The action at the Talladega Superspeedway.At dawn on a hazy autumn morning, the rising sun spilled over the steel grandstands of the Talladega Superspeedway like foam from a cracked can of Bud. This image likely came to mind because I was lying beneath a tarp in a scrubby Alabama meadow carpeted with empty beer cans -- an area known as Talladega's Family Parking Field C. The 2.66-mile Talladega racetrack, located about 50 miles east of Birmingham, is the world's second-largest car-racing venue, with a mile-long grandstand built to accommodate more than 140,000 fans. Around my L.L. Bean tent were some 40,000 parked vehicles, most of them flatbeds, SUVs, Winnebagos, and camper vans filled with groggy pilgrims rising to greet a day that would bring them the nation's biggest semiannual NASCAR racing event.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing claims to hold "17 of the top 20 most-attended U.S. sporting events." I had come to see what may rank among the world's most lavish displays of fuel consumption: 40 hot rods, each getting about 5 miles per gallon, hurtling around a strip of asphalt in an infinite loop. This was my first visit to a NASCAR event, and I admit I came with a certain lack of regard for its premise: burning huge amounts of fuel and rubber for the sole purpose of driving around in circles. The ritual seemed careless to me at a time of war in the Middle East, unchecked global warming, and soaring energy prices. But hours later I would leave Talladega with a less skeptical take on the NASCAR phenomenon and a better understanding not just of carburetors and checkered flags but of who we are as a nation -- a thrill-seeking, speed-loving, self-propelled, forward-charging culture.

Talladega is NASCAR's XXL, Big Gulp–sized speedway -- the most treacherous and most exciting. Its long straightaways and unusually wide track allow for cars to build up to and sustain speeds of more than 200 mph and to run three or four abreast. Racers don't brake for turns at Talladega the way they do at smaller tracks; instead they mash their gas pedals to the floor. These conditions raise fans' expectations for the "big one" -- a massive, harrowing multicar wreck.

NASCAR grew out of the 1930s Prohibition era in America's Deep South, when rural bootleggers rigged standard-looking cars with high-powered engines to outrun the law. The forefathers of NASCAR, wrote historian Neal Thompson, were "a bunch of motherless, dirt-poor southern teens driving with the devil in jacked-up Fords full of corn whiskey -- the best means of escape a southern boy could wish for."

*

Field C, which a week earlier had housed only wildflowers and Alabama Longleaf pines, was now a sprawling tribal village with makeshift neighborhoods and orderly avenues.

Families had been dwelling there for days before the race, many erecting well-appointed encampments with awnings trimmed in Christmas lights, lawn chairs, picnic tables, movie projectors, grills, and coolers stocked with cold American beer. Hoisted above the camps were Confederate flags and tributes to the denizens' favorite racers.

I had awoken to the ambient stench of beer-soaked crabgrass, cigarette butts, fire pits, and the charbroiled remains of last night's cookouts. I groped for soap and toothpaste and made my way to a public trailer marked "$5 Showers." En route, I caught sight of my neighbor shuffling out of his tent wearing nothing but his briefs. He nodded hello, and as he leaned over a propane stove to flip his pancakes, I saw the numeral 8 shaven expertly into his thicket of back hair -- a brash, intimate, and wholehearted display of fan loyalty. This tribute to Dale Earnhardt Jr. (whose number has since changed to 88) was a single-digit poem about America's devotion to speed.

Little and her NASCAR-savvy guide in front of the grandstands.At 1:00 p.m. -- just after the national anthem blared over the loudspeakers and a squadron of B-1 bombers buzzed overhead -- the green flag dropped. In seconds the chorus of twelve-cylinder combustion engines was echoing through the grandstands with a collective shriek as though the universe was being torn in two. Speed rumbled through the ground and into my bones, and my heart knocked against my rib cage. The air filled with the acrid odor of burnt rubber, hot asphalt, and spilled fuel.

For an up-close, under-the-hood look at the action, I made my way into the pit -- the restricted area in the center of the track where the cars are fueled and tuned between laps.

Each of the drivers has a pit crew of more than a dozen mechanics responsible for gassing the cars, changing the tires, cooling the engines, and assessing track and vehicle conditions throughout the race. The mechanics were outfitted in helmets and matching Crayola-colored jumpsuits -- cherry red, royal blue, canary yellow. Their polished metal tools--wrenches, jacks, pressurized gas pumps shaped like giant baby bottles--glinted in the sunlight.

