Eight years after a coal ash pond ruptured at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant in one of the nation's worst environmental disasters, the Tennessee Valley Authority continues to face claims of improper disposal of coal residues from its coal-fired power plants.
A federal judge in Nashville will begin hearing arguments today in a civil lawsuit filed by environmental groups that charge TVA's coal ash ponds at the Gallatin Fossil Plant northeast of Nashville are leaking toxic metals into the Cumberland River in violation of clean water regulations.
TVA, which is moving to replace all of its coal ash ponds with dry ash storage, denies the old ponds at the plant violate federal regulations, noting that the disposal methods were approved by environmental regulators in the past.
But the Southern Environment Law Center is representing the Tennessee Scenic Rivers Association, which together with the Tennessee Clean Water Network, claims coal ash is leaking into nearby water supplies through sinkholes from the unlined ponds where TVA has dumped coal residues for nearly 60 years.
"Because of the highly permeable, karst nature of the bedrock underlying the coal ash disposal pits at the Gallatin Fossil Plant, the lack of a liner underneath the coal ash, and the hydrology of the site, the only effective remedy to stop the pollution is the excavation and removal of the coal ash to lined storage safely away from the water bodies," SELC attorney Jonathan Gendzier argues in one of many documents filed in the 2-year-old case.
More than 1 million people rely on the Cumberland River for drinking water. Among the toxic substances environmentalists claim reach the river from the Gallatin plant are chromium, arsenic, lead, aluminum, boron, iron, sulfate, selenium and manganese.
TVA is spending more than $1 billion to move away from using coal ash ponds following the 2008 disaster at Kingston, where a dike ruptured at an 84-acre solid waste containment area. That accident spilled 1.1 billion gallons of fly ash slurry into the nearby Clinch and Emory rivers in the worst coal ash spill in U.S. history.
Utility officials say removing decades of ash from ponds would be more costly and potentially environmentally damaging than capping the existing ponds.
The Gallatin plant began operating in 1959, more than a decade before the Clean Water Act became law. The plant sluices its coal ash through settling ponds ponds, returning the water used to the Cumberland River. TVA said the method was approved by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
In a 2009 assessment, TVA staff rated the Gallatin ponds as having a "significant" hazard potential. But the agency said the hazard rating reflected the potential serious effects of a pond leak, and was not an assessment of the stability of the pond or its likeliness to leak into nearby water systems.
Claudine McElwain of the Southern Environmental Law Center said TVA "has dumped coal ash in the cheapest and dirtiest way possible " at Gallatin by using unlined pits covering over 500 acres that still contain more than 2.5 billion gallons of coal waste. The plant is less than five miles upstream from the Boxwell Boy Scout Reservation and approximately 1.5 miles upstream from the city of Gallatin's drinking water intake.
"TVA's Gallatin Plant is riddled with sinkholes," she said. "In fact, there were so many sinkholes present when the ash ponds were built in the 1970s that for about eight years they did not hold waste water. During that time, more than 27 billion gallons of coal ash waste leaked into the groundwater and Cumberland River."
TVA Chair V. Lynn Evans said last week she was briefed on TVA's position in today's trial, "but I am not in a position to have any comment because of the status of the suit."
U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw will hear the lawsuit in a bench trial that is expected to take at least a week or more in Nashville.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.