WASHINGTON (WVLT/AP) – A congressional panel was assembled Wednesday to discuss the ongoing cleanup of last year’s coal ash spill at the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County.

The House Subcommittee on Water Resources features updates from TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore, TVA Inspector General Richard Moore and Stan Meiburg, the Environmental Protection Agency’s acting administrator for the region.

Meiburg said the EPA had recently taken a pair of untreated river water samples from around the spill site that contained arsenic levels that exceeded acceptable drinking water standards. He did admit that treated samples from the site had elevated levels of pollutants, but still met acceptable drinking water standards.

According to the EPA, heavy rainfall has probably helped dilute the contamination, Meiburg did say, “the longer it sits there, the more opportunity you have for something to happen.”

A Perry County, Alabama politician also testified at the hearing. Commissioner Albert Turner, Jr. represents part of the rural county that recently signed a contract allowing the TVA to deposit three million cubic yards of coal ash at the Arrowhead Landfill in Uniontown.

Environmental groups in the Yellow Hammer State have raised a lot of issues with the contract, but Turner told the panel that it has been a godsend.

"It has put renewed hope back into a once proud county,” he told the subcommittee, “a place where the unemployment rate is 15 percent."

The contract brings Perry County $8 million annually. According to Turner, it has nearly doubled the county’s budget.

"I sleep very well every night,” he told the committee, “knowing that we've got coal ash in the ground and cash in the bank.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)