Tuesday morning, folks heading into Nashville, TN were greeted by a giant electronic billboard against the skyline of downtown that said “Only God Should Move Mountains.” The creators of the large message turned out to be the small but mighty Christian-based environmental group LEAF, based in Knoxville, TN, with help from environmental movers and shakers NRDC.

Do I hear applause? I know my own hands are clapping….

These sites have carried Webb’s full letter:

Huffington Post: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/urgent-webb-letter-to-oba_b_168604.html

Mountain Journey https://amountainjourney.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/an-open-letter-to-president-obama/

Grist: https://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/2/19/153153/897

Stop Strip Mining: https://stopstripmining.gnn.tv/blogs/31217/An_Open_Letter_to_President_Obama

GNN TV: https://gnn.tv/threads/34430/An_Open_Letter_to_President_Obama

Alternet: https://www.alternet.org/environment/127877/american_citizens_in_appalachia_are_living_in_a_state_of_terror_/?page=entire

United Mountain Defense, the environmental group that has been leading the charge for the on the ground response here in Harriman, TN, following the TVA coal ash spill on December 22, is now pushing for air testing and respirator protection. According to their blog, no one is testing the air except TVA and the private corporation that they hired.

United Mountain Defense is requesting independent air monitors to show up and hang out for a day, the weekend, a week or longer. They need testing for VOC’s and particulates. PLEASE HELP!!!!!! They have spaces for you to stay for free and possibly gas money.

Read the full details on United Mountain Defense’s blog

Rain water rose in the Emory River yesterday, due to, of all things, rain, which is not uncommon in Tennessee during the winter. And according to the blog site, RoaneViews.com, the river reached record level flows of 25,000 cfs (cubic feet per second). Not flood stage, but at this point you have to wonder if extra water flowing through the Emory and over the weir will wash more of the contaminated ash downstream. Or, perhaps you could ask, how will it not?

Read the Roane Views blog post about this

By Bill Kovarik

They might as well have said “Tommie, you’re doing a heckofa job” down there in Tennessee cleaning up that nasty coal ash spill.

Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and other senators at the US Senate environment committee looking into the TVA disaster took serious pains to tell Tom Kilgore what a “nice man” he was.

View the hearing on the Senate.gov website

The effusive praise in the hearing Thursday morning Jan. 8 went beyond the standard courtesies afforded witnesses in Senate hearings, perhaps because it was clear that the TVA’s CEO was a relic of a bygone age who would need to be handled with respect and care as he was ushered out the door.

In fact, before he even left the Senate hearing room, Kilgore’s notion that wind energy costs 70 cents per kilowatt hour was flashing by “Twitter” to environmental networks across the country – along with a rebuttal by the American Wind Energy Association. Four to eight cents is the US Department of Energy figure, AWEA noted.

New technology isn’t the only point on which Kilgore is sadly out of touch. By refusing to take responsibility – acknowledging TVA’s role obliquely with “this is not a proud moment” — Kilgore could not have been more obtuse.

In one memorable exchange, Boxer asked about leaving the ash in place with grass seed over it instead of cleaning up the embayment behind Swan Pond Road.

Boxer – You don’t have plans to do this?

Kilgore – We don’t have plans not to.

Boxer – That’s not an answer. That’s not cleanup, just leaving that stuff there. People will never feel safe there. People are smart, they know what’s in it, and they’re going to send grandkids out to play in it? I don’t think so… I think there are a lot of questions about your decision making …

Stephen Smith, Executive Director Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said that among the many emotions that had gripped the Tennessee Valley in the wake of the disaster, including “fear, frustration and anger,” the most significant of all was betrayal. “This was not a natural disaster,” he said. “This was a man made disaster.“

Perhaps the most interesting moment was Senator James Inhofe’s (R-OK) opening statement, where he warned that “extremist groups” might exploit this “incident” so they can “eradicate the use of coal in this country.” We can only wonder if Inhofe believes that these might be the same “extremists” who he has previously accused of hoaxing the nation about climate change.

The lasting impression is one of chaos. None of the numbers about toxins in the spill – such as how many hundred thousand pounds of arsenic — were remotely solid or acknowledged as accurate, either on the Senate side or among the witnesses.

And despite repeated comparisons to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, a comparison to Three Mile Island seems more apropos. The Exxon Valdez was never seen as the end of the oil industry. This TVA disaster is starting to look like just that for new coal fired power plants, just as Three Mile Island was the end of nuclear power construction.

Maybe the extremists won’t prove to be so extreme after all.

