Safety manager in Kingston coal ash spill cleanup admits workers denied respirators, masks

Tom Bock, the man tapped by TVA to keep workers cleaning up the nation’s largest coal ash spill safe, wasn’t about to give one of those laborers a respirator — even if a doctor said it was needed to protect their health.

“I’m not a pharmacist, and Jacobs (Engineering) isn’t a pharmacy, and I don’t think TVA is either, so I don’t think they really care whether somebody has a prescription or not,” Bock said in a sworn deposition obtained by USA TODAY NETWORK —Tennessee.

Bock, a Knoxville resident, was tasked by Jacobs Engineering to serve as safety manager for the firm as it oversaw the $1 billion cleanup of the 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash that spilled out of a dike at the TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County in December 2008.

He said TVA, which hired Jacobs, asked him to be the agency’s safety manager, too, as the years-long cleanup progressed.

Bock is accused in a lawsuit of denying workers protective gear such as dust masks and respirators and lying to them about the dangers of wet coal ash and dry fly ash. Two years after the cleanup ended, at least 24 workers are dead. Dozens more are dying.

More than 50 of the dying and survivors of the dead are suing Jacobs Engineering. They can’t sue TVA because that agency — with EPA approval — put Jacobs in charge of the clean up.

Report: Arsenic levels high in Kingston fly ash

Bock says he didn’t know if fly ash was dangerous when he went to work at the site in 2009.

“We didn’t necessarily bring the expertise to the table about fly ash,” he said in his deposition.

Bock did not return a phone message left with his current employer, Strata-G.

The Tennessee Department of Energy and Conservation said samples of wet and dry fly ash taken from the cleanup site proved it was dangerous.

“The ash does contain metals and radioactive material,” an agency report filed in 2009 stated.

The report said fly ash was particularly dangerous because all those toxic chemicals and metals in the wet stuff became concentrated in small particles that lodged in the lungs when the ash dried. That mirrors an EPA report made public two years earlier.

Samples of fly ash taken from the site — where laborers toiled without protective breathing gear — showed levels of arsenic more than 36 times higher than nearby dirt.

TDEC opined an occasional “accidental” exposure to the fly ash wouldn’t cause immediate harm, but it said nothing about prolonged exposure — such as that experienced by workers. TDEC warned citizens to stay away from the ash and wash — thoroughly — if exposed to it.

TDEC wasn’t tasked with warning workers.

The EPA won’t say whether worker safety fell on its shoulders. The EPA seized control of the site, designating it a so-called superfund disaster, but ceded authority to TVA. Part of the terms of the EPA-approved cleanup safety plan included the rights of workers to wear masks or respirators.

Jacobs, TVA at odds over responsibility

But Bock said in his deposition that provision didn’t mean what it said on paper. He admitted workers complained of breathing problems and began asking for masks and respirators — at least 25 of them as he recalled. But he said workers who wanted to wear protective breathing gear needed to prove the fly ash was hurting them.

“(If)I had 25 people tell me they just got back from the moon, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to believe them because all of those people told me that,” he said. “And so I have to have some evidence, some results, some science to back that up.”

He contends in his deposition it was TVA that nixed protective gear. His sworn testimony mirrors that of Gary McDonald, a TVA supervisor over the spill.

McDonald has said in a deposition he refused to give a worker a respirator even though the worker had a prescription for one and told the worker he had “no job” for him if he needed one.

Bock said TVA talked to complaining workers and had them evaluated. None of the other TVA supervisors who testified in depositions recalled that, though. Most said they didn’t even know workers were complaining or asking for gear.

Bock said TVA relied upon readings from fly ash monitors at the site to determine if it was dangerous enough to merit a respirator or mask. But a USA TODAY NETWORK -Tennessee story revealed secret video footage of fly ash being dumped from those monitors before they were packaged for testing.

TVA stays silent

TVA won’t talk about it — the workers, the conditions, the allegations or even the words of its own supervisors captured in depositions. Spokesman Scott Brooks cited the lawsuits as cause for the agency’s silence. TVA is not being sued, though. Jacobs is.

TVA Inspector General Richard W. Moore headed up a probe of the spill soon after it happened. His report, issued in 2009, lambasted TVA not only for causing the spill but “spinning” the public in the aftermath and minimizing the risk of coal ash exposure.

Moore, who has been tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as a U.S. Attorney in Alabama, remains inspector general for now. Asked whether he would or has launched a review of TVA’s role in protecting workers, his office demurred.

“In order to safeguard the outcome of any potential investigation, our office can neither confirm nor deny if one exists,” an email stated.

Roane County’s top prosecutor, Russell Johnson, wants a criminal probe by the TBI and the federal government. He said he’s still researching his authority to initiate one. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has declined to comment.

Mayor unconvinced of workers' stories

TVA paid Roane County more than $40 million for lost “economic development” as a result of the spill. Roane County Mayor Ron Woody said in an interview the workers aren’t his concern. He said he’s not sure if they’re telling the truth or even if coal ash is dangerous.

Asked if he would “eat a pound a day” of coal ash — a claim Bock is captured in a recording making to workers as something they could safely — Woody responded, “I wouldn’t eat a pound of hot dogs either. I wouldn’t eat a pound of anything. We’re all exposed to chemicals every day.”

But he does want to assure the public the soccer fields and other recreational areas TVA donated to the Swan Pond Community as payback for the spill is free of coal ash.

“There’s nothing there,” he said. “I’m not sure there was anything there. If you overlay photographs, I don’t think the coal ash got that high.”

Four workers who toiled directly in building up the soccer fields told USA TODAY NETWORK -Tennessee there was ash on some of that land, but they dug out most of it before covering it with truckloads of “clean” dirt.

Unlike Woody, TVA’s Brooks did not assert there was never ash on that land. Instead, he said whatever was there was removed.

“Any ash that was on the areas now being turned into recreation spaces by the county was REMOVED and returned to the failed cell,” he said.