Kingston Ash Slide Root Cause Analysis

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) contracted with AECOM, one of the nation’s leading geo-technical engineering firms, in January to perform the very detailed root cause analysis to determine the cause of the ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant. The findings and analysis were part of a comprehensive six-month report made public by AECOM.

The root cause, as reported by AECOM, is a very complex set of conditions that came together to cause the ash spill. This is not a simple report or summary because what happened was not a simple thing. A combination of the high water content of the wet ash, the increasing height of ash, the construction of the sloping dikes over the wet ash, and the existence of an unusual bottom layer of ash and silt were among the long-evolving conditions that caused the ash spill at Kingston Fossil Plant on Dec. 22, 2008.

Kinston Ash Slide Root Cause Analysis