I looked all over and saw nothing on here about the environmental disaster in Tennessee. Seems an enormous amount of coal ash sludge spilled from a storage pond (either 40 acres or 80 acres, depending on which news source) containing large amounts of toxic heavy metals, and is now spread over either 300, 400, or 3000 acres of Tennessee (again depending on the news source) leeching into the water table, running into the creeks and rivers which provide water for cities to the south... Some folks fight mountaintop removal. Some folks protest the coal-to-electric plants. Some of us are fighting the huge power lines which will ultimately carry this coal-produced electricity to the cities up north. It is all part of the same system, and designed to completely RAPE the land and destroy it forever so that the masses can have all those pretty lights and groovy electrical what-nots. George Bush just relaxed a whole list of rules and regs that the energy corporations were supposed to be following up until now, in order to make it easier for them to rape the land. And then two weeks later, this. They are saying it's 3 times bigger than the ExxonValdeez oil spill years ago... But of course not to worry.... Blah Blah Blah. There was NOTHING in the news about this for 2 days. It happened on the 22nd and not one word until the 24th... The virtually no follow-up. It's way past time for us to "do something". So much damage has already been irreversibly done. There are large areas of the US (and the rest of the world) that will quite simply NEVER be the same. This is our home that is being ruined! This is very much like someone tearing off pieces of his own house to burn in the wood stove to stay warm... If we keep on having disasters like this one, it won't take too long and there will not be enough clean land/water/air left to try to save...
that is so absolutely true. it's a short term gain that won't count for anything in the end when all the land is raped and pillaged. i read about this tragedy a few days after the fact and it's my understanding that the coal pond was known to be in trouble during the summer. TVA was supposed to do something about it then but never got around to it. then again maybe they did..... all the same, i don't understand why there isn't more long-term-thinking when it comes to things like this. couldn't we at least account for the possible consequences of a coal slurry inundating a river and wiping out the entire ecosystem for many miles downstream? aren't there any mature people running the TVA?
