Earlier landfill blowouts sounded alarm; seepage continued as coal ash pile grew
By Anne Paine • THE TENNESSESAN • January 4, 2009
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After a blowout five years ago on the wall of a massive, above-ground coal ash landfill at TVA's Kingston power plant, engineers were under pressure to find a fix that was not only viable, but also economical.
The blowout wasn't large but indicated that something was not quite right inside the 98-acre mound of sludge.
Water was tunneling in the layers of ash and creating pressure points on the dike holding the structure in place.
How the Tennessee Valley Authority decided to stabilize Kingston's ash landfill would have implications for its many other elevated waste dumps, an important tool in the agency's strategy to maximize its storage on-site and avoid more costly options.
A Tennessean review of state records and some TVA documents shows that top officials rejected solutions that were deemed "global fixes" because they were simply too costly. The most expensive option was listed at $25 million.
In the end, TVA chose to install a series of trenches and other drainage mechanisms to try to relieve the water pressure and give the walls more stability.
On Dec. 22, the walls gave way.
A dark avalanche of coal ash sludge rolled over more than 300 acres around 1 a.m., knocking one home off its foundation and damaging others, toppling trees, filling two inlets of the Emory River and raising health and environmental concerns in nearby neighborhoods and for miles downstream.
Remarkably, no lives were lost.
But the cleanup could cost far more than the most expensive options TVA once considered.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090104/GREEN02/901040392/1001/RSS6001Don't forget the TVA gave $700 thousand bonus to its TVA executives
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