Tennessee Town Still Looks Like a Moonscape After TVA Spill
It’s been nearly 7 months since the residents of Harriman, Tennessee woke up to find their properties – and the once-pristine lakes that could be seen from their windows – engulfed in a toxic mess of wet, gray coal sludge. Sadly, the view from their homes still hasn’t changed much, and their children are beginning to show signs of troubling health problems.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which is responsible for the December 22nd, 2008 spill at its coal power plant in neighboring Kingston, Tennessee, insists that the coal ash waste is safe, but residents – including the Hampton family, who live near the spill site – say that their health tells a different story.
CNN reports:
“Everything here is changed,” Hampton said, her eyes glistening. “The landscape reminds me of what you see on the moon. It breaks my heart.”
Residents are afraid of the chemicals that were released into the environment: arsenic, selenium, lead and radioactive materials including chromium and barium.
Whatever the official reports say, the Hamptons believe that the air outside their home could be toxic to their children. Pamela Hampton says she first noticed that her children were having health problems only days after the spill.
First, 11-year-old Monica started complaining about headaches. Then, all three children — Monica, 6-year-old Noah and 3-year-old Joshua — began to experience upper-respiratory problems, fevers, ear infections, runny noses and red eyes.
“You’re taking your child to the doctor yet again, or two children, and then in a week, the next child is sick,” Hampton said. “After about the third or fourth time, that’s when I started realizing that this is not a coincidence. It’s like being sucker-punched.”
Noah Hampton’s ear infections were so persistent, his ears so inflamed, Pamela Hampton says, the family’s doctor said it looked like he had growths in his ears resembling small grapes.
The doctors’ visits over the past six months have been frequent, expensive and inconclusive.
Here it is, July, and yet all the residents have received from TVA and the government is unfulfilled promises. The EPA, which doesn’t consider coal ash a hazardous material, still hasn’t revisited that stance despite reassurances from administrator Lisa Jackson that it would. TVA told residents that it would set up clinics to test community members’ blood for potential toxics – but they’ve been saying that for months.
In contrast to TVA’s finding that the water and air in the area was safe, a Duke University study concluded that toxic elements from the coal ash could be suspended in the air, which poses a health risk. It also found that coal ash caused contamination in surface waters, and that accumulation of toxic substances found in the river sediment could poison fish. Sure enough, researchers have noticed fish with gills coated completely in coal ash sediment, a sign of what it may be doing to humans’ lungs as well.
Sadly, these families don’t have the funds to leave the area and start a new life somewhere else – they’re participants in a lawsuit against the TVA, but that could be drawn out for years. They have little choice but to wait, and hope that things don’t get any worse.
Link CNN
Photo credit: Dirty Coal TVA
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Consciousness, Green Living, Health, Science, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
