The project began on 22 December 2008, when the failure of a containment pond dyke spilled 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant into the Emory River and its landscape. What led to this point? Jeff Rich investigates the river itself and the TVA’s vast reach and power throughout the region, which has forever changed the environment of its watershed, at odds with the natural evolution and ecology of the Tennessee River system.