In the Kingston coal ash spill and nearly 15 years of lawsuits that followed, Jared Sullivan, a journalist from Franklin, Tennessee, saw a David and Goliath story that was quintessentially American. A more fitting comparison for the setting of his new book “Valley So Low,” however, might be ancient Egypt.
Under the shadow of the coal plant’s twin 1,000-foot stacks, once considered a wonder of the postwar world, the waste that poured from behind a failed dike in 2008 unleashes many plagues on East Tennessee at once. It causes painful lesions, kills animals who writhe in its trap, blocks out the sun when the wind whips it up, and afflicts those who inhale it with illnesses that spell their death.
The disaster, the largest industrial spill in U.S. history by volume, releasing 100 times more waste into the environment than the Exxon Valdez oil spill, cast doubt on the beneficence of the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA, the nation’s largest public power utility, owns and operates the Kingston Fossil Plant, situated 40 miles west of Knoxville.
Sullivan’s nonfiction novel captures with deep research the protracted lawsuits that called TVA and its cleanup contractor, Jacobs Solutions (rebranded after the cleanup from Jacobs Engineering), to account for the seemingly reckless exposure of the workers who removed the coal ash – a byproduct that is sludgy when wet, a breathable dust when dry, and contains toxins like arsenic, cadmium, mercury and silica.
Because the spill occurred just three days before Christmas, it quickly faded from national attention. That likely owed to the rural Tennessee landscape it swallowed, too. Sullivan wanted to write the book so it could belong on a shelf with other environmental dramas like “A Civil Action” by Jonathan Harr.
“I would hate if someone had written it who was not from Tennessee,” Sullivan told Knox News in an interview. “If the Kingston disaster had happened in New England or outside of New York, I think it would have been the biggest story probably in the world.”
Book tells legal and personal narratives of historic coal ash spill
Much of the cinematic drama of “Valley So Low,” published Oct. 15 by Knopf, derives from TVA’s post-spill status as both hellish and heaven-sent.
Since 1933, TVA had pulled the Tennessee Valley out of poverty as a New Deal public works project initially tasked with building a stunning system of hydroelectric dams. Sullivan writes of the utility not just as a federal agency with broad immunity from lawsuits, but as a company that is “almost a religion” in East Tennessee.
By the time one billion gallons of coal ash sludge tore across 300 rural acres off Interstate 40, TVA had operated like a private Fortune 500 company for decades, receiving no tax dollars and generating 60% of its electricity by burning coal.
Drama also follows the book’s protagonist, Jim Scott, a disheveled Knoxville attorney who sacrifices his health and relationships to obsessively seek justice for the workers. The book toggles between Scott’s descent into a righteous, sleep-deprived mania and the cleanup workers’ descent into dizzy spells, strokes and cancer following years of workdays spent caked with coal ash.
The parallel narratives are both stories of unraveled lives which, like ruined ecosystems, can never really return to their pre-disaster state.
The book enters a much different world for coal. TVA has retired seven coal plants since the spill, and only gets 14% of its electricity from the fossil fuel today. Even as TVA and other U.S. utilities retire their coal plants, including the Kingston plant by 2027, the waste from those plants will stick around.
“We’re coming out of the era of burning coal, but coal is still going to be with us,” Sullivan said. “We’re not done with coal. It’s not done being our problem.”
TVA hired Jacobs as its cleanup contractor months after the spill. In depositions and documents, Jacobs staff responded with sometimes alarming nonchalance to accusations that the company refused to provide workers with respiratory protection. Some workers claimed they were fired for asking for dust masks.
Though TVA paid nearly $28 million in 2013 to settle damages to property values, a district judge in Knoxville ruled it immune from lawsuits related to the cleanup. Scott filed a lawsuit against Jacobs that same year on behalf of dozens of workers and their spouses.
After a decade of delays, a jury found Jacobs liable for the workers’ health problems and the company reached a confidential settlement with the plaintiffs in 2023. Sullivan’s talent is clearest when the courtroom drama veers from made-for-TV to painfully slow. He does not write around the late nights Scott and his colleagues spend reading documents in the office, but makes them equally captivating.
Kingston coal ash spill author: ‘I think they botched it’
Raised in Tennessee, Sullivan knew little about TVA and figured the company got lucky when no one died in the immediate spill and the waste was deemed safe. He was a senior in high school and he moved on with his life, which took him to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and then to a variety of magazines.
He was an editor and occasional writer for Men’s Journal in New York City when he attended the 10th anniversary ceremony honoring the cleanup workers. By then, hundreds had become ill and dozens had died. Sullivan published a 7,000-word story on the lawsuit for Men’s Journal in 2019, but knew he had enough material for a book.
When discussing his vision for the book, Sullivan cites towering examples of literary nonfiction like “The Power Broker” by Robert Caro and “Hiroshima” by John Hersey.
For Sullivan, who said he felt like a “hick from the sticks” in New York City, selling his book to a major publisher after he was laid off during the pandemic and moved home felt like “getting drafted by the Yankees.”
Though he is from Tennessee, there are signs in the book Sullivan feels less affection for Knoxville than he does for his characters. At various points, he describes the city as both “famously ugly” and “famously puritanical.” He claims its defining architectural feature is the strip mall, and not, say, Victorian mansions.
Perhaps part of Knoxville’s problem is that it is home to TVA headquarters. Sullivan said he respects TVA and doesn’t want readers to think he wants to burn one of the great examples of public works to the ground. “Valley So Low” is not a political book. But Sullivan is keeping his eye on the federal Frankenstein.
“I think TVA needs serious, serious reform,” Sullivan said. “I think they botched it.”
Sullivan will speak in a free public event at the East Tennessee History Center at 6 p.m. on Oct. 17. The panel discussion, presented by Union Ave Books and moderated by former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe, will feature lawyers involved in the Kingston spill cases.
Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email [email protected].
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