Officials at the Tennessee Valley Authority have said preliminary tests suggest there is no danger to millions of people who get their drinking water from the 652-mile Tennessee River.
According to TVA, there is no threat to the environment from Monday's breach at the coal-fired Kingston plant along the Emory River, which joins the Clinch River and flows into the main Tennessee River.
That was last Friday. By last night it was a different story:
Some water samples near a massive spill of coal ash in eastern Tennessee are showing high levels of arsenic, and state and federal officials on Monday cautioned residents who use private wells or springs to stop drinking the water.
Samples taken near the spill slightly exceed drinking water standards for toxic substances, and arsenic in one sample was higher than the maximum level allowed for drinking water, according to a news release from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the power plant where the spill occurred, the Environmental Protection Agency and other officials.
TVA spokesman Jim Allen said there are four private drinking water wells in the area affected by the spill and the agency should have tests from them this week.
"I think they were beyond the actual slide point of the material," EPA spokeswoman Laura Niles said of the wells. "There shouldn't be direct impact, but that's why they are sampling."
Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment, but elevated levels can cause ailments ranging from nausea to partial paralysis, and long-term exposure has been linked to several types of cancer, according to the EPA.
TVA's environmental executive Anda Ray said the arsenic levels were high because of the type of measurement that the EPA used, which included soil mixed in with water.
"Those samples were not dissolved arsenic," Ray said. "The dissolved arsenic, which is what you look at for drinking water samples, are undetectable in all the cases. The elevated arsenic that the EPA is referring to is the data that we collected when it was stirred up. It is routinely filtered out through all water treatment plants."
Authorities have said the municipal water supply is safe to drink.
The warning came a week after a retention pond burst at the Kingston Steam Plant, spreading more than a billion gallons of fly ash mixed with water over roughly 300 acres of Roane County and into a river. The deluge destroyed three homes and damaged 42 parcels of land, but there were no serious injuries.
However, environmental concerns could grow when the sludge containing the fly ash, a fine powdery material, dries out. The federal Environmental Protection agency and the TVA have begun air monitoring and on Monday advised people to avoid activities that could stir up dust, such as children or pets playing outside.
The dust can contain metals, including arsenic, that irritate the skin and can aggravate pre-existing condition such as asthma, Niles said.
But it's perfectly safe, right? Just the way the air around Ground Zero was safe and now we have a rash of cases of people who worked and live in that area with serious respiratory problems.
It's amazing that this story hasn't gotten more press than it has. I realize that the latest Israel/Palestinian fracas takes up a fair amount of ink, as does the continuing media case of Blagomania. But with this coal ash spill being at least as big an environmental catastrophe as the Exxon Valdez spill, you'd think it would get more press.
This is what the EPA is still telling people is safe for them to have in their drinking water and their backyards:
In a single year, a coal-fired electric plant deposited more than 2.2 million pounds of toxic materials in a holding pond that failed last week, flooding 300 acres in East Tennessee, according to a 2007 inventory filed with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The inventory, disclosed by the Tennessee Valley Authority on Monday at the request of The New York Times, showed that in just one year, the plant’s byproducts included 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. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications, among other health problems.
And the holding pond, at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a T.V.A. plant 40 miles west of Knoxville, contained many decades’ worth of these deposits.
Amy Gahran wrote last week on the media's near-blackout of the story, noting in particular how CNN has cut its entire science, environment, and technology news team. I guess the increase in religion-themed programming we've seen on CNN in recent years is a sign of that network's enthusiastic embrace of the new Middle Ages towards which we're headed. Or perhaps it's simply a question of not wanting to acknowledge that not even Barack Obama can change the fact that there is no such thing as clean coal.
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