TVA Coal Ash Spill in River Near Harriman, Tennessee, Estimated at 1 Billion Gallons

The Tennessee Valley Authority, better known as TVA, has a coal-burning power plant located near Harriman, Tennessee, along Interstate 40 between Knoxville and Nashville. The stuff that is left over after TVA burns their coal is called coal ash.

Coal ash contains mercury and dangerous heavy metals like lead and arsenic - materials found naturally in coal are concentrated in the ash.

TVA has a huge mountain of this coal waste material stored in a gigantic pile next to their Harriman (Kingston) power plant, alongside a tributary of the Tennessee River.

On Monday morning Dec. 22 around 1:00 am, the earthen retaining wall around this mountain of coal ash failed and approximately 1 billion gallons of nasty black coal ash flowed into tributaries of the Tennessee River - the water supply for Chattanooga TN and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

This Tennessee TVA spill is nearly 100 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, if local news accounts are correct. The amount of debris generated by this spill is almost double the amount generated by the World Trade Center collapse (2.8 million cubic yards).

This is a huge environmental disaster of epic proportions.

To see an amazing aerial video of the spill, go here. The big hunks and chunks in the river are mounds of coal ash.

Here is better aerial footage, but you have to watch a commercial first. Go here, then scroll down to the "Most Popular" section and find the button that says "aerial footage."

The local media are downplaying the spill, but the Nashville newspaper (The Tennessean) has a decent article.

When I first saw the 300 million gallon Martin County coal sludge spill in Kentucky in October 2000 I was outraged. I was sure that it would be a national news story, but it never was, because the coal companies and local law enforcement blocked the road leading to the spill and kept the media out. The national media was confused because they didn't know what "coal sludge" was. And ....the big national environmental groups didn't do enough to bring media attention to the Martin County disaster.

Thats not going to happen this time, because we have

1. You Tube

2. Bloggers

3. Digital cameras

4. You!

Please help - we need volunteers to take pictures and video of the spill and post them on the web. We need first hand accounts and documentation of the spill. We need letters to the editor. We need calls and emails to our leaders in Washington and Nashville and Frankfort and to President-Elect Obama.

Please fwd this to other concerned people and the news media.

There is no such thing as clean coal! Look at the video of this spill.

"Clean Coal" is the Big Corporate Lie.

This horrific disaster in Tennessee can be the turning point in our nation's struggle to build a new network of clean modern renewable sources of energy, like wind and solar power - but we have to raise awareness of this disaster immediately. Thanks for reading.