Environmental disaster in Tennessee

The week before Christmas, one of the worst environmental disasters in US history occured in Roane County, Tennessee. From the Tennessean:

Millions of yards of ashy sludge broke through a dike at TVA’s Kingston coal-fired plant Monday, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation and putting environmentalists on edge about toxic chemicals that may be seeping into the ground and flowing downriver.
About 2.6 million cubic yards of slurry — enough to fill 798 Olympic-size swimming pools — rolled out of the pond Monday, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Cleanup will take at least several weeks, or, in a worst-case scenario, years.
The ash slide, which began just before 1 a.m., covered as many as 400 acres as deep as 6 feet. The wave of ash and mud toppled power lines, covered Swan Pond Road and ruptured a gas line. It damaged 12 homes, and one person had to be rescued, though no one was seriously hurt. Much remains to be determined, including why this happened, said Tom Kilgore, president and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

These photos really say it all, and it’s hard to imagine the hardship the members of this community are facing. These kinds of disasters simply bring home the fact that we’ve been horribly managing waste and byproducts from industry for a long while, and the results are going to begin to catch up with us. It’s not just about global warming anymore.