Journalist Jared Sullivan's compelling Valley So Low: One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe details the aftermath of the 2008 collapse of a holding pond that contained waste byproduct from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston, Tenn., power station. The catastrophe released "more than a billion gallons of coal-ash slurry--about fifteen hundred times the volume of liquid that flows over Niagara Falls each second," burying some 300 acres of property and swamping nearby waterways. The spill is the "single largest industrial disaster in U.S. history in terms of volume," yet the extent of its damage has been little known outside of the region. Until now.
Sullivan focuses on attorney Jim Scott and the workers he represented in a lawsuit against Jacobs Engineering, the environmental recovery firm hired by TVA to clean up after the disaster. These workers, sometimes called " 'the Expendables,' because that was how Jacobs and TVA had treated them," came home covered in coal ash, a substance they were repeatedly told posed no risk to them. But over the next several years, dozens of people would find their health forever compromised.
Their legal battle finally concluded in 2023 with a settlement for the affected workers, over 50 of whom had already died. Yet the settlement, a mere 12% of Jacobs's annual profit, was woefully inadequate. Despite being full of countless struggles and disappointments, Valley So Low is a necessary and inspiring book, with Sullivan's sensitive retelling of these difficult events putting "the best of humanity and the worst of humanity" on display--all in one heartbreaking case. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian