Knox News probe: Tennessee Valley Authority used toxic waste in Claxton youth sports field

For two decades, children in Anderson County have been playing — unaware — on a sports field constructed with the Tennessee Valley Authority’s radioactive coal ash waste, Knox News confirmed this week.

The nation’s largest public power provider is now acknowledging it used a mix of dirt and “bottom ash” — the most toxic and radioactive form of TVA’s coal ash waste — to build a ball field that's part of a larger park that contains a playground, as well. The ball field has played host to youth sports games since it opened in 2001.

Coal ash is the byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity, and it contains a toxic stew of 26 cancer-causing pollutants and radioactive heavy metals. Duke researcher Dr. Avner Vengosh — a renowned expert in coal ash detection and testing — noted the “absolute concentrations” of toxic heavy metals in the soil of the adjacent playground were low.

TVA did not install a clay liner — a thick layer of compacted clay typically used to seal off TVA’s coal ash waste in its dumps — on top of the ball field to protect children from direct exposure to coal ash dust. Instead, TVA said in a statement to Knox News that the radioactive fill dirt mixture was topped with gravel, mulch and slope stabilizers known as “geofibers.”

TVA did not notify residents or Anderson County leaders that the ball field contains coal ash. The utility also did not warn residents or Anderson County leaders that its coal ash contains concentrated levels of radioactive heavy metals or that coal ash dust is dangerous to breathe.

TVA: Playground, sports field not ours

TVA wasn't required to install a clay liner or take any other actions to mitigate its harmful effects. Coal ash has been largely unregulated for decades — with TVA and its fellow toxic waste producers long arguing it was no more dangerous than dirt.

A four-year Knox News investigation has debunked that myth. Coal ash contains technologically enhanced radioactive material. Dirt does not.

What's in coal ash:List of toxic ingredients, health risks

Even now — with mounting independent evidence its toxic trash is contaminating the air, water and land around its Bull Run coal-fired plant in Claxton — TVA won’t address whether its own testing confirms coal ash is threatening the health of children and residents living and playing in that unincorporated Anderson County town about 17 miles northwest of Knoxville.

And, TVA says any contamination issues at the ball field and an adjacent playground — also contaminated with low levels of the toxic waste — are not the utility’s problem.

“While TVA owns the property where the playground and ballfields are located, Anderson County manages the use of the playground under a 30-year easement, and the ballfield area is managed by the Claxton Optimist Club under a license agreement,” TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said in a statement.

TVA’s regulators at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation also are disavowing responsibility for investigating the contamination at the park complex on Edgemoor Road.

Contaminated playground still open

It's been two weeks since Knox News revealed Kid's Palace, Claxton's only playground, is contaminated with coal ash. The facility remains open and bears no sign warning people about the danger the dust poses, although the ball field has been closed.

There also has been no move — by Anderson County leaders, Tennessee regulators or TVA — to tell nearby residents that some properties downwind of the utility’s Bull Run plant have been contaminated, too.

That could change Monday when the Anderson County Commission’s Operations Committee meets at 6 p.m. in the Anderson County Courthouse on Bowling Street in Clinton to discuss what to do now that an independent study published in late July confirmed TVA’s toxic trash is contaminating the air and land around the plant, including the playground and homes downwind of it.

Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank said Thursday that committee members will discuss “next steps” in the wake of Duke University’s findings.

She said that could include “possible authorization” to ask state coal ash regulators at TDEC and medical professionals at the Tennessee Department of Health to do follow-up studies.

The Kid’s Palace Playground is located on TVA land directly adjacent to a enormous pile of coal ash. Frank said TVA leased the playground land to Anderson County in 2002.

“Anderson County Commission has the authority to close the park,” Frank said.

Frank didn’t say if she favors closing the park as a precaution pending further testing, but noted the low absolute concentrations of heavy metals found in the Duke University tests.

Like the playground, the ball field is on TVA property. The Claxton Optimist Club holds the lease. Anderson County Commission Chairman Tracy Wandell, whose district includes Claxton, said Friday he was unaware that TVA used coal ash in the ball field.

Wandell was not a commissioner at the time the ball field and playground were constructed.

“I don’t know what (amount) they used of it,” Wandell said. “I don’t see it as a health hazard as it sits right now less than 500 feet from a coal ash pile. I don’t think the levels (of contamination) are at levels that cause immediate health concerns.

“I’m not saying coal ash is safe,” he said. “It’s going to have to be taken care of, but I don’t want my community to lose what they have.”

The ball field is currently closed and padlocked. Wandell holds the key to it. Like many residents in Claxton, he’s just not convinced coal ash is posing an immediate danger to children who play at the Claxton Community Park complex.

“We may need to investigate with further testing,” Wandell said. “It was acceptable at the time (to mix coal ash with dirt).”

