Manager denies test tampering in coal ash case

KNOXVILLE — An employee of the same government contractor that assured hundreds of blue-collar laborers in Roane County, Tennessee, the coal ash in which they were working unprotected was safe complained of safety concerns when the toxic substance made its way into a company trailer, testimony Monday revealed.

“Large quantities of [coal ash] dust in Jacobs [Engineering] trailer,” an unidentified employee of the California-based contractor wrote. “Need to look into ventilation filters if any exist and probably start air monitoring in the office. Dust is fine particulate and could be ash particles, which are unsafe to breathe.”

Tom Bock, the man Jacobs Engineering put in charge of worker safety, brushed off the significance of the note in testimony Monday and continued to insist coal ash — filled with toxins such as arsenic, silica, radium, mercury, lead, barium and radium — was safe and protective gear for workers unnecessary.

“We probably needed to sweep the floors,” Bock said of the March 2010 note penned by an unidentified colleague. “It’s safe to breathe below the exposure limits.”

Bock had no training in the dangers of coal ash when Jacobs Engineering put him in charge of the safety of the hundreds of workers who responded to a call for help cleaning up the December 2008 coal ash spill at the TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County — the nation’s largest man-made environmental disaster.

Nearly a decade after the spill, more than 30 of those workers are dead and more than 250 sick or dying. They are suing Jacobs — the firm TVA ratepayers paid more than $27.7 million to clean up its mess. The workers allege Bock and other Jacobs managers lied to them about the dangers of coal ash, denied them protective gear, tampered with testing designed to keep the workers and the public safe and threatened to fire laborers who insisted on protective gear.

The first phase of their toxic tort lawsuit is being tried in Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan’s courtroom. The case entered its second week of trial on Monday.

Bock was in his second day of testimony Monday. He admitted Friday he knew little about the toxins that make up coal ash but told workers it was safe enough to “eat a pound a day” — a claim not even TVA, which makes millions selling coal ash for industrial uses, supports.