500 million gallons of sludge spills into town
December 26th, 2008 | Published in Business, Current Events, Morality | 7 Comments
From CNN:
A wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from a coal plant in central Tennessee broke this week, spilling more than 500 million gallons of waste into the surrounding area.
he sludge, a byproduct of ash from coal combustion, was contained at a retention site at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plant in Kingston, about 40 miles east of Knoxville, agency officials said.
The retention wall breached early Monday, sending the sludge downhill and damaging 15 homes. All the residents were evacuated, and three homes were deemed uninhabitable, a TVA spokesman told CNN….
TVA spokesman Gil Francis told CNN that up to 400 acres of land had been coated by the sludge, a bigger area than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
An expensive mistake that has cost many families their homes and land. They better be generously compensated — though there is probably no monetary compensation that can make up for losing their homes like this. It’s frustrating that people have to suffer for the mistake of a corporation.
December 26th, 2008 at 9:55 am (#)
Why isn’t this story the number 1 story on CNN or any of the other national news services today? Here we have a major environmental disaster with potential long term effects for residents downstream and you have to search for references to it in the news! Are all of the news services playing along with the TVA to play down the impact of this event? Are they trying to give people a false sense of security and spare TVA from alot of lawsuits? Where is the hard questioning of TVA?
December 26th, 2008 at 1:43 pm (#)
I agree it’s frustrating. No one should have their home washed away by sludge. Do you think it’s more frustrating to have these people suffer from a corporate mistake than a single-personal one?
December 26th, 2008 at 2:38 pm (#)
I think that’s a good question. I think it can be more frustrating because (1) these kinds of mistakes usually take a corporation — it would be hard for a single person to accumulate this much sludge and then release it, (2) it’s harder to forgive a corporation that doesn’t seem to care, vs a person who you can actually talk to.
December 27th, 2008 at 12:06 am (#)
Kingston is west of Knoxville, not east, so it’s very close to Farragut. Did the news agencies just made a “mistake” in describing where it is or they just didn’t want to bother the rich folks in Farragut, because there is no danger anyway.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:43 pm (#)
Not to denigrate the current disaster, but since when does 400 acres (less than 1 square mile, btw) equal or exceed 608km of oiled shoreline in the Exxon Valdez fiasco? Hmm, calculator says 608,000 meters is roughly equal to 377.79 linear miles…slightly more than the given 400 acres.
I just hate it when people make erroneous comparisons.
December 31st, 2008 at 9:38 am (#)
This is one of the worst spills ever in the state, it is going to effect everyone, for years to come, and people who lost their homes and other homes damaged, need all the help from TVA MUST PROVIDE, it will effect every thing from revenue coming in and every tax payer, it will be years before this is cleaned up.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:22 pm (#)
Wow. I can’t believe this really happened. Does anybody listen to the pixies? Listen to these lyrics from “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven”
“there was a guy
an under water guy who controlled the sea
got killed by ten million pounds of sludge
from new york and new jersey
this monkey’s gone to heaven”
The pixies certainly deal with everything modern that drains the human soul. And a death by sludge doesn’t song nice. The realists of the 90′s words have come true…