Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill

While the Kingston workers’ coal-ash exposure was excessive, the risk to drinking water supplies remains at 1,000 active coal ash landfills and ponds and hundreds of “retired” ash dumps in the U.S. According to the industry’s data, more than 90 percent of these ponds are unlined; many are contaminating groundwater with toxins above U.S. EPA’s safe drinking water standards. 

The Kingston catastrophe and a coal ash pond failure in North Carolina prompted the EPA to set the first-ever minimum federal standards for coal ash disposal. They address structural integrity for ash ponds, groundwater monitoring, corrective action, and public disclosure. The new rule also allows coal ash to be recycled into concrete and other applications: a profitable revenue stream.

The 299 U.S. coal-burning plants that remain continue to generate nearly 70 million tons of new ash annually.

More than 99 percent of existing U.S. coal plants are more expensive to run than replacements that rely on wind, solar, and battery storage. Utilities are either shutting down coal plants or retrofitting them to burn natural gas. GenOn, for example, has converted all 22 of its plants to natural gas or oil.

But as the power grid transitions, hundreds of millions of tons of coal ash have been left behind. According to EPA data, the 299 coal-burning plants that remain in the U.S. continue to generate almost 70 million tons of new ash a year. The contaminants from this waste continue to migrate into drinking water sources and lakes and rivers used for recreation.

“Everybody has been focused on the danger of storing (coal ash) in impoundments,” says Avner Vengosh, a professor of environmental quality at Duke University, who discovered that pollution was migrating broadly from 30 North Carolina coal ash impoundments into five lakes less than a mile and a half away. “We showed that the train has already left the station. The coal ash is already in the environment.”

According to Avner Vengosh, a professor of environmental quality at Duke University, toxic metals “are relatively easily leached out (of coal ash), unlike normal soil.” Rain that falls on unlined coal-ash impoundments — either ponds for storing wet ash or landfills for storing dry ash — can transport those contaminants to underlying groundwater, he notes, where it can affect drinking water supplies. According to a 2022 Earthjustice report, at least 24 coal ash sites nationwide are known to have contaminated more than 100 private wells.

In January 2017, the EPA announced that the ecosystems impacted by the spill had returned to conditions before the spill.

During the cleanup, TVA built a new protective levee around the pond, covered the ash pond with a 2 feet (0.61 m) earthquake-proof clay layer, and replanted the areas damaged by the spill. They also purchased 180 properties and 960 acres from landowners affected by the spill and built a park on the former site of homes damaged by the spill. They also made more than $43 million in-lieu-of-tax payments to the local governments to compensate for lost property and sales tax revenue. Shortly after the cleanup was complete, TVA began selling off some of the lands that they had acquired around the spill.

The cleanup was completed in 2015, and cost approximately $1.134 billion.

As of June 2009, six months following the spill, only 3% of the spill had been cleaned and was estimated to cost between $675 and $975 million to clean, according to the TVA. TVA hired California-based Jacobs Engineering to clean up the spill. The cleanup was accomplished under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) guidelines. However, the workers were not provided with the personal protective equipment necessary to prevent exposure to hazardous chemicals contained within the coal ash.

On May 11, 2009, TVA and the EPA announced an order and agreement that documents the relationship between TVA and EPA in managing the clean-up of the Kingston ash spill, further ensuring that TVA would meet all federal and state environmental requirements in restoring affected areas.

In 2009, TVA committed to switching all of the ash storage facilities at their coal-fired plants over to dry byproduct methods, reducing the chances of another spill. TVA expects this to be complete by 2022 for $2 billion. Five TVA-operated plants used this method at the time of the fall, while Kingston and another five used a wet process with ponds.

On January 1, 2009, the TVA announced that rather than attempting to clear away all of the slurries, they would be spraying seed, straw, and mulch on top of much of it to prevent dust scattering and erosion.

On December 27, 2008, TVA issued a list of precautions to residents but did not provide information about specific levels of toxic materials in the ash, although multiple environmental activists reported that they believed that TVA knew about the contents of the ash because they had tested it before the spill. The TVA released an inventory of the plant's byproducts on December 29, 2008; it included arsenic, lead, barium, chromium, and manganese. Because the pond contained decades worth of ash from coal of several different types, it was believed that the area of the spill may have contained isolated patches of higher toxicity.
By December 30, 2008, the TVA had announced it was requesting the assistance of the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the ash-filled Emory River to restore navigation.

By early on December 24, 2008, a flyover by The New York Times did note repair work being done on the nearby railroad, which had been obstructed when 78,000 cubic yards (60,000 m3) of sludge covered tracks. By the afternoon of that day, dump trucks were being used to deposit rock into the Clinch River to prevent further downstream contamination. The TVA also slowed the river flow, for the same purpose. The slurry that was cleared from Swan Pond Road was brought back to one of the plant's intact containment ponds

The day after the spill Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) indicated that barriers would be constructed to stop the ash from reaching the Tennessee River.
On December 23, 2008, the environmental group Greenpeace asked for a criminal investigation into the incident, focusing on whether the TVA could have prevented the spill.

The Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill was an environmental and industrial disaster that occurred on Monday, December 22, 2008, when a dike ruptured at a coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion US gallons (4.2 million cubic meters) of coal fly ash slurry. The coal-fired power plant, located across the Clinch River from the city of Kingston, used a series of ponds to store and dewater the fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion. The spill released a slurry of fly ash and water, which traveled across the Emory River and its Swan Pond embayment, onto the opposite shore, covering up to 300 acres (1.2 km2) of the surrounding land. The spill damaged multiple homes and flowed into nearby waterways including the Emory River and Clinch River, both tributaries of the Tennessee River. It was the largest industrial spill in United States history.