KINGSTON, Tenn. (WTVF) — A disaster led to changes in how we all get electricity.
Sixteen years ago this month, a tidal wave of coal ash buried the area around the Kingston Fossil Plant, which is located outside of Knoxville, and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The black sludge that buried 300 acres around the plant was coal ash left over from decades of burning coal. The Kingston plant opened in 1954, and TVA stored its coal ash in a "pond" on the property.
Days before Christmas in 2008, the "pond's" retaining wall failed, and wet coal ash poured out. TVA spent more than a billion dollars cleaning up the mess which took six years.
However, the Kingston plant has been an important part of TVA's mission. TVA is a federally owned utility created during the height of the Great Depression to bring power to the region and create jobs.
Author Jared Sullivan has written a book about the Kingston Coal Ash disaster, which also looks at TVA's history.
"TVA is an American story we should all be proud of," Sullivan said.
His book "Valley So Low: One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe" is getting national attention.
"My book is very critical of TVA, but we need TVA to be great," Sullivan said.
Sullivan points to the disaster as a turning point.
"The Kingston disaster forced TVA to finally get off coal," Sullivan said.
Coal ash has been around as long as coal has been burned, but it made news in Nashville back in 1964 in an unusual place.
Headwaters and Tailfeathers was a hunting and fishing column in the Tennessean newspaper.
Columnist Bob Steber questioned what was killing fish in part of Old Hickory Lake. His column had a picture of huge metal pipes from the Gallatin Steam Plant, which pumped ash into the lake.
After the article, TVA removed the pipes, but it kept burning coal and producing ash. Coal ash has arsenic, mercury, radium and other toxins.
But the coal industry insists those elements are in such low levels that they pose no threat to human health. So, the Environmental Protection Agency does not consider it a hazardous waste.
"The coal industry has a large financial incentive for coal ash not to be considered a hazardous waste," Sullivan said. "If it was considered a hazardous waste, you'd have to take all of these additional steps in disposing of it."
So, TVA stored the ash in huge "ponds" like one at its New Johnsonville Plant. Sky 5 took video of the New Johnsonville site in 2009 after the Kingston disaster.
The ash "pond" was an island in the Tennessee River held back with a dirt wall.
Janie Clark remembers the night the retaining wall failed at Kingston.
Her husband, Ansol, drove trucks for a living and was immediately called to the scene.
"When they called him, they said, 'Well it's happened. It's everywhere,'" Janie remembered.
Ansol was one of the first to see the disaster in the morning light. The Kingston Ash Pond was six stories tall.
It held a billion gallons of sludge.
Attorney Jim Scott went on to represent hundreds of workers who got sick, and some like Ansol who died, after spending years cleaning up the site.
"They were walking into an unknown, very dangerous health risk hazard," Scott said.
As NewsChannel 5 Investigates reported, a federal jury found the private company that TVA hired to oversee the clean-up did not provide workers with protective gear like masks and respirators. The company, Jacobs Engineering, settled the lawsuit but admitted no wrongdoing.
"I do believe that is part of the motivation to transfer to other forms of energy," Scott said.
TVA plans to shut down all its coal-fired plants by 2035.
New Johnsonville has already shut down.
Kingston will stop burning coal in 2027, and use natural gas and solar power at the location.
Jared Sullivan says even though the area around Kingston looks clean now — with green fields — there is a lot of coal ash underground and in the river.
He hopes TVA's future is cleaner than its past.
TVA is still deciding what to do with the ash left behind at its coal plants.
In Gallatin, it is moving all the ash to a lined landfill.
But at other plants, it is deciding whether to just leave it and put a lining over it — or physically move the ash — which will be expensive.
TVA said Kingston will generate more electricity after it stops burning coal.
The company sent the following statement:
"TVA is an industry leader in safe, innovative coal ash management, implementing best practices years before they were required and continuing to pioneer new technology to ensure our coal ash sites are protective of the environment and human health. TVA believes a collaborative, site-specific, science-driven approach results in the safest and best outcomes for the communities we serve."
