Company officials have not determined the cause of the wall failure. Nor can they say how long the cleanup will take, or how much it will cost.
With so many unanswered questions, life in this county of 54,000 people has entered an unpleasant state of limbo. Health officials have advised residents to stay away from the ash, and to wash their hands thoroughly if they do get around it. The county school system altered its bus routes to keep a safe distance from the spill. Recreational boating has been suspended on the Emory River, parts of which have been rendered impassable.
Residents like Jeff Spurgeon who built waterfront dream homes now find themselves steps away from a man-made ecological nightmare.
"It's devastating, it really is," said Spurgeon, 43. The phone company worker and his wife saved for years to build the 4,400-square foot brick home along a cove that has become, literally, a giant ashtray.
The disaster carries a hint of irony for longtime residents: If there was a concern about ecological threats, it came from a few miles south, where the TVA operates a nuclear plant; or a few miles northeast around the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, where a cleanup of nuclear arms production sites has dragged on for years.
The spill also promises to test the store of goodwill built up over the decades by the TVA, the mammoth federally owned utility created during the Depression to provide energy, flood control and economic development to a large swath of the rural South.
TVA measures brought stability to the three rivers that meet here -- the Emory, the Clinch and the Tennessee -- which were subject to deadly flooding. A dam to the south broadened the rivers' contours, helping popularize the area as a fishing and boating spot. More recently, waterfront real estate attracted retirees from around the country. The local economic development agency distributes brochures of lake scenes, with a now unfortunate slogan: "Overflowing with possibilities."
The utility completed the coal-powered electricity plant near the confluence of the three rivers in the mid-1950s. It was welcomed as a major employer, and it earned a reputation for safety. But residents like Spurgeon watched with some trepidation as the pile of ash next to the plant grew year after year, finally towering higher than 50 feet.
"I kind of wondered, 'How high can it go?' " he said. "Accidents happen, but I think this could have been prevented."
