0:00

This is 99 % Invisible. I'm

0:03

Roman Mars. In

0:06

2008, a billion gallons

0:08

of toxic sludge spewed across 300

0:10

acres of Tennessee in the middle

0:12

of the night. It was just

0:15

before Christmas. I was a senior

0:17

in high school, and I remember

0:19

seeing this billion gallons of sludge

0:21

covering this town outside of Knoxville

0:23

and thinking, wow, that looks awful.

0:25

That's Jared Sullivan. For over 50

0:28

years, a power company called the

0:30

Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, have

0:32

been burning coal at a power

0:34

plant near Jared's hometown. Burning

0:36

all that coal helped bring electricity

0:38

to the region, but it also

0:40

created a mountain of ash and

0:43

waste. Over the years, this mountain

0:45

grew to be 60 feet high

0:47

and 84 acres wide. And on

0:49

December 22, 2008, the earthen embankment

0:51

that contained this mountain of waste

0:53

collapsed. A lethal wave of coal

0:55

sludge inundated the countryside. If you

0:58

pull the footage and look it

1:00

up on YouTube or whatever, it

1:02

really sticks with you because it

1:04

is biblical in scope what happened. This

1:07

disaster came to be known as the

1:09

Kingston Coal Ash Spill, and the

1:11

culprit wasn't a private company. It was

1:13

the TVA, a federally owned electricity

1:15

provider that had been set up by

1:17

the government during the New Deal. Immediately

1:21

after this happened, TVA's PR lackeys

1:23

got on the news and basically

1:25

said, this stuff isn't toxic. No

1:27

big deal. Don't worry about it.

1:29

And 900 blue collar workers from

1:31

around the country descended on the

1:33

site to help clean it up. Everyone

1:36

expected that they'd find bodies under the

1:38

sludge. It was a miracle that no

1:40

one died that night. The real tragedy

1:42

came years later, when many of

1:44

the workers in charge of the

1:46

cleanup fell sick and even died

1:48

from health issues caused by inhaling

1:50

the toxins found in coal ash.

1:53

The fallout from what happened at

1:55

the Kingston Coal Plant led Jared to

1:57

look more closely at the company

1:59

in charge. The Tennessee Valley Authority. The

2:02

TVA has been around

2:04

since the 1930s and

2:06

today it provides electricity

2:08

to more than 10

2:10

million people. Its presence

2:12

in the Southeast had

2:14

a huge impact in

2:16

transforming the region. The

2:18

TVA is a backdrop

2:20

to life as portrayed

2:22

in Southern literature, film,

2:24

and music. It's part

2:26

of the region's folklore.

2:31

I grew up in Tennessee and

2:33

everyone's kind of vaguely familiar with

2:35

TVA, but I did not really

2:37

know the full history of what

2:40

TVA was until I started reporting

2:42

and writing this book. Jared writes

2:44

about the TVA and his new

2:46

book, Valley Solo. One lawyer's fight

2:48

for justice in the wake of

2:51

America's great coal catastrophe. It's hard

2:53

to remember those long subtitles. I

2:55

had to... I know I was,

2:57

I assume, you see me side,

3:00

I had my book, I was

3:02

like, what's my book called again?

3:04

Jared's book follows the aftermath of

3:06

the disaster at the Kingston Coal

3:08

Plant, and in doing so, his

3:11

book reveals an even larger ongoing

3:13

American tragedy. How the TVA started

3:15

out as a mission-driven public institution,

3:17

but ended up acting like a

3:20

private for-profit company. And what that

3:22

shift can tell us about the

3:24

consequences of privatization. The story of

3:26

TVA really begins in many respects

3:28

with Franklin Roosevelt, who as a

3:31

young man contracted polio and began

3:33

making trips to Warm Springs, Georgia

3:35

for treatment. And on those trips,

3:37

he got a first-hand look at

3:40

how dire the situation was in

3:42

the Tennessee Valley. During the 1920s,

3:44

the Tennessee Valley, which is an

3:46

area covering nearly all of Tennessee,

3:48

large chunks of Alabama, Mississippi, and

3:51

Kentucky, and bits of three other

3:53

states, was deeply impoverished. Much of

3:55

the valley was farmland, but only

3:57

3% of these farms had electricity.

