Site of Kingston Coal Ash Spill Re-opened For Recreation, But Is It Too Soon?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) plan to lift the recreational advisory for and reopen the Emory River on Saturday, May 29, 2010, at 7:00 a.m. The main river channel will be accessible to the public, but caution is advised. A no-wake zone has been established from Emory River mile 1.5 to mile 3 because large equipment remains in the area as TVA and EPA continue recovery of the Kingston ash spill.
For safety, work zones will be marked and boomed off, and will only partially obstruct the main channel. The public will not be allowed in work zones. EPA, in consultation with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and the Tennessee Department of Health, has determined that any coal ash remaining in the river presents minimal health risks to recreational users.
The EPA claims that casual contact with ash in the river should not cause skin irritation, although long-term contact could result in some irritation from visible sand-like particles in the ash.
Nothing like the chance of a little skin irritation to spice up an afternoon on the river!
The Kingston spill sent 525 million to 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge (enough to cover 400 acres in coal ash about 6 feet deep) into the Emory River, potentially contaminating the water supply for Chattanooga, Tennessee as well as millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Just months after the TVA spill, which the EPA called “one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in history,” both the EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture were criticized for brazenly promoting what they call the waste’s “beneficial uses” in an effort to deal with the excessive ash piling up around the nation’s coal-fired plants.
Businessweek Magazine reported that “the federal government [was] encouraging farmers to spread a chalky waste from coal-fired power plants on their fields to loosen and fertilize soil even as it considers regulating coal wastes for the first time.”
Image: TVA’s Kingston power plant where a coal ash containment pond broke open on December 22, 2008, spilling millions of tons of ashy sludge. (Photo: ENS-Newswire/EIP/Earthjustice)