Tennessee coal ash disaster and the myth of “clean coal”

Tennessee coal ash disaster and the myth of “clean coal”
by David Roberts
3 Jun 2009

Stop what you’re doing and proceed immediately to the current issue of GQ magazine, which contains a blockbuster piece of investigative journalism: “Black Tide,” by Sean Flynn. Here’s the slug:

Just days before Christmas last year, an environmental disaster one hundred times the size of the Exxon Valdez (yes, you read that right) unfolded on a riverbank in Eastern Tennessee. A wave of poisonous sludge buried a town ... along with the myth of Clean Coal.

Flynn traces the history of the people and land affected by the Kinston, Tenn. coal ash spill, and uses that as a jumping off point for a searing look at the damage coal is doing to Appalachia. It’s criminal that there have been so few follow-up stories on this disaster, especially given that the problem of the spilled ash remains unsolved and possibly insoluble. (Thus far TVA has ... sprinkled hay on it.) Some 1,500 similar coal ash storage sites remained scattered across the Southeast, largely unregulated.

Flynn’s piece is comprehensive, precise, and devastating.

To read the full article: http://www.grist.org/article/2009-must-read-new-story-on-the-tennessee-coa