An unfortunate but really very minor incident. I am sure they will make a lot of political hay out of this.
In scope it was miniscule when compared to the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill.
December 22, 2008, a retention pond wall collapsed at Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Kingston plant in Harriman, Tennessee, releasing a combination of water and fly ash that flooded 12 homes, spilled into nearby Watts Bar Lake, contaminated the Emory River, and caused a train wreck. Officials said 4 to 6 feet of material escaped from the pond to cover an estimated 400 acres of adjacent land. A train bringing coal to the plant became stuck when it was unable to stop before reaching the flooded tracks.[1] Hundreds of fish were floating dead downstream from the plant.[2] Water tests showed elevated levels of lead and thallium.[3]
Originally TVA estimated that 1.7 million cubic yards of waste had burst through the storage facility. Company officials said the pond had contained a total of about 2.6 million cubic yards of sludge. However, the company revised its estimates on December 26, when it released an aerial survey showing that 5.4 million cubic yards (1.09 billion gallons) of fly ash was released from the storage facility.[2] Several days later, the estimate was increased to over 1 billion gallons spilled.[4] The size of the spill was larger than the amount TVA claimed to have been in the pond before the accident, a discrepancy that TVA was unable to explain.[5]
The TVA spill was 100 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, which released 10.9 million gallons of crude oil.[6] Cleanup was expected to take weeks and cost tens of millions of dollars.[7]
According to the TVA, rain totaling six inches in ten days[8] and 12°F temperatures were factors that contributed to the failure of the earthen embankment.[9]
The 40-acre pond was used to contain ash created by the coal-burning plant.[1] The water and ash that were released in the accident were filled with toxic substances. Each year coal preparation creates waste containing an estimated 13 tons of mercury, 3236 tons of arsenic, 189 tons of beryllium, 251 tons of cadmium, and 2754 tons of nickel, and 1098 tons of selenium.[10]
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