Widow's creek spill

[dragfish]

I'm curious about the lack of press coverage about the coal plant sludge TVA has spilled into our waters. I tend to get a lot of my info from talk radio at work, mainly because you seem to get a lot of different facts and opinions you just don't get on TV news. One enviromentalist said even though the volume of the Widow's Creek spill was less than the Kingston one the heavy metals were much more concentrated. We can contact our gov. reps or listen to what the press lets us hear, or I believe the talk station is the quickest way to be heard. Try 102.3(423 267 1023) especially from 6am to noon or 1pm to3pm. Let's make some noise! emoHoppingmad

 

[fish4thepeck]

What Heavy metals are they referring to?

 

[dragfish]

Acording to the list I read the likely polutants in the fly ash are:arsenic,lead,chromium,nickel selenium and thallium-sounds tasty!

 

[finbully]

The Widows Creek spill was gypsum - there are minuscule amounts of fly ash in the gypsum.
Kingston was fly ash.

Here is information on the Widows Creek spill including water quality samples:

http://www.tva.gov/emergency/wc.htm

 

[dragfish]

Well, that sounds pretty comforting and I hope it's true but, do you really trust the source? If it's really just gypsum and TVA has tons of it, why don't they go into the sheetrock business? I don't claim to be an expert, or even that smart but we are spoon fed our info no matter what the source. Time will tell and I hope you're right.

 

[Guest]

TVA doesn't even know how much they spilled, not even enough to estimate.

 

[finbully]

dragfish - 1/14/2009 3:23 PM

If it's really just gypsum and TVA has tons of it, why don't they go into the sheetrock business?

TVA sells about 50% of the gypsum produced from scrubbers. The other 50% is not pure enough, it contains a very small amount of fly ash which makes it unusable in the sheetrock manufacturing business.