From my Earthbytes blog today:

Smith Mountain Ash Dump Debate

The Tennessean (Nashville, TN) published two guest opinions and an editorial today on the proposal to build a coal ash landfill at Smith Mountain, site of the Turner mine in Cumberland County, Tennessee. Check them out, then join the debate!

Coal ash is not hazardous waste (Steve Wright, Smith Mountain Solutions)

This landfill shouldn't happen (Cathie Bird, SOCM)

More solid assurance needed against risk from ash site (Editorial staff, Tennessean)

From the article at Facing South by Sue Sturgis:

An in-depth review of monitoring data from coal ash ponds located next to 13 coal-burning power plants in North Carolina has revealed that all of them are contaminating groundwater with toxic metals and other pollutants -- in some cases at levels exceeding 380 times state groundwater standards.

The contaminants reported include arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead -- metals known to cause cancer, neurological problems and other serious illnesses.

The analysis was conducted by Appalachian Voices' Upper Watauga Riverkeeper team based on data submitted to state regulators by Duke Energy and Progress Energy, the state's two largest investor-owned electric utilities. The companies conducted the tests as part of a self-monitoring agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.


http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/10/all-north-carolina-coal-ash-ponds-are-leaking-toxic-pollution-to-groundwater.html (via shareaholic)

Phone calls are needed tomorrow to help the Swan Pond community and other Roane County residents challenge a waiver granted to TVA to send high sulfur coal ash waste through their old smokestacks. This test-firing came without notice to the community or to local officials. Apparently, TDEC Air Pollution Control division personnel in Knoxville did not know there was a waiver in place.

Coal ash coats a vehicle in the Swan Pond community. ((Randy Ellis photo.)

See my blog for details and phone numbers:

http://tennesseehawk.typepad.com/earthbytes/2009/09/help-roane-county-residents-challenge-test-burns.html (via shareaholic)

NASHVILLE, TENN. — President Barack Obama's Tennessee Valley Authority board nominee Neil G. McBride said he was surprised about how little had changed at the nation's largest public utility since the 1970s.

McBride, a public interest lawyer in Oak Ridge, said when he was concentrating on the TVA in the 1970s, problems included poor decision-making practices, environmental issues arising from coal use and modest programs to reduce demand for electricity.

"I was really preparing to be out of date when I started with these issues during the past year," he said. "For better or for worse, almost all those issues are still there."

"The whole question of TVA culture, how they look at long-range environmental issues and the appropriate way of dealing with energy efficiency at the residential level — those are clearly unresolved," McBride said.

Read more at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/economy/ap/59130467.html (via shareaholic)

Smith Mountain Solutions, LLC wants to bring coal combustion waste to the old Turner mine at Smith Mountain near Crossville under the guise of mine reclamation. This mine is in the Sewanee coal seam, with layers of coal and rock that are so toxic that breaking into them produces acid mine drainage that will need treatment in perpetuity.

Crossville Coal Inc. holds current SMCRA permits at the Turner Surface Mine and Mine No. 1, and they have submitted an application for revisions of these permits to change the post-mining land use. If the revisions are approved, it would pave the way for use of the site as an experimental solid waste mono-fill for coal combustion waste (CCW).

http://tennesseehawk.typepad.com/earthbytes/ (via shareaholic)

Cumberland County residents are taking their mayor and commissioners to task for waiving the Jackson Law to allow a landfill for toxic coal combustion waste (CCW). Any landfill with CCW would be threat enough, even if it's lined and capped (virtually everything on this planet will degrade and fall apart over time). In this case, there is additional cause for worry: the proposed Turner mine site in in the region of the dreaded Sewanee coal seam. Any disturbance of this seam is an invitation to instant acid mine drainage problems that will require treatment in perpetuity.

Let's hope this lawsuit can do what heart and reason has not to stop this foolishness before irreversible harm to people and nature in Cumberland County is unleashed.

http://www.wsmv.com/news/20587472/detail.html (via shareaholic)

I posted a blog at Daily R-r-r-ibbit today on the second round of coal industry deceptions that began with bogus "astroturf" memos to members of Congress aimed at shifting energy policy discussions in corporate coal's favor. Now some hardworking bloggers have caught them at another scam:

Check out links to some great articles at: http://tennesseehawk.typepad.com/hawks_peace_journal/ (via shareaholic)

In papers filed in federal court today, the state, environmental groups and the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho say they've been effectively shut out of the administration's deliberations over how to run the region's network of big, power-generating dams without pushing salmon closer to extinction.

