Written by Anne Paine and Brad Schrade, The Tennessean

 

Coal waste from another TVA power plant - this time Widows Creek in north Alabama - has spilled into a waterway, bringing more emergency action and more calls from environmentalists to regulate the material.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which estimated the spill at 10,000 gallons, placed booms in Widows Creek, which runs through the plant site, to stop the waste from moving downstream, said Scott Hughes, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

The material unloosed was a mixture of water and gypsum, which can contain potentially toxic substances.

The discovery of the spill came just one day after a U.S. Senate committee hearing on TVA's Dec. 22 catastrophic coal ash slide at its Kingston power plant in East Tennessee.

TVA says the spill in Alabama is unlike the Kingston spill. It is smaller; involved mostly water, not sludge; and was caused not by a break in a holding wall, but by the failure of a pipe cap.

Utilities that draw drinking water supplies from the Tennessee River downstream from Widows Creek are not expected to see any impact, Hughes said.

"We've got somebody on site who's monitoring water quality to make sure there's not any impact to aquatic organisms," he said.

The plant, about 110 miles southeast of Nashville, is one of 11 TVA coal-burning plants with ponds or dry landfills holding the dregs of the operations. It is one of the agency's older plants, operating since 1952.

At Kingston, a dike failed, unleashing more than 1 billion gallons of wet coal ash stacked in a 40-acre landfill as high as 65 feet in a force that toppled trees and power lines; damaged dozens of homes, boat docks and yards; and filled two inlets of the Emory River. Some of the ash moved into the Clinch and Tennessee rivers.

Since the Kingston disaster, TVA has increased checks at plants from one a day to two a day, spokesman Gil Francis said.

In Tennessee, seeps have been noted in the ash structures at TVA's Cumberland and New Johnsonville facilities, according to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

"We are actively working to ensure they are properly addressed," said Tisha Calabrese-Benton, a department spokeswoman.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who presided over the Thursday hearing on TVA's ash slide, said in an e-mailed statement Friday that TVA has a lot to answer for.

"I have asked the TVA for a complete assessment of the safety of its waste disposal sites and their plans for upgrading those sites," Boxer said. "This second pollution spill must be a wake-up message to the TVA and to the U.S. EPA that the current situation is unacceptable."

Inspection discovered problem

At Widows Creek, an employee making a regular inspection round of the 147-acre pond system discovered the problem around 6 a.m. Friday, Francis said.

Water from a gypsum collection pond was flooding a second settling pond that lies below it. Both are above Widows Creek, which flows through the plant property and into the Tennessee River.

Thousands of gallons overflowed the settling pond, and much of it cascaded down a hill into the creek.

Friday afternoon, the aftermath of the spill was apparent.

A large section of the higher pond looked like a mushy mess where water once stood. The uncontrolled water left a grayish path through the grass and brush leading to the creek.

Engineers were doing a review on site late Friday and tests were being performed on the creek and river to determine any damage.

Francis said the cause of this spill is "totally unrelated" to the cause of the Kings ton accident. "Again we're going to come in and do a root cause analysis on whatever happened here and make whatever changes or fixes we need to avoid that in the future."

Late Friday, TVA said a cap had dislodged from a 30-inch pipe that once carried water from the higher pond to the lower settling pond. The overflow stopped when the level in the gypsum pond dropped to the level of the pipe.

Waste can contain poisons

Ash and gypsum are coal wastes. While neither is technically labeled as hazardous waste, both contain potentially toxic substances, including what can be high levels of boron, chromium, molybdenum and selenium, according to the EPA.

Lisa Evans, an attorney with Earthjustice, said gypsum, which is used in wallboard, sounds innocuous but isn't if it's loosed in the environment.

"These pollutants can harm humans in drinking water, and in particular selenium is fatal to aquatic life in very small quantities," she said.

Earthjustice and other groups, including the Environmental Integrity Project, Greenpeace and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, have called for the EPA to regulate coal waste facilities nationwide.

A patchwork of state regulations applies across the country. Liners for the facilities, independent oversight or monitoring wells are not necessarily required.

During and after a Senate committee hearing this week on the Kingston disaster, several federal officials recommended that federal regulations, which were considered and rejected in 2000, be put in place.

Gypsum is a byproduct of coal-burning power plants when "scrubbers" are added that use a limestone spray to capture sulfur dioxide that otherwise goes up stacks into the air.

TVA is spending a half-billion dollars to put this type of system at its Kingston plant to reduce air pollution. It includes a pond to settle out the gypsum, like at Widows Creek.

Gypsum can be sold for use in building materials, but with a slumping housing market, buyers have been hard to come by, according to TVA.

Photo contents questioned

Garry Morgan, of Scottsboro, Ala., provided photos he said were taken Friday 12 miles downstream of Widows Creek, on the Tennessee River.

A silvery gray sludge coated the shore in the photos taken at Bellefonte Landing, near a site for which TVA is seeking a permit to build a nuclear power plant.

"This is the same stuff on the shoreline up there at Kingston," said Morgan, who speculated that it came from Widows Creek.

TVA spokesman John Moulton said he didn't believe that whatever Morgan had pictured in photographs was ash or gypsum from either the Kingston or Widows Creek spills.

"Most of what was released into Widows Creek was water," Moulton said.

"We're using a topography sensing system to estimate the actual amount of gypsum material released into the creek."

The results will be provided when available, he said.

But Morgan, who is a member of the Bellefonte Efficiency Sustainability Team, which opposes a new nuclear plant, and also of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said he thinks TVA is not being honest.

"It's very obvious what's happening. All the rains we've had, these retention ponds haven't been inspected and are rupturing," Morgan said.

Francis said he wasn't aware of any other TVA facility having a similar accident like what occurred here Friday. Just less than 3 inches of rain had fallen in the area in the past week, but that was not believed to be a cause of the problem.

Anne Paine reported from Nashville, and Brad Schrade reported from Stevenson, Ala.