environmental justice
TVA sends spilled coal ash to impoverished black communities in Georgia and Alabama
The Tennessee Valley Authority has begun shipping toxic coal ash from the massive spill that occurred last December at its Kingston power plant in east Tennessee's Roane County to landfills in the neighboring states of Georgia and Alabama as part of a test to determine a final resting place for the waste.
The counties where the ash is going have large black populations and high poverty rates, raising questions about environmental justice.
The disposal decision came just days before the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced it was stepping in to oversee cleanup of the disaster, which released some 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into a nearby community and a branch of the Emory River. Pollutants in the ash include arsenic, lead and cancer-causing combustion byproducts known as PAHs, as well as radioactive elements that occur naturally in coal and concentrate in the ash.





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