Jared Sullivan on the 2008 TVA Kingston Coal Ash Disaster

Jared Sullivan is a writer who has worked at Field & Stream and then Men’s Journal. He grew up in Tennessee. 

When he was a young student in school in 2008, he heard the news reports of a giant coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee. 

Now he has written his first book and it’s about that 2008 environmental disaster – Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe (Knopf, 2024) 

The book tells the story of the coal ash spill and the ensuing legal battle between the disaster’s cleanup workers and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

For over 50 years, a power plant in the small town of Kingston, Tennessee burned 14,000 tons of coal a day, gradually creating a mountain of ashen waste 60 feet high and covering 84 acres, contained only by an earthen embankment. 

In 2008, that embankment broke, unleashing a billion gallons of coal sludge that covered 300 acres, damaged nearly 30 homes, and led to a cleanup effort that would cost over $1 billion – and the lives of 50 cleanup workers who inhaled the toxins from the coal sludge. Hundreds more workers fell ill after exposure to the waste. 

The workers and their families turned to Jim Scott, a local personal-injury lawyer who agreed to represent them in pitched legal battle against the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, a colossal, federally owned power behemoth. 

Sullivan spent five years following Jim Scott, the workers, and their families. In doing so, he uncovered documents with damning implications for the TVA and federal government. 

The resulting book is a courtroom drama about whether blue-collar workers can beat the big powerful corporations or whether self-described hillbilly lawyers can beat elite corporate defense attorneys. 

There are close to 750 coal ash dump sites in the U.S., like the one that collapsed in Kingston.

Ninety percent of these dump sites leak, contaminating the drinking water of nearly 3 million Americans. 

Sullivan reports that the TVA has known since the 1960s that coal ash is hazardous, yet to this day insists that it isn’t a toxic waste. 

Sullivan uncovered documents in the National Archives revealing TVA has long known that coal ash isn’t safe, including a 1964 memo in which a top official acknowledges the “detrimental effects” and “definitive corrosive tendencies” of the coal ash – corrosive tendencies that locals witnessed firsthand when the coal ash ate away at corn cobs and heads of cabbage after falling over their gardens. 

Despite this and other troubling findings, TVA continues, six decades later, to insist that coal ash isn’t a toxic waste, and it has repeatedly refused to treat it as such or dig up coal ash it has buried in large earthen pits across the South. 

“Coal ash is what is left over after you burn coal for electricity,” Sullivan told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last month. “And in 2008, there was this six story, 84 acre mountain of coal ash that had accumulated over five decades. On December 8, 2008, in the middle of the night, it just collapsed into a river and covered 300 acres of the rural countryside. It damaged or destroyed almost 30 houses. People had to be evacuated from their homes. It was a huge disaster.”

“In 2008, the economy was in free fall. The economy, housing and the stock markets were collapsing. TVA knew it had a big mess on their hands. They got the union to start calling blue collar workers and 900 of them from around the country raced to Kingston, Tennessee to help clean this stuff up.” 

“It was a kind of Godsend for the workers. When the economy collapsed, truck driving and construction jobs closed down. They were happy to get the call. For the first few years, this coal ash is mucky, wet and sloppy. It didn’t get in the air that much. But then after a few years in the Tennessee heat, this coal ash started blowing around. It becomes like powdery dust that gets on everything. And there are pictures with workers just coated with the stuff.”

“Things started to go really bad for the workers. They started blacking out in the truck, they started coughing up blood, they started getting heart issues, lung issues.” 

“At first, they kind of shrug it off. For a year or two they shook it off. They were working crazy hours, 16 hour shifts. And they needed the money. They told themselves – I’m going too hard, that’s why I feel terrible. But it eventually gets to a point that they can’t deny that this coal ash stuff is toxic and not good for them despite what they have been told by higher ups at TVA and Jacobs Engineering.”

“They start requesting dust masks and respirators. And they are bringing notes from their physicians saying they need these on the job site. And in most cases, not in every single case, but in most cases, the workers were not provided dusk masks or respirators. They were told that the level of dust on the site couldn’t harm their health and posed no real safety risk.”

“And they paid for it with their health. More than fifty of them have died now. A lot of them have heart and lung issues.” 

How many workers were injured?

“There are almost 250 on the lawsuit. But 900 were on the site at the peak of the clean up.” 

Why are only 250 of them on the lawsuit?

“Some were not there the whole time. They worked a couple of years when the ash was soupy and sloppy and moved on. And they might not have even known the lawsuit was going on. If someone came down from New York or Florida for a year or two, and then they went back home, they might not have even heard about the lawsuit after that.”

“And it was only after a couple of years into the cleanup when it started to dry out and the stuff was in the air. By 2011 or so, the number of workers had decreased to 400 or 500 or so. It was the workers who were out there the longest were the ones who got the sickest.”

When the coal ash spilled out into the surrounding communities, were any of the residents injured or killed?

“No. It was kind of a miracle. It happened in the middle of the night. There were some pretty scary moments with people in their homes and their homes got shoved off their foundations. Thankfully, no one was out driving around or in their yards.” 

The central character of the book is a self-described hillbilly trial lawyer – Jim Scott.

