Monday, December 29, 2008

Dirty Coal Takes Heavy Toll on Tennessee

The bad news just keeps coming in from central Tennessee, where a retaining pond failure unleashed a flood of more than a billion gallons of coal ash sludge. The Environmental Protection Agency now says two local rivers are showing dangerously high levels of arsenic and heavy metals.

UPDATE: Wikipedia now has a comprehensive page on the Tennessee coal sludge disaster.

2 comments:

Rosie said...

I saw an article about this and thought of you - what a disaster and a danger to the people!

Anonymous said...

Blech - That is absolutely disgusting. Obviously this is not supposed to happen, but my question is, what are the companies supposed to do with the coal ash? These pictures make the area look like a freaky Super Fund site and I can't think that coal ash (and the sludge) anywhere is healthy.