Ash spill has far-reaching effect, from coal's future to plant neighbors who still have to live with it

The risks of environmental and personal disaster from coal-ash ponds are made clear and compelling by the reporting and writing of Arian Campo-Flores of Newsweek, in a Web-only story about the Dec. 22 collapse of storage ponds at the Tennessee Valley Authority's steam plant at Kingston, Tenn., which the magazine calls "the largest industrial spill in American history."

"The cleanup effort, which the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing, could cost as much as $1 billion (though estimates continue to climb) and take years to complete," Campo-Flores writes. "Meanwhile, the released ash—which is packed with toxins like arsenic, lead, and selenium—threatens to poison the air and water. Congressional committees are investigating the failure, some lawmakers are calling for greater regulation of utilities, and the EPA is probing about 400 other facilities across the country that store ash in similar ways. Yet the debacle has had another, potentially more far-reaching, impact: it has displayed in the most graphic manner imaginable just how dirty coal is." (Read more)

TVA's cleanup project has been shipping the ash by rail, but now the federal utility is about to use trucks as well, and that does not suit Terri Likens, editor of the Roane County News, the local weekly. "Shipping by truck will only result in further problems — damage to our roadways, more air pollution just from the truck fumes alone, more impact on traffic and safety and more concerns for local residents," Likens says in an editorial. "We’ve been through enough as a result of this disaster. Let’s keep the ash and the trucks that will be carrying it off of our highways." (Read more)