Google Earth & River Ocean: Thoughts on the Kingston Coal Ash Spill

Having spent many hours fishing and enjoying the Tennessee river systems, it did not take me long to make the trip down to Kingston after hearing of the massive coal ash spill that dumped 1.1 billion gallons of slurry into the once pristine waters of the Emory & Tennessee Rivers. The colleague, who went with me, and I quickly realized that the reality of viewing the 'devastation' a few weeks after the event simply meant viewing some cleanup crews, containment boundaries, and cleaning supplies but not a whole lot of the visual horrors that were viewed on the news immediately after the spill. Those stories showed houses with failing foundations covered in deep muck. What we saw were consequences much more subtle to the eye and would last much, much longer. We saw a river landscape that hadn't changed that much since last year from the surface but below the surface, the toxicity was secretly, quietly seeping deeper into the watershed and was drastically affecting the wildlife. A young fisherman that we found seemed to make our point wonderfully. He was fishing just downstream of the coal plant and told us that he had always 'lit the rock bass up before that BIG THING happened,' but hadn't caught a thing since. That BIG THING was the coal ash spill that would probably forever change the young man's fishing success...

To read our travel log entitled Google Earth & River Ocean: Thoughts on the Kingston Coal Ash Spill, please click here. It was written by fellow nature lover, photographer and conservationist, Chad Gilpin. All photos were taken by me, Joshua Howard.

Here are a few images that I took along the way...


As I explored the area where the Kingston coal ash spill occurred, I found several telling signs of people's gradual movement away from the appreciation of nature. This image captured one of these telling moments. A wildlife refuge sign lay half submerged and neglected in the very waters where 1.1 billion gallons of toxic coal fly ash had just been spilt. Just across the river lay the source of the spill, the Kingston Fossil Plant, which was once the largest coal-burning power plant in the world. The Kingston Wildlife Refuge was now home to lifeless waters.



I thought the contrast of the bright yellow containment barrier along with the graffiti showed telling signs of humanity's growing negligence and ignorance of the power of nature.





I came across this sign stating that a large section of the Emory River had been closed. The contaminants in the water made it unsuitable for use by humans and had pushed all the fish and amphibians downstream. A young local fisherman, unaware of the river closure, complained that the waters that used to be full of rock bass hadn't given him even a nibble since 'that big thing happened'. That 'big thing' he referred to was the spill of 1.1 billion gallons of toxic waste that flowed into the once pristine waters of the Emory and Tennessee Rivers.





Cleanup crews work to hide the last remaining visual evidence of the huge spill...