Valley So Low

Summary

Podcast Summary: 99% Invisible – "Valley So Low"

Release Date: January 28, 2025
Host: Roman Mars
Author Featured: Jared Sullivan
Book Discussed: Valley So Low: One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe

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Introduction to the Kingston Coal Ash Spill

In the episode "Valley So Low," Roman Mars delves into the catastrophic Kingston coal ash spill of 2008, exploring its origins, impact, and the broader implications for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

Key Quote:

Roman Mars [00:00]: "In 2008, a billion gallons of toxic sludge spewed across 300 acres of Tennessee in the middle of the night. It was just before Christmas."

Background of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

The TVA, established during the New Deal in the 1930s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was initially a mission-driven public institution aimed at transforming the impoverished Tennessee Valley. For over five decades, the TVA provided electricity, controlled flooding, and improved agricultural practices, significantly impacting the Southeast's socio-economic landscape.

Jared Sullivan's Perspective:

Jared Sullivan [02:55]: "I grew up in Tennessee and everyone's kind of vaguely familiar with TVA. But I did not really know the full history of what TVA was till I started reporting and writing this book."

The Genesis of the Disaster

Jared Sullivan, in his book Valley So Low, narrates the events leading up to the Kingston disaster. The TVA had been burning coal for electricity, resulting in a massive accumulation of coal ash. On December 22, 2008, an earthen embankment containing this waste collapsed, releasing a lethal wave of coal sludge.

Notable Quote:

Jared Sullivan [00:45]: "I remember seeing this billion gallons of sludge covering this town outside of Knoxville and thinking, wow, that looks awful."

Immediate Aftermath and Cleanup Efforts

Following the spill, TVA's public relations initially downplayed the toxicity of the sludge, asserting it posed no significant health risks. Approximately 900 blue-collar workers were brought in to manage the cleanup. Despite the lack of immediate fatalities, long-term health issues plagued many of these workers due to exposure to toxic substances like arsenic, radium, and mercury in the coal ash.

Key Insights:

• TVA's shift from a public good provider to a profit-driven entity compromised its initial mission.
• The disaster highlighted systemic issues within TVA, including inadequate safety measures during cleanup operations.

Quote on Cleanup Challenges:

Jared Sullivan [27:10]: "TVA did not want to upset the community... they basically tell the public this stuff poses no significant health risk. Basically, don't worry about it."

Historical Context and TVA's Transformation

Originally established to combat severe poverty, malnutrition, and disease in the Tennessee Valley, the TVA embarked on ambitious projects such as building dams, controlling floods, and providing affordable electricity. The creation of towns like Norris showcased TVA's commitment to improving living standards.

Historical Impact:

Roman Mars [06:17]: "The TVA has been around since the 1930s, and today it provides electricity to more than 10 million people."

However, post-World War II pressures and political shifts, notably during President Dwight Eisenhower's administration, led TVA to adopt a more corporate approach. This transition prioritized profitability over public welfare, setting the stage for future environmental and operational missteps.

Detrimental Shift:

Jared Sullivan [14:47]: "It was impossible to justify the other programs... TVA had to be so focused on money now and actually act more like a corporation."

Nuclear Ambitions and Financial Struggles

In the 1960s, TVA attempted to diversify into nuclear energy, aiming to reduce reliance on coal. However, these projects were plagued by delays, budget overruns, and safety incidents, culminating in significant financial debt and undermining public trust.

Key Quote:

Roman Mars [17:42]: "Even though nuclear power is cleaner than coal, it's a lot more expensive to implement."

The Kingston Spill: A Case Study in Corporate Negligence

The Kingston spill epitomizes the consequences of TVA's shift towards corporate priorities. The lack of adequate safety measures during the cleanup not only endangered workers but also exposed the broader community to environmental hazards. Jared Sullivan's book meticulously documents the legal battles faced by the affected workers in their fight for justice.

Legal Hurdles:

Jared Sullivan [30:22]: "Are we going to get any money to cover our medical bills?"

Despite initial setbacks due to TVA's sovereign immunity, the 2022 federal appeals court ruling mandated a substantial settlement for the workers, albeit too late for some.

Current Status and Future Outlook

As of the episode's release, the Kingston coal plant remains operational, albeit with plans to transition to natural gas. TVA continues to grapple with its coal legacy, facing regulatory pressures to monitor and remediate coal ash contamination. However, systemic issues persist, with legacy coal ash ponds across the U.S. continuing to pose environmental risks.

