The coal ash slurry spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant more than 11 years ago dumped more than 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash into neighboring rivers and properties in one of the worst environmental spills in U.S. history.
TVA President Jeff Lyash said the spill "should never have happened" and TVA needs to and has taken responsibility for the mistakes that led to the ash dike failure. But in spite of claims by some cleanup workers that they were lied to and unnecessarily harmed by TVA's main contractor for the cleanup, Lyash said the ultimate site restoration has become a model for other utilties on how to clean up coal ash.
"I've spent significant time in Kingston looking at the restoration of that environment and the way we are handling and storing coal ash today is world class," Lyash said following the quarterly TVA board meeting last week in Mississippi. "It was done right and it is still being done right and others are benchmarking TVA at that site to learn lessons how to do this correctly. This is something that shouldn't have happened but I think has effectively been recovered."
FILE - This Dec. 22, 2008, file photo shows homes that were destroyed by coal ash when a retention pond wall collapsed at the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tenn. A grand jury in Tennessee's Roane County is supporting a criminal investigation into claims that a Tennessee Valley Authority contractor failed to protect workers cleaning up a massive coal ash spill. The grand jury report alludes to the workers' claims that air monitoring results and other environmental tests were tampered with by supervisors with contractor Jacobs Engineering. (AP Photo/Wade Payne, File)The spill at Kingston in December 2008 released a slurry of fly ash and water, which traveled across the Emory River and its Swan Pond embayment, and eventually covered up to 300 acres of the surrounding land. The initial spill, which rendered many properties uninhabitable, cost TVA more than $1 billion to cleanup, and was declared complete in 2015.
But many employees of an engineering firm hired by TVA to clean up the spill, Jacobs Engineering, have since developed illnesses and cancers and sued both Jacobs and TVA for damages.
In November 2018, a federal jury ruled that the contractor did not properly inform the workers about the dangers of exposure to coal ash and failed to provide them with necessary personal protective equipment. A grand jury in Roane County last month filed an addendum to their report suggesting that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation should pursue a criminal investigation "into certain issues pertaining to cleanup worker safety."
The judge in the Knoxville case against Jacobs ordered the company and plaintiffs to try to mediate a monetary settlement in the case for the roughly 200 affected workers, but 15 months later no deal has yet been struck.
Jacobs continues to deny it caused the workers to be injured. Jacobs attorney Theodore Boutrous said the company "stands by its work assisting TVA with the difficult job of managing the cleanup of the Kingston coal ash spill."
Lyash said utilities across the country that long relied upon coal for much of its electricity generation "are struggling how to deal with coal ash," which built up over more than a half century of major coal-fired power generation in America. TVA once operated 59 coal-fired generators which collectively supplied nearly two thirds of TVA power in the late 1980s. TVA has since shut down more than half of those coal units, including the closing of its Widows Creek, Watts Bar, Colbert, John Sevier, New Johnsonville, Allen and Paradise plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky. TVA plans to shut down its Bull Run plant near Oak Ridge by 2023.
"We are committed to a responsible approach to the ultimate decommissioning and dismantling of these sites and the closure of these coal ash storage facilities," Lyash said. "Fundamentally, our belief is that we let the science determine what the best closure method is. That may be closure and cap in place or it could be closure by removal (of the coal ash to another site)."
FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2012 file photo, TVA contract workers remove coal ash from the edge of the Emory River next to the Kingston Fossil Plant in Kingston, Tenn. as part of the cleanup from a December 2008 spill. A grand jury in Tennessee's Roane County is supporting a criminal investigation into claims that a Tennessee Valley Authority contractor failed to protect workers cleaning up a massive coal ash spill. The grand jury report alludes to the workers' claims that air monitoring results and other environmental tests were tampered with by supervisors with contractor Jacobs Engineering. (Michael Patrick/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP, File)TVA's long-range budget plan envisions TVA spending billions of dollars more for coal ash cleanup and site monitoring and Lyash said he continues "to engage effectively with the public and the community so that we are transparent about what we are doing so that we hear their concern and input and incorporate that into our final decision."
At the Bull Run Fossil Plant, TVA is seeking approval by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to build a new 60-acre coal ash storage facility. Anderson County commissioners scheduled a hearing late Tuesday to consider the plan after Anderson County Commissioner Tracy Wandell told the Knoxville News Sentinel that he wants the county to invoke a state law known as the Jackson Law to require the county to approve any new coal ash dump by TVA.
TVA spokesman Scott Gureck said since TVA doesn't plan to bring any new coal ash to the site and "it is our position that the Jackson Law does not apply to the proposed Bull Run landfill."
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.