TVA Should Follow Center Advice: Process Ash On Site

The Center has proposed the best solution to TVA for mitigating the fly ash retention pond spill at Kingston, Tennessee: building a concrete production plant onsite and using the spill spoil as feedstock. Other solutions are band-aids that will not work and will cause TVA much anguish on Capitol Hill and from local area concerns. Will TVA listen to us, or will they try everything except the best solution, in order to mitigate the December spill? Many other companies have failed to take our advice and they have failed miserably in promoting their projects. We are starting to become frustrated with companies that would rather fail than listen to our expert and accurate advice.

Now Smith Mountain Solutions, LLC wants to reclaim a strip mine by turning it into a landfill for TVA's coal ash spill. The Charleston, Tennessee firm has an option on the 300-acre site owned by Crossville Coal Inc. that is in a remote corner of Cumberland County near the Morgan County line. the company wants to be paid by TVA for hauling and holding coal ash spilled in the Dec. 22 disaster when a retention pond burst at Kingston Fossil Plant. Why dispose of a resource that has value as a recycled product?

All of the 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash that spilled into the Emory River and adjoining countryside could be stored in a lined landfill at the old strip mine, but such storage would only lead to more problems related to groundwater contamination and other runoff problems. A state permit would have to be obtained and Cumberland County would receive a host fee for the landfill that could mean between $7-8 million over three years, said Brock Hill, Cumberland County's mayor. Only about 100 jobs would be created, mainly for truck drivers and heavy equipment operators. This projects would not generate any climate change relief nor minority ownership participation. (KnoxvilleBiz.com, 6/3/09)