High levels of toxic heavy metals are present in samples taken from the Kingston Fossil Plant ash spill in Harriman, TN, independent testing shows.

Preliminary testing was conducted on samples from the Emory River by scientists working in coordination with Appalachian Voices and the Waterkeeper Alliance’s Upper Watauga Riverkeeper Program.

Concentrations of eight toxic chemicals range from twice to 300 times higher than drinking water limits, according to scientists with Appalachian State University who conducted the tests.

“Although these results are preliminary, we want to release them because of the public health concern and because we believe the TVA and EPA aren’t being candid,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chair of the Waterkeeper Alliance.

The tests were conducted this week at the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry labs at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, by Dr. Shea Tuberty, Associate Professor of Biology, and Dr. Carol Babyak, Assistant Professor of Chemistry.

Tuberty and Babyak conducted tests for 17 different heavy metals in triplicate using standard EPA methods. The samples were collected on Saturday, December 27 by Watauga Riverkeeper
Donna Lisenby from three separate locations on the Emory River.

According to the tests, arsenic levels from the Kingston power plant intake canal tested at close to 300 times the allowable amounts in drinking water, while a sample from two miles
downstream still revealed arsenic at approximately 30 times the allowed limits. Lead was present at between twice to 21 times the legal drinking water limits, and thallium levels tested at three to
four times the allowable amounts.

All water samples were found to contain elevated levels of arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and thallium. The samples were taken from the immediate area of the coal
waste spill, in front of the Kingston Fossil plant intake canal just downstream from the spill site, and at a power line crossing two miles downstream from the spill.

“I have never seen levels of arsenic, lead and copper this high in natural waters,” said Babyak.

A sediment sample was also taken from one of the ash piles at the coal spill site, and revealed even higher levels of heavy metals. Arsenic tested at 135 parts per million, while lead tested at
25 ppm.

Due to the porous topography in the Kingston and Harriman region, well and spring water contamination is one of the primary concerns for nearby populations. “The springs and the well
water in that area need to be closely monitored to see if there is any movement of these arsenic compounds and other heavy metals percolating down through the soil into these wells, because the [surface] levels are 300 times higher,” said Tuberty. “That’s a dangerous level.”

“The highest level of risk you can have with these heavy metals is actually ingesting them,” Tuberty said. “Either drinking or eating them is really the only way it will become an issue, unless you are breathing them. That is coming into play with these ash piles, from drying and becoming picked up from the winds. You can actually breathe them in and that’s the third way you can become exposted to them.”

Recreation on Watts Bar Lake and nearby regions downstream from the site could be affected for some time to come, Tuberty said. Some heavy metals can accumulate in fish, making them unsafe for eating. Although simply touching the water will not necessarily be dangerous for people, failure to wash after contact or swallowing water while swimming could also pose risks.

According to Dr. Tuberty, while the toxicity levels of heavy metals in the water are cause for concern to humans, there is even more cause for concern regarding aquatic life’s ability to survive and reproduce in waters with these levels.

“The ecosystems around Kingston and Harriman are going to be in trouble, the aquatic ones for some time, until nature is able to bury these compounds in the environment,” said Tuberty. “I don’t know how long that will take, maybe generations.”

Of particular concern are metals such as selenium and mercury, which bioaccumulate, or increase in concentrations in tissues of animals higher on the food chain. Birds and mammals that ingest fish and invertebrates contaminated with these metals are at risk of health issues.

The TVA has not released any water quality or solid soil sample results from the immediate spill site. The only results the utility has released to the public to date were from the Kingston water facility intake 6 miles down river from the spill site, and approximately half a mile upstream on the Tennessee River. According to Tuberty, with a sediment spill, downriver contamination can take place over time rather than immediately following a spill.

“There is a huge quantity of this ash still laying there and being picked up from the water,” Tuberty said. “Every time you get a significant rainfall, you’re going to be getting another pulse of this coming through…until [the ash] is removed from the water, and sequestered one way or another, it is going to be a continued input.”

“TVA [and EPA] certainly knows what is in the ash,” Tuberty continued. “[Testing is] part of their routine for solid waste disposal procedures. There is some data out there about how many tons of heavy metals are being released in a year’s time, so they know those numbers.”

“What you could do now is take what was lost to the river, multiply them back by the concentrations of those known compounds in the fly ash, and calculate a likelihood of what number of tons of these different heavy metals have been released in the water.”

“I think it’s going to be a frightening number.”

Dr. Shea Tuberty, an environmental toxicologist at Appalachian State University, earned his doctorate from Tulane University and spent four years conducting EPA post doctoral work at the
University of West Florida.

