Coal ash spill called ‘a godsend’
Official says TVA accident good for Alabama county
By Michael Collins- Knoxville News Sentinel- Wednesday, December 9, 2009
WASHINGTON – The massive coal-ash spill at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant
may have been a costly environmental nightmare, but from Albert Turner
Jr.’s point of view, it was “a godsend.”
Turner, a county commissioner in the rural Alabama community where the
coal ash is being shipped for permanent disposal, said Wednesday that the
spill has given the poor, mostly black community an economic boom “unseen
since the state of Texas struck oil.”
“I sleep well at night knowing we’ve got coal ash in the ground and cash
in the bank,” Turner said during a congressional hearing on the spill.
At the same hearing, TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore disclosed that the
public utility would probably spend at least $1 billion to make
improvements to coal-ash storage facilities at its 10 coal-fired power
plants.
The cost would be on top of the $1.2 billion that TVA has estimated it
will take to clean up the coal-ash spill in Kingston.
“TVA deeply regrets what occurred last December, but you have our
continued commitment to clean up the spill,” Kilgore assured the U.S.
House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.
Wednesday’s hearing was the congressional panel’s fourth on the Kingston
spill, which happened when a storage facility collapsed on Dec. 22, 2008.
The accident dumped 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge into the Emory
River and surrounding countryside and resulted in calls for the federal
government to regulate the storage of coal ash.
To date, about two-thirds of the 3 million cubic yards of ash that ended
up in the river has been removed, Kilgore told the congressional panel.
Cleanup crews average the removal of about 15,000 cubic yards per day and
are on track to remove all of the ash from the river by next spring, he
said. TVA estimates the rest of the ash removal will be completed by
2013.
TVA appears to be “marching in the right direction,” testified TVA
Inspector General Richard W. Moore, whose office has released two reports
on the spill and the utility’s response.
Moore lauded TVA for taking a number of steps, including making personnel
changes, which he said is credible evidence of a commitment by TVA to do
“whatever it takes to get this right.”
In July, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave its approval for
TVA to transport the ash by train to the Arrowhead Landfill in Perry
County, Ala., for permanent disposal. As of Nov. 24, more than 744,000
cubic yards of ash had been sent to the landfill.
Environmentalists have accused the TVA of using the poor community as its
dumping ground. Read Entire Article.