What the Heck? Second Coal Ash Spill, this Time in Alabama
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 01. 9.09
Image: Google Maps. We think this is the Widows Creek power plant where the spill happened, but if anyone from Alabama could confirm, please do so in the comments.
Coal Waste Spill at At Alabama Coal Plant
It wasn't so long ago that we were writing about the big environmental fail (that's the current lingo, I think) in Tennessee where 2.6 million cubic yards of coal ash sludge broke through a dike and covered 400 acres up to six feet deep. Now the Tennessee Valley Authority says "a waste pond at its Widows Creek power plant in northeast Alabama has ruptured."
Read on for more details.
From the AP:
TVA spokesman John Moulton says the leak in the pond was discovered at about 6 a.m. at the plant near Stevenson, Ala. He said most of the material flowed into a settling pond at the plant site, but some spilled into Widows Creek.The federal utility says the leak of what it described as gypsum has stopped and it is repairing the pond. It doesn't have an estimate on much material spilled and the cause of the failure is under investigation.
It's not yet clear how toxic or non-toxic this spill was. With some luck it will have been only gypsum and local ecosystems won't be harmed. But even in that case, this still shows that the waste produced by coal power plants isn't exactly contained in a foolproof way...
Let's hope that the study that claimed that world reserves of coal are actually much smaller than previously thought is right.
Via AP, Huffington Post
More on Coal
Epic Environmental Fail: Landowners sue Tennessee Valley Authority for $165M over Coal Ash Spill
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/12/tennessee-coal-ash-slurry-spill-48-times-bigger-than-exxon-valdez-spill.php
World Coal Reserves Could Be Much Smaller than Previously Thought
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The original story is here and we have a graphic associated with it, with the location: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090109/GREEN02/90109016/1906/GREEN
Yes this is the other TVA power plant that is in the headlines. This one is 40 mi. SW of Chattanooga, Tn.Slurry pits are up and right of steam stacks or north and east (big gray looking ponds), worked there in 2001 for Sand MTN. power CO-OP
If the coal industry can't effectively manage their current waste, what makes the public believe that they will do a better job with CCS where the stakes are much much higher?
this is starting to look fishy its weird that two separate ones collapsed in such a short period of time
If it wasn't such an absurd idea one might think the companies were pulling the plug on some of these waste lakes (they're huge so pond isn't a true representation).
I wonder if there will be a third...
this is excellent news....now all the we need are a few more disasters before we officially state that the s**t has indeed hit the fan, and enforce some serious environment friendly rules. I mean enforce, not put up for polling and/ or consider corporate and fiscal requirements and human laziness .
I'm being very hypocritical here... I'm one of the aforementioned lazy humans. a very good one in fact. but a problem's a problem. and a few people are 6 feet deep in it... damn clean coal to hell, and reserve the spot for eco-criminals
Funny, everyone thinks coal electricity is bad, but is sucking it up with their computer to read about it. If you don't like it stop using electricity.