Colbert Fossil Plant, Coal Ash, & Ecological Disaster - We Want Your Input

 

Fatal Beauty?

Over the years, we've been asked to discuss the environmental situation between Tuscumbia and Cherokee. There have been official reports, lawsuits, and feelings of hopeless resignation about the contamination of land in the western end of Colbert County. We've chosen not to address the contamination primarily because we're very ill prepared to and there have been no knowledgeable individuals who wished to comment.

Now a friend's family has been affected, and we feel a need to assist in continuing to expose what many are so oblivious to. For those not familiar with the decades long story of the Colbert Fossil Plant, commonly called the Steam Plant, here's a brief history from Ashtracker:

Tennessee Valley Authority’s Colbert Fossil Plant opened in 1955 and was located on the south shore of Pickwick Landing Lake in Colbert County, AL. The Colbert Plant had five units with a combined capacity of 1,204-MW until it was retired in 2016. It has one disposal area regulated under the CCR rule, Ash Disposal Area 4 CCR Unit.

Colbert Fossil Plant is among the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of potential damage cases, indicating that coal ash disposal at the site has potentially polluted groundwater or surface water at levels which threaten human health and the environment.

Colbert Fossil Plant has 32 groundwater monitoring wells, 27 of which have been polluted above federal advisory levels based on samples collected between April 26, 2010 and August 08, 2019. Groundwater at this site contains unsafe levels of molybdenum, arsenic, boron, cobalt, manganese, antimony, lithium, lead, sulfate, chromium and nickel.

We plan reporting on this in a long-term series of articles. If you have personal knowledge of health concerns in this geographical area or if you have expertise in general on this type of pollution and its aftermath, please contact us at Shoalanda.Speaks@gmail.com. All communications remain secure and anonymous.