Between pit stops, as mechanics lounged on spare tires and casually dragged on cigarettes, I pressed them for some answers about NASCAR's fuel consumption. The cars get anywhere from 4 to 7 miles per gallon, which means that in a 500-mile race such as this one, averaging 5 mpg, each car would consume roughly 100 gallons of fuel. Multiply that by 43 cars per race, and each event as a whole consumes approximately 4,375 gallons of gasoline (assuming all cars finish). With about 96 U.S. NASCAR races per year spread out across several divisions, that totals over 1 million gallons (factoring practice rounds and adjusting for some shorter races).

You also have to factor in the tires for every race. Several gallons of oil go into the production of a synthetic rubber tire. One car competing in a NASCAR event burns through 40 to 80 tires per race. Additionally, each team has a convoy of 18-wheelers that hauls its race cars across the country from track to track, cumulatively traveling hundreds of thousands of miles per year. Fully loaded, these trucks get around 4.5 miles per gallon, which means that millions of gallons are consumed in just getting the cars to the races.

These numbers are small when compared to the volume of fuel that goes into America's military endeavors or our daily commutes, let alone our total oil demand. What's fascinating about this particular form of fuel consumption is that its purpose is sheer entertainment. This is gas consumption as an art form.

Drivers and crews pause before the race to say the Pledge of Allegiance.Looking up at the grandstands, I was struck by the appearance of the crowd. For all the wealth of competing logos and gear available to them, by far the stand-out choice among the Talladega fans was patriotic garb: the grandstands looked like a pointillist painting in red, white, and blue. I approached one bystander, a 63-year-old account manager at a North Carolina carpet company who had been coming to NASCAR races since they were held on dirt tracks in the 1950s, and asked him about this apparent connection between stock car racing and patriotism. "Those fellas are fast, proud, fearless go-getters with rebel hearts," he said, nodding toward the track. "That about sums up the American spirit, don't it?"

I'd take it a bit further to say that no consumer product more wholly embodies the American ethos than the automobile -- "the heartbeat of America," as Chevrolet famously dubbed it. The word derives from the Greek root auto, "self," and the Latin mobile, "moving"--words that could be said to define the American dream: we each propel ourselves toward the life and destiny of our own choosing. In these individual pursuits, we also directly consume on average 1.5 gallons of gasoline per person per day. This fuel consumption -- roughly quadruple that of the average European -- is due in part to the great distances traveled in our sprawled-out, auto-dependent lifestyles, but also to the fact that we have some of the lowest fuel economy standards of any industrial nation -- lower even than those of our up-and-coming rival China. All of which contributes to a habit of domestic consumption that far exceeds our ability to produce domestic oil.  

Our penchant for long-distance driving is not surprising in a geographically expansive country that now has nearly 4 million miles of heavily subsidized, well-maintained roadways, low gas taxes, and a hobbled rail system -- a country in which driving has become, on the whole, significantly more convenient than public transit. Even in the summer of 2008, when gas prices hit record highs, some three-quarters of Americans vacationed in cars. According to the Department of Transportation, the average American driver travels between 30 and 40 miles per day or nearly 14,000 miles a year -- the distance around the equator every 1.8 years.

Packing up my sagging tent in Field C at Talladega, I struck up a conversation with an amiable family from Missouri camped out nearby. The four boys, aged 12 to 19, and their parents had driven 600 miles from home in an RV they'd named "Bigfoot." It's a voyage they make every year because, as one of the kids told me, "Getting here is half the fun."  

I asked how much their fuel bills -- in a Winnebago that gets 8 mpg -- had been affected by rising gas prices. The father, a tall, bearded man in his fifties cooking a hot dog on a fork over his smoldering fire pit, answered, "It'll cost you. But we adapt -- cutting back on the restaurant stops, maybe going direct instead of taking the scenic route." But, he conceded, if oil prices keep going up, eventually Bigfoot may not be able to make the journey.

As I surveyed the sea of campers and Winnebagos in Field C, I wondered what would happen to this scene if oil stopped flowing tomorrow. The answer, simply, is that NASCAR would go with it, along with a piece of the American identity and a slice of the American dream.

This piece was excerpted from Amanda Little's book Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—Our Ride to the Renewable Future.

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Exposure to dust and river sediment in the area of the massive coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant could present a health risk to local communities.

That's the finding of a study published this month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. It's the first peer-reviewed, double-blind research paper to examine potential human health effects from the spill, according to Duke University's news office.

The authors include graduate students and researchers from Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Pratt School of Engineering, the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"Our findings emphasize the fact that although you may stop the emission of toxic elements from coal-fired power plants into the air, they remain in the fly ash that gets stored in power plants' containment ponds, and may still end up in the environment," said study author Avner Vengosh, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at the Nicholas School.

