Red, Green, and Blue

Tuesday’s initial reports about the coal ash disaster in Harriman, Tennessee at the TVA’s Kingston Power Plant turned out to be false. The Tennessee Valley Authority initially estimated the spill to be approximately 500 million gallons, although they have now amended their estimate to 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic waste, which is the equivalent of over one billion gallons. My initial guess that this was the largest unnatural disaster of its kind has certainly given itself a bit of breathing room. A slurry impoundment, used to concentrate the waste byproducts that come from washing and burning coal, containing both uranium and thorium broke, releasing the toxic material into the surrounding community.

Aside from the shear devastation that this series of events has caused, including the dozen homes that have been ruined, there are a number of things that should be looked at more closely. First of all, the Kingston disaster shows the lack of attention given to the construction and engineering of waste depositories for coal byproducts - specifically slurry impoundments like the ones ruptured at Kingston, in Martin County, KY in 2000 and in Buffalo Creek, WV in 1972. Because sound engineering requires both time and money, stability in these unenforced slurry ponds is rare - if coal companies (and even the federal government in the form of the TVA) were required to dispose of coal waste in a safe and secure way, coal mining (especially mountaintop removal, where most slurry ponds are sited) would become significantly less profitable.

That leads into the second learning point from this disaster, which is the utter failure of the Bush administration’s energy and environmental policy which has completely neglected to regulate the coal industry in any way whatsoever. In fact, they’ve taken every possible opportunity, even at the 11th hour, to eliminate preexisting regulations. Although Barack Obama’s allegiance to coal has been a topic of much dispute in recent months, it is absolutely imperative that Obama support legislation that requires a great deal more from the industry which has been propped up by improper subsidies and lax enforcement.

This episode has again shown the importance that citizens and citizen journalism play in informing both the public and the mainstream media about the events that matter. Initial and ongoing reporting by the local newspapers in Knoxville and Nashville were integral in breaking the story, but it was through the blogosphere that the story gained ground and became a priority for those who weren’t necessarily close to the area affected. It wasn’t until Christmas eve that the nightly news reported on the coal ash disaster, which happened nearly three full days before. From local niche blogs to those of major environmental organizations, the Kingston spill illustrates the necessity of what we do in the blogosphere - without an informed and active citizenry ready to report on and analyze the implications of the spill, the story may never have gotten picked up beyond central Tennessee.

Finally, we can look at the Kingston ash spill as further evidence that no matter what the coal industry wants us to believe, the negative consequences of coal dependence far outweigh the possible benefits. Being able to heat your home doesn’t really matter when your home gets destroyed by 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic waste - the coal industry and our nation’s policymakers would do well to remember that.

Related Posts:

• Coal Slurry Disaster in Tennessee is Largest Ever
• Clean Coal? Storage Failure Covers 12 Homes, 400 Acres with Toxic Ash
• Tennessee Coal Slurry Retention Pond Disaster [video]
• Raw Video Footage of TVA Kingston Power Plant Disaster Area

Photo Credit: Brian Stansberry via Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License

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