{"id":4207,"date":"2018-11-08T16:48:59","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T21:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=4207"},"modified":"2019-01-16T20:36:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T01:36:55","slug":"coal-ash-doing-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2018\/11\/08\/coal-ash-doing-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Doing Their Job — And Now They’re Dying For It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dying
Angela Gosnell\/News Sentinel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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This is one of those horrific stories that you think must have come out of the 19th century or early 20th century.<\/p>\n

Just before Christmas in 2008, a dike at the Tennessee Valley Authority\u00a0Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, gave way, carrying away houses and smothering 300 acres of land under a billion gallons of coal ash slurry, a by-product of coal combustion to produce electricity. It was the nation’s worst coal ash spill.<\/p>\n

Construction workers from East Tennessee and across the nation responded, but without\u00a0any protection or training, despite the fact that coal ash contains “a concentrated stew of toxins, including arsenic, radioactive material, mercury and lead.”<\/p>\n

Today, “more than 30 workers who cleaned up the December 2008 spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority\u00a0Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County are dead, and more than 250 are sick or dying.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

This tragedy wasn’t an oversight on Jacobs’ part, nor a failure of workers to follow the rules, according to Knoxville News Sentinal’s Jamie Satterfield<\/a> and an investigation by USA TODAY Network-Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Testimony showed Jacobs began watering down both safety testing procedures and worker safety rules as soon as the EPA allowed the TVA to put the firm \u2013 which has a long history of worker safety lawsuits and even criminal charges \u2013 in charge of the Kingston site.<\/p>\n

The workers were \u2013 falsely \u2013 assured coal ash exposure was safe<\/strong> and were misled about its dangers, testimony showed. As many grew sick while working more than 60 hours weekly unprotected, Jacobs\u2019 safety managers, including Tom Bock and Chris Eich, continued to insist coal ash exposure was not the cause.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Testimony showed Bock ordered dust masks kept on site for the workers destroyed<\/strong> and refused to provide them any protective gear<\/strong>. Jacobs refused an EPA directive to provide the workers showers and changing rooms<\/strong> and instead provided them a cat litter box filled with ash-contaminated water to clean up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jacobs also was accused in the case of manipulating exposure level testing<\/strong> \u2013 watering down monitors and sampling on rainy days that dampened the level of coal ash dust in the air \u2013 and tampering with test samples<\/strong> \u2013 dumping ash from the monitor filters before sending them off to a laboratory.<\/p>\n

No one in authority at the clean-up site \u2013 including TVA and Jacobs safety managers \u2013 had any training in the dangers of coal ash or how to protect workers<\/strong> from it. [emphasis added]<\/strong><\/p>\n

“These were just blue collar workers who showed up for work and they trusted what they were told and they did their jobs, and now they are dying for it.”\u00a0<\/em> – Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News Sentinel<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After they started getting sick, workers took videos of mishandling of test samples by Jacobs technicians and supervisors telling workers the reason they couldn’t breathe was pollen in the air.<\/p>\n