Knoxville.biz is reporting on the collapse of a retaining wall at a TVA slurry ash storage pond. Dramatic video of the flooding can be seen at the Knoxville.biz web site.
A retention pond wall collapsed early this morning at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston steam plant, releasing a mixture of water and fly ash that flooded nearly a dozen homes and caused a train wreck.
No injuries have been reported, but one house was swept into the middle of Swan Pond Circle Road and huge piles of wet fly ash cover the roadway.
Officials say 4 to 6 feet of material washed out of the pond and now covers up to 400 acres of land adjacent to the plant.
Some of the material made its way into Watts Bar Lake, which flows past the plant, according to TVA spokesman Gil Francis.
“It’s going to take some time to clean up,” Francis said.
Eight to 10 homes were flooded, and 12 residences in all have been affected by the break.
Although, this leak was relatively small, there have been some very large ones in the past: In 2000, a 2.2 billion gallon coal waste dam failed in Martin County, Kentucky.
Coal–it can be dirty in so many different ways.
Coal sludge Mildred, Pennsylvania
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