the tennessee valley authority estimates the cost of the cleanup over eight hundred twenty five million dollars this spill is ten times larger than the exxon valdez spill in alaska and is believed to be america's largest environmental disaster to date with throwing away the next generation's most valuable resource and that is water and one of the best sources of water anywhere in the world and maybe the best source of freshwater in proximity to one of the world's largest fastest growing populations. you know with all the and all the lawsuits and all the carrying on that goes on in the in the press and you know the vanity fair's and. u.s. news and world reports and all at that where the authors are warning people to believe that that we're absolutely strip in appalachia down to nothing. in order to get the mineral is patently untrue it's patently untrue when you look around at the forested mountains that we have a recent environmental impact statement from the e.p.a. estimates over eight hundred square miles of mountains of already been destroyed this includes the permanent destruction o

the tennessee valley authority estimates the cost of the cleanup job or eight hundred twenty five million dollars this spill is ten times larger than the exxon valdez spill in alaska and is believed to be america's largest environmental disaster to date with throwing away the next generation's most valuable resource.

here, the tennessee valley authority, t.v.a., dumped up to 1,000 tons of coal ash every day into a wetd near the plant, slowly amassing a waste-cake 60 feet high. some of the ingredients, according to the e.p.a.: arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium, cadmium, and other toxic metals. you know, some people say that this is a poisoned meadow. >> leo francendese: i guess that's one way to describe it. it just doesn't belong here. it needs to come out. >> stahl: leo francendese is an environmental "mr. fix-it." he was sent by the e.p.a. to clean up this mess. >> francendese: in the wrong circumstances, coal ash is dangerous. breathing it, that's dangerous. >> stahl: the summer heat can bake the ash into a fine talc- like powder that can wreak havoc on your lungs. and this is all coal ash right along here. so, while the government has never formally labeled coal ash a hazardous waste, it's being treated as such here. is that all coal ash? >> francendese: yeah. >> stahl: as we left the site, we were scrubbed clean, as was our car. oh, my goodness. look at this. is this every car that goes through