Kingston coal ash spill worker: 'They told us we would be fired if we wore a mask' — and he was

Jamie Satterfield | Knoxville

Show Caption Hide Caption Lawsuit reveals coal ash workers treated as 'expendables' More than 50 coal ash spill cleanup workers and workers' survivors are suiing Jacobs Engineering for unsafe working conditions that they allege lead to sickness and death at the cleanup site.

When Kevin Thompson showed up for work cleaning up the nation’s largest coal ash spill, he underwent a drug test but no training, he told jurors Thursday.

“We did a drug test, filled out (paperwork) and were told where to report,” he said.

Attorney Jim Scott asked the Sweetwater native, “Did anyone go over the safety of fly ash with you?”

“No,” he responded.

Undercover video shows air quality monitors manipulated On separate occasions, workers secretly filmed Jacobs Engineering staffers cleaning coal ash out of monitor filters before packaging them to be sent for testing.

Healthy at first

Thompson, 38, was a healthy 30-year-old married father when he started work cleaning up the December 2008 massive coal ash spill at the TVA Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County.

Complete Coverage: TVA Coal Ash Spill

Months after working “10 to 16 hours a day, six to seven days a week,” inside heavy equipment with layers of coal ash in the cab, Thompson said he started having chest pains and breathing problems.

He knew better, though, than to ask Jacobs Engineering safety manager Tom Bock for a dust mask or respirator, he said.

“They told us we would be fired if we wore a mask,” Thompson told jurors in U.S. District Court.

But Thompson kept getting sicker.

“My breathing was so bad I needed it for protection,” he said. “I went to my doctor, and they prescribed me a dust mask.”

Thompson took it to Bock. A few days later, he told jurors, he was fired – after flunking a “test” to see if he was physically fit enough to wear a dust mask, the type used routinely by workers in the concrete industry.

Thompson didn’t find out how dangerous exposure to coal ash – laden with arsenic, radium, barium, silica, lead, mercury and other toxins – was until he found a new job, he testified Thursday.

This one was at TVA’s Bull Run Fossil Plant. There, he said, he finally got protection – and the truth – about coal ash.

“They told us if we wanted a dust mask or a respirator, one would be provided for us,” Thompson said. “They told us the ash could kill us.”

Thompson is among the hundreds of blue-collar laborers now suing Jacobs Engineering, the government contractor the EPA allowed TVA to put in charge of the clean up and worker safety.

In nine years since the spill, more than 30 of those workers, including many from East Tennessee, are dead and more than 250 are sick or dying.

The workers allege Jacobs Engineering was more concerned about earning bonuses for quick, injury-free work, and TVA more concerned about public image than protecting them.

Jacobs Engineering managers, including Bock, are accused of denying workers protective gear, threatening to fire them if they persisted, lying about the dangers of exposure to coal ash and tampering with testing designed to ensure the workers and Roane County was safe.

COAL ASH SPILL: USA Today Network-Tennessee investigation

From the archives: The effects of the TVA coal ash spill From the archives: An estimated 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge burst from a failed retention pond at a TVA Kingston fossil plant near Harriman, Tenn. in the early morning of Dec. 22, 2008.

Jacobs banned in China

Jacobs’ China division last year was banned by the government in Hong Kong from any work there after 21 of its employees were accused of tampering with test results on construction materials used in a bridge project there. The firm, based in California, has a history of worker safety lawsuits and settlements.

The firm is fighting the laborers’ claims this week in Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan’s courtroom in what is the first phase of a toxic tort lawsuit filed by the sickened Kingston clean-up workers.

Lead attorney Jim Sanders, a celebrated corporate defense lawyer, has outlined a two-prong defense: The laborers are lying and, even if they’re not, Jacobs owed them no protection or care. Sanders has repeatedly questioned laborers about whether they were, in fact, responsible for their own safety.

Jacobs is using the results of testing – which a separate USA Today Network-Tennessee investigation showed was suspect and some of it deemed by the EPA to be unreliable – to fend off the workers’ allegations. That testing, Sanders has told jurors, showed safe exposure levels.

But Thompson and other workers testified this week they saw Bock and other Jacobs staffers “bang” coal ash from personal air monitors before testing and tossing out some of them entirely. Thompson said he was ordered to wash down stationary monitors set up specifically to protect workers and the Roane County community.

“I was told to drive to the stationary (monitors) when (exposure limits) got too high,” he said. “They would have us … spray the monitors or sit there all day and spray water straight up into the air. We washed fly ash off the trees so nobody (from the public) would see it … They didn’t want anybody seeing it outside those who worked there because they didn’t want the job shut down.”

Other workers, including East Tennessean Danny Gouge, and Thompson’s father have offered similar testimony this week of being ordered to water down the monitors.

The USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee investigation revealed secretly-recorded video of Jacobs staffers dumping ash from the cartridges of the stationary monitors before sending them for testing. Two scientists assigned to handle packaging of ash samples at the Kingston clean-up site told the news organization both the watering down of the monitors and the removal of ash from the cartridges would have lowered the results under the exposure limit testing methodology employed.

What is coal ash? Coal ash is produced primarily from the burning of coal in coal-fired power plants.

Trial continues Friday

The trial continues Friday. It is expected to span at least three weeks.

The workers first must prove coal ash exposure could cause their illnesses and diseases, which range from blood diseases to cancers to heart and lung ailments, and that Jacobs was responsible for their safety.

If they prevail in this trial, they then will get a chance – in front of entirely new jury – to detail their sicknesses and seek damages for treatment. The laborers are paying their own medical and legal bills.

TVA has a contract with Jacobs to cover its legal expenses under certain circumstances. TVA won’t say if they’re footing the bill. Ratepayers paid Jacobs more than $27.7 million for the clean-up work.

TVA COAL ASH SPILL: Sickened Kingston workers testify safety manager tampered with testing

TVA COAL ASH SPILL: Witness says Jacobs Engineering more worried about 'public perception' than safety

TVA COAL ASH SPILL: Contractor accused of lying under oath and to workers in Kingston coal ash spill