Kingston Cleanup Could Take Five Years: EPA Project Manager

An official with the Environmental Protection Agency says cleanup of the TVA ash spill in Kingston will likely continue for another five years. That’s longer than the estimate TVA officials gave at a Congressional hearing last week, when CEO Tom Kilgore said it would take until 2013.

EPA project manager Craig Zeller says the longterm goal for the cleanup will be restoring native plants and animals to the spill area. That will take at least two and a half years, but Zeller says it looks like he’ll be at it for the next five.

He says containing the ash has been the focus in this first year since the spill. That’s meant planting grass over what’s on land to keep it out of the air, and building dikes to keep more of it from sliding into the river.

“Using the medical terms of triage, the patient has been stable, and now we’re working on getting it back to life, so it’s back up and walking, and that’s going to take a little bit of time.”

Zeller says the cleanup is fairly straightforward, but time-consuming because of the spill’s huge volume. Millions of cubic yards of ash were spilled last year, but the train that carries it off can only haul 10 thousand cubic yards daily.

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TVA is currently dredging ash out of the Emory river, and expects to be done by next May. But how it will deal with another two million cubic yards of ash on nearby land remains undecided.

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EXTRA:

Feature story on the ash spill’s first anniversary here – includes new photos and aerial views.