More on the Coal Ash Spill

There's still not a lot of information available about the Tennessee coal ash spill. Officials from the TVA met with local residents today, a mere six days after the spill occurred. According to a brand new fresh blogger in the area (who started blogging in response to the spill), they weren't terribly helpful. When challenged with specific issues, "Come by the office if you have questions was often the answer given." It's obviously no secret how TVA officials earned their six-figure bonuses.

Dave Cooper has a post at Huffington Post in which he describes the situation first hand and provides some numbers:

Now TVA is saying that 5.3 million cubic yards of their coal ash mountain collapsed into the water. There are 200 gallons in a cubic yard, so that equates to about 1.06 billion gallons -- almost 100 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons in 1989.

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It's hard to comprehend the enormous size of this spill. TVA's coal ash mountain was stacked over 50 feet high -- as high as a 5 story building.

If a dump truck can hold 20 cubic yards of dirt and ash, it will take 265,000 truck loads to haul away all the ash (they are taking it back to the power plant). If they fill one dump truck trip every 5 minutes and work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it will take about 2.5 years to clean up the spill. TVA has been telling the media it will be cleaned up in about 6 weeks - this is a ludicrous claim.

He's also got some video, which comes from the TVA website and is worth seeing to get an idea of what they're up against down there.