The Tennessee Valley Authority’s massive cleanup of a coal ash spill from last Christmas at the coal-fired power plant in Kingston, Tennessee, “has hit a snag 500 miles away, just before the treated wastewater reaches Mobile Bay,” according to the Associated Press.

A wastewater processing company in Mobile, Alabama, called Liquid Environmental Solutions, said Friday it would stop accepting shipments of wastewater runoff from the Perry County landfill that is accepting the coal ash, which is laced with arsenic, mercury, lead, uranium and other heavy metals and toxic substances.

In a statement, the Dallas-based Liquid Environmental Solution’s senior vice president, Dana King, said the shipments have been stopped “due to local concerns” because “some people are up in arms” even though the company has “properly accepted, tested and treated the non-hazardous Perry County landfill wastewater.”

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Approval of Congress Hits New Low, Down There With Lawyers

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

In a continuation of our series on public opinion in America, we find it quite interesting that in the latest surveys, the public approval rating of Congress has fallen to a new low — down there on the scale with lawyers.

The job approval rating of Congress fell six points in the past month, from 24 percent to 18 percent — the lowest reading in more than a year. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans, 78 percent, now disapprove of the job Congress is doing, according to Gallup.

This decline in congressional approval is largely explained by a sharp drop in approval among rank-and-file Democrats, from 45 percent in January to 30 percent today. The slight changes in approval among Republicans and independents are not statistically significant.

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