Most {water} utility districts can feed other districts and sell to them. A short term solution if they can't be cross connected is to find the nearest place they can and do it till the hazard is gone.
I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it but I think TVA is running the Clinch pretty high right now. Perhaps to slow down the Emory? At the upper bridge in Clinton every day at various times when I've crossed it this week it's been running full stream. That means Melton Hill is feeding on through to Watts Bar. The higher they keep Watts Bar the slower Emory river empties.
If they can TVA convert it over it needs to make Kingston Plant and others a dry storage like Bull Run is.
I live in Kingston and work in Oak Ridge, so I see a lot of this area.
(1) Yes it is a mess.
(2) All the lakes... Watts Bar, Melton Hill, and Ft Loudon are high. And the are spilling water at Norris, even though it is below full pool. They started that at Norris before this spill I believe.
(3) The Kingston water intake is on the Clinch upstream of the mouth of the Emory. Shouldn’t be an issue.
(4) We’ve had a ton of rain. It didn’t wash the ash away. And tests of the water so far haven’t really shown any chemical or biological problems that I have heard about. In fact, I think the water from the original storage area was routinely discharged back into the river, and anything that would leach out quickly would probably be there.
(5) Erin is a bit of a carpet bagger I think. But from what I have heard today, some (not all) of our local politicians aren’t any better. You’d think they had slipped on a wet floor at Walmart.