Jury says cleanup workers were put in danger
A federal jury on Wednesday ruled a global contractor tasked with keeping disaster cleanup workers safe instead endangered them — some fatally.
A jury in U.S. District Court spent five hours deliberating before returning a verdict Wednesday in favor of the hundreds of blue-collar laborers who say they were sickened during the cleanup of the nation’s largest coal ash spill.
More than 30 workers who cleaned up the December 2008 spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County are dead, and more than 250 are sick or dying. They sued Jacobs Engineering, a global contractor TVA put in charge of cleaning up its mess and keeping workers safe. TVA ratepayers paid the firm more than $64 million.
Jurors deciding the first phase of the workers’ toxic tort lawsuit in Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan’s courtroom heard three weeks of testimony before returning their verdict.
The panel ruled Jacobs failed to adhere to its contract with TVA, failed to “exercise reasonable care” in keeping workers safe and, in its failures, likely caused the poisoning by coal ash of the laborers, many of whom live in East Tennessee.
The verdict means the workers now will get a chance to seek damages, including money to cover medical testing for all laborers who worked at the site and medical treatment for themselves and their families. Many of the workers’ family members also are believed to have been sickened by exposure
to the coal ash the laborers brought home each night on their skin and clothing.
Coal ash, a by-product of burning coal to produce electricity, is filled with a concentrated stew of toxins, including arsenic, radioactive material, mercury and lead. TVA makes millions each year from selling it for industrial uses, including mixing it in concrete.
When a dike at the Kingston plant gave way just before Christmas 2008, smothering 300 acres of land in the Swan Pond community, construction workers from East Tennessee and across the nation responded — without any protection or training. Not only was the spill the nation’s worst but the clean-up itself represented the country’s largest worker exposure to coal ash.
Testimony showed Jacobs began watering down both safety testing procedures and worker safety rules as soon as the EPA allowed the TVA to put the firm — which has a long history of worker safety lawsuits and even criminal charges — in charge of the Kingston site.
The workers were — falsely — assured coal ash exposure was safe and were misled about its dangers, testimony showed. As many grew sick while working more than 60 hours weekly unprotected, Jacobs’ safety managers, including Tom Bock and Chris Eich, continued to insist coal ash exposure was not the cause.
Testimony showed Bock ordered dust masks kept on site for the workers destroyed and refused to provide them any protective gear. Jacobs refused an EPA directive to provide the workers showers and changing rooms and instead provided them a cat litter box filled with ash-contaminated water to clean up.