Sunday Focus: Coal Ash Settlement

    

TVA works to clean up the Tennessee coal ash spill of 2008.

The TVA has agreed to pay landowners almost $28-Million for damages they suffered when a coal ash containment pond burst and send a sea of wet coal ash onto the land and into a river.
     That's a lot of money for you and me, but it is chump change for TVA, which has paid out several billion dollars to clean up the spill.
    While any form of energy, from solar to wind to natural gas to nuclear, can cause accidents and damage, it seems coal, from the digging to the burning to the disposal of the ash, carries with it a lot of liability.
     Most of the ash was packed on rail cars and dumped in Perry

County Alabama, hundreds of miles away from the spill.
    The Alabama Public Service Commission is angry that The EPA is forcing power companies---including Alabama Power and TVA--- to reduce the emissions from the coal-fired power plants.
     An environmental group announced plans to file civil rights complaints on behalf of some Perry Country residents last December, on the 5th anniversary of the spill.
     An online petition to block any added shipments of coal ash to the Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County gathered just 73 signatures. And not one of those signing is from Alabama.
 

 

  
And the company that bought the landfill out of bankruptcy in December 2011, Green Group Holdings, promotes it as the perfect place for what they now call CCR..."Coal Combustion Residue".




[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of TimLennox.com]