Earthen Dam bursts on Clinch

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The poor ole TVA(sic). I like cheap electricity.....will someone let me know where to get some? I sure as hell don't want to poison my surroundings for cheap electricity(sic). I'll pay an extra 50$ a month to be able to eat the fish, swim, and use the lake.

TVA is at fault here, and they allowed this too happen. TVA marches to the beat of it's own drummer, and has for years. I hate to say it, but they need some oversight. Some agency that is not TVA, needs to watch TVA.
 
Pulling the amount of water they have been pulling, why would they post results from up river of the spill site? I know there is concern since Kiingston water treatment plant is close to the steam plant, but sh*t runs down hill boys and girls. Especially since they are giving it a little push.
 
I've heard of heavy metal damaging rivers. Mostly in fish consumption advisories. I have dismised a lot of it as they just didnt know any better back then. We know better now. And I believe that if there is potential of an accident of this magnitude the potentiol has to be removed. It seems like the placement and design of those ponds were and accident waiting to happen. But noone wanted to dent their budget to take care of it. Too many people said "It isn't my problem." I want TVA to clean it up and to be forced to be accountable. And I want the mentality concerning these potential industrial accidents to change so that noone can just sit on a potentential accident for any time longer than it takes to correct it. If the potential is there you will get it with enough time. emoBang emoEnforce emoHoppingmad emoVomit emoRain emoBawl emoPlease emoCrazy emoBooHoo emoBadLanguage emoTskTsk
 
Every steam plant that TVA has is run the same way as the one that had the spill, there is millions of gallons of the same fly ash in holding ponds at every one of them. Years a go there wern't any holding ponds, there wern't any scrubbers to take the fly ash out of the air, everything that was burned went into the atmosphere but TVA started to clen up the air and put the residue in the holding ponds, now we have problems or potential problems just waiting to do whatever. There is no demand for this waste so you can't get rid of it so TVA keeps building holding ponds to keep it in, it is a vicious cycle that no one has come up with a cure for. The new gypsum board or drywall plant in Bridgeport was supposed to use this waste to make drywall but I guess they decided not to because of the arsnic in it. Maybe the bright minds in our USA will come up with something in the future.
 
If this report from the Knoxville News is correct and the TVA has known for decades that this retention pond has been leaking and the retention walls where weakening...its time time that a whole bunch of people go to jail for a long time...not just a CEO but anyone that had knowledge of this...I don't understand how anyone could ever defend knowing there was/is a problem and did little to nothing to fix it.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jan/04/report-raises-questions-of-ethics/
 
The forecast rain heading our way is guaranteed to move a bit more fly ash into the rivers. At last report they were putting the sludge right back in the coffers with the failed dam. I will never accuse TVA of exhibiting any competency or common sense.. I agree if it was known by TVA that the dams were failing everybody that knew deserves jail time and staggering fines. Perhaps shifting the lawsuits to the CEO rather than TVA might get some attention!!
 
I fished around Thief Neck Sunday (two little bass and a few drum). The 2nd point on the left coming through the cutoff. There were some places I had to shake my line (mono) to get it to sink, otherwise it just coiled a little on the scum. I had no idea it was so prevalent this far down stream, 15-17 miles is my guess. Seen two little songbirds dead floating in the scum also, although it may not have anything to do with the release, the scum didn't allow those little birds to float to shore. It's a shame. I read an article on Ms Brokvinich(sp?), and she said something interesting. If someone has a "retention" pond, one has to wonder what they are trying to retain and why...
 
The Kingston Steam plant is not right next to the Steam Plant... the Steam plant is about 3-4 miles up river on Clinch, and the Kinston Water Treatment plant is just above SW Point and takes its water from upstream of the Clinch (just barely)
 
I`m not trying to dispute Doc1`s last post but to put a personal knowledge timeline on the ash collection history at Kingston Steam Plant. I`m sure some ash collection system has been in place since the plant went on line in the early 50`s. I do remember riding by the plant when it was belching terribly black smoke out of 9 stacks as a child on the way to middle Tennessee on old HWY 70.
I first worked there in 1975 on a project that included the massive Electrostatic Precipitators and the new tall stacks. There were already a small set of Precipitators and a set of mechanical Ash collection hoppers in place. The big Precips. probably collected 75%+ of the ash and the tops of the ponds that collected the ash were several feet above Watts Bar full pool water level. I`m sure the outer boundry walls of dikes were constructed of clay and rock in the initial contruction of the plant. I have been in and out of the plant working alot since 1992 and while we rarely actually did any work around the ponds I saw some work going on on the dikes most of the time. Some of it was raising the dikes a very few feet. About 10 years ago it seemed the work on the dikes increased and while you could see some rise in the dikes it wasn`t a substanial amount . Some time in that timeframe it reached the level of Swan Pond road . I didn`t pay much attention to it because we parked on the other end of the Plant. In the 2001-2004 we were building the SCR on the west side of the plant and had good view of the ponds from the elevated steelworks and I noticed the pond getting taller.and a couple of pieces of heavy equipment working on it constantly. This January `08 I was at Bunch Marine for some reason and decide to drive back the back entrance to see if I could get a look at the Scrubber Project that is underway and turned around at the back entrance which is next to the Pond that blew out and was astounded at the heigth of the Dike. It really caught my eye that I could just barely see the Trackhoe on top of the dike. I guess my point is this particular dike hasn`t been that high for that long. What I can`t figure out it how they pumped it up that high. It takes hundreds of horsepower and huge pumps just to raise to it to ground level to gravity fall to the low ponds
The Scrubber s will not go online until probably 2010 and the ash from it will be sent to a different pond out on the penninsula end of the grounds. The majority of the ash will still be sent to the existing ponds as most of it is collected in the SCR and El Precips. The Scrubber should take the very last little bit of ash out of the flue gas as well as the SO2. Supposedly it turns into gypsum and after draining the water could be recovered for commercial use. We`ll see !
If I had to guess I`d say they will wind up with a lined dry ash landfill somewhere on the pennisula east of the plant. The problem is there really isn`t any way to move the ash without the aid of water so there probably always be collection ponds.
I bet they won`t get too high anymore though.
 

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