The Weather Channel missed out on this one. It is a perfect example of It Could Happen Tomorrow. Out of the hundreds of containment ponds scattered throughout Appalachia it is only a matter of time before disaster.
From knoxvillebiz.com
HARRIMAN — The amount of coal-ash sludge released Monday when an earthen dike failed at a Kingston Fossil Plant retention pond was triple what TVA has estimated.
A TVA aerial survey done Tuesday and made public Thursday shows that 5.4 million cubic yards of fly ash spilled, covering hundreds of acres, destroying three homes, damaging others and clogging the Emory River.
The agency previously had said an estimated 1.7 million cubic yards had burst through the coal-ash storage facility in Roane County about 1 a.m. Monday. TVA officials had said the pond contained about 2.6 million cubic yards of sludge and that two-thirds of it had spilled.
Photo from Knoxville News
This merry Christmas brought to you by the friends of coal.
So, one more time…. just how safe are the children of Marsh Fork Elementary?
Hey denny what a mess. I still don’t know what to think.
TVA sucks. that is not news.
what do you think this says about the possibility of “clean coal”?
you are absolutely spot on with the linkage to Marsh Fork. this sort of thing happened in Knox co TN where there are lots of TVs and news media that can’t really ignore it (although they try, KNS reporting has been dismal particularly in the first days of the event).
when this happens deeper in rural appalachia it gets covered up much more quickly. christmas present?
how do we keep the compromisers from squandering this gift? I am not sure. Fist, air.
Hey Folk – sorry it took so long to reply.
Mountainsaver and I actually came down there but we couldn’t get anywhere near the site.
I think it says it all about clean coal… coal can never be clean. It is dirty from extraction all the way through ash. I think for people to even think/talk/discuss/argue about clean coal you can’t think just about removing flue gases from the burning of coal when there is still the extraction and the waste disposal.
It is so easy to understand the dirty sides of coal that it just baffles me that supposedly educated people continue to talk clean coal this and clean coal that. They just simply don’t get it and that is too bad for us and our mountains.