Kingston Fossil Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and is located on Watts Bar Reservoir on the Tennessee River near Kingston, Tennessee.
The power station has nine coal-fired generating units and "net dependable generating capacity" of approximately 1,456 megawatts. TVA states that "the plant consumes some 12,350 tons of coal a day." Construction of the power station commenced in 1951 and was commissioned in 1955. According to the TVA the "plant consumes about 14,000 tons of coal a day."
Originally TVA estimated that 1.7 million cubic yards of waste had burst through the storage facility. Company officials said the pond had contained a total of about 2.6 million cubic yards of sludge. However, the company revised its estimates on December 26, when it released an aerial survey showing that 5.4 million cubic yards of fly ash was released from the storage facility. Several days later, the estimate was increased to over 1 billion gallons spilled.
On December 29, 2008, after an inquiry by the New York Times, the Tennessee Valley Authority released an inventory of the plant's 2.2 million pounds of toxic deposits during 2007. The inventory included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications, among other health problems.
On March 4, 2010 the Alabama House introduced a bill that would allow Perry County, Alabama to levy a $5 per ton fee on coal ash disposed at a privately owned landfill in the city of Uiontown. Alabama Rep. Ralph Howard of Greensboro, Alabama introduced the bill. Currently the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is shipping coal sludge that breached the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee. TVA anticipates that it will ship approximately 3 million cubic feet of coal and ash to the landfill before the clean-up is completed.
Revenue from the levy would be spent evenly between the towns of Uniontown and Marion. The total amount raised could be as much as $15 million.
Democratic Rep. Ralph Howard of Greensboro introduced the bill Thursday.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is shipping coal ash and sludge that breached an earthen dike at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee to the landfill. TVA plans to ship about 3 million cubic feet of coal and ash to the landfill.
Howard said revenue from the fee would be split evenly between the cities of Uniontown and Marion. Howard estimated the fee could raise as much as $15 million. If the legislation passes voters would have to approve the measure in their November 2010 election.
After the accident, the TVA board voted to replace its six ash ponds -- including the one at Kingston, three others in Tennessee, and one each in Kentucky and Alabama -- with dry storage, at a cost of $1.5 billion over 10 years.
2005 Mercury Emissions: 430 lb.
A 2011 Union of Concerned Scientists report, "Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource," calculated the available water in every major watershed in the U.S. and measured that against the water used by power plants in each watershed. The report found that water use by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston coal plant is stressing the water supply of the Emory River, in Tennessee. The water stress problem is likely to get worse, according to the researchers, as the population, and the corresponding demand for energy and residential water, grows.
↑ Tennessee Valley Authority, "Kingston Fossil Plant", Tennessee Valley Authority website, accessed June 2008.
↑ Chloe White, "Dike bursts, floods 12 homes, spills into Watts Bar Lake," Knoxville News Sentinel, December 22, 2008.
↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Ash spill: TVA triples amount of sludge released," Knoxville News Sentinel, December 26, 2008.
↑ 13.0 13.1 "Landowners sue TVA for $165M over coal ash spill," Associated Press, December 30, 2008.
↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Jim Burress, "Coal Ash from Tennessee Disaster Making its Way to Georgia Landfill," WABE, May 8, 2009.
↑ 24.0 24.1 Bill Theobald, "TVA led coal-ash report astray," The Tennessean, July 29, 2009.
↑ 33.0 33.1 "TVA plant must replace liner at leaky gypsum pond" Bloomberg, Dec. 21, 2010.
↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 "EPA’s Blind Spot: Hexavalent Chromium in Coal Ash" Earthjustice & Sierra Club, February 1, 2011.
↑ Averyt, K., J. Fisher, A. Huber-Lee, A. Lewis, J. Macknick, N. Madden, J. Rogers, and S. Tellinghuisen, "Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource," The Union of Concerned Scientists' Energy and Water in a Warming World initiative, November 2011 Report.
This page was last edited on 17 March 2015, at 17:28.