FEATURE_UNION
HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
“That city was swamped in debt,” Perry County
commissioner Albert Turner Jr., says of Uniontown. “It was
on the verge of the lights and telephone being cut off.”
response to the Kingston spill,
several sites in Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Tennessee
were considered as destinations
for the coal ash being dredged out
the Emory River there. Arrowhead, which was then operated by
a subsidiary of Knoxville-based
land development and construction firm Phillips & Jordan, was
deemed the best option by both
TVA and the EPA — not least because of its large capacity, its
modern containment and monitoring systems, and its proximity
to a Norfolk Southern rail line,
which would obviate the need for
a massive convoy of coal-ash laden trucks on area roads.
TVA entered into a $95 million
contract with P&J to bring the ash
to Uniontown.
Turner, meanwhile, says the
decision was a no-brainer for the
county. It delivered roughly $4
million to the commission’s coffers
through a $1.05 per-ton fee, effectively doubling the Perry County
budget in the space of a year.
At least $300,000 went directly to Uniontown to help balance
its books.
“That city was swamped in
debt,” Turner say