Dr. Babyak, an environmental chemist at Appalachian State University, obtained her doctorate at West Virginia University and specilized her study on coal plant emissions.

View the complete results (pdf)

The nine-member TVA Board of Directors sets policy and strategy for TVA. The members are nominated by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve five-year terms.

Their next board meeting is February 12 in Bristol, TN.

Board Members
Chairman William B. Sansom of Knoxville, Tenn., is chairman and chief executive officer of The H.T. Hackney Co. and has held that position since 1983. Hackney is a diversified company involved in wholesale grocery, gas and oil, and furniture manufacturing. His term expires May 18, 2009.

Dennis Bottorff of Nashville, Tenn., serves as chairman and partner of Council Ventures, a venture capital firm. He was chairman of AmSouth Bancorporation in Nashville until his retirement in 2001 and previously was chief executive officer of First American Bank. His term expires May 18, 2011.

Don DePriest of Columbus, Miss., is chairman of a venture capital firm headquartered in Alexandria, Va. The firm has founded or invested in such companies as American Telecasting, now merged with Sprint; his Charisma Communications Corp. was a pioneer in the cellular phone business. He previously chaired the Columbus, Mississippi, Utilities Commission. His term expires May 18, 2009.

Mike Duncan of Inez, Ky., is chairman, chief executive officer, and director of Community Holding Co.; chairman, CEO, and director of Inez Deposit Bank; and Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He is a director of the regional Center for Rural Development. His term expires May 18, 2011.

Tom Gilliland, of Blairsville, Ga., recently retired as executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of United Community Banks Inc. He is a former chief of staff to Georgia Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard and served as chairman of the Stone Mountain Authority under Georgia Govs. Roy Barnes and Sonny Perdue. His term expires May 18, 2011.

William Graves of Memphis is presiding Bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. He was previously pastor of the Phillips Temple CME Church of Los Angeles, Calif. He is the immediate Past President of the Board of the National Congress of Black Churches and a former member of the board of Memphis Light, Gas & Water. His term expires on May 18, 2012.

Howard Thrailkill of Huntsville, Ala., recently retired as president and chief operating officer of Adtran, Inc., in Huntsville, which supplies equipment for telecommunications service providers and corporate end-users. Previously, he was president and chief executive officer of the firm Floating Point Systems. His term expires May 18, 2010.

iLoveMountains.org, a coalition fighting mountaintop removal coal mining, of which Appalachian Voices is a partner organization has launched a comprehensive section of information including links to news, blog posts, photos, and videos of the event as well as detailed information about coal fly ash, historical accounts of other similar incidents, and personal accounts of the current event.

Visit ilovemountains.org/tvaspill.

When the Environmental Protection Agency decided not to regulate coal fly ash in 2000, saying the materials were “non-hazardous,” environmental scientists were aghast, since many coal waste storage facilities had already appeared on toxic waste “superfund” lists and many others were eligible.

By 2007, EPA admitted there was a problem, saying coal waste and fly ash have probably damaged drinking water around at least 135 sites nationwide. Some of the site damage had been known to exist for over 10 years. The problem sites include the Kingston TN plant, location of the Dec. 22, 2008 catastrophic release.

The risk assessment was cited in a New York Times article Dec. 30 as detailing a long list of toxic and hazardous chemicals residing the the coal ash pile in Kingston, including 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese.

But EPA assessment should have covered even more sites, according to the environmental group Earthjustice, which also criticized the agency for deliberately “reducing the number of proven damage cases by creating a test of proof that is extremely difficult to meet.”

Coal combustion residues, including fly ash and boiler slag, are the second largest waste stream in America, just after household trash. About 125 million tons overall were produced in power plants around the country in 2006. Fly ash use in cement is considered “beneficial,” but is not “sustainable.” By emphasizing the “beneficial” uses of fly ash, the coal and utility industries have managed to fend off regulations for over a decade. The industries have also diverted attention from one of the major external costs of coal — the mess that is inevitably created when coal is burned.

Serious environmental damage is typical around the hundreds of coal fly ash and combustion waste storage plants located near coal fired power plants. The emerging picture is one of a lack of any precautions such as landfill liners or even basic monitoring of water quality.

