TVA Coal Ash Spill Update
March 2nd, 2009
KINGSTON, Tenn. — This is the latest view of the TVA coal ash spill site, a land mass of putrid power plant ash six miles long, in what was the most vibrant stretch of the Emory River in Kingston, Tennessee. It is now biologically dead and may take 5 to 10 years to restore, and constitutes the second worst environmental disaster in the U.S. next to the day the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William’s Sound, Alaska, in the spring of 1989.
Full story, more photos and video to follow shortly…
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Well, what did you expect from TVA’s Republican Board.. They preferred to fail to protect the river by the simplist of maintence of the dikes.. It’s clear to me that this disaster was contrived to do damage to a fine agent of change in the Tennessee Valley.. Few realize the battles that have been fought in congress to preserve TVA. Now with the Democrats in control and a shrillness in the air, who will start the ball rolling to take TVA PRIVATE at a fire sale to the republican Utilities.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I thought we were going the other way. How about the Obama administration taking the quasi-public-private institution back into government hands, and fire the private managers?
What did I expect? Just what I saw today, knowing the neglect of oversight by the Bush administration for the past eight years.
December 29th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
What if we just resurrect FDR and ask him what the heck to do. Obviously we have totally lost sight of what he intended for any of his programs. The purpose of the all the New Deal programs was to benefit the poor in this country. To create jobs, improve the lifestyle, and enhance the standard of living of even the poorest in our nation. They were never intended to create dependency which is exactly what has happened to them over the years. Then we have allowed portions of these to become more privatized where the only concern is the value of the stock of the company. By doing this we have created a monster that is driven by greed. This monster is not interested in enhancing the standard of living of the poorest of our citizens. It is only interested in lining the pockets of the stockholders of the companies involved in the day to day operations of the monster. FDR is spinning in his grave at what we have allowed this country to become.
Of course there is a solution and no one will like it. You see FDR did not create a dole system. He did create a “make-work” system whereby he improved the infrastructure of this country and created jobs for the masses that were unemployed. Well I am staying with my mother in Northeast Alabama. She lives on a dirt road. She has no city water or sewer and many of the people that live near her have rust colored mineral water in their wells. We have ridiculously priced high speed internet but no water and dirt roads.
I actually live in North Carolina and there are places there with dirt roads, no city water or sewer and the only semblance of internet comes in the form of dial-up or even more ridiculously priced and flaky satellite service. In the age of digital television I guess I could add cable TV to that list also since satellite TV is crap in the smokey mountains due to the almost constant cloud cover.
So I agree that Obama needs to take back control of TVA. I also think that we need to get the people that are on welfare and not actively going to college and physically able up off their collective derrieres and out working to build some simple infrastructure that this country is still lacking and repair the crumbling Interstate system like I-40 between NC and TN that has had two major rock slides that forced its closure in the last five years.
I think we should get the bean counters and the Armani suits out to disasters like this and make them actually work to clean up the mess they created by being too stingy to spend the money necessary to prevent this disaster.
The only way that is going to occur is when we all realize that the cure to this is in the Declaration of Independence. Only when we study our history and the numerous offenses imposed by the King of England and see the similarities to what is happening to us today will these words become the battle cry of the oppressed and the mantra of the learned.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
December 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
If you had been reading this site for the past four and a half years, you would know that Bush was the Christian-Capitalist culprit who took the U.S. back toward monarchy. Obama has already brought science back into the process of setting environmental policy in this country. He is trying to reform the health care system, fight for a global warming treaty, and create jobs in the renewable energy sector .
We needed a revolution before Bush got his second term.
Obama’s election is what we got after the disaster of idiocracy II.
It took Clinton-Gore eight years to get the technology economy booming and wipe out the Reagan-Bush deficit. I’m willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt awhile longer, although I would like to see more action on fixing the justice system and I’m wondering when the FCC is going to start monkeying with the monopolies of the telecom giants.