It's a little surprising there hasn't been more local or national coverage of a recent coal ash spill near Kingston, Tenn.

A site holding as much as 1 billion gallons of water impregnated with coal ash spilled from a power plant site into 300 acres of land and surrounding groundwater. This ash is the residue left from burning coal for power and contains concentrated amounts of such kid-friendly treats as lead, mercury and selenium.

Though you thought arsenic was used only in titles of non-contemporary works of theater, water tested in a nearby river tested at more than 00 times the federal acceptable limit. It's one of those 19th century poisons no one uses any more except in readings for 11th-grade advanced placement literature.

This excess from power production can have safe uses; much of the ash of this sort can be repurposed as a filler that strengthens cement, and it becomes made chemically safe and inert when used in paving or construction.

But lots of it sits on or near the property of power plants. If you dispose of it in sealed landfills, ones with plasticized liners, any effects to the surrounding land are pretty much nil. Trouble is, most power plants are located on bodies of water. They need it for heat exchange purposes. That means any of this coal ash is most likely to be stored there as well, in suspension.

A flood very well could spread this stuff about in some power plant sites.

At mines, an impoundment might fail, like say Buffalo Creek. That said, the biggest fear in the coal industry is probably that of sabotage. Imagine someone my age who read about the Weather Underground in a 400-level political science class and thinks the best way to get back at the Man is to dynamite a holding pond at coal mine or power plant.

That said, every plant handles this stuff differently. I'd love to know just how all the plants within a day's drive of West Virginia deal with it.

Public records reported by the Knoxville News-Sentinel show the Tennessee plant had plans to move this material to dry storage five years ago but balked at a cost of $25 million at that time.

Folks in the power industry estimated earlier this decade that taking all wet-stored coal waste and moving it to this dry landfill method would be a $5 billion-$10 billion tab per year. So just build more ashy roads with the Obama infrastructure program, and this problem should take care of itself. Right?

Surely this debate will engorge when the anti-energy industry finds the right champion. Maybe some penguins from the Exxon Valdez deal will volunteer to do a photo shoot covered in coal ash sludge.

Landowners in the most afflicted acres in Tennessee can count on big checks and the chance to move out of Love Canal. Various Google.com searches indicate the tort bar is busy at work trying to find a class-action suit of some sort. Some guys, it appears, are trying to take their bustling dog-bite and ATV rollover injury practices to the East Tennessee up-market.

This story does have one dirty little secret ... and maybe that's why the conventional media haven't jammed this tale of woe down our collective throats still further. If Don Blankenship of Massey Energy or Ben Hatfield of International Coal had anything to do with this December mishap, I'd imagine that we'd be in our 15th day of above-the-fold coverage.

The trouble is the alleged tortfeasor: The Tennessee Valley Authority.

Yeah, that federal make-work project from the 1930s designed to bring electricity and modern farming methods to folks of the mid-south. They still own and operate power plants, when most of the rest of the country seems to do OK with actual public companies running them.

It probably hurts the hearts of so many on the left to have to blame government for this one. How can you protest any part of the New Deal? How can I hate the TVA that brought light to so many? How can I find a way to blame someone else? Could Barry Goldwater have been right about something?

Rob Cornelius follows the energy industry for The State Journal.