 Imagine a church rock uranium mill spill, but with coal ash. Before we get started, I'd like to say thank you to this video's sponsor. Brilliant. More about that later on. Over $1 billion estimated to clean up, millions of dollars worth of damage, many workers dying of long-term illnesses, including brain cancer, lung cancer and leukemia, were only similar results of a massive spill of toxic fly ash. Today we are looking at the Kingston Fossil Plant Fly Ash Spill. This disaster I'm going to rate here, because why not? The Kingston Fossil Plant, or better known as the Kingston Steam Plant, is a coal-fired electric generating station in Kingston, Road County, Tennessee, which is around here on the map. The area is fairly rural with a small population. The plant, a 1,398 megawatt coal-fired power station, was commissioned in 1951 and when completed in 1955, was one of the world's largest of its kind. The plant was originally intended to supply power to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which has unsurprisingly been on this channel quite a few times. The site is operated by Tennessee Valley Authority. The organisation operates and maintains multiple power stations, including coal, hydro and nuclear powered plants. The plant is located on a junction of the Emory and Clinch rivers, just over four miles from the clinches mouth to the Tennessee River. Coal is a dirty fuel and, as such, has some pretty nasty polluting byproducts. Fly Ash is a byproduct from coal burned in power generating plants. To stop this particulate matter getting into the atmosphere, a type of storage is needed to reduce the risk of environmental pollution. To achieve this, containment pumps are used. A full power operation, 1,000 tons or 1,200 cubic yards, of coal fly ashes produced daily by the plant. The fly ash is captured by electrostatic precipitators. A mix with bottom ash, which is taken from the boilers. To get the waste product to the storage areas, the ash is mixed with water in the plant and pumped to a settling pond. After the ash has settled to the bottom, the pond is dredged and the wet ash is pumped into storage cells. The ash then sits in the cells waiting for the water to be evaporated, after which a new cell is built on top. Once concentrated together, these ponds contain many toxic contaminants including arsenic, barium, beryllium, boron, cadmium, nickel, lead, mercury, selenium and phallium. Such pools can even have high levels of radioactivity. Since commencement of operations in the 1950s, the plant had been storing its coal ash in its containment ponds at a site adjacent to the Emory River. Due to high levels of waste, the initial ponds were filled by 1965. This necessitated the need to have a more comprehensive storage arrangement. To combat the growing waste problem, a new settling pond and ash storage cells were constructed. The storage area was divided into a number of smaller dredged cells. These consisted of a perimeter 60 feet above the winter level and 740 feet above sea level. Dykes were then stacked on top of each other on top of the previously sluiced ash materials. To maintain safety, these dykes were visually inspected by workers daily and more in-depth surveys were undertaken by engineers yearly. In between the daily and yearly inspections, quarterly checks were undertaken by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. In the early to mid-2000s, a number of small dyke failures were investigated and repaired by TVA with the assistance of an engineering firm. After that and leading up to disaster, no other issues were reported on the dykes. This leads us to the disaster in December 2008. On the 22nd of December 2008, at 1am Eastern Standard Time, the central and north portions of the dyke failed and tons of ash slurry were released over a period of two hours. Initially, the first wave lasted around one minute, but was followed by several other smaller waves. The spill extended over approximately 300 acres outside of the ash storage area. The effluent flowed through houses, disrupting gas, water and power services, flooding nearby railway line and blocking off roads. 5.4 million cubic yards of waste spillage was estimated after aerial surveys were undertaken. Once settled, the sludge was up to six feet deep. Due to the blocking of the road and rail services, coal supplies to the plant were shut off. The toxic contents also made its way into the Emory River, poisoning the food chain for the local wildlife. A day after the spillage, TVA released a statement acknowledging the event, saying, We deeply regret that a retention wall for ash containment at our Kingston fossil plant failed, resulting in an ash slide and damage to nearby homes. We're taking steps to stabilize runoff from this incident. Tests of nearby water showed elevated levels of lead and fallium, however arsenic was not recorded to be too high. Drinking water tested six miles away was shown to still be within legal standards. However, later tests by independent laboratories showed elevated levels of