<![CDATA[Grist - Comment Feed for Tennessee ash spill more than three times larger than originally thought]]> Grist Comment Feed en Comment #1 by JMG http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/ Fri, 26 Dec 2008 08:05:23 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/1 Tut-tut says the WAPost

Headline over the WA Post story on this today:
in the "News About the Environment" column:

"Environmentalists Fear Risks From Tennessee Ash Spill; Cleanup Progresses"

See, normal people aren't concerned, only "environmentalists" -- besides, the cleanup is progressing.  All is well.  Experts are standing by.  Nothing to see here, move along ...

The 5% Project Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.


]]> Tut-tut says the WAPost

Headline over the WA Post story on this today:
in the "News About the Environment" column:

"Environmentalists Fear Risks From Tennessee Ash Spill; Cleanup Progresses"

See, normal people aren't concerned, only "environmentalists" -- besides, the cleanup is progressing.  All is well.  Experts are standing by.  Nothing to see here, move along ...

The 5% Project Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.


]]> Comment #2 by Pompey Road http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/ Fri, 26 Dec 2008 10:45:01 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/2 Hazardous Waste:

Coal corporations have fought for years to keep the sludge ponds for ash and coal cleaning from being listed as hazardous material. Each and every heavy metal found in the coal sludge by itself is listed as a hazardous material but if you label the brew as coal sludge it is not consisered as hazardous.

The Tennessee spill is just a puddle when measured against the the massive spill that happened in Martin County Ky. a few years ago. The spill polluted streams all the way to the Ohio River including the Big Sandy River that flows into the Ohio. You see the father up in appalachia you get the more secluded it gets and the media misses a lot. This last spill happened to be in the foothills of Tennessee. If it had been up in WVa. or East Ky. it would have hardly made the front page of a local paper. We have hundreds of coal sludge impoundments that leak or occasionally fail. Heavy with chemicals used to clean and seperate the coal from the dirt.

When Mountain top Removal is resolved this will be the next big environmental battle with the coal industry.

As of yet there is no such thing as clean coal.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

]]> Hazardous Waste:

Coal corporations have fought for years to keep the sludge ponds for ash and coal cleaning from being listed as hazardous material. Each and every heavy metal found in the coal sludge by itself is listed as a hazardous material but if you label the brew as coal sludge it is not consisered as hazardous.

The Tennessee spill is just a puddle when measured against the the massive spill that happened in Martin County Ky. a few years ago. The spill polluted streams all the way to the Ohio River including the Big Sandy River that flows into the Ohio. You see the father up in appalachia you get the more secluded it gets and the media misses a lot. This last spill happened to be in the foothills of Tennessee. If it had been up in WVa. or East Ky. it would have hardly made the front page of a local paper. We have hundreds of coal sludge impoundments that leak or occasionally fail. Heavy with chemicals used to clean and seperate the coal from the dirt.

When Mountain top Removal is resolved this will be the next big environmental battle with the coal industry.

As of yet there is no such thing as clean coal.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

]]> Comment #3 by Peter B. Meyer http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/ Fri, 26 Dec 2008 10:55:15 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/3 Capacity 2.6 - Spill 5.4???

That's the news ... so, we economists calculate the risks and all that based on the possible harm from a possible spill of 2.6 million cubic yards of ash. After all, that's the worst case accident, right? That's the capacity of the storage facility! (And it is a regulated storage lagoon, right?)

Then we do a cost-benefit analysis - and assume with me that the economics actually makes sense. Si we then make a rational economic decision that it is efficient to permit the coal burning and the ash dumping and storage.

BUT false data make the conclusions based on them false ... an old computer term applies: GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out, no matter how sophisticated the analysis.

No economist - from any of the many schools of the discipline - would claim that the cost-benefit analysis of that power plant's economic and environmental effects was correct. Not with those data.

The devil is not in the details -- it's in the data!

]]> Capacity 2.6 - Spill 5.4???

That's the news ... so, we economists calculate the risks and all that based on the possible harm from a possible spill of 2.6 million cubic yards of ash. After all, that's the worst case accident, right? That's the capacity of the storage facility! (And it is a regulated storage lagoon, right?)

Then we do a cost-benefit analysis - and assume with me that the economics actually makes sense. Si we then make a rational economic decision that it is efficient to permit the coal burning and the ash dumping and storage.

BUT false data make the conclusions based on them false ... an old computer term applies: GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out, no matter how sophisticated the analysis.

No economist - from any of the many schools of the discipline - would claim that the cost-benefit analysis of that power plant's economic and environmental effects was correct. Not with those data.

The devil is not in the details -- it's in the data!

]]> Comment #4 by PurpleOzone http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/ Fri, 26 Dec 2008 11:32:45 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/4 When Dirty is An Act of God

4000 homeless, 125 dead, after a dam to contain coal slurry burst in 1972
but it was God's fault...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood


]]> When Dirty is An Act of God

4000 homeless, 125 dead, after a dam to contain coal slurry burst in 1972
but it was God's fault...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood


]]> Comment #5 by wildleaf http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/ Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:40:58 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/5 Punish the unpunishable.

No one will be punished for this criminal negligent act. Some corporation or government agency will pay fines but it is doubtful anyone will even get fired much less go to jail. If I were someone who lost there home or developed cancer from this I would probably act directly against the people who are profiting the most from this dangerous practice of coal burning and sludge. I think that in the court of human dignity any individual who acts in outrage with the aim to end this from happening in the future or acts with the plain notion of justice should do so. It is far past time that people who cause harm to others by profiting from destruction face punishment, so please feel outraged and do act. Obviously if there was another way to hold people accountable do so but I just don't think justice of this kind exists by legal means.

