Cleanup of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s huge sludge-spill at its power plant near Knoxville has reached a kind of fork in the road. Nearly four years ago, millions of tons of coal ash from a manmade lake spilled into nearby rivers. What remains for TVA to clean up is mixed with radioactive material – which some say is best left alone.
TVA’s Kingston plant is downstream from Oak Ridge National Lab, where the first atomic bomb was developed in the 1940s. Toxic cesium from those years still lingers in downstream riverbeds, including the one TVA has been dredging for ash.
“You know, is the cure worse than the disease?”
Craig Zeller is overseeing TVA’s cleanup for the Environmental Protection Agency.
During the ‘90s, Zeller says federal officials looked at trying to pull the cesium out, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk of stirring more up. Now it could complicate TVA’s effort to remove what’s left of the ash. Zeller says another option is to cover the river bottom it with sand, but that comes with downsides of its own.
“The short term impact is that we would smother the existing bug community that’s there in order to protect them.”
Bugs seem to be the main wildlife affected by the ash, along with birds that eat them, though Zellar says neither is about to die off. He says there is one other downside to trying to dredge more ash: Because it’d be mixed with radioactives, paying someone to take it will cost ten times as much.
PUBLIC INPUT
Right now the EPA is gathering input on whether to risk as much by continuing to dredge. An official expects they’ll extend the public comment period through October, and reach a decision later this fall.
Stephen Smith heads up the TVA watchdog Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
“It was a very real concern coming out of the coal ash spill (that) because of this legacy material, dredging operations could potentially stir that up.”
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