Relating Fish Health and Reproductive Metrics to Metal Bioaccumulation at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Coal Ash Spill Site

A 4.1 million m³ coal ash release into the Emory and Clinch rivers in December 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant near Kingston, TN, prompted a long-term, large-scale biological monitoring effort to determine if there are chronic effects of this spill on resident biota. We monitored four species of fish for selenium, arsenic and mercury at ash-affected and reference sites bi-annually for five years following the spill. On the same individual fish, we measured metal burdens in various tissues, blood chemistry parameters as metrics of fish health, and various condition and reproduction indices. We then used a multivariate statistical approach to evaluate relationships between contaminant bioaccumulation and fish metrics to assess the chronic, sublethal effects of exposure to the complex mixture of coal ash associated contaminants at and around the Kingston ash spill site. Our findings suggest that while fish tissue concentrations of some ash-associated contaminants are elevated at the spill site, there was no consistent evidence of compromised fish health linked with the spill. Further, we found relationships between elevated fillet burdens of ash associated contaminants and some fish metrics, but these relationships were not indicative of exposure to coal ash or spill sites.