3:59

The area also had a per

4:02

capita income of less than half

4:04

of the national average, and about

4:06

a third of the population was

4:08

stricken with malaria. The poverty was

4:11

so crushing that it really challenged

4:13

the notion of whether democracy could

4:15

care for its people and whether

4:17

the American experiment had vitality. On

4:19

the farms crops would suffer from

4:22

an uneven climate. constant flooding from

4:24

the Tennessee River would badly damage

4:26

the soil. Sometimes the outlook was

4:28

so bleak that people would abandon

4:31

their farms altogether. In the mountains

4:33

families lived in very crude rudimentary

4:35

shacks. They slept in many cases

4:37

like multiple people in a bed

4:39

to stay warm throughout the winter.

4:42

Infant mortality rates were high. People

4:44

caught typhoid from drinking bad water.

4:46

Malaria was endemic. It was a

4:48

grave grave situation. There was this

4:51

notion that something needed to be

4:53

done, if not simply for the

4:55

good of the people, then at

4:57

least to prevent some sort of

4:59

uprising. There's actually some concern that

5:02

the Southeast was ripe for a

5:04

populist uprising, because the system was

5:06

so not working, because the Bolshevik

5:08

Revolution had not been that many

5:10

years in the past, right? So

5:13

there was really a strong sense

5:15

of like, we have to do

5:17

something, or this region may never

5:19

catch up or worse. The idea

5:22

was simple. Electric power should become

5:24

a public good, because if you

5:26

want to improve people's lives, you

5:28

have to give them electricity. The

5:30

problem was at the time that

5:33

all the big power companies were

5:35

owned by private holding companies, and

5:37

there was no financial incentive for

5:39

them to provide power to rural

5:42

areas, because there were just not

5:44

that many people out there, there

5:46

was not that much money to

5:48

make from these rural communities. But

5:50

as a result, these communities were

5:53

basically stuck. Then in 1933, FDR

5:55

got sworn in as president and

5:57

pretty quickly got to work on

5:59

New Deal programs, one of which

6:02

was to establish a power company,

6:04

the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1933,

6:06

we started. Down on the Tennessee

6:08

River, when Congress created the Tennessee

6:10

Valley Authority, an authority commission to

6:13

develop navigation, flood control, agriculture,

6:15

and industry in the

6:17

valley. It was, for

6:20

almost a quarter century,

6:22

the single most ambitious

6:25

public work project in

6:27

the world. TVA had three

6:29

basic goals. Control the Tennessee River,

6:31

produce power, and improve agriculture. The

6:34

Tennessee River's propensity to flood not

6:36

only damaged farmland, but also sometimes

6:38

took out entire towns. It wiped

6:41

out the city of Chattanooga, and

6:43

I believe it was the 1870s,

6:45

almost completely drowned the whole city.

6:47

So they needed to control the amount of

6:49

water that was coming down the Tennessee

6:52

River. Because you can't develop as

6:54

a society if your city is getting

6:56

washed away every... A dozen years or

6:58

so, right? The goal was to

7:01

control the river and

7:03

generate hydroelectric power, and so

7:05

began the construction of

7:07

the dams. They used eminent

7:10

domain to remove about 20,000

7:12

families from their homesteads, and

7:14

in their place, they peppered

7:17

the valley with dams

7:19

and brutalist concrete buildings.

7:21

Shortly after the TVA Act

7:23

of 1933 has passed, TVA...

7:25

rushes to start building hydroelectric

7:27

dams throughout the Tennessee Valley

7:29

and the first one that

7:31

they complete themselves from start

7:33

to finish it is Norris

7:35

Dam outside of Knoxville. First came

7:38

the dams up on the clench at

7:40

the head of the river, we built

7:42

Norris Dam. A great barrier to hold

7:44

water in flood time and to release

7:46

water down the river for navigation in

7:49

low water sea. This is the middle

7:51

of the Great Depression, people needed a

7:53

job so they hired 40,000 men. to

7:55

throw up these dams all up the

7:57

Tennessee River and they end up building...

8:00

49 dams and all, 29

8:02

of which produced power. So

8:04

that helped control the river and it

8:06

helped generate much needed

8:08

electricity in the south. And

8:11

it really worked. But

8:13

the TVA didn't stop at just building

8:15

dams. TVA initially had all

8:17

these other like utopian side projects. It's

8:19

hard to imagine the federal government

8:21

ever doing something like this today. It

8:23

had a mobile library service that

8:26

loaned out tens of thousands of books

8:28

to people. It started a ceramics

8:30

laboratory. It created 13 ,000 demonstration farms

8:32

where it taught locals how to maximize

8:34

crop yields. Alongside TVA's

8:36

construction of their first dam

8:38

in 1933, they also established

8:40

a town called Norris. Norris

8:43

was created to house the workers building

8:45

the nearby dam. But the town

8:47

was also a way to show

8:49

America how cooperative living could work. Norris

8:51

was completely wonkable with most homes

8:53

facing each other instead of the street.

