Testing Continues to Show Toxic Impacts of TVA Spill

Official call participants were:

Jeff Stant, Director of the Coal Combustion Waste Initiative for the Environmental Integrity Project. In this position and for the past 21 years as the Executive Director of the Hoosier Environmental Council in Indiana, Director of the Power Plant Waste Program for the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force and consultant to other organizations, he has researched, advocated and negotiated for local, state and national regulations to stop contamination of water supplies and harm to people and the environment from coal combustion waste. He is based in Indianapolis.


Chris Irwin, Staff Attorney for United Mountain Defense and a sixth-generation Tennessean. Irwin worked for a year as an AmeriCorps volunteer doing watershed preservation work; and for the World Bank and U.S. Agency for International Development as a Peace Corps volunteer, where he saw the U.S. spend millions to protect watersheds overseas. Protection of Tennessee’s water has been a focus of his work in his current position.



Sarah McCoin, a resident of Harriman, Tenn., and member of the Tennessee Coal Ash Survivor Network. Sarah resides at Adkisson Farm, a 40-acre Emory riverfront property that has been in the family since the early 1800’s. She is the fifth generation to live on the farm. Sarah moved back to Tennessee last summer after a career in employee benefits consulting in Saint Louis, Mo. She plans to finish out her career in Tennessee and retire on the farm to raise Irish sport horses. Most recently, Sarah has become a community advocate for federal coal ash regulation. She is joining the call as a representative of the Tennessee Coal Ash Survivor Network, a new community organization which aims to publicize the harsh realities of the coal ash disaster and the need for federal regulation to prevent similar disasters in some 152 communities nationwide.