Final Insights:

Jared Sullivan [36:02]: "We have to hope that lawmakers outside the Tennessee Valley nudge it in the right direction."

Roman Mars and Jared Sullivan express a nuanced view of TVA—acknowledging its historical significance while critically examining its failures. Sullivan advocates for TVA's reform to reclaim its original mission of public service and environmental stewardship.

Closing Quote:

Jared Sullivan [33:22]: "I do not want to burn TVA to the ground... My book is very critical of TVA because it has made some horrible missteps over the years."

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Conclusion

"Valley So Low" offers a compelling exploration of TVA's evolution from a New Deal miracle to a corporate entity grappling with environmental disasters and public trust erosion. Through Jared Sullivan's detailed research and personal narratives, the episode underscores the enduring impact of corporate decisions on communities and the environment.

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Produced by Lashma Dawn, edited by Nina Patak, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, with music by Swan Rial. Special thanks to Jared Sullivan for his insightful contributions.

Transcript

[Roman Mars]

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[Jared Sullivan]

I was a senior in high school and I remember seeing this billion gallons of sludge covering this town outside of Knoxville and thinking, wow, that looks awful.

[Roman Mars]

That's Jared Sullivan. For over 50 years, a power company called the Tennessee Valley Authority, or tva, had been burning coal at a power plant near Jared's hometown. Burning all that coal helped bring electricity to the region, but it also created a mountain of ash and waste. Over the years, this mountain grew to be 60ft high and 84 acres wide. And on December 22, 2008, the earthen embankment that contained this mountain of waste collapsed. A lethal wave of coal sludge inundated the countryside.

[Jared Sullivan]

If you pull up the footage and look it up on YouTube or whatever, it really sticks with you because it is biblical in scope. What happened?

[Roman Mars]

This disaster came to be known as the Kingston Coal ash spill. And the culprit wasn't a private company. It was the tva, a federally owned electricity provider that had been set up by the government during the New Deal.

[Jared Sullivan]

Immediately after this happened, TVA's PR lackeys got on the news and basically said, this stuff isn't toxic. No big deal. Don't worry about it. And 900 blue collar workers from around the country descended on the site to help clean it up.

[Roman Mars]

Everyone expected that they'd find bodies under the sludge. It was a miracle that no one died that night. The real tragedy came years later when many of the workers in charge of the cleanup found fell sick and even died from health issues caused by inhaling the toxins found in coal ash. The fallout from what happened at the Kingston coal plant led Jared to look more closely at the company in the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA has been around since the 1930s, and today it provides electricity to more than 10 million people. Its presence in the Southeast had a huge impact in transforming the region. The TVA is A backdrop to life as portrayed in Southern literature, film and music. It's part of the region's folklore. So I thank God for the tva.

[Jared Sullivan]

Thank God for the TVA where Roosevelt let us all work for an honest day's pain. I grew up in Tennessee and everyone's kind of vaguely familiar with tva. But I did not really know the full history of what TVA was till I started reporting and writing this book.

[Roman Mars]

Jared writes about the TVA in his new book, Valley so Low.

[Jared Sullivan]

One Lawyer's Fight for Justice. In the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe.

[Roman Mars]

It's hard to remember those long subtitles. I had to.

[Jared Sullivan]

I know you see me side eyeing my book. I was like, what's my book called again?

[Roman Mars]

Jared's book follows the aftermath of the disaster at the Kingston coal plant. And in doing so, his book reveals an even larger ongoing American tragedy. How the TVA started out as a mission driven public institution but ended up acting like a private for profit company. And what that shift can tell us about the consequences of privatization.

[Jared Sullivan]

The story of TVA really begins in many respects with Franklin Roosevelt, who as a young man contracted polio and began making trips to Warm Springs, Georgia where for treatment. And on those trips he got a firsthand look at how dire the situation was in the Tennessee valley.

[Roman Mars]

During the 1920s, the Tennessee Valley, which is an area covering nearly all of Tennessee, large chunks of Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky and bits of three other states, was deeply impoverished. Much of the valley was farmland, but only 3% of these farms had electricity. The area also had a per capita income of less than half of the national average. And about a third of the population was stricken with malaria.

