www.newrivervalley.com

More about the Tennessee coal ash dam break.

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Radford University professor and Appalachian Voice editor Bill Kovarik just posted this. (10:47 a.m. 12-24)

Appalachian Voice is getting a report this morning on a hospitalization from drinking tainted water

We also understand that TVA officials are telling local residents to boil water. This seems like very poor advice under the circumstances. through an environmental group.

Boiling kills bacteria and is good advice in a general flood when sewer lines are breached. But boiling will also concentrate heavy metals.  We have asked TVA for a response.

We have also asked for citizen journalists to report more about the spill by logging on here.
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More updates and news about the coal ash slurry spill. It's happened in Harriman before.
The Charleston, S.C., paper has running coverage of coal sludge issues.

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Jeff Biggers, author of The United States of Appalachia, has weighed in on the the coal ash flood story.

CNN ran a story last night (Dec. 23), just 43 hours or so after the flood began.

You can find more information and more links in the posts and comments below.

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When the first reports came in Monday morning, they said an earthen dam holding a slurry of coal ash and water collapsed at the Kingston Steam Plant, a coal-fired Tennessee Valley Authority electricity generating plant near Harriman, Tenn. It flooded eight to 10 houses and a train track, those reports said.

When the sun came up, things looked a lot worse.

This spill is bigger than the Exxon Valdez, bigger than the Martin County, Ky., coal sludge spill of 2000. The Exxon Valdez dumped nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in 1989. The Martin County dam collapse dumped 300 million gallons of coal sludge into tributaries of the Tug Fork River. The effects spread all the way into the Ohio River. The Harriman spill has spread more than 500 million gallons of a mix of coal ash and water over about 400 acres. It's 6 feet deep in some places. At least one house was shoved off its foundation.

Coal ash contains a long list of toxic components, including arsenic, lead and mercury.

Environmental reporter Jim Bruggers has gathered reports and video on his blog that tells the story so far.

The news may bring Cumberland Park mind. Cumberland Park is the Appalachian Power project in Giles County that is in the process of burying 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash in the flood plain beside the New River. But Cumberland Park is filling with dry ash. The Kingston pond was filled with wet ash.

"That's completely apples and oranges," Joe Ryder said Monday. Ryder is the environmental compliance officer at the Glen Lyn power plant that's providing the ash for Cumberland Park.

The Kingston pond has more in common with the slurry ponds the Glen Lyn plant has used for decades. They're down river from the plant, just upstream from West Virginia.

There's more video on the Tennessee flooding here.

Here's another report about fish kills downstream from the spill.

This may be the first national news notice of the event. Though I hear the New York Times has dispatched a reporter to the scene. (It's now about 40 hours after the flood began.)

Here's some talk about what's up with the dearth of national coverage.

-- Tim Thornton