Tennessee Coal Slurry Disaster

rhadamanthus · Mar 20, 2014

Lovely expose of the Kingston Coal Sludge Disaster (2008) and how the industry learned nothing, and thanks to lobbying, federal inaction, and nonsensical secrecy requirements, virtually nothing has been done to prevent it from happening again.

Worth a read.

Kingston, though, is by far the worst coal ash disaster that the industry has ever seen: 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash, containing at least 10 known toxins, were spilled. In fact, the event that woke Sarah McCoin that night—the deluge that moved houses and ripped trees from the ground—was even bigger than the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010, which spewed approximately 1 million cubic yards of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
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Still, the EPA seemed committed to pushing out new regulations. In March 2009, the agency released a statement that they were “moving forward quickly to develop regulations to address the management of coal combustion residuals.” The organization said it would have proposed new rules ready for public comment by the end of the year.

But the research on new rules warranted inspections of coal ash ponds around the country—and that immediately brought up a major problem: The agency didn’t know where the coal ash sites were, nor did they know when new ones were created.

“The absurdity is that because neither the states nor EPA regulates coal ash impoundments, they simply don’t have information about their existence,” says Lisa Evans, an attorney with San Francisco nonprofit Earthjustice. The group has independently estimated that there are 437 coal ash landfills and 1,070 wet-storage sites across 41 U.S. states.

In June, the regulators sent a major signal. Senator Boxer, who chaired the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said the EPA had identified 44 high-hazard coal ash sites around the country—but that the agency also forbade her to make those locations public. “If these sites are so hazardous and if the neighborhoods nearby could be harmed irreparably, then I believe it is essential to let people know,” she told reporters. “There is a huge muzzle on me and on my staff.”
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And oh yeah, it happened again just recently.

Cohete Rojo · Mar 26, 2014

This is why we need fracking. The naysayers will continue to wrongly contend that CO2 is a pollutant and talk about how we should drive electric cars with coal generated electricity.

rocketsjudoka · Mar 26, 2014

This is why need to develop multiple energy sources, improve energy efficiency in technology and development, and conserve.

Ubiquitin · Mar 26, 2014

This is why we should conserve as much as possible.

rhadamanthus · Mar 26, 2014

Not sure I understand the responses above. I mean, I agree that conservation is a good thing, but the real point to this story (IMO) is that it's foolhardy to trust an industry to regulate itself.

And this is no mere anecdote. There are tons of data points that reinforce my statement above.

rocketsjudoka · Mar 26, 2014

rhadamanthus said: ↑

Not sure I understand the responses above. I mean, I agree that conservation is a good thing, but the real point to this story (IMO) is that it's foolhardy to trust an industry to regulate itself.

And this is no mere anecdote. There are tons of data points that reinforce my statement above.
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Yes I agree. I was and I think Azadre were responding to Cohete's post that because there are some big problems with coal means we need more fracking.

CrazyDave · Mar 27, 2014

They're not regulating themselves, they're paying regulators not to do it for them. duh.

JuanValdez · Mar 27, 2014

Coal is not as powerful now as it was in 2008 (thanks to fracking). Hopefully, that means regulation is becoming more feasible.

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