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The toxic TVA coal ash mountain grows higher every day at the Arrowhead Landfill in Alabama’s Black Belt as millions of tons of the deadly stew makes its way down in train after train from one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history at Kingston, Tennessee. Click here or on the image for a photo essay…
Hurricane Creekkeeper Says Stop the Emory River Cleanup…
Or Bring the Arrowhead Landfill into Compliance
by Glynn Wilson
The Waterkeeper Alliance is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt the dredging of the Emory River in Kingston, Tennessee — and hauling wet TVA coal ash to the Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County, Alabama — until the landfill comes into full compliance with state and federal laws.
In a formal complaint lodged today with the EPA, Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen says the formal agreement with EPA and TVA says no ash can be shipped to any landfill that does not meet compliance standards.
“We therefore respectfully request that EPA order a complete stopping of disaster ash to Perry County until this landfill is in complete compliance as certified by EPA national headquarters,” Mr. Wathen writes in the letter.
“EPA Region 4 and ADEM have failed us,” he says. “The situation here grows more dire with every rain event. Excessive water in the landfill is causing off-site violations, some intentional it seems.”
Wathen has photographs showing pumps diverting liquid waste off the landfill property into adjoining ditches near residential homes. (One is included below).
TVA Coal Ash Controversy Continues
A panorama view of the Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County, Alabama, along with the surrounding area. Toxic TVA coal ash by the train load is filling up the landfill in Alabama’s Black Belt, causing air and water pollution in one of the poorest counties in the country…
by Glynn Wilson
The controversy over the toxic coal ash pouring into Alabama’s Black Belt from the TVA spill site in Kingston, Tennessee, continues today with the filing of another set of letters declaring an intent to sue the operators of the Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County on behalf of 155 local residents.
David Ludder, a Florida attorney who specializes in environmental law, filed the letters of intent to sue today, giving the landfill management 60 days notice.
The letters, signed by 155 residents of Perry County, accuse the landfill operators of violating the Solid Waste Disposal Act for air pollution that could impact the health of people who live nearby, and for operating what is basically an “open dump,” which is prohibited by law.
If found guilty, the company could be liable for up to $37,500 for each violation.
What Happened to the Millions from the TVA Coal Ash Contract?
Toxic TVA coal ash by the train load is filling up the local landfill only designed for household garbage, not hazardous waste, in Alabama’s Black Belt…
by Glynn Wilson
The Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County, Alabama — where TVA is hauling millions of tons of coal ash in one of the biggest environmental cleanups ever – has filed for bankruptcy protection just days before a major lawsuit was to be filed, sources say.
It is not clear whether this decision will stop shipments of the toxic fly ash to Alabama’s Black Belt, or halt the ongoing cleanup in the Emory River in Kingston, Tennessee.
It is also not clear where the money went from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which contracted with the landfill for millions of dollars to take the waste, although sources say it ended up in New Jersey, not Uniontown, Alabama.
Environmental lawyer David Ludder, who confirmed the bankruptcy petition, said he and other attorneys representing local residents are investigating the options available to those in the community.
He said the filing of the bankruptcy petition automatically stays or prevents any new lawsuits from being filed against the company, Perry County Associates, at this time.
“I see it as an opportunity for any new operator to do a better job,” Ludder said, “and an opportunity for the residents to approach them and demand that they do a better job.”
No one from the company could be reached for comment at the numbers listed in Uniontown or Atlanta on their Website.
But Jeffery Hartley, an attorney for Perry Uniontown Ventures, which filed for bankruptcy in federal court in Mobile, told the Birmingham News it had “no choice given Phillips and Jordan’s refusal to turn over monies to ownership, to make payments they had agreed to make, or to provide a proper accounting of the funds.”
Perry Uniontown Ventures I owns Arrowhead Landfill. Phillips & Jordan Inc., and Phill-Con Services operate the landfill under an agency agreement with Perry Uniontown Ventures.
Hartley said the bankruptcy filing would not affect the operation of the landfill, “which will continue to operate safely and effectively, without interruption.”
Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen says the landfill has not been operating safely or effectively, since he has discovered the company dumping liquid waste into ditches along the road in front of people’s houses.
Check out more of this story and the best coverage of this controversy in the country here:
Ruby Holmes, 80, who has lived in a house right across the street from the Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County all her life, says when she tries to sleep with her window cracked, “This odor wakes me up at night.”
Originally published as the Christmas Day lead story at Truthout.org | Digg It…
by Glynn Wilson
On the third day before Christmas in 2008, the people living along the Emory River in East Tennessee were listening to the songs on the radio about a white Christmas like everybody else in the country, trying to look forward and not back. A new president had been elected and would soon occupy the White House, a president who promised “hope” after eight years of Bush and war and unprecedented corruption, as well as increasing economic hardship, squeezing the middle class like a juggernaut.
Instead of a white Christmas, though, people like Steve Scarborough of the Dagger Kayak and Canoe company woke up to a black-gray mess of epic proportions, a river full of toxic coal ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s coal-fired power plant at Kingston, Tennessee.
“There are no excuses for this,” Scarborough said. “One of the dumbest thing humans do is dig coal out of the ground and burn it.”
The largely affluent population of the area demanded action and an immediate cleanup of the largest environmental disaster in American history in the lower 48 states, second only to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince Williams Sound, Alaska, in the spring of 1989. So within four months, by March 20, TVA began dredging the mountain of coal ash out of the river and shipping it by train to a landfill in the poor Black Belt of Alabama.
One year later, on the first anniversary of the second worst environmental disaster in American history, while the people in Tennessee are hiring lawyers and suing TVA and reading story after story in the local newspapers about their plight while the cleanup continues, the poor people of Perry County, Alabama, where TVA found a place to dump the toxic ash, are not singing Christmas carols. They are locked in their homes with their air conditioners running even in winter trying to stay out of the gaseous fumes from the landfill where the coal ash is piling up on top of household garbage by the freight train load.
The People Who Don’t Want It Are Afraid of the Effects
by Glynn Wilson [Videos below]
UNIONTOWN, Ala. — The Rev. James R. Murdock sits on his porch with a view of the Arrowhead Landfill and wonders, watching the TVA coal ash train roll in.
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| Glynn Wilson |
| The Rev. James R. Murdock |
Murdock is one of the original members of Concerned Citizens of Perry County, a group that lost a court fight to keep the landfill from opening — before they knew the coal ash would be shipped to their town dump. It was permitted to take garbage from 16 states, including New Jersey, and for that the chairman of the county commission of 18 years lost his seat.
Not in time for the people here who have to live with the landfill now, though, along with the effluent from the Southeastern Cheese factory, overflowing their lagoon sewer.
Murdock, a cancer survivor, is anxious about the toxic and radioactive coal ash rolling into town. It contains at least 14 different chemicals and heavy metals, including arsenic and lead. There are ways to recycle some coal ash, like putting it in concrete. But experts say this particular coal ash is some of the most toxic ever generated as a byproduct of burning some of the dirtiest coal to ever be mined for electric power. It has been piling up in East Tennessee since the 1960s. A member of Congress from Huntsville, a doctor, recently testified it was as deadly as nuclear waste.
Murdock and his group are concerned, but they don’t know what they can do since the people elected to represent them have written them off. He worries the toxic ash will get airborne and pollute the very air he breaths every day, as well as the local drinking water supply.
Yet he wonders, aloud, if “there’s even a point to fighting it anymore.”
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