8:56

It included a green belt, a

8:58

school where dam workers could take classes,

9:00

a post office, a gym, and

9:02

even a farmer's market. And TVA,

9:04

some of their board directors actually live in this

9:06

little playing community. It's very cute. It still exists

9:08

to this day. In

9:10

those first few years, TVA continued

9:13

to steadily build more and more

9:15

dams. And in the process, they

9:17

became the largest producer of electric

9:19

power in the United States. But

9:21

these massive government interventions came with

9:23

a lot of pushback. It was

9:25

a huge fight over transmission lines.

9:27

And private industry definitely pushed back

9:29

on TVA. They were very scared

9:31

that TVA was going to expand

9:33

into their territory. A guy named

9:35

Wendell Wilkie led the fight against

9:37

the TVA. He was the president

9:39

of a large private power company in

9:41

the South. Wendell and other

9:43

power company reps complained bitterly about

9:45

what they saw as unfair

9:48

competition. They took the TVA to

9:50

the Supreme Court and lost,

9:52

twice. The TVA had this

9:54

grand ambition to electrify the

9:56

South. And it did. The dams

9:58

tamed the rivers and and

10:00

controlled the floods, which meant healthier

10:03

soil and more productive farmland.

10:05

Hydroelectric power was cheap and available,

10:07

which meant the standard of

10:09

living increased dramatically. For those who

10:11

benefited, it was a social

10:13

revolution. It was ambitious and it

10:15

had noble intentions and it

10:18

actually worked. And I really do

10:20

feel like it is like

10:22

an American miracle. It exemplified a

10:24

good government in action. For

10:26

the first time ever, the Tennessee Valley

10:29

could be lit up after dark. In

10:31

one of the most conservative regions in

10:33

the country, millions of people got their

10:35

electricity from a federal agency that had

10:37

no shareholders to answer to and no

10:39

profits to make. And

10:43

then something happened that caused the

10:45

TVA to suddenly change direction. The

10:47

big thing that forever changed TVA

10:49

was World War II. During World

10:51

War II, TVA supplied a tenth

10:54

of all the electricity used by

10:56

the country's defense industries. The TVA,

10:58

which was a program of the

11:00

federal government, was suddenly summoned to

11:02

support the war. Electricity was needed

11:05

to produce weapons and military equipment

11:07

and to build atomic bombs. The

11:09

government decided to base the Manhattan

11:11

Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee because

11:13

of TVA. What all this meant,

11:15

though, was that electricity that was

11:18

previously going to the public was

11:20

now being siphoned off for war.

11:23

Then, in the early 1940s, Congress feared

11:25

a power shortage because it was

11:27

forecasting a dry year, which would lower

11:30

the river levels throughout the valley.

11:32

The following year, at the government's urging

11:34

and with its funding, the TVA

11:36

began construction on its first coal -fired

11:38

power plant. It meant that at least

11:40

some of the TVA's power would

11:42

no longer depend on the weather. After

11:46

World War II, Tennessee stayed in

11:48

the bomb -making business. This time,

11:50

there was a need for uranium

11:53

enrichment for the Cold War nuclear

11:55

arsenal, and so the demand for

11:57

TVA's electricity kept going up. After

12:00

that, it was the Cold War. Oak Ridge

12:02

did not shut down after Hiroshima, right?

12:04

Just the opposite. Oak Ridge is still

12:06

in the bomb-making game, and TVA had

12:09

to supply power for it. Almost half

12:11

its power at one point went to

12:13

the government bomb-making facilities in Oak

12:15

Ridge. Meanwhile, the South was also

12:17

seen in uptick in population. AC

12:20

became more widely available air

12:22

conditioning, so it was more tolerable

12:24

to live here, so a lot

12:26

of people migrated South. And TVA's power

12:28

production couldn't keep up with the

12:31

growing demand from both war manufacturers

12:33

and people living in the valley.

12:35

So they started to build more

12:37

coal power plants. And they ended

12:39

up building 11 of the world's

12:41

largest coal-fired power plants. Parsally

12:44

to serve Oak Ridge, but also

12:46

again, to meet the energy demands

12:48

from the growing population here. Coal

12:50

plants were cheap and helped the bottom

12:52

line. It was the easiest way to

12:55

produce more power under so much pressure.

