TVA reversal: Utility warns of coal ash dangers
Utility reverses early stand on fly ash danger
The nation’s largest electricity provider is now warning workers fly ash can damage their lungs.
Signs posted at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant in Roane County this month warn fly ash “may cause damage to lungs after repeatedly/prolonged exposure.” It requires workers to wear masks, which TVA is providing.
“Do not breathe dust,” the signs warn. “Get medical advice/attention if you feel unwell.”
The signage is in contrast to the position TVA took after more than 5 million cubic yards of coal ash were released into the environment when a dike failed at the fossil plant on Dec. 22, 2008.
During the $1.2 billion cleanup that followed, TVA blocked use of the label “hazardous waste” and references to hazardous materials on signs. The work was completed in 2015.
Coal ash is produced primarily from the burning of coal in coal-fired power plants.
Workers are suing in U.S. District Court Jacobs Engineering, the contractor TVA put in charge of the spill cleanup and worker safety, claiming coal ash sickened them after they were refused dust masks and never
warned coal ash was dangerous.
More than two dozen of the cleanup workers are dead, and more than 70 are dying — more than a quarter of the workers in the most dangerous sections of the 300-acre spill.
TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said the agency now is posting the
signs as part of its commitment to worker safety.
“TVA takes the safety of its workers very seriously,” Brooks said.
He said the new signs warn of the dangers of fly ash swirling inside “silos” but the same warnings wouldn’t apply to clean-up work,
since that was done outdoors.
WORKERS EXPOSED DURING KINGSTON CLEANUP
During the cleanup, workers spent more than 70 hours a week for months
and even years surrounded by “dust devils” of fly ash with no protective gear. The dust devils have been repeatedly captured on film.
Craig Wilkinson was one of the workers who said he was refused a mask. Now, the 59-year-old is in a hospital fighting for his life following a double-lung transplant after spending five years laboring unprotected in what was the nation’s largest coal ash disaster site.
It was in May 2009 that Anda Ray, then TVA senior vice president for the Officer of Environment and Research, insisted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency remove the label “hazardous waste” from signs at the clean-up site, according to a document reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee. Workers had already been toiling
unprotected and untrained at the cleanup site for five months.
“It will not be necessary to use the terms ‘hazardous waste’ or ‘HAZWOPER’ on the signs,” the document stated.
HAZWOPER is an acronym related to training for workers dealing with hazardous materials.
Brooks said Ray wanted the EPA to be consistent with its own label for coal ash.
“Coal ash and other coal combustion residuals are treated as non-hazardous solid waste, according
to the EPA,” he wrote in an email.
The EPA has refused to answer questions about its role in protecting the cleanup workers and the integrity of a testing process for dangerous levels of toxins such as arsenic at the site.
SCIENTIST: COAL ASH TREATED ‘LIKE DIRT’
During the cleanup, environmental scientist Steven Bunkley, 52, worked inside a tiny, aging trailer turned make-shift laboratory where he spent many of his work days, Bunkley said he was bathed in fly ash.
“There was dust floating around in the air in the lab,” he said.
Bunkley got worried when his testosterone plummeted and he developed skin rashes and a thyroid condition at the site. He asked to wear a testing monitor.
“They said that came out fine, and I was like, eh, I was getting covered,” Bunkley said.
He didn’t trust the results, so he asked Jacobs safety manager Tom Bock, whom he knew and liked, for a mask. He respected Bock, playfully dubbing him “the Bockanator” for his attention to equipment safety. Bock, too, told him his test results were fine, but Bunkley said he was never provided the results — a requirement of TVA’s safety plan.
“He said it was fine,” Bunkley said, adding Bock told him he didn’t need a mask.
“It was treated like it was a dirt site,” Bunkley said.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conversation did testing of the coal ash at the Kingston clean-up site in early January 2009 before Jacobs took over. That testing revealed levels of arsenic 36 times higher than the level in surrounding unaffected dirt, a TDEC report showed.
Wilkinson’s wife, Chris Wilkinson, told USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee on Monday her husband was not yet breathing on his own.
“He’s still on a breathing tube,” she said. “But he’s holding his own.”