[Jared Sullivan]

The poverty was so crushing that it really challenged the notion of whether a democracy could care for its people and whether the American experiment had vitality on the farms.

[Roman Mars]

Crops would suffer from an uneven climate. Constant flooding from the Tennessee river would badly damage the soil. Sometimes the outlook was so bleak that people would abandon their farms altogether and the mountains.

[Jared Sullivan]

Families like lived in very crude rudimentary shacks. They slept in many cases, like multiple people in a bed to stay warm throughout the winter. Infant mortality rates were high. People caught typhoid from drinking bad water. Malaria was endemic. It was a grave, grave situation.

[Roman Mars]

There was this notion that something needed to be done, if not simply for the good of the people, then at least to prevent some sort of uprising.

[Jared Sullivan]

There's actually some concern that the Southeast was like ripe for a populist uprising because the system was so not working because the Bolshevik Revolution had not been that many years in the past. Right. So there was really a strong sense like, we have to do something or this region may never catch up or worse.

[Roman Mars]

The idea was simple. Electric power should become a public good, because if you want to improve people's lives, you have to give them electricity.

[Jared Sullivan]

The problem was at the time that all the big power companies were owned by private holding companies, and there was no financial incentive for them to provide power to rural areas because there were just not that many people out there. There was not that much money to make from these rural communities. But as a result, these communities were basically stuck.

[Roman Mars]

Then in 1933, FDR got sworn in as president and pretty quickly got to work on New Deal programs, One of which was to establish a power company, the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1933, we started down on the.

[Jared Sullivan]

Tennessee river when Congress created the Tennessee.

[Roman Mars]

Valley Authority, an authority commissioned to develop.

[Jared Sullivan]

Navigation, flood control, agriculture and industry in the valley. It was, for almost a quarter century, the single most ambitious public work project in the world.

[Roman Mars]

Its mission was to lift the rural south out of poverty by making electricity more accessible to all.

[Jared Sullivan]

TVA had three basic control the Tennessee river, produce power and improve agriculture.

[Roman Mars]

The Tennessee River's propensity to flood not only damaged farmland, but also sometimes took out entire towns.

[Jared Sullivan]

It wiped out the city of Chattanooga, and I believe it was the 1870s, almost completely drowned the whole city. So they needed to control the amount of water that was coming down the Tennessee river, because you can't develop as a society if your city's getting washed away every dozen years or so. Right.

[Roman Mars]

The goal was to control the river and generate hydroelectric power. And so began the construction of the dams. They used eminent domain to remove about 20,000 families from their homesteads. And in their place, they peppered the valley with dams and brutalist concrete buildings.

[Jared Sullivan]

Shortly after the TVA act of 1933 is passed, TVA rushes to start building hydroelectric dams throughout the Tennessee Valley. And the first one that they complete themselves from start to finish is Norris Dam outside of Knoxville. First came the dams up on the.

[Roman Mars]

Clinch at the head of the river.

[Jared Sullivan]

We built Norris Dam, a great barrier to hold water in flood time and.

[Roman Mars]

To release water down the river for.

[Jared Sullivan]

Navigation in low water sea. Just in the middle of the Great Depression, people needed jobs, so they hired 40,000 men to throw up these dams all up the Tennessee River. And they ended up building, it was 49 dams in all, 29 of which produce power. So that helped control the river, and it helped generate much needed electricity in the South. And it really worked.

[Roman Mars]

But the TVA didn't stop at just building dams.

[Jared Sullivan]

TVA initially had all these other, like, utopian side projects. It's hard to imagine the federal government ever doing something like this today. It had a mobile library service that loaned out tens of thousands of books to people. It started a ceramics laboratory. It created 13,000 demonstration farms where it taught locals how to maximize crop yields.

[Roman Mars]

Alongside TVA's construction of their first dam in 1933, they also established a town called Norris. Norris was created to house the workers building the nearby dam. But the town was also a way to show America how cooperative living could work. Norris was completely walkable, with most homes facing each other. Instead of the street. It included a green belt, a school where dam workers could take classes, a post office, a gym, and even a farmer's market.

[Jared Sullivan]

And tva, some of their board of directors actually lived in this low plain community. It's very cute. It still exists to this day.

[Roman Mars]

In those first few years, TVA continued to steadily build more and more dams. And in the process, they became the largest producer of electric power in the United States. But these massive government interventions came with a lot of pushback.