Several utilities have settled damages recently with residents. These include:

• Anne Arundel, MD — Constellation Energy Group is settling with landowners for $45 million after contaminating their water supply by dumping fly ash in a sand and gravel mine near their homes in Crofton and Gambrils, MD. Thirty four residential wells were polluted by the fly ash dump, and testing of residents’ drinking water revealed the presence of arsenic, cadmium, thallium, beryllium, aluminum, manganese and sulfate at levels above safe drinking water standards. The fly ash dump may also threaten the deep aquifer that supplies Crofton’s municipal wells. The class action lawsuit alleged that Constellation has known that hazardous substances linked to cancer and other serious health effects had been leaking into groundwater from the Waugh Chapel and Turner Pit dump sites in Gambrills since 1998, but that residents received no warning of the discharges into the local aquifer and dumping operations were expanded.

• Allentown (Northampton County) PA— Delaware River Conservancy and other environmental groups sued when utility PPL spilled 100 millions of gallons of fly ash into the Delaware River in August 2005. Although the Conservancy had legal standing in court, negotiations over the settlement between PPL and the state environmental enforcement agency did not include the conservancy, and forced the settlement to be renegotiated. The conservancy is a group of 200 Delaware riverside residents who live downstream from the are of the Martins Creek spill. PPL claimed it had spent $35 million cleaning up the spill in 2005 and 2006.

• Colstrip, MT — Coal ash ponds built since the 1970s have contaminated residential wells and Castle Rock Lake with heavy metals. Utilities settled with residents for $25 million on May 8, 2008. Ironically, EPA never included this as a proven damage case in its risk assessments.

Other cases are ongoing battlegrounds for citizens against the utilities:

• Pines, IN — https://www.pineswater.org/ — https://indianalawblog.com/archives/2004/04/environment_tow.html — People noticed funny tasting water around April 2000, and by 2002 formed the People In Need of Environmental Safety. A book about the town’s experience was published in 2004. They found that according to official records, a utility coal ash landfill “was known to have the potential to cause groundwater and surface water pollution and that this contamination would pose a danger to nearby residential well users.” Children were particularly at risk according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, an organization within the Centers for Disease Control), which reviewed the drinking water data for Town of Pines. They expressed concern about “high levels of metals in residential drinking water”. While some improvements were ordered for the landfill, the ultimate solution was to stop using ground water and develop a town water system. “Report: Not in My Lifetime: The Fight for Clean Water in Town of Pines, Indiana (April 2004).” The accompanying description: “It is a story meant to inspire action, not just in Town of Pines, but nationally, to ensure responsible and environmentally safe disposal practices, particularly for toxic coal combustion wastes.”

• Pittsburgh, Pa. — A 50 year old fly ash dump collapsed in January, 2005, covering the Forward Township (near Pittsburgh) with fly ash sludge and then fine dust particles in Jan. 2005. The Environmental Integrity Project worked with residents, calling on the EPA and state authorities to intervene and better inform residents of the hazards of dried fly ash residues. The group is sending Pennsylvania residents to Tennessee to help residents cope with cleanup and self-protection issues. www.environmentalintegrity.org/pub284.cfm

• Hyco and Bellews Lakes, NC — Selenium contamination from fly ash runoff in freshwater lakes in North Carolina led to a ban on fishing during the 1980s. Eventually, the utility was forced to stop allowing runoff into the lakes.

• Mt Carmel, IN — A cooling lake for Duke Energy’s Gibson power plant was closed to fishing after high selenium levels were detected. In recent years, contamination of water wells was discovered and Duke has apparently been supplying residents with bottled water under an informal agreement.

• Newcastle, England — In the 1980s and 1990s, according to a Wikipedia article, around 2,000 tons of fly ash from local incinerators were spread on footpaths around the Byker and Walker districts of Newcastle upon Tyne. Studies found dioxin and furan contamination, but not heavy metals.

Power plants with pollution problems in Appalachian include:

• Seven inactive hazardous waste sites in North Carolina, including:

1. Cape Fear Steam Station, Carolina Power and Light Company (metals found in groundwater)
2. Mayo Steam Plant, HWY 501, Roxboro, CPL (metals found in soil)
3. Spruce Pine, Mountain Laurel Dr., CPL
4. Sutton Steam Generating Station, Highway 421, Wilmington, CPL (metals found in sediment)
5. Weatherspoon Steam Generation Plant, East, Lumberton, CPL
6. Fayetteville Plant, CPL, (organics found in surface water, groundwater and soil)
7. Walnut Cove, Duke Power Co.

• Mitchell WV and Putnam County, WV — Two power plants here have unlined impoundments and show high levels of selenium in downstream water. The Amos plant has “substantial evidence that aquatic life uses are being seriously degraded due to the disposal of fly ash in the headwaters of the creek,” Earthjustice said. Fish containing 58.02 ppm selenium, well above the suggested limit of 4ppm, “should trigger a West Virginia fish advisory,” the group said. Neither site has been listed as damaged by CCWs, but both should be, the group said.

