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As the cases drag on, dozens who believed their work for the contractor made them sick have died.

Workers who cleaned up the 2008 Kingston, Tennessee, coal ash spill spent years working in conditions that they believe made them sick

The Daily Yonder This story was published in partnership with Grist. In 2009, App Thacker was hired to run a dredge along the Emory River in eastern Tennessee. Picture an industrialized fleet modeled after Huck Finn’s raft: Nicknamed Adelyn, Kylee, and Shirley, the blue, flat-bottomed boats used mechanical arms called cutterheads to dig up riverbeds and siphon the excavated sediment into shoreline canals. The largest dredge, a two-story behemoth called the Sandpiper, had pipes wide enough to swallow a push lawnmower. Smaller dredges like Thacker’s scuttled behind it, scooping up excess mu...