[Jared Sullivan]

It was a huge fight over, like, transmission lines and private industry definitely pushed back on tva. They were very scared that TVA was going to expand into their territory.

[Roman Mars]

A guy named Wendell Wilkie led the fight against the tva. He was the president of a large private power company in the South. Wendell and other power company reps complained bitterly about what they saw as unfair competition. They took the TVA to the Supreme Court and lost twice. The TVA had this grand ambition to electrify the south, and it did. The dams tamed the rivers and controlled the floods, which meant healthier soil and more productive farmland. Hydroelectric power was cheap and available, which meant the standard of living increased dramatically. For those who benefited, it was a social revolution.

[Jared Sullivan]

It was ambitious and it had noble intentions. And it actually worked. And I really do feel like it is like an American miracle. It exemplified good government in action.

[Roman Mars]

For the first time ever, the Tennessee Valley could be lit up after dark in one of the most conservative regions in the country. Millions of people got their electricity from a federal air agency that had no shareholders to answer to and no profits to make. And then something happened that caused the TVA to suddenly change direction.

[Jared Sullivan]

The big thing that forever changed TVA was World War II. During World War II, TVA supplied a tenth of all the electricity used by the country's defense industries.

[Roman Mars]

The tva, which was a Program of the federal government was suddenly summoned to support the war. Electricity was needed to produce weapons and military equipment and to build atomic bombs.

[Jared Sullivan]

The government decided to base the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee because of tva.

[Roman Mars]

What all this meant though was that electricity that was previously going to the public was now being siphoned off for war. Then in the early 1940s, Congress feared a power shortage because it was forecasting a dry year which would lower the river levels throughout the valley. The following year, at the government's urging and with its funding, the TVA began construction on its first coal fired power plant. It meant that at least some of the TVA's power would no longer depend on the weather. After World War II, Tennessee stayed in the bomb making business. This time there was a need for uranium enrichment for the Cold War nuclear arsenal. And so the demand for TVA's electricity kept going up after that.

[Jared Sullivan]

It was the Cold War. Oak Ridge did not shut down after Hiroshima, right? Just, just the opposite. Oak Ridge is still in the bomb making game and TVA had to supply power for it. Almost half its power at one point went to the government bomb making facilities in Oak Ridge.

[Roman Mars]

Meanwhile, the south was also seeing an uptick in population.

[Jared Sullivan]

AC became more widely available air conditioning, so it was like more tolerable to live here. So a lot of people migrated south.

[Roman Mars]

And TVA's power production couldn't keep up with the growing demand from both war manufacturers and people living in the valley. So they started to build more coal.

[Jared Sullivan]

Power plants and they ended up building 11 of the world's largest coal fired power plants. Partially to serve Oak Ridge, but also again to meet the energy demands from the growing population here.

[Roman Mars]

Coal plants were cheap and helped the bottom line. It was the easiest way to produce more power under so much pressure. Then in 19, in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower was elected president. And unlike FDR, he was highly skeptical of TVA as a whole.

[Jared Sullivan]

He really hated tva. He accused that being an example of quote, creeping socialism. And he reportedly wanted to sell the whole thing.

[Roman Mars]

Eisenhower's administration affected TVA's ability to expand even though more people were in need of electricity than ever before.

[Jared Sullivan]

Republicans in Congress who are aligned with Eisenhower, they repeatedly withheld appropriations from TVA which it needed to build power plants to keep up with energy demand.

[Roman Mars]

Then in 1959, Eisenhower cut TV off from federal funding entirely. This was a monumental change. It meant that the tva, although owned by the government, needed to start operating like a private corporation in order to finance itself. Since 1959 the TVA has raised capital for its electricity projects by issuing and selling bonds. This new financial model meant that the TVA began to shift its priorities. What was once FDR's mission driven project to lift up the Southeast from poverty shifted its focus to building profit. There was no time or money anymore for cute little walkable towns where you learn how to farm and do ceramics. In this new chapter in TVA history, those social services were the first to fall away.

[Jared Sullivan]

It was impossible to justify the other programs. It was impossible to justify the farm programs. Even things like the ceramics laboratory, the library, all of that just seemed. It just fell by the wayside because TVA had to be so focused on money now and actually act more like a corporation, right? I think this is the period where TVA went from being this quasi governmental corporation to basically a true and true corporation. And it morphed into a power giant because it had to really care about money unlike it had before.

