TVA has replaced their website's front page with an emergency response update page. The current Jan. 4th update has contact and outreach info for area residents and the latest results of coordinated TVA, EPA, and TDEC air and water testing with links to detailed reports.

There are also weekly "incident action plan" documents which summarize the equipment and personnel, where they are deployed, and what they are tasked with doing.

The current plan for 1/2-1/9 lists more than 160 pieces of heavy equipment including cranes, bulldozers, track hoes, dump trucks, barges, skimmers, booms, command trailers, etc. plus a helicopter. It also lists more than 250 personnel, including seven personnel assigned to air quality testing and 13 assigned to water quality testing.

There's also a site and area security plan, four medical aid stations for workers, and worker safety plans with emergency contact info.

While the executives are at press conferences talking about the disaster, we sometimes tend to overlook the fact that there are hundreds of hard-working TVA employees and contractors up there working to clean up the mess, some of them in harms way.

It's also a reminder that large-scale cleanups don't happen overnight, no matter how many resources you have (or don't have) to throw at the problem.