On Dec. 22, 2008 a containment pond at TVA's plant in eastern Tennessee failed, spilling more than a billion gallons of coal ash. In the weeks following the disaster, a team of Duke scientists analyzed sediment and water samples collected from the areas of the spill, including locations downstream and upstream on the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers. They found high levels of toxic metals and radioactivity, including 75 parts per million of arsenic, 150 parts per billion of mercury, and eight picocuries per gram of total radium.

As long as the sludge remains wet, risk of exposure via inhalation remains slight -- but that risk increases as it dries out. People already suffering from lung disease or infections would be especially susceptible to health problems from airborne coal ash dust.

During the ongoing the cleanup, TVA has worked to prevent the spilled ash from becoming airborne by vacuuming it up, wetting the ash and growing grass on top of it.

The Duke research team has also begun a program to monitor mercury levels in the nearby rivers with a $105,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. That program is examining the impact of high mercury levels on aquatic life.

Vengosh notes that there are hundreds of similar coal-ash storage ponds throughout the United States, most of them located next to rivers. Unregulated by the federal government, the ponds are subjected to an uneven patchwork of state rules.

The findings about the health risks of the spilled coal ash come as TVA is considering shutting down at least two of its oldest coal-fired plants. TVA's fleet of 11 coal plants is among the nation's oldest, with an average age of over 47 years.

At its board meeting last week, TVA President Tom Kilgore said the federal utility is studying whether to close its John Sevier Fossil Plant near Rogersville, Tenn. and the oldest of six units at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant near Stevenson, Ala., the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports:

In next year's budget, TVA plans to begin building an $820 million, combined-cycle, gas-powered plant to replace the generation at the John Sevier plant. With power demand down because of the recession, TVA also has reduced power production this year from the oldest six units at Widows Creek.

United Mountain Defense, a Tennessee-based nonprofit working to halt destructive coal mining practices, reports that TVA has been buying property around the Widows Creek plant to create a safety buffer around the plant's coal waste dumps.

Earlier this year, a leak of as much as 10,000 gallons of coal waste from a storage pond at the Widows Creek plant contaminated a tributary of the Tennessee River.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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Following local protests and international outcry, the city of Oxford, Ala. appears to be backing away from plans to destroy an ancient and archaeologically significant Indian mound in order to use the dirt as fill for a new Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store operated by Wal-Mart.

A local landowner says his property will now serve as the source for construction fill dirt, according to the Anniston Star:

Landowner Charlie Williams confirmed to The Star Wednesday that Oxford-based Taylor Corp. is negotiating with him for dirt for the Sam's site. The company has the contract to do site prep work for Sam's Club. He said the dirt would come from his property on McIntosh Road in Oxford. He said he has not received money for the dirt but expects to eventually.

The paper also reports that a sinkhole has been discovered at the Sam's Club construction site. The city's Commercial Development Authority -- the force behind the controversial construction project -- has authorized setting aside $350,000 to reimburse Sam's Club for the cost of fixing the hole.

As Facing South reported earlier this month, the demolition of the 1,500-year-old structure drew protests from Native Americans and others concerned about the site, which a University of Alabama report found to be historically important as the largest of several ancient stone and earthen mounds throughout the Choccolocco Valley. Preservation advocates have called such structures "prayer in stone."

However, city leaders have disputed the site's archaeological significance, with Mayor Leon Smith insisting it was not man-made and was used only to "send smoke signals." An Anniston Star investigation documented financial ties between the CDA, firms it does business with, and Smith's political campaign.

In the meantime, a protest and reconsecration ceremony are planned for this Sunday, Aug. 30 from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Oxford mound, according to the Alabama-based blog Deep Fried Kudzu.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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City leaders in Oxford, Ala. have approved the destruction of a 1,500-year-old Native American ceremonial mound and are using the dirt as fill for a new Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store operated by Wal-Mart.

A University of Alabama archaeology report commissioned by the city found that the site was historically significant as the largest of several ancient stone and earthen mounds throughout the Choccolocco Valley. But Oxford Mayor Leon Smith -- whose campaign has financial connections to firms involved in the $2.6 million no-bid project -- insists the mound is not man-made and was used only to "send smoke signals."

"The City of Oxford and its archaeological advisers have completed a review and evaluation of a stone mound that was identified near Boiling Springs, Calhoun County, Alabama, and have concluded that the mound is the result of natural phenomena and does not meet the eligibility criteria for the Natural [sic] Register of Historic Places," according to a news release Smith issued last week.