Both Wandell and Frank have repeatedly asked TVA to donate back to the Claxton community the more than 200 acres of land the utility bought and set aside for a new coal ash dump to allow the county to construct a new children’s recreational complex and, perhaps, a new elementary school.

“My goal is to have TVA be a corporate good neighbor,” Wandell said. “My goal is to have all of it — the Claxton Community Center, the playground and the ball field — moved to that (TVA) land.”

TVA, which dropped its bid to build a new dump after residents rose up against it, says it’s too soon to decide if the utility will need the land before closing the plant in 2023.

Contamination reports stacking up

The publication of the independent Duke University study and TVA’s acknowledgement of the ball field contamination is just one more round of bad news for Anderson County leaders grappling with TVA’s abrupt decision in 2019 to close Bull Run and potentially leave its coal ash dumps behind.

TVA’s regulators at TDEC recently told county commissioners the utility’s preliminary testing of waterways around and under its coal ash dumps at Bull Run reveal contamination by the utility’s toxic waste.

The water contamination being logged by TVA, TDEC now confirms, includes instances of unsafe levels of cancer-causing coal ash ingredients, including arsenic, barium, beryllium, cobalt, copper, lead, lithium and selenium.

Those waterways serve as public drinking water sources for the West Knox Utility District and the Hallsdale-Powell Utility District.

Neither utility district tests that water for unsafe levels of the complete list of dangerous toxins and radioactive heavy metals TVA’s coal ash waste contains. Both utilities have defended the safety of the water provided customers.

TDEC also has confirmed TVA — which has long denied its coal ash waste poses a radiological threat — is testing for levels of radium and other dangerous radioactive heavy metals in the waterways.

TDEC is not making those results public. A representative told commissioners at a recent meeting TDEC hasn’t completed an analysis of TVA’s radiological threat testing results.

TVA, regulators: We're working on it

TVA is staying largely silent about the flurry of contamination reports. TVA officials say they are doing a thorough job of investigating the risks its coal ash dumps pose to surrounding communities and will release its findings sometime in 2023. The Bull Run plant is slated to close in December 2023.

TDEC says the playground is not within its investigative purview.

The regulatory agency is also declining to take any action on TVA’s contamination of waterways around Bull Run until TVA wraps up its investigation. Anderson County Commission Chairman Tracy Wandell has called for the state to fine TVA.

TDEC ordered TVA to investigate the risk its coal ash dumps pose to public health and the environment in 2015 after a massive spill of the waste seven years earlier at its Kingston plant.

Knox News probe:Kingston coal ash spill workers treated as 'expendables,' lawsuit by sick and dying contends

Measuring the threat:Duke University testing shows Kingston coal ash uranium at triple report levels

TDEC scandal:Regulators deleted and altered radiological test results on coal ash from Kingston spill

“TDEC is directing a comprehensive investigation of all of TVA’s coal ash disposal sites across Tennessee, including the Bull Run Plant site and the surrounding area,” TDEC spokeswoman Kim Schofinski said in a statement. “We are committed to working with local government officials and the broader community to ensure that public health and the environment are protected. We believe that our Commissioner’s Order methodology will accomplish that.

“Once our investigation is complete, and TVA’s Environmental Assessment Report has been thoroughly reviewed and accepted, public health and environmental determinations will be made, and remedial actions will be addressed,” the statement continued.

Claxton playground a community jewel

The Kid’s Palace Playground — located on Edgemoor Road and sandwiched between the Claxton Community Center and Optimist Club ball field — has long been a source of pride for this tiny unincorporated town.

It was built by volunteers from the community in 2001 and, for the first time, offered Claxton children a place to play and Claxton families a place to gather and celebrate.

Bull Run report:What goes out of the stacks at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bull Run plant in Claxton,

Back then, TVA was storing its toxic coal ash trash in dirt pits on plant property located away from the playground. But after one of those massive pits collapsed at TVA’s Kingston plant in 2008 — contaminating 300 acres of land and all waterways around it — TVA began stacking up the radioactive waste in uncovered piles directly beside the playground.

Knox News in 2019 captured both video and photographic evidence of the radioactive dust blowing onto the playground and ball field and reported it to TVA and TDEC.

TVA added a cover to the stack before the utility took political leaders from Anderson County and the Legislature on a tour of the Bull Run plant a few months later. But workers routinely remove it to add more of the toxic stuff to the mound.

Neither TVA nor TDEC followed up on Knox News' observations of blowing dust. Vengosh sent a research team to Claxton in 2020 to collect samples of the soil at the playground and picnic pavilion. Several Claxton homeowners allowed the team to sample their properties for coal ash contamination, too.

The research confirms TVA’s coal ash is making its way off the plant site through the air and onto surrounding properties downwind of the Bull Run plant.