Over the weekend a truck driver was killed while delivering pipe to the Kingston, Tenn coal ash site and in an unrelated incident a Train carrying some of the coal ash to Perry County derailed and the shipment was halted.
The Kingston , Tennessee site was the location of a massive 5 million cubic yard spill in December of 2008.
These two unrelated accidents comes on the heels of the TVA decision to "self-regulate" and upgrade hazard ratings of coal ash sites according to a story Friday in the New York Times.
The TVA sent a letter to the EPA last week announcing that it has changed several of their coal ash sites as "high hazard". As this news has been released, criticism of the decision to move coal ash from the spill into Perry County Alabama has intensified. Now even more scrutiny will and should take place with the death at the site and the train derailment.
I intended to solely focus on the issue of the coal ash transport to Alabama; however I just got a google alert about the train derailing as well as a worker getting killed at the coal ash cleanup site. This highlights more concerns about the danger involved in not only the coal ash removal but also the on-site cleanup. So while the change of the ratings is significant in its own right, I did want to bring attention to all of the safety concerns in the cleanup and removal.
An Iowa truck driver died Monday after being crushed by a load of pipe he was delivering to the cleanup site of a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee, authorities said.
Larry LaCroix, 55, of Fort Madison, Iowa, died at University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, Tennessee Valley Authority spokeswoman Barbara Martocci said.
LaCroix was injured Monday morning while unloading pipe for dredging machines at the TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant, she said.
The cleanup was temporarily halted so safety procedures could be reviewed with the hundreds of workers at the site. More than 5 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled into a river and lakeside homes near the plant on Dec. 22.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration was notified and TVA officials promised a full investigation.
"We need to know what happened and why, as soon as possible, so that everyone touched by this accident can make the necessary changes to prevent a recurrence," Anda Ray, TVA's top environmental executive, said in a statement.
LaCroix was releasing a hold-down strap on his flatbed trailer when the 20-inch-diameter pipe came loose and rolled on top of him, Martocci said.
LaCroix had worked for WW Transport for about seven years, a spokeswoman for the West Burlington, Iowa-based transportation company said.
Meanwhile, rail shipments of coal ash from Kingston to a landfill in Perry Co. in Alabama already had been halted by another incident. Four cars loaded with ash derailed while switching tracks at the site on Saturday. The cars remained upright and no ash was released, but 200 to 300 feet of track had to be repaired by TVA and Norfolk Southern railroad.
Martocci said some work at the site was expected to resume Tuesday and grief counselors were being made available to help workers.
Now back to the letter that was sent last week from the TVA to the EPA - this comes on the heels of heightened scrutiny
On Thursday, the utility sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency saying that "in the interest of taking a conservative, self-critical approach," it had reclassified four of its sites, Bull Run and Cumberland in Tennessee and Colbert and Widows Creek in Alabama, as "high hazard." Most of the others were reclassified as "significant" hazards, which means that dam failure would most likely result in economic loss and environmental damage.
The ranking system is not intended to measure the likelihood of failure, but the potential damage if failure occurs. The authority has hired Stantec, an engineering firm, to inspect all of the disposal sites, and has said that while many need repairs, none are in imminent danger of failure.
"We are doing and have done a lot of work at these sites, millions of dollars of work, with the intent of becoming the industry leader," Mr. Kammeyer said.
The E.P.A. list identifies disposal sites in 10 states, including 12 in North Carolina, 9 in Arizona and 7 in Kentucky.
The same day that the New York Times story ran on the changed ratings, a story running on the Associated Press talks about Perry County accepting this coal ash for economic reasons. This county is in a sad state when it has to make a short term economic decision which will likely produce long term harm to health and safety.
Critics have accused TVA of environmental racism for sending the coal ash to a poor, mostly black county. But Turner, who is black, disagreed.
"It would be economic racism if they didn’t send it here," he said. "This is economic survival for one of the poorest counties in the nation. Poor people sought this."
Kim Greer lives in a small wooden house on a dirt road near the landfill. She doesn’t know much about coal ash but has noticed a lot more trucks and trains recently.
"I hope it’s not dangerous and doesn’t get in the water or air," Greer said, speaking through her screen door. "There’s farm fields all over here."
There’s little else in Perry County, about 80 miles west of Montgomery in Alabama’s Black Belt, a region named for the shade of its rich soil. Once a prosperous farming region, the area has been among the nation’s poorest for generations.
About 31 percent of the county’s families live in poverty, more than three times the national average, according to U.S. Census figures. The county is almost 70 percent black. Some residents are descended from the slaves and sharecroppers who once worked its fields.
Jobs in the county are few, outside of a catfish processing plant, the hard-hit timber industry, some mom-and-pop businesses and a 700-bed private prison.