[Roman Mars]

Over time, the TVA began pumping out electricity, producing large quantities of coal powered electricity throughout the valley. Then they started plotting a transition to nuclear nuclear power.

[Jared Sullivan]

In the late 60s, the government starts passing this first big wave of environmental laws and TVA feels the pressure of this. So they decide that it's going to build seven jumbo nuclear power plants with 17 nuclear reactors.

[Roman Mars]

In 1965, the TVA announced plans for its first nuclear plant. A Knoxville newspaper headline read Nuclear Roars at King Coal.

[Jared Sullivan]

But it's almost a disaster right from the beginning.

[Roman Mars]

There's a well documented record of TVA's nuclear projects running far behind schedule, far over budget, and many times being abandoned altogether. Of the seven nuclear power plants TVA had intended to build, only three of them were completed plans to build the rest fell away after The TVA amassed $10 billion in debt because of their nuclear endeavors. And then in 1975, TVA's first nuclear plant in Brown's Ferry, Alabama, accidentally caught on fire.

[Jared Sullivan]

There was an electrician looking for an air leak, like in a pipe or something, and he's using a lit match to find the air leak. I don't, I'm not an electrician. I won't pretend to understand how a lit match will help you find an air leak in a pipe. But it catches this whole huge area on fire and it forces an emergency shutdown at the plant and causes millions of dollars of damages. So that's like the most noteworthy safety issue. But there was tons of other small issues.

[Roman Mars]

Even though nuclear power is cleaner than coal, it's a lot more expensive to implement. The TVA didn't have the money to really invest in this experiment and its initial nuclear failures, along with other well known nuclear disasters like Three Mile island, mired public perception of nuclear power's potential to pivot to cleaner energy. Throughout the 1980s, the TVA canceled or put on hold many of these nuclear projects. Some exist today only as blueprints, while others are fragments of concrete and metal that dot the landscape of the Tennessee Valley. The nuclear fiasco has left TVA with a total debt of nearly $20 billion. All of this also meant that the TVA was still heavily relying on coal to produce its power.

[Jared Sullivan]

So TVA wanted to get off coal, it just couldn't. But it was still effectively hooked on coal and would be for the next several decades. And that is really where my book picks up. It's after decades of TVA burning coal and not being able to get off of it.

[Roman Mars]

After the break, I talk with Jared about one of the consequences of TVA's decision to stick with coal that billion gallon toxic sludge eruption at the Kingston coal plant in Tennessee. Foreign Nothing is more important than protecting your loved ones from harm. That's why millions of Americans trust SimpliSafe with their home's security. SimpliSafe's Active Guard outdoor Protection can help prevent break ins before they happen. AI powered cameras backed by live professional monitoring agents monitor your property and detect suspicious activity. If there's someone lurking around or acting suspiciously outside, those agents will see and talk to them in real time. They'll activate spotlights. They'll even contact the police police all before they have a chance to get inside your home. Simplicity is implied in the name SimpliSafe. Simplicity is also at the forefront of the design and carries through in the function and a simple solution that works makes me feel the most confident. Start the year with greater peace of mind. Visit simplisafe.com invisible to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and your first month free. That's simplisafe.com invisible there's no safe like simplisafe. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing so your money has a chance to grow for you, your kids and your retirement. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you invest with the spare money you've got right now. You can start with $5 or even just your spare change. You don't need to feel like financial wellness is impossible. Acorns gives you small, simple steps to get you and your money on track. Basically, Acorns does the hard part so you can give your money a chance to grow. Head to acorns.com invisible or download the Acorns app and start saving and investing for your future. Today. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns Tier 2 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important [e-mail] Invisible Arkle believes in delightful design for every home and thanks to their online only model they have some really delightful prices too. Arkle's team of designers are all about finding the perfect balance between style, quality and price. Their curated collection features a variety of styles including mids and century, modern, coastal industrial, Scandi and Boho, making furniture shopping easy and they are committed to creating well crafted pieces that are built to last and look great. I've had The Seno extendable 12 person dining table in my house for like I don't know, 10 years. I'm not even sure and it is the MVP of the house. Joy works at it every day and then for big dinners we clear it off, we put on a fancy runner, we put on flowers and candles and then we gather everyone around and we just love this thing. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com 99 and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com 99 for $50 off your first purchase of$100 or more. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place. All on your terms. You can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or [e-mail] Invisible now introducing Design Intelligence from Squarespace. Combining two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. Design Intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. I personally found that Squarespace is a way to have a website with all the bells and whistles without knowing how to make a bell or a whistle. It's that easy. Go to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch squarespace.com invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. I'm back with Jared Sullivan. So your book largely centers on one particular coal power plant that's run by tva. It's the Kingston Fossil plant in Kingston, Tennessee. Tell me about this plant.