The Black Car Project Killing cars before they kill us!

]]> Punish the unpunishable.

No one will be punished for this criminal negligent act. Some corporation or government agency will pay fines but it is doubtful anyone will even get fired much less go to jail. If I were someone who lost there home or developed cancer from this I would probably act directly against the people who are profiting the most from this dangerous practice of coal burning and sludge. I think that in the court of human dignity any individual who acts in outrage with the aim to end this from happening in the future or acts with the plain notion of justice should do so. It is far past time that people who cause harm to others by profiting from destruction face punishment, so please feel outraged and do act. Obviously if there was another way to hold people accountable do so but I just don't think justice of this kind exists by legal means.

The Black Car Project Killing cars before they kill us!

]]> Comment #6 by Atomicrod http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/ Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:33:22 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/6 Surprise - David Roberts and I agree

Dave Roberts and I are in complete agreement here - coal is a dirty fuel that produces a lot of dangerous waste products in addition to CO2. Even if - and that is a BIG IF - it became possible sometime in the future to capture and sequester CO2, coal burning in power plants would still be an environmental problem, especially on the scale of billions of tons per year.

All that material has to be dug out of the ground, processed, cleaned, transported, burned. The waste products, including air polluting gases and land and air polluting ash have to be put somewhere beside inside human and animal lungs and into water supplies. There is simply no way to do all of that "cleanly".

An interesting development occurred recently in the energy discussion. Virginia Beach, VA, a city located in the Tidewater area, where there are several coal fired power plants and a very large coal export port, recently passed a resolution opposing a study to determine if it would be possible to safely mine uranium from Coles Hill, a deposit that apparently includes more than 60,000 tons of uranium valued at approximately $10 billion located about 200 miles from VA Beach.

The weird thing here is that Virginia is home to more than 140 coal mines and enough coal fired power plants to provide 38% of its electrical power, but it has people in leadership positions who believe that uranium mines have to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they will not release any naturally occurring radioactive materials to the environment.

It seems to me that the only people who should worry about uranium mining in a carefully regulated environment are the people who sell coal. That single uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County, with its 60,000 tons of uranium, contains the same potential energy as 180 Billion tons of high quality Appalachian coal. If Coles Hill uranium was used in efficient breeder or converter reactors, it could provide as much heat energy as 180 years worth of current US coal production.

]]> Surprise - David Roberts and I agree

Dave Roberts and I are in complete agreement here - coal is a dirty fuel that produces a lot of dangerous waste products in addition to CO2. Even if - and that is a BIG IF - it became possible sometime in the future to capture and sequester CO2, coal burning in power plants would still be an environmental problem, especially on the scale of billions of tons per year.

All that material has to be dug out of the ground, processed, cleaned, transported, burned. The waste products, including air polluting gases and land and air polluting ash have to be put somewhere beside inside human and animal lungs and into water supplies. There is simply no way to do all of that "cleanly".

An interesting development occurred recently in the energy discussion. Virginia Beach, VA, a city located in the Tidewater area, where there are several coal fired power plants and a very large coal export port, recently passed a resolution opposing a study to determine if it would be possible to safely mine uranium from Coles Hill, a deposit that apparently includes more than 60,000 tons of uranium valued at approximately $10 billion located about 200 miles from VA Beach.

The weird thing here is that Virginia is home to more than 140 coal mines and enough coal fired power plants to provide 38% of its electrical power, but it has people in leadership positions who believe that uranium mines have to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they will not release any naturally occurring radioactive materials to the environment.

It seems to me that the only people who should worry about uranium mining in a carefully regulated environment are the people who sell coal. That single uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County, with its 60,000 tons of uranium, contains the same potential energy as 180 Billion tons of high quality Appalachian coal. If Coles Hill uranium was used in efficient breeder or converter reactors, it could provide as much heat energy as 180 years worth of current US coal production.

]]> Comment #7 by ks7724a http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/ Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:26:48 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/Clean-coal/7 No Clean Coal

It amazes me that the myth of clean coal is not adequately discussed in the television news media, however, it does give me hope to see people commenting on just that, even if it is online. We all know that the internet has the ability to affect massive amounts of change, and I hope the issue of clean coal is one of them. If you have not yet discovered it, there is a coalition of many groups dedicated to fighting the misinformation about clean coal. http://www.powerpastcoal.com has launched a 100 Days of Action to Power Past Coal campaign, and its goal is to provide, through the website, the ability for community activists to add their local events and gather information about clean coal. Please check it out, and let's make this a powerful campaign. In order to do that, we need all the assistance we can get.

]]> No Clean Coal

It amazes me that the myth of clean coal is not adequately discussed in the television news media, however, it does give me hope to see people commenting on just that, even if it is online. We all know that the internet has the ability to affect massive amounts of change, and I hope the issue of clean coal is one of them. If you have not yet discovered it, there is a coalition of many groups dedicated to fighting the misinformation about clean coal. http://www.powerpastcoal.com has launched a 100 Days of Action to Power Past Coal campaign, and its goal is to provide, through the website, the ability for community activists to add their local events and gather information about clean coal. Please check it out, and let's make this a powerful campaign. In order to do that, we need all the assistance we can get.

]]>