It’s uncertain what will happen to a federal lawsuit against the operators of a landfill in Perry County when the coal ash stops flowing in.

And, that ash is scheduled to stop coming into the Arrowhead Landfill near Uniontown some time this month, according to Steve McCracken, hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority to clean up the mess at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee.

The ash is the result of an accident at the Kingston plant in December 2008, when a dike of a 50-year-old dredge cell for coal ash gave way, dumping 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into the Emory River and about 300 acres of adjacent land.

McCracken told members of Leadership Oak Ridge Alumni the last of the 400 trains per day should pull into Uniontown by Nov. 22.

But how that would affect the federal lawsuit filed by Perry County residents against the operators of the Arrowhead Landfill will depend on what TVA does, said David Ludder, a Florida attorney who represents those 64 residents.

Trains lugging boxcars filled with ash from the Kingston site roll into Perry County every day, where the residue, which bears heavy metals, such as arsenic, is placed in the Arrowhead Landfill.

Each week, the recovery project posts a report with the TVA. The week of Oct. 25-31, the last one available on the TVA’s website, shows that since the disaster, 389 trains have made their way to the landfill, carrying 3.8 million tons of ash.

The lawsuit was filed in June in U.S. District Court in Mobile against Phil-Con Services and Phillips and Jordan Inc., seeking enforcement of the Federal Clean Air and Waste Disposal Act.

The suit seeks abate of odors and asks for penalties of up to $37,000 per day.

The lawsuit, which is one side of a legal issue, contends the operators of the landfill have violated the state implementation plan for landfills approved by the Environmental Protection Agency; that the operators continue to run an “open dump” in violation of federal law and the complainants want a permanent injunction to have the owners of the landfill, Perry County Associates, from operating Arrowhead in a way that would produce odors injurious to human health.