[Jared Sullivan]

The Kingston fossil plant was built in 1954, or rather it went online for the first time in 1954. It creates enough electricity to power 700,000 homes. It is a jumbo, jumbo facility. And it sits at the confluence of two rivers, the Clinch and the Emory.

[Roman Mars]

And so in 2008, a billion gallons of this substance called coal ash bursts out of this power plant. What is coal ash?

[Jared Sullivan]

Coal ash is kind of the stuff that's left over after you burn coal to produce electricity. It's almost like if you have like a charcoal barbecue, it's like the sooty stuff that's left over afterwards, like in the bottom of it.

[Roman Mars]

So what has been the typical system or protocol that coal power plant operators use in terms of managing or disposing of those coal ash?

[Jared Sullivan]

The standard practice for every power company, not just tva, was just to dig a big hole in the ground and dump all your coal ash there. They call it a pond, this coal ash pond, but the name is not accurate. It's not a pond. This thing grows into a mountain, effectively. It's six stories, tal 84 acres. These, I should say there's 750 of these things across the country. This is not just a TVA problem. And almost all of these ponds leak toxins into the groundwater. They are a huge, huge mess.

[Roman Mars]

In Kingston, this mountain of coal ash was just a part of the landscape near the power plant. The TVA had covered it with a layer of clay, which allows grasses to grow on top. So to the unfamiliar eye, it could have just looked like a grassy hill. People would do their regular morning runs up and down this mound. Okay, so walk me through what happened at this Kingston plant in 2008 when this mountain of coal ash burst free.

[Jared Sullivan]

This wave of sludge slams into a peninsula. Half it kind of hits this peninsula and it kind of forks right and fills in this deep channel in this river, the Emery river. And the rest of it slams into this peninsula and knocks homes off their foundation. It hurls fish onto the riverbank. It knocks down power lines. It's almost like something out of the Bible.

[Roman Mars]

This was in the middle of the night. At first, people Living nearby thought it might be an earthquake or a landslide. The whole earth felt like it was rumbling and trembling.

[Jared Sullivan]

And so I talked to one local who, you know, he looked out of his window and saw a black wave just rolling across his yard. One home in particular was shoved, I think it was like 60ft off its foundation and thrust against this embankment and basically collapsed in on itself. One woman describes washing as dark sludge, like wet, soupy sludge, came in under her door and started filling up her sunroom and her living room, which again is like something almost out of a horror movie, you know.

[Roman Mars]

While the disaster itself didn't result in a big loss of life, the real problems took place during the cleanup.

[Jared Sullivan]

It's 2008. The economy is on its knees. The housing market and the stock market have just collapsed.

[Roman Mars]

TVA hired 900 people from across the country to come clean up the disaster.

[Jared Sullivan]

So as these union reps start calling to get people to come clean this up, many of these workers, blue collar workers, are delighted to get this call. They know this is a huge environmental disaster, but it's kind of a godsend for them.

[Roman Mars]

What they didn't know was that this job came at a huge cost to their health.

[Jared Sullivan]

And turns out these workers had asked for respirators and dust masks throughout the cleanup and in most cases were not given them. And so they had inhaled this coal ash sludge. And coal ash contains arsenic and radium and mercury and just stuff you really do not want in your body at all. I mean, I found documents going back from to 1964 that show that TVA has known this stuff is hazardous, it's toxic.

[Roman Mars]

I mean, this puts them in a real conundrum because everyone knows that this bill was bad enough that they had to clean it up. But TVA kept insisting that the sludge wasn't actually toxic. Could you describe what's going on there?

