11 Years After 5.7 Million Cubic Yard Coal Ash Spill, 200 Surviving Kingston Cleanup Workers Sue TVA

On December 22, ten years to the day after a dike ruptured at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant near Kingston, Tennessee, pouring more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash into the Emory River, TVA took out a full-page ad in the local paper to congratulate itself and its contractors on a cleanup job well done. That same day, about 150 of the workers who actually cleaned up the spill gathered at the site, which is now a park with hiking trails, boat ramp, and ball fields. Standing in blue jeans and work boots near a homemade wooden cross, they commemorated a different aspect of the cleanup: their 36 coworkers who’ve died from brain cancer, lung cancer, leukemia, and other diseases. Some of the survivors walked with canes. Most bore blisters from the arsenic buried in their skin. Nearly all carried inhalers in their pockets. TVA's ad did not mention them.

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The Kingston cleanup workers, however, were heavily exposed to airborne ash. More than 900 people worked on the site between 2008 and 2015, operating the giant dredges, track-hoes, bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment to remove the ash from the river, dry it in windrows, and ship it in rail cars to a lined landfill near Uniontown, Alabama. Ansol Clark was one of the first to arrive at the site on December 22, 2008. A 57-year-old professional truck driver, he’d just gotten a clean bill of health on his Department of Transportation physical. For the next five years he worked as a fuel-truck driver at the site, putting in 15-hour days, often seven days a week, keeping the big earth-moving machines running.

After two years he started having breathing problems, runny nose, and coughing. Then he started getting dizzy spells. One day he got up to go to work and collapsed on the bedroom floor. The doctors told him he had arrhythmia, that his heart wasn't getting enough oxygen. They gave him medicine, and he went back to work. Then he started having black-out spells. Eventually he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. A few months after he was forced to quit, he suffered a massive stroke. He recovered, but has since been diagnosed with polycythemia vera, a rare blood cancer. His doctors say it was likely caused by radiation from the ash.

"After Jacobs took over [the cleanup] at three months, they started telling us everything was safe," says Clark, who is now 67. "And we worked in a blue haze for months. When we started piling it up and the dust started blowing, they said it was pollen. Take an allergy pill and you'll be fine in a week. They'd tell us you can eat a pound of it every day and it won't hurt you."

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/02/coal-other-dark-side-toxic-ash/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=twitter::cmp=editorial::add=twp20190219env-coalashdumps::rid=&sf208020722=1