Green Options

The Maryland Department of the Environment is reporting a coal ash spill, this time on the Potomac River.

[Creative Commons photo by Mikko Itälahti]

How many spills does this make in the past few months alone? There was the devastating TVA spill in Tennessee, the January spill in Alabama, and now this. Three spills in three months is a pretty terrible track record that underscores our need to move beyond coal as a primary fuel source.

The Maryland Department of the Environment press release said:

Officials at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) are bracing themselves for a long-term wildlife study at the TVA spill site. The area was severely contaminated after a massive release of coal ash on Dec. 22, 2008. The spill originated from a holding pond belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Steam Plant on Watts Bar Reservoir.

A large number of fish were killed immediately following the spill which dumped 5.4 million cubic yards (more than 1 billion gallons) of toxic sludge directly into the Emory River and surrounding lands. The spill occurred when the earthen wall of a storage pond breached. The scale of the accident is much larger than initially reported.

A breach in an earthen dike caused toxic ash from the Kingston coal-fired power plant to devastate over 400 acres in Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Authority estimates that 3.1 million cubic yards of ash and water leaked from the holding pond. The sludge contaminated the surrounding area and is now moving down the Emory River.

[Creative Commons photo by Daniel Johnson]

Coal plants collect the “fly ash,” a byproduct of burning coal for fuel, in order to bury or recycle it later. The scrubbers collecting the ash are in place to reduce emissions so that plants can produce “clean coal.” Disasters like this certainly call into question how clean that process really is.