WE THE PEOPLE: TVA ash, a dumb idea

By John Wund / Chronicle contributor

June 02, 2009 04:50 pm

— I was going to write about Tom Paine. The upcoming 200th anniversary of his death on June 9 certainly needs to be acknowledged, but if the people of Cumberland County can pull together to prevent the despoiling of their God-given land, they will do more to honor Tom’s memory than my feeble words, so I’ll defer for now.
When coal burns, most of it turns into gas (carbon dioxide), but heavier minerals are left behind in the ash. Therefore, coal ash contains concentrated amounts of toxic metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and heavy radioactive elements. As I said in an earlier column, Wake Forest University found Emory River arsenic measurements hundreds of time higher than allowable levels after the TVA ash spill. Radioactivity in the ash is over 50 percent above allowable levels in uranium mining waste.
Obviously, TVA ash presents a long-term health risk. The “liners” in ash disposal sites don’t hold for significant amounts of geological time. When the toxins inevitably leak into the groundwater, there is no way to undo the damage or stop the spread.
Affluent communities want no part of TVA’s ash. You won’t find any being shipped to Knoxville or Nashville. The entire state of Pennsylvania declared the ash too toxic to accept (AP Report on May 13). Instead, the toxic sludge has been sent to places populated by the poor and unsuspecting.
According to the Institute for Southern Studies, TVA shipped the toxic ash to Perry County, Alabama and Taylor County, Georgia. Taylor County is 41 percent African-American with 21 percent living in poverty and Perry County is 69 percent African-American with a 39 percent poverty rate. The government thus continues a tradition of storing or releasing dangerous pollutants in poorly educated communities least able to defend themselves.
Now they want to use Cumberland County as another dumping ground. Although TVA, EPA, TDEC and the rest of the governmental alphabet soup will tell us not to worry, they said the same thing about the pond in Harriman before it broke and caused the nation’s largest ever toxic spill. Why should we trust the same bureaucrats today?
The county commission is being pressured into a hasty decision after only limited discussion of a still-vague dumping plan. This suggests that a very few might make a lot of short-term money at the expense of most of our citizens by quickly and quietly pushing through the proposal.
I’ve heard that the county is being offered a few million dollars (about $100 to $200 per resident) as an “incentive.”
Even if the number was 2 billion dollars, it wouldn’t be enough to move everyone to a similar community without toxic waste dumps. Our home county’s beauty and tranquility, our reputation as a golf and retirement destination and the health of our children’s children are worth far more.
The only way to truly guarantee no long-term damage in our county is to keep TVA’s ash out. Let’s keep our home clean, our water pure, and our children healthy. Stop at the courthouse and voice your opinion. Call your county commissioners now and let them know we want to keep TVA sludge out of the county. Go to the June 15 commission meeting and demand their accountability. Make old Tom Paine proud.