[Jared Sullivan]

TVA did not want to upset the community. And I think it would have been really troubling for the community if the workers were out there stomping around in head to toe hazmat suits and dust masks and respirators. So instead TVA comes out and they basically tell the public this stuff poses no significant health risk. Basically, don't worry about it. And they say this over and over and over.

[Roman Mars]

Another sort of trap that these workers are in is that it's extremely hot. And so if they were to be in head to toe hazmat gear, not only would it look bad and make TVA look bad, it would mean they'd have to take even more precautions for the workers because wearing a Hazmat suit in 95 degree weather means that they can't work as much or as hard and they have to provide cooling and all kinds of other stuff.

[Jared Sullivan]

Yes, exactly. So the EPA gave TVA pretty tight deadlines to clean this stuff up. And if Jacobs Engineering, the subcontractor and TVA gave the workers dust masks, yes, they would need to take more breaks. And that would mean they would have to leave the job site, get on a shuttle or some kind of bus, take it to a break area, derobe, take their break, put all their gear back on again, then take a shuttle back to the job site. And it would have slowed the whole process up. And I think there's very compelling evidence that TVA said this can't happen like this is. We can't take this much time with this protective gear or we're just not going to hit our deadlines. And the EPA is going to fine us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars if we're slow.

[Roman Mars]

One TVA contractor told workers that they could eat a pound of coal ash a day and be fine. But things weren't fine. Many workers started to feel sick after the first few months of cleanup. But they chalked it up to being overworked or lack of sleep. Things got much worse over time.

[Jared Sullivan]

And these workers start passing on their trucks, they start coughing up blood. Then the cancer diagnosis has come. Not long after that, eventually, with the.

[Roman Mars]

Help of a local lawyer, hundreds of these workers gathered together to sue TVA and their subcontractor, Jacobs Engineering, for not giving them the appropriate hazmat gear to protect their health. But the lawsuit proved very difficult. And there were many hurricanes. Hurdles to overcome. One of the biggest problems was that a judge ruled that because Jacobs was acting on behalf of the tva, they couldn't be sued. This is because the tva, even though it operates like a private company, is still owned by the federal government. It grants them something called sovereign immunity.

[Jared Sullivan]

Sovereign immunity protects TVA and many other government agencies from a whole lot of lawsuits. Not every single lawsuit, but it grants them broad protections. I think the simplest way to think about it is if the government or one of its contractors is acting in good faith, like they're trying to follow the letter of the law and acting in the government's interest, they're protected by the law.

[Roman Mars]

So after all this litigation all centering around the people that are cleaning up crews and how they were exposed to this Cole Ash, what ended up happening.

[Jared Sullivan]

So after 10 brutal years of litigation where the case gets basically thrown out twice, the lawyers save it on appeal twice. The workers have to, they have to capitulate. They're getting so sick and they're getting just also just exhausted of 10 years of this big question hanging over their heads. Are we going to get any money to cover our medical bills?

[Roman Mars]

Eventually. In 2022, a federal appeals court ruled that Jacobs Engineering was not entitled to the sovereign immunity granted to the TVA. And the 230 workers settled for $77.5 million. That works out to a couple hundred thousand dollars per person. But some workers didn't survive to receive the settlement.

[Jared Sullivan]

They were not pleased. But that's what often happens in these sorts of big environmental tort cases. I talk a lot in my book about Exxon Valdez. There's a lot of parallels between the Exxon Valdez case and the case I write about in my book because it's the same playbook. You drag things out until people get so desperate that they have to more or less take whatever offer you, you give them. And that's what, that's what happened to these workers.

[Roman Mars]

So what's the status of the Kingston coal plant now?

[Jared Sullivan]

It is still up and running at this moment. I believe the intent is to. Is to convert it into a natural gas facility. TVA, over the past 10 years, basically, ever since the Kingston disaster, has been gradually phasing out its coal plants and turning its coal plants at these same sites, building natural gas facilities.

[Roman Mars]

In 2015, the government passed a new set of laws. These laws mandated that the TVA had to monitor its active coal ash dump sites to make sure that coal ash wasn't contaminating the groundwater. But there's a major loophole here. Most coal ash sites across the US Aren't actively used. There are still many giant holes in the ground filled with coal ash across the country. But the power plants they're connected to aren't operating. These sites do not need to be regulated. Yeah.

