A baseline ecological risk assessment (BERA) was performed for residual ash in the Watts Bar Reservoir following a release of fly ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant. The site consists of parts of 3 rivers in eastern Tennessee comprising over 32 river kilometers. The purpose of the assessment was to determine if residual ash negatively impacts maintenance and reproduction of balanced communities or populations of potentially exposed ecological receptor groups in these rivers. This introductory article summarizes the site and environmental setting, assessment and measurement endpoints, risk characterization methods, and the study approach. Subsequent articles describe ecological risks to fish, benthic invertebrates, aquatic- and riparian-feeding wildlife, and aerial-feeding insectivores; and the role ecological risk characterization played in determining the most effective management of the residual ash, setting project remediation objectives and targets, and designing long-term monitoring to measure the effectiveness of the selected removal action. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2015;11:32–42. © 2014 SETAC

Ecological risk assessment for residual coal fly ash at Watts Bar Reservoir, Tennessee: Site setting and problem formulation.

Influence of metal(loid) bioaccumulation and maternal transfer on embryo-larval development in fish exposed to a major coal ash spill.

The Tennessee Valley Authority conducted a Baseline Ecological Risk Assessment (BERA) for the Kingston Fossil Plant ash release site to evaluate potential effects of residual coal ash on biota in Watts Bar Reservoir, Tennessee. The BERA was in response to a release of 4.1 million m3 of coal ash on December 22, 2008. It used multiple lines of evidence to assess risks for 17 different ecological receptors to approximately 400 000 m3 of residual ash in the Emory and Clinch rivers. Here, we provide a brief overview of the BERA results and then focus on how the results were used to help shape risk management decisions. Those decisions included selecting monitored natural recovery for remediation of the residual ash in the Emory and Clinch rivers and designing a long-term monitoring plan that includes adaptive management principles for timely adjustment to changing conditions. This study demonstrates the importance of site-specific ecological data (e.g., tissue concentrations for food items, reproductive data, and population data) in complex ecological risk assessments. It also illustrates the value of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) data quality objectives process in building consensus and identifying multiple uses of results. The relatively limited adverse effects of this likely worst-case scenario for ash-related exposures in a lotic environment provide important context for the USEPA's new coal combustion residue disposal rules. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2015;11:80–87. © 2014 SETAC

https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ieam.1586

Application of ecological risk assessment in managing residual fly ash in TVA's Watts Bar Reservoir, Tennessee

Waterfowl are often exposed to and readily accumulate anthropogenic contaminants when foraging in polluted environments. Settling impoundments containing coal combustion waste (CCW) enriched in trace elements such as arsenic (As), selenium (Se), and mercury (Hg) are often used by free-ranging migratory and resident waterfowl and represent potential sources for contaminant uptake. To assess accumulation of CCW contaminants, we experimentally restricted waterfowl to a CCW-contaminated impoundment and quantified trace element burdens in blood, muscle, and liver tissues over known periods of exposure (between 3 and 92 d). From these data we developed models 1) to predict elemental bioaccumulation with increased exposure time, and 2) to predict muscle/liver burdens based on concentrations in blood as a nondestructive sampling method. Although Hg and As did not bioaccumulate in our waterfowl, we observed an increase in Se concentrations in muscle, liver, and blood tissues over the duration of our experiment. Furthermore, we found that blood may be used as an effective nondestructive sampling alternative to predict muscle and liver tissue concentrations in birds contaminated with Se and As through dietary exposure. These data provide unique insights into accumulation rates of contaminants for waterfowl utilizing habitats contaminated with CCW and demonstrate the efficacy of nonlethal sampling of waterfowl to quantify contaminant exposure. Environ Toxicol Chem 2020;39:1052-1059. © 2020 SETAC.

Patterns of Trace Element Accumulation in Waterfowl Restricted to Impoundments Holding Coal Combustion Waste.

In environmental questions, particles at the micrometre scale are usually analyzed regarding their particle size and morphology using microscopic techniques. Thereby, their composition and trace element contents are neglected. However, when focusing on recycling and re-use of minor and trace elements in environmental particles like fly ash, originating from municipal waste incineration, information on elemental distribution within single particles may be of grave importance. In this work a procedure for the preparation of fly ash particles for LA-ICP-MS analysis is presented that also allows access to the spatial elemental distribution of each single particle. Herein the particles are dispersed and retained on a sticky substrate, followed by fixation. Roughly one half of the particle is ablated to access the particle cross-section. This cross-section is ablated with consecutive line scans to generate sufficient data to create an image. More than 60 particles with diameters between 25 μm and 100 μm have been analyzed using the presented procedure. General differences in the particle composition could be observed and the elemental distribution of minor constituents like Al, Cu, Pb, Si, Ti and Zn could be visualized for single particles with lateral resolutions down to 2 μm per pixel. Cu and Pb were found to be enriched at the surface, easily accessible for recycling techniques, whereas Ti was found predominantly in the particles' insides. Al, Si and Zn were mostly found to be evenly distributed within particles.

/pdf/analysis-of-single-fly-ash-particles-using-laser-ablation-1bv1z0ya49.pdf

Analysis of single fly ash particles using laser ablation ICP-MS – an approach achieving lateral elemental distribution information via imaging

Extensive site-specific biological and environmental data were collected to support an evaluation of risks to the fish community in Watts Bar Reservoir from residual ash from the December 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston ash release. This article describes the approach used and results of the risk assessment for the fish community, which consists of multiple measurement endpoints (measures of exposure and effects) for fish. The lines of evidence included 1) comparing postspill annual fish community assessments with nearby prespill data and data from other TVA reservoirs, 2) evaluating possible effects of exposures of fish eggs and larval fish to ash in controlled laboratory toxicity tests, 3) evaluating reproductive competence of field-exposed fish, 4) assessing individual fish health through physical examination, histopathology, and blood chemistry, 5) comparing fish tissue concentrations with literature-based critical body residues, and 6) comparing concentrations of ash-related contaminants in surface waters with US Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) Ambient Water Quality Standards for Fish and Aquatic Life. These measurement endpoints were treated as independent lines of evidence that were integrated into an overall weight-of-evidence estimate of risk to the fish community. Collectively, the data and analysis presented here indicate that ash and ash-related constituents pose negligible risks to the fish communities in Watts Bar Reservoir. This conclusion contradicts the predictions by some researchers immediately following the ash release of devastating effects on the aquatic ecology of Watts Bar Reservoir. The information presented in this article reaffirms the wisdom of carefully evaluating the evidence before predicting probable ecological effects of a major event such as the TVA Kingston ash release. This study demonstrates that a thorough and detailed investigation using multiple measurement endpoints is needed to properly evaluate ecological effects.

https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ieam.1588

Assessing ecological risks to the fish community from residual coal fly ash in Watts Bar Reservoir, Tennessee.

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Assessing ecological risks to the fish community from residual coal fly ash in Watts Bar Reservoir, Tennessee.