Posts Tagged ‘TVA Kingston coal ash spill’
Dirty Congressional Coal Ash Proposal Smothered in Negotiations
Congressional Research Service Report Shows Little Change in State Programs if Congress Had Its Way By Erin Burks Red, White and Water intern, Summer 2012 Transportation bill negotiations between the House and Senate came to a close on June 29 and an amendment blocking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to finalize coal ash storage…
Read MoreStorage of TVA Coal Ash Waste Leads to Civil Rights Lawsuit
December 22 marked the three-year anniversary of the disastrous coal ash spill at Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant. Residents of the damaged Swan Pond community are still struggling with the impacts of relocation and pollution. But the toxic effects of the more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash that flooded the Clinch and…
Read MoreProposed Coal Ash Regulations Weaker than Household Waste Laws
Nearly three years after the Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash disaster spilled over a billion gallons of toxic sludge into the Emory River in Harriman, Tenn., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to finalize guidelines regulating coal ash ponds. However, a bill in the Senate could put a permanent hold on the EPA’s ability…
Read MoreWho Cares About Coal Ash? “Have A Sip, Take a Dip, Eat Some Fish”
Yesterday, we wrote about a bluff containing coal ash pond breaking, allowing a football field chunk of debris into Lake Michigan. According to a We Energies spokesman “it is probable that some of the material that washed into the lake is coal ash”. The dangers of coal ash have been made apparent through the coal…
Read MoreDangerous Coal Ash Ponds Extremely Common
There should be zero “significant” hazard coal ash ponds in the United States. The catastrophic collapse of TVA’s Kingston coal ash pond should be a one-time event. Congress should be fighting to protect citizens from another spill. Unfortunately, there are 181 “significant” hazard coal ash ponds, according to EPA’s latest assessment of coal combustion waste…
Read MoreHeath Shuler and Others Who Stood Up Against Dangerous Coal Ash Legislation
Today, Congressmen Heath Shuler (NC), David Price (NC), Mel Watt (NC), Brad Miller (NC), John Yarmuth (KY), Gerry Connolly (VA) and Frank Wolf (VA) voted against H.R. 2273 , the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act, a bill that does nothing to protect our communities from the dangers of toxic coal ash. Though we are…
Read MoreTell Congress We Can’t Afford The Status Quo on Coal Ash!
This Friday, the House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 2273, the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act, a bill that puts the profits of coal ash polluters above public health. H.R. 2273 subverts public support of the EPA’s proposed federal coal ash rules by leaving coal ash pollution in the hands of states with…
Read MoreA Cup of Arsenic in the Morning Does a Body…Good?
In what some folks would call the “no-duh” factor, the TVA has found contaminated groundwater near some of their coal fired power plant coal ash sites. Following the 2008 coal ash disaster at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tenn., the topic of toxicity in coal ash has raged hotter than a coal-stoked furnace. According…
Read MoreGreat Film on the TVA Coal Ash Spill Disaster Two Years Later
In September, 2010 I traveled back to Harriman, Tennessee to meet the Blue Planet Expedition crew and our research partners at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute to tell the story of the TVA coal ash spill disaster two and half years after it happened. We spent a long day on the Emory River electroshocking fish…
Read MoreCoal Ash Cleanup Effort Comes in Phases
Story by Sarah Vig “A clean-up can either be done right or it can be a ticking time bomb,” California Senator Barbara Boxer cautioned TVA CEO Tom Kilgore during the Environment and Public Works committee’s oversight hearing on the recent coal ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant near Harriman, TN. In response, Kilgore promised…
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