[Jared Sullivan]

So earlier this year, the EPA under President Biden finally passed a rule that required power companies to monitor their legacy or old coal ash ponds and to remediate or clean up any contamination that they found. The problem with this is that the power companies self regulate under these rules. And you can read my book and judge for yourself whether you trust power companies to be honest about whether their coal ash ponds are contaminating groundwater. I, for one, would rather have EPA people on staff independently testing these sites.

[Roman Mars]

Studies have found that of the 750 coal ash ponds across the country, almost all of them contaminate groundwater. They contaminate thousands of miles of American rivers and the drinking water of millions each year. I think a lot of people in bad faith could go, well, you know, the TVA is the real problem here. But I sense some reluctance on your part to vilify the TVA because of its rich history of acting on behalf of people for decades and then becoming this corporate entity that caused a lot of harm. Could you talk about your ambivalence about the TVA and how you want its legacy to be presented to today's world?

[Jared Sullivan]

I do not want to burn TVA to the ground, okay? Some people do.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah.

[Jared Sullivan]

I do not. My book is very critical of TVA because it has made some horrible missteps over the years. And I think what happened at Kingston is an American tragedy. The Kingston disaster was a huge black eye for the organization. But we need TVA to be great. We need them to produce abundant clean power so we can hit our climate goals and so we can continue to have industry here. The south still lags the rest of the country in income and whatnot. And I wrote a very critical book of TVA in hopes that TVA can be reformed and can recapture some of the FDR era magic that it had.

[Roman Mars]

Well, it's clear that these dirty coal plants make people sick. And TVA knows this. So could there be a way for TVA to try again with nuclear power like they did in the 1960s and 70s, but this time without the failures? I'm just curious about what could be possible with nuclear power and how our clean energy landscape would look today if the government had fully invested in that path.

[Jared Sullivan]

Back then I mentioned the seven nuclear power plants that TVA wanted to build it only three of them. But as a result of that, it is billions of dollars in debt. $20 billion in debt, actually. Well, it has a. There's a cap on how much debt TVA can take on. It's $30 billion, so only has $10 billion of wiggle room to build more stuff while nuclear power plants cost more than $10 billion. So TVA is in a tight spot right now where it wants. It actually is trying to decarbonize because I think it sees because of the Kingston disaster and other other such missteps. It knows that coal is not the future. It knows it needs to get off fossil fuels, but it really can't. But it is an American tragedy that TVA did not build those seven nuclear power plants. Now this region, the Sun Belt, is exploding in population. And we need those nuclear power plants more than ever.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah. To me that's sort of the original sin of it is the 1959 act to make it self sufficient and act like a corporation. I mean, like, I firmly believe that anyone who believes that the government should be run like a business doesn't know anything about government or business. That's not how things work.

[Jared Sullivan]

That's totally my view. We have to hope that lawmakers outside the Tennessee Valley nudge it in the right direction.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah. Well, what it needs to, I mean, to me what it needs to do to work is it needs to be run the way it was designed to run, which is a socialist organization. I mean, that's really. It's the source of the conundrum is that it is a thing designed to do a thing that is not allowed to do. That thing it was designed to do.

[Jared Sullivan]

Exactly.

[Roman Mars]

I'm kind of like a classic New Deal Democrat. And so I actually have a TVA electricity for all baseball cap that I wear. So can I wear this with pride? When you think of what does TVA mean to you and would it be okay for a progressive like me to wear a TVA hat?

[Jared Sullivan]

TVA was born of such noble intentions, but all the rest of the stuff comes after World War II is. That's the messy part. As much as I am rooting for tva, I would not wear a TVA hat. The day TVA finishes its seven nuclear power plants, I'll proudly wear a TVA hat again.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah. Yeah. Jared, thank you so much for the book. I loved reading it. And thank you so much for talking with us. It's been a real pleasure.

[Jared Sullivan]

Thank you for having me. This was such a, such a treat.

[Roman Mars]

99% invisible was produced this week by Lashma dawn, edited by Nina Patak, mix by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Rial. Special thanks this week to Jared Sullivan, author of Valley so One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Cold Catastrophe. It is a really good fun read. If you like those John Grissom style like legal thrillers, this is right up your alley. Cathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlsted is the digital director. Delaney hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Joe Rosenberg, Gabriella Gladney, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason and me, roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of The Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites for spending much more time on Blue sky, as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to the Discord server as well as every past episode of [e-mail].