10 Years After Kingston Tennessee's TVA's Coal Ash Spill

I was in a weird place in 2009. 

Alabama Public TV had laid me and others off because of The Great Recession. 

I was one of tens of thousands of TV anchors and reporters looking for work and finding it hard to get return calls.

     One of the part-time gigs I got, thanks to the News Director at WBHM Public Radio in Birmingham, Tonya Ott, was an assignment to report on the Kingston Tennessee coal ash spill.

     Alabama was interested because hundreds of tons of the stuff was being loaded on rail-cars to be transported 300+ miles to the Arrowhead Landfill in Uniontown, in the Alabama Black Belt.

The cars were lined with sheets of plastic and the coal ash was loaded in....four-million cubic yards of it!...and buried in the landfill, the largest commercial facility of its kind east of the Mississippi.

I was escorted around the site, shown big and small earth moving equipment trying to recover all of the coal ash that has spilled when one of the earthen walls of the containment area had failed.

    I don't remember sensing any danger...there were no breathing masks offered, though oddly, I remember plastic booties being handed over to cover my shoes as we got into vehicles.

   Some of the Perry County residents who dared to make negative comments about the Arrowhead landfill owners---Green Group Holdings--- found themselves at the end of a BIG COMPANY stick, sued for $30-Million Dollars for defamation in 2016. 

It was settled in 2017, with the company dropping the lawsuit and promising to post notices about any future shipments of coal ash to Arrowhead. In return, the residents---represented by the ACLU--- agreeing to post a notice about the settlement on their Facebook pages.