Earlier this year, photographer and popular workshop leader Carlan Tapp began working in Tennessee on a story about the TVA ash spill in Kingston, TN. This is one piece of a larger project called "Fueling America: The Social Cost : The 21st Century human condition and social cost of the production and consumption of energy in America."
Carlan has a new multimedia piece combining his interviews of residents at the site and with images of the devastation and has a new blog where you can keep up with his work.
Carlan wrote to us from the field:
- At 12:40 am on December 22, 2008, 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal sludge surged into the confluence of the Emory and Clinch Rivers, covering 300 acres of rural Tennessee land and waterways.
The coal ash sludge is the waste by-product of burning coal to make electricity. The sludge contains heavy concentrations of a vast array of heavy metals.
Independent water testing at the Kingston plant's canal intake revealed arsenic levels 300 times what federal laws allow; all samples contained "elevated levels of arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and thallium," according to Appalachian Voices' web site.
I have been in Kingston, TN working for the past five days.
Be strong, be safe,
Carlan
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