Gallatin water tests don't detect harmful chemical

Josh Cross | USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

Independent testing of raw water taken by the Gallatin Water Treatment Plant from the Cumberland River and of drinking water treated at the facility has found no detectable levels of the harmful chemical hexavalent chromium.

Gallatin Public Utilities received the results of the water samples, taken Nov. 30, on Monday.

The testing comes one month after the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a motion in federal court on behalf of two other environmental groups citing testing that found the chemical in two private water wells near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Gallatin Fossil Plant and in the Cumberland River near the Gallatin Water Treatment Plant.

“There were no detectable levels of it in our water or our raw water, which is coming from the lake,” Gallatin Public Utilities Superintendent David Gregory told city leaders Tuesday.

TVA has operated the Gallatin power plant, the closest coal-fired power plant to Nashville, for nearly 60 years. The plant burns about 4 million tons of coal a year and produces enough electricity to power the equivalent of 300,000 homes. But burning that coal produces about 235,000 tons a year of coal ash waste, which contains arsenic, selenium, mercury and other pollutants that are all harmful to people and wildlife when found in high concentrations.

Environmental groups have long raised concerns about the power plant and how TVA stores its coal ash waste, and the agency now faces legal action in state and federal court over the issue.

TVA officials addressed water quality along with air pollution controls and new coal ash storage projects at the power plant during an environmental stewardship meeting Thursday.

While the two Odoms Bend Road wells met the overall national U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, the levels of hexavalent chromium were found to be “slightly above” the EPA risk levels, according to a Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation letter sent to the residences in early October.

Michael Clemmons, a TVA project manager, said TVA and state regulators have since conducted more testing of the residential wells and are awaiting the results.

“Needless to say, we’re very interested in finding out what is going on,” Clemmons said Thursday. “We’re going to be doing some really intense investigations on what is happening out there.”

John Kammeyer, vice president for projects for TVA, said that officials are in the process of trying to determine whether water in the area flows from the fossil plant to the homes.

“The burden is always on us to prove that we are being good neighbors and being safe and to correct anything that is wrong,” Kammeyer said. “We’re committed to that.”

Rarely found naturally, hexavalent chromium is typically the result of an industrial process and can be found in coal ash. It has been found to cause cancer in lab animals when they drink it in water and cause lung cancer when inhaled, according to the National Institutes of Health and the EPA.

The Southern Environmental Law Center in April filed a federal lawsuit against TVA, alleging violations of the federal Clean Water Act.

TVA spokesman Scott Brooks declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday. TVA has previously stated that tests have shown the health of the Cumberland River above and below the plant is not impacted by TVA operations.

TVA is in the process of spending $1.2 billion to reduce air pollution at the plant and will begin storing coal ash in a dry form, a far safer way to handle the material. The first 19-acre cell of a new 52.4-acre lined landfill for the ash storage is expected to be complete by April 2016.

Once complete, the upgrades are expected to reduce nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury and particulate emissions between 90 percent and 99 percent.

To answer further questions about upgrades to the Gallatin Fossil Plant as well as environmental stewardship efforts at the facility, TVA has launched a new website, www.tva.gov/gallatinenvironmentalstewardship, with additional details.

“We want to be a good neighbor,” Kammeyer said. “We want to be a good long-term neighbor, and we want to make sure that our footprint is as small as we can make it.”

Reach Josh Cross at 615-575-7115 and on Twitter @joshcross.