• Oak Ridge, TN — Elevated levels of lead, arsenic and heavy metals were recently found at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s coal fired power plant and ash pond. Deformed fish were found in downstream of the coal ash pond.

• Two additional TVA sites are also responsible for groundwater contamination: the Colbert and Widows Creek plants, both in Alabama on the Tennessee River. The Widows Creek plant has had high levels of lead, iron, manganese, aluminum, sulfates and boron. The Colbert site is over standard for sulfate, chromium, selenium, iron, molybdenum and boron.

• Clinch River, VA — 130 million gallon spill, 1967.

For more information:

See EPA Drinking water standards, 2006 (PDF)

Earthjustice Comments on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Coal Combustion Waste Damage Case Assessment
https://www.earthjustice.org/library/references/noda_appendix_-d.pdf
and https://www.earthjustice.org/library/references/noda_appendix_c_damage-cases.pdf

Environmental organizations teamed up Saturday to take water samples along the embattled Emory river despite attempts by authorities to keep them away.

John L. Wathen, a Hurricane Creekkeeper; Sandra Diaz, Appalachian Voices’ National Field Coordinator; and Donna Lisenby, the Watauga Riverkeeper, used kayaks to access the Emory River and the site of the Kingston Steam Plant spill. The three navigated two kayaks to take samples and photos among mounds of “ash bergs.”

Results of the independent sampling should be available in three or four days, Lisenby said.

A selection of photos is available immediately for use with appropriate credit (By John Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper) The photos are copyrighted but offered without charge as a public service for environmental groups, web bloggers, and the news media.

The photos and videos show a river turned into a moonscape of ash bergs and thick seams of floating scum.

“This is the largest loss of material into a river I have ever seen,” said Wathen. “It could rank as one of America’s worst environmental disasters in recent history if not the worst. This tops the Susquehanna cave in, the Exxon Valdez, or the Martin County KY Tug River slurry spill.”

“Folks, it is time to change the way we do business with coal burning,” Wathen said.

Wathen said the groups have been denied access to public roads and escorted out of a waterway by private TVA security police who claimed they were given federal authority through the Patriot act.

These are, Watham said, “gestopo tactics intended to scare people away from the truth.”

Along with Donna Lisenby and Sandra Diaz, Watham skirted police lines and took samples. “Cops (were) yelling from both sides,” he said. “The cops in cars could not get to us for the water. The cops in the boat could not reach us for the mud and debris in the river, and the helicopter couldn’t land in the muck to pick us up either.”

The three did receive warnings from police and were told that the river was closed.

Additional links:

• Watham’s photos from the TVA spill site
• Watham’s YouTube video

Appalachian Voices’ National Field Coordinator Sandra Diaz and the Watauga RIverkeeper Donna Lisenby visited ground zero of the TVA coal fly ash spill in Harriman, TN, today, kayaking into the area hardest hit and taking water samples for independent study. Below are Sandra’s updates by cell phone using the Twitter service:

# Uploaded a few more pics, more to come, plus video #coalash https://is.gd/dHd6 4:48 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from web

# We made it out alive! cops everywhere- on land, on water, in the air 2:36 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# We got busted! more later 1:47 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# Cops yelling @ us 1:35 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# We r where it all blew out…islands of sludge 1:21 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# Looks like they r puttin in a boom. finally! 12:50 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# Big machines ahead… can we get thru? 12:46 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# We just did our 1st water sample 4 ny times! 12:15 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# We r being recorded by ny times! 12:05 PM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# Water looks like marble…gross! 11:57 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# ny times is here, about 2 get on the water! 11:47 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# We r on water! 11:43 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# We found our loading dock. hopefully tva wont see us 11:31 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# heading off the get on the water to take pics and take water samples 10:55 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from web

# Figuring out our P of A using Google Earth…love the Google! 10:30 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from web

# Reporter from NPR Weekend Edition (Sunday) came and went. Hopefully she will be able to get into the affected area. 10:21 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from web

# will be posting my pics as I can here: https://is.gd/dHd610:13 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from web

# We have reached the hq @ a secret undislosed location in kingston, tn 9:39 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# 13 miles outside of kingston…no sign of the environmental disaster coming up 8:55 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

# On the road 2 biggest coal sludge disaster in us 6:37 AM Dec 27th, 2008 from txt

Folks from United Mountain Defense took a small boat up the Emory River and into ground zero of the Kingston Steam Plant coal ash spill.