12:58

Then in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower was elected

13:00

president, and unlike FDR, he was

13:02

highly skeptical of TVA as a

13:05

whole. He really hated TVA. He

13:07

accused of being an example of,

13:09

quote, creeping socialism, and

13:11

he reportedly wanted itself

13:13

the whole thing. Eisenhower's administration

13:16

affected TVA's ability to expand even

13:18

though more people were in need

13:20

of electricity than ever before. Republicans

13:23

in Congress who are aligned with

13:25

the Eisenhower, they repeatedly withheld appropriations

13:27

from TVA, which needed to build

13:29

power plants to keep up with

13:32

energy demand. Then in 1959, Eisenhower

13:34

cut TV off from federal funding

13:36

entirely. This was a monumental change.

13:38

It meant that the TVA, although

13:41

owned by the government, needed to

13:43

start operating like a private corporation

13:45

in order to finance itself.

13:47

Since 1959, the TVA has

13:49

raised capital for its electricity

13:51

projects by issuing and selling

13:53

bonds. This new financial model meant

13:56

that the TVA began to shift

13:58

its priorities. What was once... FDR's

14:00

mission -driven project to lift up

14:02

the Southeast from poverty shifted

14:04

its focus to building profit. There

14:06

was no time or money anymore for

14:09

cute little walkable towns where you learn

14:11

how to farm and do ceramics. In

14:13

this new chapter in TVA history, those

14:15

social services were the first to fall

14:17

away. It was impossible to justify the

14:19

other programs. It was impossible to justify

14:22

the farm programs, even

14:24

things like the ceramics laboratory, the

14:26

library. All of that just

14:28

fell by the wayside because TVA

14:30

had to be so focused on money now

14:32

and actually act more like a corporation,

14:34

right? I think this is the period where

14:37

TVA went from being this quasi -governmental

14:39

corporation to

14:41

basically a true and

14:43

true corporation, and it morphed

14:45

into a power giant because it had

14:47

to really care about money unlike it

14:49

had before. Over

14:52

time, the TVA began pumping out

14:54

electricity, producing large quantities of

14:57

coal -powered electricity throughout the valley.

14:59

Then they started plotting a transition

15:01

to nuclear power. the

15:03

late 60s, the government

15:05

starts passing this first big wave

15:07

of environmental laws, and TVA

15:09

feels the pressure of this. So

15:12

they decide that it's going

15:14

to build seven jumbo nuclear

15:16

power plants with 17 nuclear reactors.

15:18

In 1965, the TVA announced

15:20

plans for its first nuclear plant.

15:22

A Knoxville newspaper headline read,

15:24

Nuclear Roars at King Cole.

15:27

But it's almost a disaster right

15:29

from the beginning. There's

15:31

a well -documented record of TVA's

15:33

nuclear projects running far behind schedule,

15:35

far over budget, and many

15:37

times being abandoned altogether. Of the

15:39

seven nuclear power plants TVA

15:41

had intended to build, only three

15:43

of them were completed. Plans

15:45

to build the rest fell away

15:47

after the TVA amassed $10

15:49

billion in debt because of their

15:51

nuclear endeavors. And then in

15:53

1975, TVA's first nuclear plant in

15:56

Browns Ferry, Alabama, accidentally caught

15:58

on fire. electrician

16:00

looking for an air leak like in a

16:03

pipe or something and using a lit match

16:05

to find the air leaks. I don't,

16:07

I'm not electric, I won't pretend to

16:09

understand how, how a lit match will

16:11

help you find an air leak in

16:13

a pipe, but it catches this whole huge

16:16

area on fire and it forces an

16:18

emergency shutdown at the plant and

16:20

causes millions of dollars of damages.

16:23

So that's like the most noteworthy

16:25

safety. issue, but there was tons

16:27

of other small issues. Even though

16:29

nuclear power is cleaner than coal,

16:31

it's a lot more expensive to

16:34

implement. The TVA didn't have the

16:36

money to really invest in this

16:38

experiment. And its initial nuclear failures,

16:41

along with other well-known nuclear disasters

16:43

like Three Mile Island, mired public

16:45

perception of nuclear power's potential to

16:48

pivot to cleaner energy. Throughout the

16:50

1980s, the TVA canceled or put

16:52

on hold many of these nuclear

16:54

projects. Some exist today, only as

16:56

blueprints, while others are fragments of

16:58

concrete and metal that dot the

17:00

landscape of the Tennessee Valley. The

17:02

nuclear fiasco has left TVA with

17:04

a total debt of nearly 20

17:06

billion dollars. All of this also meant

17:09

that the TVA was still heavily

17:11

relying on coal to produce its

17:13

power. So TVA wanted to get

17:15

off coal, it just couldn't. But

17:18

it was still effectively hooked on

17:20

coal and would be for the

17:22

next several decades. And that is

17:24

really where my book picks up.

17:26

It's after decades of TVA burning

17:29

coal and not being able to

17:31

get off of it. After

17:33

the break, I talked

17:36

with Jared about one

17:39

of the consequences of

17:41

TVA's decision to stick

17:44

with coal, that

17:46

billion gallon toxic

17:48

sludge eruption at

17:50

the Kingston Coal

17:53

Plant in Tennessee.

17:55

I'm back with

17:57

Jared Sullivan. So your

17:59

book... largely centers on one particular

18:01

coal power plant that's run by

18:03

TVA. It's the Kingston Fossil Plant

18:06

in Kingston, Tennessee. Tell me about

18:08

this plant. The Kingston Fossil Plant

18:10

was built in 1954, or rather

18:12

it went online for the first

18:14

time in 1954. It creates enough

18:17

electricity to power 700,000 homes. It

18:19

is a jumbo-jumbo facility, and

18:21

it sits at the confluence of

18:23

two rivers, the clinch in the

18:25

emory. And so in 2008, a

18:27

billion gallons of this substance called

18:30

coal ash bursts out of this

18:32

power plant. What is coal ash? Coal

18:34

ash is kind of the, it's like the

18:36

stuff that's left over after you

18:38

burn coal to produce electricity.

18:40

It's almost like if you

18:42

have like a charcoal barbecue,

18:45

it's like the sooty stuff

18:47

that's left over afterwards like

18:49

in the bottom of it. So what? has

18:51

been the typical system or protocol

18:53

that coal power plant operators use

18:56

in terms of managing or disposing

18:58

of this coal ash. The standard

19:00

practice for every power company, not just

19:02

TVA, was just to dig a big

19:05

hole in the ground and dump all

19:07

your coal ash there. They called a

19:09

pond, this coal ash pond, but the

19:11

name is not accurate. It's not a

19:13

pond. This thing grows into a mountain

19:15

effectively. It's six stories tall and 84

19:18

acres. These, I should say, there's 750

19:20

of these. things across the country. This

19:22

is not just a TVA problem. And

19:24

almost all of these ponds leak toxins

19:27

into the groundwater. They are a

19:29

huge, huge mess. In Kingston, this mountain

19:31

of coal ash was just a part

19:33

of the landscape near the power plant.

19:35

The TVA had covered it with a

19:37

layer of clay, which allows grasses to

19:40

grow on top. So to the unfamiliar

19:42

eye, it could have just looked like

19:44

a grassy hill. People would do their

19:46

regular morning runs up and down this

19:48

mound. Okay, so walk me through what

19:50

happened at this Kingston plant in 2008 when

19:53

this mountain of coal ash burst free.

19:55

This wave of sludge slams into a

19:57

peninsula. Half it kind of hits this

19:59

peninsula. and it kind of forks right

20:01

and fills in this deep channel in

20:03

this river, the Emory River, and the

20:05

rest of it slams into this peninsula

20:08

and knocks homes off their foundation,

20:10

it hurls fish onto the river

20:12

bank, it knocks on power lines, it's

20:14

almost like something out of the Bible.

20:16

This was in the middle of the

20:18

night. At first people living nearby

20:20

thought it might be an earthquake or

20:23

a landslide. The whole earth felt like

20:25

it was rumbling and trembling and trembling.

20:27

And so I talked to... one local

20:29

who you know he looked out of

20:31

his window and saw a black wave

20:33

just rolling across his yard. One home

20:36

in particular was shoved I think

20:38

it was like 60 feet off

20:40

its foundation and thrust against this

20:43

embankment and basically collapsed in on

20:45

itself. One woman describes watching as

20:47

dark sludge like wet soupy sludge came

20:49

in under her door and started

20:52

filling up her sunroom and her living

20:54

room which again is like something almost

20:56

out of like a like a horror

20:58

movie you know. While

21:01

the disaster itself didn't result in a

21:03

big loss of life, the real

21:05

problems took place during the cleanup.

21:07

It's 2008. The economy is on its

21:10

knees. The housing market and the stock

21:12

market have just collapsed. TVA hired 900

21:14

people from across the country to come

21:17

clean up the disaster. So as these

21:19

union reps start calling to get people

21:21

to come clean this up, many of

21:23

these workers, blue collar workers, are delighted

21:26

to get this call. They know this

21:28

is a huge environmental disaster. but it's

21:30

kind of a godsend for them. What

21:32

they didn't know was that this job came

21:34

at a huge cost to their health. And

21:36

turns out, these workers had asked

21:39

for respirators and dust masks throughout

21:41

the cleanup, and in most cases,

21:43

were not given them. And so they

21:45

had inhaled this coal ash sludge, and

21:47

coal ash contains arsenic and radium and

21:49

mercury, and just stuff you really do

21:51

not want in your body at all.

21:54

I mean, I found documents

21:56

going back to 1964. that show that

21:58

TV has known this stuff. is

22:01

hazardous, is toxic. I mean this puts

22:03

them in a real conundrum because everyone

22:05

knows that the spell was bad enough

22:07

that they had to clean it up,

22:10

but TVA kept insisting that the sludge

22:12

wasn't actually toxic. Could you describe what's

22:14

going on there? TVA did not want

22:17

to upset the community. And I think

22:19

it would have been really troubling for

22:21

the community if the workers were

22:23

out there stomping around and head

22:25

to toe hazmat suits and dust

22:27

mass and respirators. So instead TVA

22:29

comes out and they basically

22:31

tell the public this stuff

22:33

poses no significant health risk.

22:35

Basically, don't worry about it. And

22:37

they say this over and over and

22:39

over. Another sort of trap that these

22:42

workers are in is that it's extremely

22:44

hot. And so if they were to

22:46

be in head-to-toe hazmat gear, not

22:48

only would it look bad and

22:50

make TVA look bad, it would

22:52

mean they'd have to take even

22:54

more precautions for the workers because...

22:56

wearing a hazmat suit in 95

22:58

degree weather means that they can't

23:00

work as much or as hard

23:02

and they have to provide cooling

23:04

and all kinds of other stuff. Yes,

23:07

exactly. So the EPA gave TVA

23:09

pretty tight deadlines to clean this

23:11

stuff up. And if Jacob's engineering

23:14

subcontractor and TVA gave

23:16

the workers dust masks, yes, they would

23:18

they would need to take more breaks.

23:20

And that would mean they would have

23:22

to leave the job site, get on

23:24

a shuttle or some kind of bus.

23:26

take it to a break area, de-robe,

23:28

take their break, put all their gear back

23:30

on again, then take a shuttle back

23:33

to the job site, and it would

23:35

have slowed the whole process up, and

23:37

I think there's very compelling evidence that

23:39

TVA said, this can't happen, like this

23:41

is, we can't take this much time

23:44

with this protective gear, or we're just not

23:46

going to hit our deadlines, and the

23:48

EPA's going to find this hundreds of

23:50

thousands, if not millions of dollars,

23:53

if we're slow. One TVA contractor told

23:55

workers that they could eat a pound

23:57

of coal ash a day and be

23:59

fine, but... things weren't fine. Many

24:01

workers started to feel sick after

24:03

the first few months of cleanup, but

24:06

they chocked it up to being overworked

24:08

or lack of sleep. Things got much

24:10

worse over time. And these workers started,

24:13

they started passing on their trucks, they

24:15

started coughing up blood, then the cancer

24:17

diagnosis come, you know, not long after

24:19

that. Eventually, with the help of a

24:22

local lawyer, hundreds of these workers gathered

24:24

together to sue TVA and their subcontractor,

24:26

Jacobs Engineering, for not giving them the

24:29

appropriate hazmat gear to protect their health.

24:31

But the lawsuit proved very difficult, and

24:33

there were many hurdles to overcome.

24:35

One of the biggest problems was

24:37

that a judge ruled that because

24:39

Jacobs was acting on behalf of

24:41

the TVA, they couldn't be sued.

24:44

This is because the TVA, even

24:46

though it operates like a private

24:48

company, is still owned by the

24:50

federal government. It grants them something

24:52

called sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity protects

24:54

TVA and many other government

24:56

agencies from a whole lot

24:58

of lawsuits. Not every single

25:01

lawsuit, but it grants them

25:03

broad protections. I think the simplest

25:05

way to think about it is if

25:07

the government or one of those contractors

25:09

is acting in good faith, like they're

25:12

trying to follow the letter of the

25:14

law, and acting in the government's interest,

25:16

they are protected by the law. So

25:19

after all this litigation, it's like all

25:21

centering around the people that a clean

25:23

up cruise and how they were exposed

25:25

to this coal ash, what ended

25:28

up happening? So after 10 brutal

25:30

years of litigation, where the case

25:32

gets basically thrown out twice, the

25:34

lawyers save it on appeal twice,

25:36

the workers have to, they have

25:38

to capitulate. They're getting so

25:41

sick and they're getting just, also

25:43

just exhausted of 10 years of...

25:45

This big question hanging over their heads are,

25:47

are we going to get any money to

25:50

cover our medical bills? Eventually in 2022,

25:52

a federal appeals court ruled that

25:54

Jacob's engineering was not entitled to

25:56

the sovereign immunity granted to the

25:58

TVA and the 230... workers settled

26:00

for $77.5 million. That works out

26:02

to a couple hundred thousand dollars

26:05

per person. But some workers didn't

26:07

survive to receive the settlement. They

26:09

were not pleased, but that's what

26:11

often happens in these sorts of

26:14

big environmental tort cases. I talk

26:16

a lot of my book about

26:18

Exxon Balades. There's a lot of

26:20

parallels between the Exxon Balades case

26:22

and the case I write about in my

26:25

book, because it's the same playbook. You

26:27

drag things out. You drag things out.

26:29

until people get so desperate that

26:31

they have to more or less

26:33

take whatever offer you you give

26:35

them. And that's what happened to

26:37

these workers. So what's the status

26:39

of the Kingston coal plant now?

26:42

It is still up and running

26:44

at this moment. I believe the

26:46

intent is to convert it into

26:49

a natural gas facility. TVA over

26:51

the past 10 years, basically ever

26:53

since the Kingston disaster, has been

26:56

gradually... phasing out its coal plants

26:58

and turning its coal plants at

27:00

these same sites building natural gas

27:02

facilities. In 2015, the government

27:04

passed a new set of laws.

27:07

These laws mandated that the TVA

27:09

had to monitor its active coal

27:11

ash dump sites to make sure

27:13

that coal ash wasn't contaminating the

27:15

groundwater. But there's a major loophole

27:17

here. Most coal ash sites across

27:19

the US aren't actively used. There

27:21

are still many giant holes in

27:23

the ground filled with coal ash

27:25

across the country, but the power

27:27

plants they're connected to aren't operating.

27:30

These sites do not need to be

27:32

regulated. Yes, so earlier this year, the

27:34

EPA, under President Biden,

27:36

finally passed a rule that

27:38

required power companies to monitor their

27:41

legacy or old coal ash

27:43

ponds and to remediate or clean

27:45

up any contamination that they

27:47

found. The problem with this is that

27:50

The power company self-regulate under these rules.

27:52

You can read my book and

27:54

judge for yourself whether you trust

27:56

power companies to be honest about

27:58

whether their coal ash ponds are...

28:00

containment in groundwater. I for one

28:02

would rather have EPA people

28:05

on staff independently testing these

28:07

sites. Studies have found that

28:09

of the 750 coal ash

28:12

ponds across the country, almost

28:14

all of them contaminate groundwater.

28:16

They contaminate thousands of miles

28:18

of American rivers and the

28:20

drinking water of millions each year.

28:23

I think a lot of people in bad

28:25

faith could go, well, you know, the TVA

28:27

is... is the real problem here, but

28:29

I sent some reluctance on your

28:31

part to vilify the TVA because

28:34

of its rich history of acting

28:36

on behalf of people for decades

28:38

and then becoming this corporate entity

28:41

that caused a lot of harm.

28:43

Could you talk about your ambivalence

28:46

about the TVA and how you

28:48

want its legacy to be presented

28:50

to today's world? I do not

28:53

want to burn TVA to the ground.

