I’m sure you saw this on the news. I just wanted to highlight it briefly.

Roane County officials are pushing the Tennessee Valley Authority to quit using large retention ponds filled with water and fly ash, a byproduct of coal-fired power plants.

One of the ponds burst Dec. 22 at a plant roughly 35 miles west of Knoxville, sending a flood of gray sludge over about 300 acres and destroying three homes along the Clinch River. (link)

No one was killed in the spill, but there are definitely going to be long term effects.  This morning it was released that the spill flooded the local water with dangerous levels of arsenic:

No one was harmed, but residents are worried about the long-term health effects from the ash, which contains potentially harmful contaminants such as arsenic. They are also worried about the threats to their economy and culture, long defined by the picturesque waterways that snake through the lush Appalachian hill country. (link)

The Environmental Protection Agency has released data showing levels of arsenic more than 100 times safe levels in the water after a coal ash spill that flooded an East Tennessee neighborhood. (link)

Some interesting points on the regulating coal ash:

There are no federal regulations governing dumps of coal ash on power plant property, despite plenty of evidence of problems.

After coal is burned, it leaves behind one-fifth to one-third of its volume in ash laced with arsenic, selenium, mercury and other contaminants. Yet, regulation of coal ash dams is left to state agencies.Naturally, standards, staff and expertise vary widely.

In contrast, active mine sites are governed by strict rules for impoundments used to hold the slurry remaining after coal is washed and prepared for burning. Those requirements are spelled out in the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.(link)

And it looks like we are again seeing the fingerprints of Bush deregulation blow-back:

In 1980, Congress required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to decide if a power plant site held “hazardous waste” and should be subject to stricter regulation. That ruling didn’t come until May 2000. Two years later, the Bush administration simply said it would not write hazardous waste rules for plant ash. In March 2006, the National Academy of Sciences recommended the federal Office of Surface Mining and EPA develop nationwide standards for power plant ash in surface impoundments, landfills and mining sites. (link)