Sludge Spill: A Major Clean UpDecember 24, 2008
In the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2008, the earthen wall of a containment pond at Tennessee's Kingston Fossil Plant gave way. The breach released 1.3 million cubic meters (1.7 million cubic yards) of fly ash — a coal-combustion waste product captured and stored in wet form. As fly ash dries, it is typically moved to new containment areas to continue drying, and it was one of these areas, housing dredge cells that facilitate further drying, where the containment wall broke. Some of the sludge traveled north through a valley, and some flowed to the east, where it damaged dozens of homes. The spill infiltrated the Emory River, buried some 120 hectares (300 acres) in sludge, and even knocked a nearby home completely off its foundation. The Thematic Mapper on NASA's Landsat 5 satellite captured these images of the Kingston Fossil Plant and its surroundings on Nov. 20, 2008, a month before the spill (left), and Dec. 22, 2008, immediately after the spill (right). In these false-color images, water appears blue, and sediment-laden water appears light blue. Vegetation appears green, and bare ground and urbanized areas appear pinkish-brown. In the November image, walls visibly contain two adjacent slurry ponds at the plant—one in the northwest and one in the southeast — but in the December image, the walls of the northwestern slurry pond have given way. In this image, light blue slurry covers the ground to the north and east of the plant. Sediment also clogs the nearby Emory River, evident from the waterway's relatively light blue color.
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