Kingston coal ash spill

The Kingston plant stored coal ash wet, in a diked pond. The dike failure released about 1.1 billion gallons of slurry, which covered up to 300 acres to a depth of up to six feet and reached the Emory and Clinch rivers, tributaries of the Tennessee. Twelve homes were covered, three made uninhabitable and 42 damaged. The ash contained arsenic, lead, barium, chromium and manganese, along with mercury, thallium, cadmium, nickel, copper and uranium.

In the first phase, within a year, 3.5 million cubic yards of ash were removed, including 90% of what had entered the Emory; the material was sent to the Arrowhead landfill in Perry County, Alabama. Among the cleanup workers, more than 250 fell ill and over 30 died within ten years of the spill; in 2018 a federal jury found that the contractor, Jacobs Engineering, had failed to provide the necessary protective equipment. The accident led in 2015 to the first federal rule on coal combustion residuals.