Ash spill tops list of disasters in 2000s

Nov 25 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Steve Ahillen The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.

The trees were moving up the cove.

That's how firefighter Chris Copeland described what he saw as he looked out the window of his home in the Swan Pond community of Roane County on the night of Dec. 22, 2008. What Copeland was explaining to News Sentinel reporter Scott Barker was just a small result of a catastrophic man-made disaster that came to be known as the Kingston ash spill.

A dike broke on a containment area at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant and sent 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash sludge across the landscape, nearly burying some homes, oozing into the creeks and Emory River, killing fish and making the trees move as the sludge pushed them along.

The website earthfirst.com was to rate it America's worst man-made environmental disaster in history -- worse than the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, worse than the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

Although no one died or was seriously injured, more than 22 residences were evacuated. Experts flying over the area in the days after the spill described it as a moonscape with ash 6 feet deep or more covered everything in sight.

The cleanup took more than three years and is technically still ongoing. The Tennessee Valley Authority announced early this year that it is counting on nature to complete the work by covering up an estimated 500,000 cubic yards -- about 9 percent of the total spilled -- with sediments.

More than 3.5 million cubic yards of ash was sent in 40,000 rail cars to an Alabama landfill.

TVA was held liable for the disaster and responsible for the cleanup cost estimated on the high end at $1.2 billion; however, the final tally is still to be decided.

That cost estimate does not include damages that could be awarded to 872 plaintiffs, who sued TVA. In August, federal Judge Tom Varlan found TVA liable in those suits and this past Monday ordered both sides to agree on a mediator within the first 30 days. More people are still allowed to sue until 2014.

A much smaller, but more deadly accident occurred on April 5, 2011. Workers John Eslinger and Don Storey died when an equalization basin's east wall collapsed at the Gatlinburg Wastewater Treatment Plant. The break resulted in nearly 1 million gallons of raw sewage pouring into the Little Pigeon River. Families of both workers filed separate $17 million lawsuits.

The list of man-made disasters also includes a train wreck on Sept. 15, 2002, in Farragut that caused the evacuation of thousands of people because one of the trains was carrying sulfuric acid. The McClung warehouses, highly visible in downtown Knoxville, were even more so on Feb. 7, 2007, when they went up in flames.

Nature also had its moments.

A tornado ripped through the Morgan County community of Mossy Grove on Nov. 10, 2002, killing seven and injuring 28; another hit Pleasant Hill in Greene County on April 27, 2011, claiming six lives and injuring 33. That same day -- a day on which 20 tornadoes were spotted in the area -- a violent hailstorm sent damage into the multimillions as home repair personnel converged on Knox and surrounding counties, insurance companies worked around the clock, and cars -- their bodies peppered with hundreds of dimples -- were totaled. Another round of devastating thunderstorms raked East Tennessee on June 21, 2011, and left 127,000 Knoxville Utilities Board customers without power -- the worst power outage in the utility's history.

Floods, usually minor, remain a problem: One on Feb. 28, 2011, forced the evacuation of some homes.

A violent storm that lashed the Smoky Mountains on July 6, 2012, left two dead when a tree fell on them.

Rockslides have been a headache seemingly forever. One on Oct. 25, 2009, near the Tennessee line in North Carolina took nearly a year to completely clean up. In early March 2012, a fill slope collapsed on Interstate 75 in Campbell County, closing parts of the interstate into August.