“Scott’s not this big high profile attorney by any means,” Sullivan said. “He’s basically a one man show. He’s kind of a character. He eats candy incessantly. He has crazy hair. He was approached by these workers in late 2012 and early 2013 about their health claims. These cases are hard to litigate. It’s hard to prove that your exposure to toxic substances caused your specific illnesses. It’s hard to make these claims definitively. Many of these workers would work other job sites, where they could also be exposed to hazards. But Jim believed these workers that coal ash was to blame for their illnesses. And he pursued these cases for ten years and kind of wrecked his life doing it.”

In what way did he wreck his life?

“He went through a nasty divorce, got kicked out of his house, temporarily lost custody of his kids.” 

Because he was working 24/7 on the case?

“Yes. He meant well. He wanted to be a good father, but the demands of the case were just so high that he had to give it all he could. And he was working this case by himself for three or four years before he brought in any extra help. It was a bear of a case.” 

“He ended up having a mini-stroke because of all of the stress in the case. But what he discovered throughout years of litigation was that the workers were given these portable air monitoring devices. They clipped these devices on their work clothes. And they would wear them on the job site. And these devices would sample the air. They would take these devices for the quality of the air. This is how TVA and Jacobs Engineering were allegedly making sure that the workers were not overexposed to harmful toxins in the air.”

“Jim Scott found data that Jacobs tended to give these workers these sampling devices the day it would rain or the day after it would rain. After it rained, this coal ash stuff would be wet and moist on the ground and wouldn’t be blowing around in the air as much.”

“Jim made the case in court, and a federal jury sided with him, that Jacobs in this way manipulated their air monitoring data. They could have tested every Monday or Tuesday. Or regularly on a set day of the week over a period of years. But instead, there was a significant overlap between rainfall and when they tested the air for hazards.”

“That was the strongest argument the workers had.”

What were the illnesses the workers were coming down with?

“Blood cancer, heart failure, various lung issues. It was mostly respiratory.” 

What was the judgment?

“It was a bifurcated trial. The first trial asked – could Jacobs Engineering have plausibly caused the illnesses? Did Jacobs fail to protect the workers from hazards? And a federal jury said – yes, Jacobs did not protect these workers properly.” 

“In the next phase, each worker would have had to prove that their specific illness was as a direct result of their exposure to the toxins in the air. It didn’t get to that point. They settled before the second phase of litigation.” 

What was the settlement?

“It was $77.5 million for 220 or so workers.” 

“The attorneys take a third so that comes down to $220,000 per person. The sickest workers got more money than the ones who were less ill. The workers were not pleased with the settlement, but their attorneys ran out of money. They were up against a huge multi-billion dollar corporation. Eventually, it got to the point where they were forced to settle.” 

“The workers who are still alive are still sick. They got to the point where their attorneys were running out of money. The workers basically needed money to help pay for their medical care and living expenses. They got to the point where they had to capitulate and settle even though the settlement was far less than what they would have hoped for.”

Progressives argue that the government, public institutions are more reliable than private for-profit institutions. But this book says that here you have a famed New Deal public institution like the TVA acting like a for profit corporation, engaged in the same type of behavior. 

“TVA was set up as responsible to the President alone. The Senate confirms TVA’s board members. But TVA was set up so that the President has the final say. The problem is that every President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has either undercut TVA or not paid it sufficient attention. TVA needs close attention. It has not had enough oversight from the government. I hope that changes. TVA could be really great. We need it to be really great. But it has been allowed to operate almost too independently without not enough checks and balances on it.”

Jacobs Engineering was hired to oversee the site safety during the cleanup. TVA delegated 100 percent to Jacobs?

“A former TVA employee who worked at the cleanup site told me that Jacobs was brought on to basically pass the buck, so that if workers got sick, TVA would not bear the full liability for that.” 

TVA could have cleaned up the site itself?

“Yes, but it hired this safety contractor to help oversee site safety as a way to diffuse responsibility. That’s according to a source of mine. That makes sense. I wrote about this for Time magazine. I found an internal memo from 1964 where TVA executives were saying that fly ash was falling on employee cars at a power plant in Paradise, Kentucky and peeling away at the paint of their cars. They described what they called “definite corrosive tendencies of the dampened fly ash.” So TVA knew from at least 1964 that this stuff was nasty. And they have done subsequent studies on it. So they have known for a good long while that there was a problem. That explains why they would hire a contractor to oversee site safety.”

“But TVA was immune from the lawsuit from the worker exposures.” 

TVA is a public agency that did wrong by its workers and tried to deflect responsibility by hiring Jacobs Engineering?

“TVA had a good idea that this was toxic.” 

Did Jacobs Engineering or TVA ever admit wrongdoing?

“No. They both maintain they have done nothing wrong.”

Scott probably made a couple of million dollars on this case, but he lost his marriage, his house and his kids. If you were to ask him – was it worth it? – what would he say?

“He probably wouldn’t do it again. But that is contingent on another lawyer being willing to take the cases. If another was willing to do it, Jim wouldn’t have gotten involved. But the reality is that no other lawyers were willing to take the case. He didn’t really have a choice. So yes, in the same situation, he would do it again. He just couldn’t tolerate that no one would go to bat for these workers. If the scenario were the same, yes he would do it again.”

[For the complete q/a format Interview with Jared Sullivan, see 38 Corporate Crime Reporter 44, November 11, 2024, print edition only.]

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