arsenic, copper, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel in the nearby river water. Within days of the spill, cleanup efforts began under the watchful eye of the EPA. In 2009, TVA hired contractor Jacobs to provide program management services to assist with the cleanup. The first stage of the cleanup was run by TVA and was called the time critical stage. During this 18 month period, around 3.5 million cubic yards of waste was collected. Removing around 90% of the ash in the Emory River, allowing it to be reopened in 2010. The cleanup involved mechanical excavation, hydraulic dredging and rapid materials handling. The ash was dewatered at Kingston and then transported by rail to Arrowhead landfill in Perry County, Alabama, which is around here on the map. Phase two was a non-time critical stage and involved mechanical excavation of approximately 2.3 million cubic yards of ash near the Watts Bar Reservoir. The excavated ash was dried on site to a storable moisture level and was placed in a 240 acre cell. This phase of the cleanup ended in December 2014. The third and final phase consisted of a human and ecological health risk assessment for the remaining ash not removed from the Emory River during phase one. During this phase, monitored natural recovery was selected to complete the cleanup. This used natural processes such as mixing, scouring and re-depositing and sedimentation of the remaining waste. Now here's some words from today's sponsor, Brilliant. 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If this interests you, and if you're a regular watcher of Plainly Difficult, might hint that you are, then you can try a free preview of each course and get daily challenges in the Today tab. Even better than that, the first 200 people to subscribe using my URL link www.brilliant.org slash plainly difficult will get 20% of a yearly subscription. After around 70 years and $1.1 billion, the cleanup efforts were considered complete, taking 6,700,000 worker hours. During the peak remediation works, around 900 people were on site per day. Although no one was killed during the spill, as many as 40 would die during the cleanup with hundreds more left with illnesses linked to the toxic materials left on site. The contractor Jacobs Engineering was discovered to have misled many of the cleanup workers of the hazards of coal ash. As such, the company didn't provide correct PPE to workers, meaning many did cleanup works without masks or protective clothing. After a number of years seeking compensation, a federal jury in November 2018 ruled in favour of the workers paving the way from much needed payout. This would be a vital lifeline as many of the workers did not have health or life insurance. The lawsuit is still ongoing with a rejected offer of $10 million in April 2020. The legacy for these workers is respiratory difficulties and long-term illnesses such as elevated chances of cancer. Although the effects were pretty obvious, I mean just look at this aerial photo, the main question remains, how did this happen if it was regularly inspected? LA-based engineering firm ACOM was commissioned by TVA to launch an investigation into the root cause of the dike failure. ACOM, at the start of 2009, began to analyse samples collected from the site. The scope of the work was limited to the identification of the likely cause of the disaster. Something was used to find out the native and non-native site materials to find out their properties in order to see if there are weaknesses in the ponds. On June 25th 2009, ACOM released a final report on their conclusions on the root cause of the disaster. They set out four likely causes, fill geometry, increased fill rates, soft foundation soils and loose wet ash. It was found that the unstable wet ash had slipped underneath the pond, weakening the dike leading to failure. This failure point was compounded by rainfall leading up to the failure of around 6.48 inches between December 1st and December 22nd. However, ACOM's findings were not definitive as unsurprisingly they were unable to get undistributed samples, but that would have really only been possible pre-disaster. In a court case in 2012, to see if TVA was liable for the spill, found that the organization did not build the holding pools according to plans and failed to train its employees on how to properly inspect the dikes surrounding the ash ponds. This led to a failure to maintain the facility to prevent rupture of the dikes, essentially guaranteeing a disaster. The site still operates today and many workers paid the price for the remediation with their health and in far higher number than necessary with their lives. I hope you enjoyed the video. I'd like to thank Brilliant for sponsoring this video. Sponsors like this really help keep the lights on here at Plainly Difficult HQ. So don't forget, if you'd like to check out Brilliant, use this link, www.brilliant.org slash plainlydifficult for the first 200 people to get 20% off an annual subscription. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching.