good morning or explore coal ash disposable in perry county alabama this hearing has also been conducted as one of several hearings it made the oversight requirements of the clause unleashed a torrent of toxic coal ash over the landscape and into nearby water bodies the volume itself is staggering five point four million cubic yard were released i have visited harrison tennessee the sheer amount of coal ash just truly staggering this is even more the case when one considers that the vast majority of th was deposited in the river in the river the coal ash is out of sight but it is certainly not invisible recent toxic release inventory figures from t v indicate that the two thousand and eight from all power plants come by because of the physical destruction that took place and the potential it illogical and human risk presented the coal ash toxic all of this material must be cleaned up and i last meeting mr kilgore president and c e o publicly committed to restoring the environment area to its natural state and i welcome that response and look forward to overseeing the work they will do there and in the order of his commitment  agency partners in the removal and cleanup operation t d m a also needs to ensure that it anticipates and prepared for an unforeseen eventualities or example more than more rain than expected and properly overseeing its contractors and their work in terms of the cleanup itself absolve the work being done by e p a in terms of their coordination and management of the project given  its longstanding experience in running superfund cleanup and operation has shown it was money well spent the kingston impoundment was only one of many t the surrounding community with employment opportunities we must ensure that a p a and the state of alabama are vigilant in ensuring that all disposable disposal safety and public health protocols including proper and long term monitoring are followed to ensure good health of local residents thank you very much for being here today continues its review of coal ash storage specifically the december twenty second two thousand and eight incident at the tennessee valley these power generating facility in kingston tennessee while there has only been a few documented failures of coal ash disposal sides we all hope that what occurred at the kingston called edge disposal site was an isolated incident the witnesses today will help the committee evaluate the conclusions drawn from the accident report some of their observations about kingston and discussed the role played by the eleven thousand residents of perry alabama moving forward it appears that the tennessee valley authority its board of directors and its officers have begun to recognize the shortcomings in its existing ash management practices and seem to be making changes to ensure more appropriate risk management at its facilities the tennessee valley authority needs to continue to take aggressive steps that its other coal ash storage facilities to identify and reduce risks to the public into the environment lives and property were forever changed by the events of december twenty second two thousand and eight however there's another side to the story while no one should benefit from another's misfortune perry county alabama has positioned itself to perhaps lead the way in the disposal of this unique facility will allow perry county to construct new roads new schools and additional infrastructure back in should directing a state of the art landfill economic development opportunities abroad a renewed sense of optimism to the small at the kingston site i've driven past many times during the years that i've lived in tennessee and living in the hudson valley i've become more aware over the last couple of years of how interconnected all of our water is really  no separating ultimately the aquifers we drink from the rivers that run through our communities and the the runoff from various industrial processes one of the things i am hoping to hear from that i'm sure you're learning as you study this is what alternatives will be in the future for disposing of a fly ash as we simultaneously are looking at carbon capture capture and sequestration it's been some talk of precipitating combustion products into solids that can be mixed with for instance paving materials for building materials and turning what's seen as a liability into an asset in that regard or at least into a stable form side and gave me a detailed briefing and then within just a few more days i went down and had a helicopter tour in a briefing and i was very impressed by the fact that there was a war room of is still estimates that they will spend approximately a billion dollars in cleaning up this mess and i assume that does not count the time and salaries of all the different employees from so certainly i think a lot of progress has been made but it's also been testified to the other hearings that this billion dollars does not count potential regulatory signs and lawsuits and i hope that the and i've exp this before that i hope that agencies that intend to are there are considering fines for t j will keep in mind a lot of lower income rate payers who could be affected if we get in to additional year and there's that and we've seen a dramatic decline in state courts because very few jury trials are being tried now compared to say twenty five or thirty years ago or are certainly when i first started practicing law and that means that there are many young lawyers out there today that never go to court and i think they're scared to go to court and don't hope that they won't give in to exorbitant demands just to settle a lawsuit to keep from trying the case that's that's another concern i have but i'd but i will say that there's been a lot of progress made and in fact as some people know i've spent over half my time in my district and people make comments to me every place i go and i've heard almost nothing about this in my district over the past few months i did obviously there was a lot of news about this and a lot of comments made in the first few months after it happened but almost no comments now and in fact that mr kilgore i'm hearing more about  problem that same has raised about the dams not being high enough and i'm and i'm pleased that you're meeting with the homeowners association teleco village next week and i hope you will listen to their concerns but i have  kilgore in the present board came but in past years i've been pretty critical about several things that t v has done i'm not hesitate to criticize to you but i also think t b a should be given credit when the good work is being done and i don't see how that any department or n c could have done more than what has been done in this situation so i do have to go very shortly to another very important hearing and  hazardous waste they say if it's classified as hazardous waste it loses its commercial value and environmentalist in the past have been big advocates of recycling and i hope that we will look closer at getting some sort of that we'll use out of this material and three hundred twenty seven million gallons of water onto adjacent lancet into rivers causing the evacuations of the nearby community and one tragic death during the cleanup following the spill in may of two thousand and nine that the t v a which owns and operates a kingston fossil plant came to an agreement with the environmental protection agency this agreement set the precedent for cleanup procedures from the emery spill and surrounding areas affected by the spill is of great we meet here today to discuss the progress of the clean up as well as the new safety and security measures that have been put into place to prevent such an event from ever happening again it's my understand the agreed upon time critical removal of the ashes been occurring steadily but has slowed in recent weeks i feel that meeting the designated time deadline of spring two thousand and ten for the completion of those areas designated as time critical is extremely important madam chair as members of the sub committee it's our duty to perform do jealous due diligence of the oversight of the t v we must also consider the public and work for safety and take a hard look at the environmental and economic impact of this import import independent  government the corporation which is the nation's public power company and i look forward from hearing from all of our witnesses today i welcome you to for the subcommittee and i thank you again madam chairwoman and you've done a tremendous job on this issue i know will continue to push thank you so much  you'll back thank you very much we will matter now introduce the panel we only have one panel the honorable tom t o gore president and chief executive administrator region for the united states environmental protection agency atlanta georgia commissioner abbott turner jr district one perry county marion alabama mr environmental counsel birmingham alabama we will proceed with testimony if you are seated  of the twenty second of two thousand and i'd like to briefly cover three things with you today our progress in cleaning up the spill are improvements at other in pound months and the efforts we have underway to improve our performance and effectiveness across yards per day and today about two thirds of that has been removed this is a good milestone for us and we are on track to complete this progress in the spring of two thousand and ten recovered from the river is loaded down to drain for ask continues to be removed from the emory river we are planning the next most important step and that is the cleanup of the non time critical mines in the northern flew and on the land the engineering evaluation and cost analysis work is underway for this step and it will serve as the basis for our work going forward our goal is to have a seamless transition between the time critical and the non time critical removal p v a currently estimated the removal of our non time critical  be completed in two thousand and thirteen and our commitment is to restore the area to its natural state as it was before the spill we also continue to work closely with our own county commission community attending public meetings and holding open houses providing independent confidential medical evaluations and supporting the area's long term economic development this support and the cooperation of our neighbors as mina great deal to us during the last hearing completed an intrusive investigation and our impound our aggressive schedule to incorporate their recommendations is ongoing in addition to kingston we have already placed almost a quarter of a million tons of rock for additional stability  removed about thirty thousand cubic yards of trees and vegetation to allow for better visual inspections to sharpen our management focus on storage facilities dva created a specific organization called clean strategies and project development which is responsible for all storage in power months and the kingston recovery project also a stand tax recommendation t v a personnel one tine the impoundments completed a comprehensive trying program in september designed to increase the awareness of your modes provide an understanding of what to look for in their work and to recognize structural distress in august t v i announced plans to convert six call burning plants currently annulling systems to drop these draw systems in addition program would close about eighteen existing ponds and gypsum all of the plans are subject to the completion of the required environmental reviews and our obtaining regulatory approval at the t v a board's direction we continue to make significant strides templeman our organizational plan focused on change management performance improvement and compliance we have strengthened our existing enterprise risk management system to further identify our financial and non financial risk the real key for us will be dipping to new using the lessons we've learned in the past year and to build and to sustain a culture of accountability and performance simply put our goal is to be recognized by our customers our employees and cultures as a company that does its job well in closing i'd like to say again that t v i deeply regrets what occurred last december but you have our continued commitment to clean up the spill considerably considerable progress this year on many fronts and our focus is on  we work to rebuild the public trust and to build a better t v for the people of the tennessee valley thank you and all of forward to your quest thank you very much mr moore and i'm sure woman johnson ranking member bozeman and members of the subcommittee i appreciate the opportunity to testify before you on the eve of the one year anniversary of the kingston ashville my written testimony covers the specifics of our assessment of the degree to which t v has responded to the findings and recommendations in the recent zero i g reports concerning the coal ash spill cleanup operations and t v s overall environmental management my statement this morning however will be to the victims and restoration of the community the second report was issued in july of this year and focused on providing an independent peer review of the root cause analysis utilizing the services of our engineers marshall miller and associates interviewing v s ash management practices these report resulted in nine very broad recommendations designed to improve specific business processes develop a more robust risk management program and take actions that would change t culture to be more focused on developing sound business practices and driving compliance throughout the t v organization over the past year we have seen t v i devote an extraordinary amount of time money and focus  addressing not only the recommendations of the inspector general's office but also the recommendations of the mckenna law firm which in many respects paralleled our findings and recommendations dva has extracted all of the detail findings and recommendations and they have cross reference t develop a gap analysis and a tracking matrix has details of a civic action that needs to be taken to address all findings and recommendations they have contracted with a consultant to develop the necessary policies and procedures and they are benchmarking other companies including identifying best practices related to drive storage dva is hired another consultant mckinsey and company to analyze t v culture and to assist in effectively changing the culture that contributed to the kings and asheville beyond these procedural changes are changes that are perhaps more difficult to measure but in my opinion are just as significant changes in personnel changes in the tempo of how quickly things are done and changes in attitudes are evident to us as we track the work of t v a management this all leads me to believe that t v s marching in the right direction as you know we have been perhaps t v s harshest critic in terms of how they handle the coal ash storage and how they handled the crisis after the fa in many ways the kinks in nashville was t v s darkest hour our impression now however is that t v a management is not just reacting to criticism to emerge from a crisis but they are committed to transforming t v a into what we all hope it can be i would like to offer however some historical perspective on t v and crisis i know this is not the first on the t v i has been under the microscope the first time the findings and recommendations for significant change have been made the mccann report aptly points out that in one thousand nine hundred seven in response to t v s nuclear safety issues and sustained regular increases in t v a writes the southern states energy alliance board created an advisory committee which found some of the same problems with t v hundred eighty s as we're finding today the mckenna report also notes that mouth has has issued reports citing process problems at t v that continue to resurface over the years while it is true that none of the attempts to reform t v a focused on culture and risk to the extent that is now been dynamic in the aftermath of the kingston spill it is clear that there are some reoccurring themes in t v history one is that t v has suffered from an insular culture that shuns views outside the valley this defensive and protectionist philosophy has produced a tunnel vision that it's use input that might have aided in changing the very