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Right now, first responders & cleanup workers from the nation's largest industrial disaster are gathering in their cars and driving out to the 2008 Kingston spill site. Here, Ansol Clark, a former truck driver now severely ill with a rare blood disease, built an 8-ft white cross
Below it are two American flags, faux buttercups, and a granite rock with pennies on it. Those pennies symbolize the lives of the workers. Ansol’s wife Janie told me she chose one-cent coins because the lives of the workers “were not worth one penny to corporate America.”
I first wrote about the Clark's in 2019 for @Sierra_Magazine. Back then, over 40 workers had died and over 400 were ill and injured. Today, it’s 51. In 2018, a Knoxville jury ruled their illnesses could be related to their long-term coal ash exposure. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/remembering-kingston
But workers still haven’t seen any medical assistance, financial compensation, or emotional relief from TVA, who told community members it would pay medical expenses for all those affected during a 2009 public meeting https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/12/10/kingston-coal-ash-spill-workers-medical-expenses-tva/2198306002/
Many are underinsured or completely uninsured. In 2019, they asked TVA’s board of directors to create a health insurance program much like that created for 9/11 first responders. A year and a respiratory pandemic later, still crickets @guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/17/coal-spill-workers-sick-dying-tva
This lack of action has led to deaths. My main source for the above story died a week prior to publication. I sat w/ him on his porch 4 months earlier. He loved hard work, movies, British Whyte Park cattle, his country home, the green hills surrounding it (told w/ @econhardship)
Most of all he loved his wife. They met when they were teenagers. She often posts photos of his military gravesite. She visited on Dec. 4, their anniversary, and left a bouquet of roses, daisies, and lilies. It would turn out to be the same day the most recent cleanup worker died
Another main source, Craig, called me two weeks ago to tell me his lung function has crashed again after some tentative good news this summer. He’s married with three grandchildren; he's currently trying to figure out how to write his will @southerlymag https://southerlymag.org/2020/08/17/they-deserve-to-be-heard-sick-and-dying-coal-ash-cleanup-workers-fight-for-their-lives/
Instead of relying on TVA, workers, their spouses, and their supporters will have a new announcement today. Doves will be released and on Dec. 22, the spill's anniversary, an ad honoring the workers, feat. Ansol’s folk art, will publish in Roane County's paper.
I wish I could be there, but COVID-19 prevents travel. Immunocompromised workers will stay in their cars, and listen in to the program through the radio, to minimize their risk https://www.oakridger.com/story/news/2020/12/17/caravan-memorial-12-th-anniversary-kingston-coal-ash-spill/3952341001/?fbclid=IwAR1B2YIRpyKiaGfdwpsPCGmDLv33gRSzZzWp41M19tml4hww7fC0Lrl5lZI
This week I published my latest story about these workers, and the additional radioactive waste they may have been exposed to, with @grist & @dailyyonder; if you’re interested in their stories, I urge you to read about what they’ve gone through https://grist.org/justice/tva-kingston-coal-ash-spill-nuclear/
+ a plug for local journalism: I subscribe to @knoxnews to read @jamiescoop's ongoing, heart wrenching investigation that began in 2017. She's far and away the best reporter covering Kingston. Her latest here: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/tennessee/tvacoalash/2020/12/18/university-of-tennessee-epidemiologist-became-unlikely-hero-coal-ash-workers/6396168002/?fbclid=IwAR1KA76Ma26OTaTG3FFvaAK7_mzd5_vSFSd7HHyFAX_v5jyXl5k3PX0QHY0
@lyndseygilpin attended & sent me a worker quote: "looking around at 70-80 ppl and you're required to wear a mask on this property. But we weren't allowed to wear masks. This is a pandemic, but we were in a pandemic. People are not here b/c we weren't allowed to wear a mask."
The speaker is Jason Williams, 49, who we wrote about in our @southerlymag story from Aug. He quit his last job after passing out 12 times in a day. He has low testosterone, failing eyesight, skin cancer, for which he had surgery on his nose, but no insurance for cont. monitoring
Because TVA has failed to provide workers medical care, Williams unveiled a new foundation that will provide cleanup workers free evaluations and care through University of Tennessee
Janie spoke too & told the crowd, "For a long time we didn't have anybody and we saw the worst of humanity...But now we've seen the best of humanity."
Workers & their supporters released doves over the old spill site, today a children’s soccer field
