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On December 22, 2008, an
earthen dam failed at the Tennessee Valley
Authority’s Kingston Coal Plant near Knoxville,
Tennessee. The dam formed a portion of the
containment for a 40-acre waste pond used to
dewater fly ash, and the failure caused the loss
of approximately 5.4 million cubic yards of fly
ash slurry over approximately 300 acres
downstream from the plant. AECOM’s Bill
Walton was retained by the TVA to investigate
the cause of the failure and to report these
findings to public officials. Mr. Walton
will explain the methodology used to determine
the proximate cause of failure, and will also
discuss the politics of defending the results of
this work against other engineering teams hired
by other interested parties.
Bill Walton, P.E., S.E.,
F.ASCE, is a senior vice president of AECOM,
formerly STS Consultants, Ltd., located in
Vernon Hills, Illinois. He began his career as
an embankment dam engineer and now has 28 years
of experience providing geotechnical engineering
consulting. Walton received a bachelor of
science in civil engineering from Worcester
Polytechnic Institute and a master of science in
agricultural engineering from Cornell
University. He is a licensed structural engineer
in Illinois and a licensed professional engineer
in Illinois and 11 other states.
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