28:55

Some people do. I do not. My

28:57

book is very critical of

28:59

TVA because it has made some

29:02

horrible missteps over

29:04

the years. And I think what

29:06

happened at Kingston is

29:08

an American tragedy. The

29:10

Kingston disaster was a

29:13

huge black eye for the

29:15

organization. But we need TVA to

29:17

be great. And we need them

29:19

to produce abundant clean

29:22

power, you know, so we can

29:24

have climate goals. And so

29:26

we can continue to have

29:28

industry here. South still lags

29:30

the rest of the country

29:32

in income and whatnot. And

29:35

I wrote a very critical book

29:37

of TVA in hopes that TVA

29:39

can be reformed and can

29:41

recapture some of the FDR era

29:44

magic that it had. Well, it's

29:46

clear that these dirty coal

29:48

plants make people sick and

29:50

TVA knows this. Could there be

29:52

a way for TVA to try again

29:55

with nuclear power like they did in

29:57

the 1960s and 70s, but this time

29:59

without the failures. Like I'm

30:01

just curious about what could

30:03

be possible with nuclear power

30:05

and how our clean energy

30:07

landscape would look today if

30:09

the government had fully invested

30:11

in that path back then. I mentioned

30:14

the seven nuclear power plants

30:16

that TVA wanted to build,

30:18

it only cleared three of them, but

30:20

as a result of that it is

30:22

billions of dollars in debt, 20 billion

30:25

dollars in debt actually. Well,

30:27

there's a cap on how much

30:29

debt TV can take on. It's

30:31

$30 billion. So only has $10

30:33

billion of wiggle room to build more

30:35

stuff. Well, nuclear power plants

30:37

cost more than $10 billion. So

30:40

TVA is in a tight spot

30:42

right now where it actually

30:44

is trying to decarbonize, because

30:46

of the Kingston disaster and

30:48

other such missteps, it knows that

30:50

coal is not the future. It

30:52

needs to get off fossil fuels.

30:55

But it really can't. But it is

30:57

an American tragedy that TVA did

30:59

not build those seven nuclear power

31:01

plants. Now this region, the Sunbell,

31:03

is exploding in population and we

31:05

need those nuclear power plants more than

31:07

ever. Yeah, to me, that sort of

31:10

the original sin of it is the

31:12

1959 Act to make it self-sufficient at

31:14

like a corporation. I mean, I firmly

31:16

believe that anyone who believes that the

31:18

government should be run like a business

31:20

doesn't know anything about government or business.

31:22

You know, like that's not how things

31:24

work. That's totally my view. We

31:26

have to hope that lawmakers outside the

31:28

Tennessee Valley nudge it in the right

31:31

direction. Yeah. Well, what it needs, I

31:33

mean, to me, what it needs to

31:35

do to work is it needs to

31:37

be run the way it was designed

31:40

to run, which is a socialist organization.

31:42

I mean, it's really, it's the source

31:44

of the conundrum is that it is

31:47

a thing designed to do a thing

31:49

that is not allowed to do that

31:51

thing it was designed to do. Exactly.

31:53

I'm kind of like a classic

31:56

New Deal Democrat and so

31:58

I actually have a TV

32:00

electricity for all baseball caps

32:02

that I wear. So can I

32:04

wear this with pride? Like do

32:06

you, when you think of like

32:08

what is TVA mean to you

32:10

and would it be okay for

32:13

a progressive like me to wear

32:15

a TVA hat? TVA was born

32:17

of such noble intentions but

32:19

all the rest of the stuff

32:21

I've come to after a world

32:23

or two is is that's the messy

32:26

part. As much as I am rooting

32:28

for TVA. I would not wear a TVA

32:30

hat. The day TVA finishes at seven

32:33

nuclear power plants, I will wear, I'll

32:35

probably wear a TVA hat again. Yeah,

32:37

yeah. Jared, thank you so much for the

32:39

book. I loved reading it and thank you

32:41

so much for talking with us. It's been

32:43

a real pleasure. They hate you for having

32:45

me. This is such a treat. 99%

32:48

Invisible was produced this week by

32:50

Losh Madame, edited by Nina Pottak,

32:52

mixed by Martine Gonzales, music by

32:54

Swan Réon Riao. Special thanks this

32:56

week to Jared Sullivan, author of

32:58

Valley Solo. One lawyer's fight for

33:00

justice in the wake of America's

33:02

great coal catastrophe. It is a

33:04

really good font read if you

33:07

like those John Grissom style like

33:09

legal thrillers. This is right up

33:11

your alley. Kathy too is

33:13

our executive producer Kirk Colestette is

33:15

the digital director of Laney Hall

33:17

is our senior editor. The resident

33:20

team includes Chris Baroupe, Jason De

33:22

Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian

33:24

Lay, Joe Rosenberg, Gabriella Gladney, Kelly

33:27

Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, and me,

33:29

Roman Mars. The 99% of his

33:31

logo was created by Stephan Lawrence.

33:33

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33:36

and SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered

33:38

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33:42

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33:45

for spending much more time on blue

33:47

sky as well as our own Discord

33:49

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33:51

server as well as every past episode

33:53

of 99 p.i at 99 p.org