Read the whole article at:

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/08/oregon_and_its_allies_slam_oba.html (via shareaholic)

The recent Inspector General's report on TVA's failure to heed warnings over the past 20 years that might have prevented the Kingston coal ash disaster has stirred a hornet's nest of response -- and well it should have -- from mainstream media and the blogosphere. I've been following as many of these as I can, and today I found one that needs a wider audience.

The editors at the Lexington Herald-Leader speak with the outrage that many people are feeling:

These conclusions by the TVA's Inspector General prompted the head of the seven-state electrical utility to confide that TVA suffers from a "larger cultural problem."

The "culture" that comes to mind isn't the kind that's talked about in business colleges, though. It's the kind that grows on a microscope slide and requires large doses to overcome.

The rot that infects TVA's management of 11 coal-fired power plants — and the mountains of heavy metals and toxics-laced waste they produce — is alarming. People live downstream from every single one of them.

But the utility's indifference to protecting the public and environment is nothing new. TVA fought clean air laws. Its appetite for cheap coal is directly responsible for much of the devastation caused by strip mining in Kentucky. And its sloppy management of nuclear power plant construction has been enormously costly to its customers.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE:

http://www.kentucky.com/591/story/884042.html (via shareaholic)

Just posted a link to a great article on cerulean warblers at my Daily R-r-r-ibbit blog. Check it out to see why I'm concerned about cerulean warbler habitat and why I'm now a fan of A DC Birding Blog:

http://tennesseehawk.typepad.com/hawks_peace_journal/2009/07/a-dc-birding-blog-cerulean-warblers-return-to-the-same-winter-habitat.html (via shareaholic)

From the article: Coal operators in Southern West Virginia are not restoring large strip-mining sites to their "approximate original contour," despite a state policy change meant to require such reclamation, according to a previously unpublished federal government report.

So, is anyone out there surprised? Coalfield residents in Appalachia and other coal producing regions of the United States have long complained about enforcement failures under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). Apparently, similar studies are happening in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. I can hardly wait to see a copy of this unpublished report. Once again Ken Ward of the West Virginia Gazette proves his mettle as a coalfield watchdog! Read the whole story at:

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200907250119?page=1&build=cache (via shareaholic)

The I Love Mountains endangered mountains web page has a new video featuring the Eagan community in Tennessee. Community resident Carol Judy talks about collecting herbs and roots and how surface mining is destroying long-standing traditions of human connection with mountain ecosystems. A local miner also talks about people who must support their families with a job that ultimately destroys the communities in which they live. This is a great video. Links to other videos of endangered mountains and communities are listed on the same page.

http://www.ilovemountains.org/endangered/# (via shareaholic)

"When it comes to the environment, Washington’s attention is fixed these days on the Congressional battle over legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions. But there are other pollutants — so-called ground level pollutants, as opposed to those that rise into the atmosphere — that also need urgent attention, starting with toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants."


Read the whole editorial @ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/opinion/25sat1.html?th&emc=th (via shareaholic)

"Deforestation and, some scientists contend, global climate change are making the Amazon region drier and hotter, decimating fish stocks in this area and imperiling the Kamayurá’s very existence. Like other small indigenous cultures around the world with little money or capacity to move, they are struggling to adapt to the changes."

Read article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/science/earth/25tribe.html?th&emc=th (via shareaholic)

The environmental damage caused by mountaintop removal mining across Appalachia has been well documented. But scientists are now beginning to understand that the mining operations’ most lasting damage may be caused by the massive amounts of debris dumped into valley streams.

http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2172 (via shareaholic)

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation's largest public utility, has recently gained approval from the EPA to ship three millions of tons coal ash waste, from the December 2008 Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant ash spill disaster in Kingston TN to Perry County, Alabama. The TVA is now shipping ash coal waste that contains significant levels of 14 toxic substances including arsenic, lead, mercury selenium and radioactive elements to a private waste site owned by Perry County Associates. This move has generated considerable controversy. Why? For reasons I will explain later, largely because it appears to be a blatant case of environmental injustice.

Read the whole story at http://www.counterpunch.org/button07162009.html (via shareaholic)

I think my upgrades to a new computer system and satellite Internet connections are securely embedded in my home office now, and I have to tell you: blogging and networking with something other than dial-up and Windows '98 is a whole different proposition...it's actually fun! The only times I've yelled today have been at my puppy when I caught him starting to chew a power cord and (just now) when I found him chewing on an aluminum case (knocked off my desk by Buddy, the cat) in which I keep memory cards for my camera.

Anyway, it was a hoot yesterday to create and post a new blog piece about the diversity of life up here in the holler. Please check out my photos and narrative on treehoppers at http://tennesseehawk.typepad.com/hawks_peace_journal.