Coal ash dam in Tennessee had previous leaks

"The chief executive of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the coal-burning power plant responsible for an enormous flood of coal ash in East Tennessee late last month, acknowledged Thursday that the plant’s containment ponds had leaked two other times in the last five years but had not been adequately repaired," according to a report by John M. Broder of The New York Times. Earlier leaks had been repaired inexpensively, but these were in a different area from where the dam failure occurred last month. There are plans in the Senate to push for new regulations on the management of coal ash, "including a requirement that it be stored in lined pits and dried out so that it could not cascade into towns and rivers."