culture that contributed to t v s current was that same culture resisted system wide standards and accountability all of this is based on an underlying philosophy that t v s uniqueness as a hybrid government agency exempted it from adherents to standards and uniform processes my point here this morning is simply this the challenge for v as a culture that is highly resistant to reform the kings and spill demonstrated that in a dramatic way changing a culture takes time the same culture that existed on december twenty second two thousand and eight still exist today it residual effect is likely to be felt for years to come despite all of this i remain optimistic that the current efforts to effect meaningful changes that will be successful for four basic reasons number one the kinds of reforms being implemented  it system wide process changes that have worked well in private sector companies and they have not had those that have not had the system failures c v a has experienced number two t v a management has demonstrated a willingness to solicit input from culture experts outside the valley and they appear to be taking all of this very seriously number three t v a management has recently gone through an extremely robust evaluation of risk that is unparalleled in t v history and finally t v management has made personnel changes that to me provide credible evidence of a commitment to do whatever it takes to get this right ultimately the office of inspector general manager measure the progress that t v makes and we will report the facts as we find them we appreciate the subcommittee's efforts to protect the citizens of the tennessee valley by focusing on these important issues my office will work with this subcommittee to track t v s progress and issue reports that may be helpful to you i look forward to answering any questions that you may have thank you very much mr mabry matter not i'm chairwoman ranking member bozeman and members of the subcommittee thank you very much for the opportunity to testify this morning and thank you for your words in your opening statement i'd like to update you on e p a s actions in response to the coal ash release at the t v a kingston facility and give an overview of the next phase of the cleanup e p a is committed to a cleanup that protect public health and the environment and is consistent with the law and sound science part of our ongoing responsibility is to inform and involve the public and all interested parties in our activities the time critical removal activities are progressing well the objective here is to recover and manage the a emory rever and to minimize the potential for flooding and downstream as by gratian e p a has on site both an on scene coordinator overseeing this effort and a community involvement coordinator to provide information to the public and local officials is transported by rail for disposal at the arrowhead landfill in perry county alabama a subtitled the solid waste facility permitted to receive such waste the landfill was selected by t v a through competitive participated in extensive sampling and monitoring of the air and surface water and drinking water there have been no exceeds of water quality standards for aquatic life in areas of the emory clencher tennessee rivers that are open to the public there were elevated levels in some samples from the emery and clint rivers right after the spill we recently found out that there were two confirmed samples in the clinton river near the power plant which slightly exceed the e p a is arsenic in drinking water standards additional analysis is underway but samples of treated water at me this water treatment plants withdrawn from the tennessee river downstream from the spill have shown no exceeds as of any maximum contaminant levels for drinking water some exceeds of drinking water and aquatic life water quality standards have been detected in the northern and payment the stilling pond and its dreaded plume these every areas are heavily impacted by the spill and are closed to the public downstream data indicates that the public and the environment continue to be protected air monitoring results for particulate matter are below the national ambient air quality standards air monitoring for workers in contact with or close proximity to the ash has shown no exceeding says of established occupational exposure limits we are preparing to move into the next phase of the cleanup to address the residual ash in the river and should release to environments west of die to restoration activities investigation of ecological risk and impact and long term human health impacts e p a uses an engineering evaluation cost analysis known as an eco to evaluate alternatives to do this as required p v a submitted a draft eco work a on august tenth this work plan is that open for public comment because of high public interest in the site and efforts to ensure public participation e p a extended the original thirty day comment period for a total of sixty days for public comment through this december twentieth after consideration of comments on the work plan e p a will produce an eco report describing a range of alternatives to remove ash west of dyke to following comments on the eco report the be able to submit an action memorandum to e p a that responds to public comments and describes the selected response actions dva can implement the response only after e p a approved the action memorandum public involv transparency are very important to us i stress this because the eco raises important choices for the non time critical removal phase options include excavation and of ash and disposal at the  excavation and disposal off site and x good patient and disposal of site of both the spilled ash and some additional i still remaining in the failed landfill each of these options has advantages and drawbacks to help the community understand site activities and provide input on the clean up e p a assisted t v a in the development of its technical assistance plan program that will provide the community advisory group with the technical advisers the technical advisor will help the community interpret technical information and assist the community with commenting on future work plans in closing i want to thank you again for the opportunity to testify and to reiterate to a comprehensive clean up and a long term restoration high school graduation rate is above ninety five percent perry county alabama is to place where in the one nine hundred seventy s had more ph d s per capita than any other county in alabama perry county alabama is to  place where the modern voter rights movement started in one nine hundred sixty five with the night march and the death of generally jackson who was shot at point blank range the right to vote in a demonstration march led by my father albert turns sr perry county alabama is the only county in the nation to whole official counting holidays celebrating the historic election president barack obama perry county alabama now is the first place in the south to construct a state of the art land feel that will be an environmentally safe disposal site for  coal ash the economic development opportunity along with the safe environment management practices put renewed hope back into a once proud county perry county led the way in the one nine hundred sixty s in the field of civil rights in voting rights we have now a pause to lead the way in environmental safe disposal of coal ash the contract between t v a an era hit land deal has provided the candidate with an economic boost unseen sister state of texas skoal when paul has allowed the county to put together a master plan of economic development and infrastructure advances unseen in this rural alabama county candidate now will have a budget of eight million dollars a year to service eleven thousand citizens in plain words we now have a budget that eight thousand eight million dollars a year eleven thousand citizens almost one million dollars per one thousand citizens heard of the perry county commission is set we have parlayed three hundred thousand dollars into a five million dollars water expansion for our residents thanks to both the president and the t v s decision to dispose of this coal ash and perry county now more than ninety six percent of the residents of perry county will have clean fresh drinking water thanks to arrowhead and t v a tonnage pages will provide our school system with more than five hundred thousand dollars over the next year these funds say that a school system for massive layoffs and that could in the vital educational after school programs these funds will keep our school obligations and allow room for economic growth monism allowed us to seek grants now that we have matching funds as required now that perry county is poised to join the ranks of the have shout environmental racism it would be economic racism t v a stop the flow of cash it would be environmental racism with the way the industry prior to areas landfills state of the art facility be allowed to continue to dig a hole in the backyards of african american communities and fill it with water and coal ash there are hundreds of online ash poems around the country that has been in operation for decades these ash ponds did not have the level of controls in place in perry county's area landfill facility however environmentalist have not said a word now that period county stands to make millions of dollars per year on the steel in the river and even more from the remains of ash on site  environmentalist are now concerned about the environment i wonder if the concern is about a once poor economically depressed african american goldman run county joining the ranks of the to this date they have been no mention of the effect of the legacy of puns that exist in alabama across this country this lack of action by environmentalists leads me to believe that all the attention placed on perry canning and this agreement average sours the perry county commission has received more than a half million dollars the county has expanded its water system new home construction has increased and they have been zero for clos thirty six miles a new role has been pay but payments from out to sea it is up and called up and fifteen grant applications have been approved rising from housing to health care to education now the more marion wastewater treatment facility is in line for unnecessary upgrades with money being received from tonnage payments i come to washington today to ask that you implement the procedures that we have  chairman johnson ranking member bozeman thank you in the subcommittee for holding this hearing and providing me the opportunity to testify on behalf stan tech consulting services my name is john and senior principal with farm i'm also a licensed engineer with over twenty two years of experience and eleven fossil plants stand tech proposed for phase approach for this program and the details are provided the written testimony in summary phase one include a record review of available t v a document and site reconnaissance of the facilities at the eleven fossi plants phase two consists of perform egypt expressions and engineering evaluations providing recommendations for initial renovation options and offering general engineering support phase three includes planning assistance for short and long term coal combustion product management performing annual facility inspections the current status of the program is as follows phase one is complete and the final report was submitted to t v a on june twenty fourth two thousand and nine phases two three and four our ongoing phase two activities were until phase two is complete the initial dam safety training for face for has been completed to date over three hundred t v staff and receive training and dam safety inspection reporting during phase one of the program stan tek a dental file the following seven system wide concerns one limited record drawings and construction testing and observations observation records to construction of stocks over ash bonds and the operation fly ash direct sales three tall unsupported where structures for condo and we are abandonment procedures five implementation of maintenance recommendations six limited operation and maintenance manuals and emergency action plans seven limited to technical instrumentation to address these concerns the following actions have been stability criteria significant renovation designs and structure ongoing or completed various other sites that work includes slope regrading rock armoring slope but you're seeing spillway retrofit and replacement seepage collection systems pull reductions and conduit aban five work plans have been developed providing recommendations and plans to improve observed conditions construction associated with thirty one of the work plans has been completed and is in progress for the main fourteen again appreciate this opportunity and look for to answer your questions thank you chairwoman johnson ranking member bozeman and members of the committee i appreciate the opportunity to travel all the way from alabama to share comments with you at this important hearing i also appreciate the previous hearings and oversight related to the coal spill at the t v s kingston fossil plant i recognize that previous meetings were mostly about the spill and subsequent cleanup and i appreciate this here in bringing in more discussion about the disposal in alabama at the arrowhead landfill in perry county i agree with commissioner turn is resulted in a windfall of funds for perry county and a number of local communities however i do not share his enthusiastic opinion of this matter and neither do a large number of people in alabama as my local congressman and i discuss this is another illustration of our ongoing systemic problem of how we structured our rural economies to become so dependent on under desirable markets and unsustainable systems however the fact remains that when i attended a brief meeting in union town in perry county on september the sixteenth i heard a lot of residents of perry county that still had a lot of questions about this disposal and windfall residents say not to have had all their fears and concerns answered to alleviate their anxiety it appeared to me then and every time i talk to someone from there that there are more questions than there are answers and it doesn't seem to be subsiding within the last month a number of residents have come forward with health concerns that did not seem to be present before the disposal began i'm here to bring a number of concerns to your attention that need to be evaluated before this disposal continues any further how can removal of county be performed with such a deliberate containment process to prevent airborne exposure and yet the exact opposite is true in perry county how can individual elements like heavy metals and other toxic substances be listed as hazardous when considered individually yet considered nonhazardous solid waste when contained within coal ash are all regulations pertaining to superfund sites being followed according to circle are the operating permits ground water monitoring parameters adequate to put protect public health and the environment perry county how can the perry county landfill be found in compliance of all applicable state requirements that quote does not currently have any relevant violations when it is just charging leach it to the marion wastewater treatment plant without a required state government and when the plant has been in violation of its impede the permit since august of two thousand and three why is the logical characterization of the landfill site not receive careful scrutiny before millions of tons of hazardous substances were allowed to be added to the landfill particularly in view of the evidence that monitoring wells contained element levels of pollutants why do i operate in permits post closure requirements fail to require at least thirty years of post closure monitoring to protect residents when perry county associates are long gone are solid waste disposal act regulations being in force and is the coal ash waste being quote stored separately from the other material there as reported in mr tom kilgore's written statement on july twenty eighth two thousand and eight two thousand and nine before this very committee are all clean air act regulations being enforced and monitored to protect public health from toxic exposure and why is this not been identified as an environmental justice issue with agent extra agency support to local communities when waste is being collected in a mostly a fluent white roane county and being disposed in a mostly poor african american perry county this action should be labeled the injustice that it is  t v and perry county associates attempted to alleviate all concerns and questions to perry county citizens who continue to suffer through the worst environmental disaster in u s history i would not i would not have serve the citizens of alabama to the best of my ability had i not asked these questions please understand that these comments questions and extensive written statement have been collected in a short period of time and may not reflect the full environmental and public health impacts of this disposal plan however many think there is enough reason for this plan to be further scrutinizing river before allowing the toxic waste to continue to be dumped on the people of perry county alabama i look forward to the good work of this committee to answer these questions alleviating all public health and environmental concerns for citizens of perry county alabama and other citizens across our great state thank you for the opportunity to address this committee and i look forward to your questions thank you very much before we go the questions i want to recognize that distinguished chance thank you madam chair and thank you for your continued follow up and vigilance on this very very important issue our committee has had a great deal of experience with spills and structural failures whether t canyon wreck off the shores of normandy france that led to the first spill liability legislation the exxon valdez in the cleanup that followed it and the need for a major wreaked devastation and now the gas pipeline failures that we've followed up on and now this tragedy our committees very familiar with this type of calamity and the effects it has on the people on the economies and the lives especially the lives and the safety of communities we want to know that e response of t v a to getting their regulatory program back in order their oversight program in order and and creasing their internal vigilance as is necessary  way into the headwaters of one fifth of all the fresh water on the face of the earth blocked the highway wiped out shoreline and dumped this  toxic ash into lake superior we've taken steps and minnesota in the state and with this mining company and its power plant to rectify the problem we want to be sure that t s doing that as well the e p a is following up people's lives are not distressed and disturbed as mr turner has so well said in that environment is being protected churchmen has advocate institutions and agencies are are being responsive t v s much repaired you can go all throughout the rural south and hear people say as i've heard time and again for t v a before the appalachian regional commission the only way up was a bus ticket north much of the south was characterized think as commissioner turner's be sure this is only a temporary failure so mr johnson's vigilance over this issue is the drives from a long standing role of this committee which understand we're also going to stand by you and make sure that u statement madam chair was just i was a couple of things the first is that we completely agree that with the perry county committee as with any community we want to make sure that any landfill that is cited meets all of our technical compliance standards and that the disposal materials conducts safely and so we very much agree with both he and with commissioner turner on that point we are in fact exercising our oversight vigilantly together with our partners in alabama to make sure that that's the other portion have you made a determination as to how frequently you must move this out before it gets to a point of s i'm not sure i understand your question totally but let me try and then you can elaborate we have made a determination that we've got to move faster with getting the processed and also right now the dredging is slightly about one percent behind schedule but it's it's doing well we've got two million cubic yards out of the river we have a million cubic yards of have been ship so that means we've got a million cubic yards that we need to get all sides we're thirteen that's in the northern embodiment it's all in the land it's behind the dock so it's not in jeopardy of moving out into the river so our real goal is to move to get all of this out of the river before the spring is so that the recreation another boat boating users can use the river again how you dealing with that continues to accumulate that lead to moving you know where i'm sorry i missed your quest and we are not running those units except in emergency they have run very little and only in very very cold weather our very very hot weather we've got through all the summer weather running those very little is pretty callback in tennessee yesterday and really we aren't running those units so we put them at the bottom of the dispatch order billion dollars cleaning up kingston we will spend at least that much cleaning up the other sides that haven't failed as testimony mr montgomery indicated we've drilled ten of the eleven sockets we've got shell in a bank that's left  drill we've aggressively withstand direction drilled all of those to find out not only what's down there but what we need to correct and we are already working on all of those dots so if you really think about it we've got kingston that we're cleaning immediate ing the other ponds and we've committed to to close wet ponds and convert those to dry facilities so those are the three major elements that we're doing on our program so you don't anticipate another s chairwoman i am working as hard as i can to make sure this never happens again i do not want to go through this none of us do so we're keeping a close being very intrusive as far as our investigation is we're looking back as barrier of selma chalk which is an ideal ground for land feel and we've had no problems e p a and t v as long as well as a has been very vigilant and they are testing and and nobody is the one word because those counties wouldn't get any money those counties wouldn't make any progress now that our callen has good money making progress here they come running talking about how bad it is what it was forty years the negative impacts the toxicity of such a product and its its need to be addressed in a certain way that we feel is potentially not being taken care of at this time thank you  entails the same reason i missed the question most regional offices take in more than one state that was one of them it was within the same region yes both tennessee and alabama are both located within region four yes have you gotten any complaints i've been checked to see about the safety of this story yes we have we've sent staff out a number of occasions most recently last wednesday to go look and make sure that operations are proceeding as they should be as well as we have oversight conducted by the alabama department of environmental management which has the regulatory authority over the landfill and we believe that the operations that well first of all we did not would not have approved the disposal of the ash in the in the landfill itself unless we were satisfied that the landfill itself was constructed with appropriate technical standards and the landfill was sited in perry county and the siting decision is not e p a s with any jurisdiction but it was cited in perry county prior to the spill so it was not built for created for the spill itself but we made sure that it was constructed appropriately with the clay liner with the g s and that a membrane will each a collection with financial responsibility all the kind of thing he would want to make sure that if the arabs disposed there it was properly disposed of the management of it the information that we have suggests there been no existence is very quality standards for monitoring conducted and phil and the disposal operations have been proceeding there you've seen this location does it appear that it has no limit as to how much the less it can accommodate the landfill as it stands now does have additional capacity i don't remember off the top of my head just exactly what the full capacity of the landfill is but there is additional capacity beyond what will be used to dispose of the material being transported as part of the time critical removal there's been no decision made about about offsite transport of material beyond the time critical removal ask a lot of coal ash and at maybe a little different when i go again but i am concerned about the safety of the storage is it located near where their residence this is the land you're talking about the landfill now and not the kingston plant the landfill where it's going there are some residences there within a few hundred yards  saudi it's largely out in a predominately rural area but there are some residences there within a few hundred yards there's a one hundred yard buffer around the landfill itself where there are no residences but there are some down the road from there yes and again mr turner can speak to th alabama legislature session comes in and january there will be a bill put forth in the alabama legislature that will codify the disposal in alabama of coal ash in the time period that we've discussed about coal ash come we've had one female who has come to the commission meeting in she didn't complain to us about receiving the new york new jersey you know this is this is a economic venture that we look to profit from not only are we not profiting just on the coal as being disposed to property tax that every time a bill of sale increases our property the property taxes they pay and it's just been a positive when fall and i see no need to get declassified and change the classification i hear people talking about it t on top of it it has a system that sucks away the water and you know they got this guy around now time or he's going to sue for that leak jake but the new levels at that facility that he talked about had been what is your goal do you have any other land deals are you plan on bailing out city of land fields or what is your goal well our goal is to move our county where right now before we go in and into this we had zero community centers now we have three on the way being built what i don't mean i don't mean that aspect of it i'm talking about collecting this waste our goal is to feel the landfill with this much waste is it can hold because it's did most of our milk is safe way to dispose of it i don't think we should be my concern is that what the e p a is going to do possibly classifying coal ash and other coal combustion by products as as hazardous and that's a that's a big concern because you not only do you have the land you know we don't have enough landfills if it all the sudden becomes a hazardous material but the way you're storing it seems seems to work and i know pennsylvania where i'm from has had almost thirty years of oversight monitoring of  percent of the coal ash produced the united states goes into recycling products in a positive way from mine reclamation projects to the wallboard and also to transportation construction so and i know there's a lot of after a lot of you are trying to propose a rule on the future management of coal combust residuals by the end of the year and beyond that i really can't say a whole lot about the rule itself i will just simply note that e p a is very aware of the potential for benefi appropriate beneficial use of some of these materials and that's something that there's been a lot of a lot of concern to the folks in headquarters who've been tried to to to design the rule and hopefully they'll be more information on that forthcoming as a proposal and a robust opportunity for public comment and i would hope so because a view it is a potential outcome is saying coal ash that's being stored is hazardous but coal last it's being recycled is not hazardous and i don't understand how that works you've got two trucks that roll out of the out of a plant one goes to be recycled the other goes to be put in a put in a landfill the economics of that i did there's no logic first of all to it and then the economics of it start to become staggering and then me as a producer of wallboard let's say i decide not to use coal ash and my competitor is using it well then i'll just run an ad campaign so he's using that hazardous products i'll destroy his business so again it's it's frightening to think that that we come up with that kind of illogical ruling and as i said i think that the proof of the proofs out there that it can be used in a safe and stored in a safe way that again  transportation projects you know my concern there but if you're going to you're going to not be able to use that that becomes an increasing raw materials and on the transportation projects do you have any any view on that is there any difference in your disaster occurred down at the t v and oversight was labs had lapsed and we need to make sure we're making changes but i think to to say that we're going to take a product been positively used in a positive is stored for frame this material beings tonight fight there is being collected out of the river being transferred for disposal is being transported and supposin or property away this is one of those cases where the material is a high volume low concentration of some of the toxic chemicals  concern and you want to make sure in doing that that's handled appropriately beyond the situation in kingston there is a constant use or just said a rule making about the future manager of this material which will be coming out very soon as far as a national rule making i should ponds that are there they don't have berms around them but they have call i showed them and they are some of the electric electric companies want to top those off with with clay instead of having to move it out because of the expense do you think that going out the bottom mr turner referred to the settlement there are different impermeable permeability is under these so if we're monitoring it correctly then i think yes we should be able to submit a plan to close these out with proper monitoring kept all so that you keep the water off the top and therefore they're allowed to just exist to me that's probably safer than trying to move this stuff again but for all the new stuff we will be able to go to law and land sales we're going we are going to drop collections so that keeps the water out of it to start with ok and then have a question for mr churchman you said is it correct that the well it's a two part question is the that the operating permit for the arrowhead landfill issue but state of alabama allows use of coal ash as an alternative daily covers that correct that is something that i do believe that i remember saying that that contradiction that originally it was going to be segregated as a separate material but now it's being left as an open down so why would they allow i guess i don't know the answer that question i could look look further into it someone or is that correct that they're covering the call ash with coal ash at the landfill do you know and if they are why would they do that i mean it would seem to me you'd want to cover it with something other than coal which maybe was invited all ya'll come come on down the alabama and see this thing i might i might do that heard you had a pretty good football team by the way we do let me let me just ask you this if you could for the committee because i'm just preach your you know fighting for your county and bad economic times you know it's nice to see people that actually are going back to work and building things so thank you man thank you madam chair thank you very much ms development thank you madam chair mr turner you don't talk about the alabama football team too much because the chair lady is a texan we've we've had extensive testimony you know several several maintenance recommendations i guess what i'd like to know is what the role of the of the t v i g was in that and if you've had some internal assessments you know what's been the role again not i'm go back in time but our role currently is to have our engineers as i mentioned earlier marshall miller do appear a view of the work that stand has been doing and they have been doing is you know excavation wor do our audit and inspections we have one hundred people in our office the v a has about twelve thirteen thousand people we try to look around the curve to sometimes we get that right sometimes we don't as you may know there was an opportunity for t v to spend twenty five million dollars to correct this problem years ago i'm not sure if our office made that recommendation back then but it would have been followed  marburg the this has been a terrible tragedy it has been also somewhat of an experiment in the toxicity of the of the coal ash in the sense you know you've had the sure manda spill and then i guess the measuring that we're doing right now is probably like and no another another in the sense of testing and finding out the hazardous it appears that  again i won't put words in your mouth but it appears that the toxicity surrounding has not been that great is that a fair statement well we have been pleased that the results downstream from the spill have not showed exceeds and that's important thing we could do is to get the body of the main body them tiriel out of the river because the longer it sits there the more opportunity you have for something to happen that you don't want to and so from our standpoint that's justified we have been pleased that you have a couple of the it's obvious in mr turner's testimony you know he's concerned about funding as community and things like that i guess it helps us to learn about who funds different areas can you tell us about your funding where you get you are a guest in an environmental advocacy group can you tell us maybe your top two or three funding streams i would say that we company donations one local municipality for helping with recycling efforts and different things like that i can provide you with with more specific information if you'd like to hear more you or your auntie color  know we are interested in an environmentally sustainable efficient or noble uses for you so far as coal fired plants do you feel like we need to get rid of those or not or whether think that there are a number of detrimental impacts to the full life cycle of coal and i think that this is an illustration of one of those and so i would say that i'm very enthusiastic about moving forward towards a cleaner energy system in nuclear there's a lot of different options and i think are you any new water also not necessarily anti nuclear i would say that there are a lot of options that are going to have to be implemented that are going to have to be looked at me let me just and being disposed in a mostly poor african american perry county this action should be labeled for what it is i don't really understand in the sense that for years and years the waste was deposited in roane county unlined i mean just dumped there and then all of a you know we have this environmental action and so then we have to find a place to put it the mayor is begging for it and you're implying that there's some sort of rushnell thing in that regard that makes no sense to me at all i would say that first of all we i think that there's a lot of concerns about call last to begin with the chief agree that this was stored on line and would still be story there right now if it hadn't been for the incident that occurred and as i would mention out i would agree that i don't i don't think that that's the proper way to store it i don't think that we need to  what roane county that's that's not that's not what you're saying the implication there is something totally different and so again i resent that i think it that you're trying to just read things that are very inappropriate to be dredged up to make your point i would say after attending the hearing that there are a number of people that feel like this is that people were taken advantage of by going into this community that doesn't always have enough people to speak up for for this this issue that has has gone on even though like i say it was stored in a in a fluid roane county and would still be stored there if it hadn't been for same group that wants to settle and go away if we could somehow put them financially i've gotten some calls where yeah well you know help us vile acidly we'll go be handled in a very positive proactive way i think it sets the stage and sets the bar very very high because we're going to have these accidents periodically in america based on our history of manufacturing and economic development and all over the geography of the united states we have potential kingston's that might occur and i think this sets the stage for how we might handle them and how we might prevent  might say that the as a state senator in alabama we were very much aware of the landfill that's the state of the art fifty eight million dollar landfill that takes the waste from all states east of the mississippi and all states lined by the mississippi  river the the dumping in the landfill is monitored by g p s it's mapped it is a state of the art facilities so if you have in your head that there's a big there's a big levy somewhere in those trucks or back it up and dump response they have been frank they have been honest they have never denied that that was a tragedy they have never denied that it was something to correct and they have never denied that they wanted to prevent this in the future it's a refreshing response i might say that i was a boy scout as well i am a board certified radiation oncologist very concerned with heavy metal on the cell biologist physicist i have been monitoring this very very carefully and so i'm very very tuned in to what may be situations that may cause malignant disease i was interested in your bio however on twitter my bio is on the tree huggin dirt worship and water eleven climate protect in food so you a you may you may bring a little blast here i'm not sure it's just just my opinion on that as i think everybody on the committee probably would also bring their own biases as well but i think it's good to have i think it's good to have the differences of opinion the madam chair has has encouraged it and we're going to live in a part of the transitioning into sensitivity to the environment so we appreciate you but we also appreciate the corporate response and i think our environmental groups need to understand that there are some very very good and sensitive people running our companies in america today and they're not looking for a shortcut thank you madam chair mr turner commissioner turner is this a profit is the main own this landfill is a privately owned and no this is a privately owned land feel that determined because i'm sure there are other sites closer that would have maybe enjoyed some of this revenue benefit from this we did our requests for beds and we got big packages and  but you said closer there were not other method facilities closer than the perry county we had one in georgia and one in alabama that wound up being the finalist for this and we selected the perry county after an investigation to look at their to was it just a straight bad situation is the reason that period about what got it i don't know the exact answer on that but it was not just cost it was quality and the permitting and so we did a bit evaluation and i do know that cost wasn't the only thing they're ok could you just let me know what those qualifications may have been and mr kilgore one other thing are you doing the same bidding  removal of the as far as who's actually removing the ash from the site we do have a contractor there and dva personnel are working on that there's only one ask you the same question what did the e p a what kind of input did did you have into it as far as what type of site this would go to we had to look at it from the standpoint primarily of the technical side that was a landfill and appropriately constructed landfill that had the requisite liners and leach a collection of financial responsibility and good compliance record so those are the main criteria that we applied so did you i mean i will i will add one other thing which is that one of the critical criteria turned out to be and i think this is very much in t v s consideration as well was the access to rail transport because the alternative that that would have been a tremendous amount of truck traffic in eastern tennessee would have that all kind of environmental  adverse environmental impacts of the rail access was very important sure and i can appreciate that but what i'm asking i guess is to e p a did have some input into what the requests for bed would have been as far as what that facility would have has looked at this as far as being classified as a hazardous waste and and just for the record a p a feels very comfortable that this can be disposed of and a suitable  specified solid waste landfill environment e p a is very comfortable with where this particular material is going the stuff that had to be in compliance with the laws in place for handling the material and this material hearings that i've attended on the on this issue i want to just clarify for the record mr churchman your organization the environ the alabama environmental council have you as the executive director any members of your board contacted mr turner or any legislator in perry county asking for a deal to be cut and then you would go away no ma'am thank you very much and you're a nonprofit organization and you're not required by law to disclos donors because you have a first amendment right to freedom of association and said to the extent that you disclose those you're doing that voluntarily isn't that correct that's correct thank you very much mr turner mr kilgore let me just turn and turn to you because in late november there was a high hazard coal ash dam in west virginia that was discovered by the west virginia department of environmental protection to be in a condition that was similar to the kingston pond that failed and had been giving and given an unsatisfactory rating by the agency and in order to investigate it appears now that the failure in kingston may not be the result of totally rare circumstances do you agree that we may find additional dams that have the potential to fail similarly  i'm not totally familiar with that particular house and i've been following all the other ones that have made the news recently and obviously there's a lot of a lot more attention so we've looked at ours and i would say yes as a simple answered your question thank you and i would appreciate very much i mean i looked at the questions that were outlined in mr churchman testimony which he risk bonded to they were his own questions i found them very thoughtful and interesting and i would appreciate a response from the rock on the record from you mr kilgore as to each one of those eleven questions and i think the chairwoman will probably hold the record open for some period of time that would allow you to get those responses into the and to the subcommittee thank you i wonder mr mayberg in your testimony you note that the e p a region four has a quote exceptional working relationship with the state of tennessee and i would just note that the state has one hundred forty seven major sources with clean water permits and of these one hundred ten or it's seventy five percent of them are in significant noncompliance in two thousand and eight according to t v s own numbers that's a sizable portion of tennessee's facilities that are on e p a s enforcement watch list and so i wonder if you could just tell the subcommittee how region for can have such an exceptional relationship when so many major facilities are polluting the waters in a sizable number have not had any enforcement action taken against them and wonder well what it is about that exceptional relationship that might in fact get in the way of being able to do its its job properly in terms of oversight and enforcement a couple of points on that one is that the reference in the testimony of course is to our relationship with respect to the management of the incident  do exercise an oversight responsibility which we take very seriously with respect to the state of tennessee on all aspects of their operation delegated environmental programs the issue you mentioned has been an issue across the country and the ministry has been very clear that e p a is going list there are at least three different kind of things there are some that are sure not violations that we need to be continuing to work on there are some that result from errors and data transfer between e p a in the state of tennessee which we very much need to do and there are some that while they're all violations are of concern to us there are some that are less significant than others that may be simply some data record keeping and so we do exercise review with tennessee as with all the states in our region to make sure that we are in fact seeing compliance with the environmental laws of the united states thank you and i do appreciate the turner i understand that your concerns about moving forward economic development i am an environmentalist myself and so i'm going to confess to that but i happen to believe that it is important to try to balance environmental concerns in particular environmental justice concerns with positive after economic development i don't think any community however it situated should have to sacrifice a clean water and clean air because it wants economic development and so i would i would hope that you're able to reach out fully to your community i'd encourage you to get a citizen community advisory group in perry county stablished in the same way that one was established in roane county that's sending its coal ash to you and would encourage the t v a in fact to invest in the same relationship in perry county that it invested in in roane county i wonder commissioner turner how many public hearings or what kind of oversight do you say that they've been sick because i learned feel we just got there in june and you know they act like it's been there for one hundred years what's your plan though that's in place to monitor the health and well very canny we give every citizen in our county an opportunity for one hour every two weeks to come for the full commission and address any concerns we have every quarter chorley means at night doing everything we can and we did before they came here and we had gone and now we're not going to our make it seem like we are sacrificing our citizens i wouldn't do that sacrifice asked for by saying to the chairwoman we might want to explore more directly how it is that the perry county community can monitor monitor effectively the health and wellbeing of its citizens so that we don't come before this committee a year from now two years from now and find in fact that we're seeing some of the same concerns that are raised in roane county around the health and well being a medical condition of the citizens of roane county and i wouldn't want that to happen to perry county as a recipient recipient community and i don't and i think a plan needs to be in place early on to do that monitoring so that we have some idea of what's happened to this happening to the citizenry and i i apologize for that we do have a committee already set up committed that's already set up that meets a quarterly basis a five member committee made up of citizens from each one of the commission districts that me i did have some people come by my office and ask if it was possible to get some of this for making highway materials i didn't know but i did yes thank you very much in follow up mr my bargain is that one of the considerations of my understanding is that a significant percentage of this stuff is going into in the rows and into various whatever it is declared a hazardous waste we not have more of this this type of problem and having to come up with landfills and then all of the related possibly leeching you know in that regard as opposed to what so far as being damaged it had to be to the best of my knowledge a very safe you know where once it is part of the road or whatever we really don't have the problem of it leeching into this and that that's goes and i know this speaks again to the prospective role with respect to the future baggage of coal combustion residuals and what i probably can say is that e p a is very aware of the beneficial use aspect of the fact the coal ash and i can assure you that that is a consideration they'll be considerable