The Daily Climate: Bird's-eye view of coal power's "Three Mile Island"

Here's a bird's-eye view that conveys the scope of the enormous 300-acre spill of coal ash in Tennessee on Dec. 22, 2008:

For comparision, the same landscape on Nov. 20:

As information finally starts to emerge about the contamination, it becomes clearer just how devastating a disaster this is:

Arsenic Levels Near Spill Site Far Surpass Federal Limits: "Federal data show arsenic levels more than 100 times the acceptable amount in a river near a massive coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee." (The Washington Post)

Metal Levels Found High in Tributary After Spill: "An environmental advocacy group’s tests of river water and ash near the site of a huge coal ash spill in East Tennessee showed levels of arsenic, lead, chromium and other metals at 2 to 300 times higher than drinking water standards...The findings far exceed levels reported by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency or the TennesseeDepartment of Environment and Conservation. " (The New York Times)

Spill Could Endanger Sturgeon: Conservationists and biologists have been re-introducing sturgeon upriver of the spill.  What's happened to those fish who've moved downstream?  "Though there are plenty of variables, fish have not fared well in past coal spills, according to [Dr. Anna George, director of the Tennessee Aquarium Research Institute]. She cited a huge fish kill on the Clinch River in Virginia in 1967, where a ruptured dike allowed a large amount of similar coal ash into the water." (MSNBC.com)

A Spill at a Tennessee Power Plant Demonstrates Another Danger in Burning Coal for Energy: "Coal burning is to the environment what cigarette smoking is to the body, a point brought home with startling clarity last month when an earthen dam holding back a vast reservoir of coal ash at a Tennessee power plant ruptured, turning the area nearby into a landscape resembling Mordor. The sludge buried a dozen homes, left residents anxious about the safety of their water supply and, we hope, opened Americans' eyes about the dangers posed by our poor energy choices." (Los Angeles Times editorial)

Trucks Track Sludge Into City Streets:  "For two weeks, a seemingly endless line of trucks has traveled in and out of the TVA cleanup site. And with every trip, the trucks of hundreds of contract workers take a little piece of the spill with them. 'The mud is falling off their trucks, people are coming out walking through it,'said Kingston resident Audy Byrd. 'This is a small town and it is going to be covered in fly ash off of people's feet and tires.' Byrd retired to Kingston and runs the Kingston Trading Company shoe store downtown. After calling TVA to express his concerns, Byrd said a TVA scientist told him 'it is just mud.'" (WBIR, Knoxville)

The images are via the NASA Earth Observatory: "In the early morning hours of December 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."