'They deserve to be heard': Sick and dying coal ash cleanup workers fight for their lives
This story was produced through a partnership between Southerly andthe Guardian, with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Doug Bledsoe opened his mouth to order sweet tea at the Ruby Tuesday in Powell, Tennessee, when he had his first seizure.
It was a Friday night in November 2018. Bledsoe and his wife, Johnnie, were out celebrating the end of her two-year battle with breast cancer and trying to relax after his hospital visit that afternoon, when doctors found a spot on his lung. Johnnie remembers looking across the table at her husband, whose tan face was slack, his mouth drooling. She quickly got him to their truck and sped to North Knoxville medical center across the street.
Doctors ran a Cat scan of his brain and found a large tumor growing above his eye, which was catalyzing the seizure and affecting his speech. They also found that the shadow on his lung, as well as spots on his brain and adrenal gland, were tumors.
“I was still at home, but the light was out,” Bledsoe told me a year-anda-half later, thumping his worn hands against a metal chair on his back porch. It was a warm May morning and storm clouds glinted overhead at the couple’s “home place” – a green, 70-acre crest with woodlands on either side – that has been in the family since Bledsoe was three years old. Behind their porch, a yard of old trucks and trailers marked his long career as a crewman for the film industry, moonlighting as a stuntman and actor in movies such as Coal Miner’s Daughter and Burning Rage.
The Bledsoes’ lives revolved around labor: when Doug wasn’t traveling, they bush hogged hay, trained horses and invested in a cattle breeding business that landed them in a bovine hall of fame.
In early 2009, after movie work dried up, his union offered him a new job with GUBMK, a long-term subcontractor under the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, a federal agency founded to provide flood control and electricity to east Tennessee. TVA was known as one of the best employers in the south-east, putting thousands to work and creating a thriving middle class.
For almost six years, he, along with roughly 900 others, helped clean up the nation’s largest coal ash spill an hour west of his doorstep. TVA’s own testing showed the utility knew the coal ash – waste material leftover from burning coal for electricity – contained toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, mercury and selenium, and radioactive materials, decades before the spill; an
EPA pollution report from early 2009 shows TVA tested for radioactivity in ash and soil samples two weeks after the spill occurred and EPA found spikes in radiation above background levels.
When reached for comment, Scott Brooks, a TVA spokesperson, stated, “The constituents of coal ash have been well-known for years, and TVA was transparent with this information throughout the Kingston recovery project.”
But an initial draft of the site safety plan made no mention of radioactive materials, and did not list heavy metals as constituents of fly ash aside from arsenic. Contractors working for the utility repeatedly assured cleanup workers that the ash, which floated in the air, coating their bare skin and lungs, was safe. Some workers testified the company refused to provide or allow for the use of protective suits or masks.
“I was right proud of TVA until I went to work for them,” Bledsoe said.
Bledsoe, 69, had grey hair that swept across his forehead. In May, he still looked hardy, but his ailments sapped his energy and left him rail thin. His stage four cancer meant he was on chemotherapy treatments for the remainder of his life, though he outlived his doctor’s expectations by over nine months.
Bledsoe was one of many workers hired for the cleanup who have suffered since the spill. His eldest brother, Ron, a lifelong health enthusiast, has a terminal condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. App Thacker, who dredged ash from the riverways, said his testosterone levels dropped to those of an octogenarian when he was in his 40s. Roy Edmonds, who drove dump trucks around the site, had five debilitating surgeries to remove a sarcoma that nearly bankrupted his family. Ansol Clark, a fuel truck driver, had two strokes before he was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. Frankie Norris, a heavy equipment operator,developed weeping sores all over his skin, including on his face. He has to wash blood off his body every night. Philip Crick, who operated a water truck, had skyrocketing blood pressure and a series of skin cancer diagnoses that led to reconstructive surgery on both sides of his nose.
I spoke to 20 workers and their family members about the pain they’ve endured in the decade since the spill. One worker’s wife remembers the sour, metallic odor of ash on their skin lingering for years. Another worker’s wife tasted it in his mustache when she kissed him.
In the decade since, at least 50 people who worked the cleanup are dead and over 400 are sick. Many of them are unemployed, on disability, or were forced to take early retirement, their bank accounts drained from years of exorbitant out-of-pocket medical bills. More than 200 workers, spouses and families of the deceased are now part of an ongoing series of lawsuits seeking damagesagainst Jacobs Engineering, the contractor TVA paid $64m to oversee the cleanup.
The case has dragged on for seven years. In 2018, a jury found Jacobs – now represented by three of the highest-paid law firms in the nation – failed to protect its workers, which could have contributed to their medical conditions. In 2019, a judge, citing the illnesses of the workers, ordered Jacobs to mediate to reach a settlement, but so far two offers have failed.
In March, Jacobs offered the first 52