In fact, the report does not conclude the mound is a result of "natural phenomena" but says very clearly it is of "cultural origin." And while the University's Office of Archaeological Research does not believe the site qualifies for the National Register of Historic Places, the Alabama Historical Commission disagrees, noting that the structure meets at least three criteria for inclusion: its "association with a broad pattern of history," architecture "embodying distinctive characteristics," and for the information it might yield to scholars.

The site is also significant to Native Americans. The Woodland and Mississippian cultures that inhabited the Southeast and Midwest before Europeans arrived constructed and used these mounds for various rituals, which may have included funerals. There are concerns that human remains may be present at the site, though none have been found yet.

United South and Eastern Tribes, a nonprofit coalition of 25 federally recognized tribes from Maine to Texas, passed a resolution in 2007 calling for the preservation of such structures, which it calls "prayer in stone." Native Americans have held protests against the mound's demolition, and last week someone altered a sign for the Leon Smith Parkway that runs past the development to read "Indian Mound Pkwy."

A local resident named Johnny Rollins told the Anniston Star how his Native American grandmother taught him that when she died he could "go to that mountain" to talk to her:

"It seems like it's taking part of you away," he said of the demolition. "I always felt I had ties to that there."

Since the media began reporting on the site's demolition, city officials have revised their story and are now claiming that dirt from the mound is not being used as fill, despite earlier statements to the contrary. But eyewitnesses say they have seen workers hauling dirt from the mound to the Sam's Club development.

"I mean really, I went there, saw the giant trucks deliver the earth straight from the mound to the construction site, and I still can't believe what they are doing," writes the seventh-generation Alabamian behind the blog Deep Fried Kudzu, where she shares photos from her visit to the site.

'More prettier' than an Indian mound

Deepening the development's controversy is how the contracting has been handled. The force behind the project is Oxford's Commercial Development Authority, a public board that uses taxpayer money to lure businesses to the area. The CDA owns the land where the mound is located.

Alabama law exempts CDAs from bid requirements, which means contracts can go to whomever the board chooses. A recent Anniston Star investigative series about the CDA  revealed among other things that the group has awarded nearly $9 million in contracts since 1994 but has taken bids for none of them.

The newspaper also detailed the financial ties between the CDA, firms it does business with, and Mayor Smith's political campaign.

For example, the $2.6 million contract for preparing the Sam's Club site went to Oxford-based Taylor Corp., with the money for that coming in part from the sale of city property to Georgia-based developers Abernathy and Timberlake. Taylor Corp. owner Tommy Taylor, who has received thousands of dollars in city contracts for non-CDA work, donated $1,000 to Smith in 2004 and $1,000 in 2008, while Abernathy and Timberlake donated $1,000 to Smith's re-election campaign in 2004, the paper reports.

The Anniston Star also found that the CDA paid engineering firm Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood of Montgomery, Ala. $45,000 in engineering contracts for the Sam's Club project, with part of that money paying for the archaeological study. The firm contributed $500 to Smith in 2004.

An Alabama Ethics Commission official said the relationships could violate state law "depending on facts," but the mayor said he's done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the damaged mound's fate rages on. After getting an earful from alarmed preservationists, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) forwarded their concerns to the state Historical Commission -- but said his office has no intention of getting involved. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Tommy Taylor contributed $1,000 to Riley's 2006 gubernatorial campaign, while Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood contributed $1,500.

For now, it appears Oxford officials are pressing ahead with the project. As Mayor Smith said in its defense, "What it's going to be is more prettier than it is today."

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan last week to dump 3 million tons of coal ash that spilled from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in eastern Tennessee in an impoverished, largely African-American community in Alabama -- and the decision is sparking resistance among local officials and residents who don't want the toxic waste.

The district attorney for Perry County, Ala. -- where the privately owned Arrowhead landfill that's getting the ash is located -- said yesterday the federal government's decision to bring the waste to his community was "tragic and shortsighted" and would endanger generations of residents, the Associated Press reports:

Perry County District Attorney Michael Jackson said he would monitor the lengthy disposal process to make sure the landfill operator and the federal utility comply with environmental regulations.

Jackson said he doesn't know if anything can be done to block the shipments, however.

"We're looking at every option, talking to different groups," Jackson said.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management defends the decision, and some Perry County officials say it will bring millions of dollars in payments and about 50 jobs to the area.

Coal ash contains significant levels of toxic pollutants including arsenic, lead and mercury as well as radioactive elements, but it is still not regulated by the federal government as hazardous waste. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said her agency plans to release a proposed federal rule for the waste by year's end.

In May, Facing South broke the story that TVA's decision to primarily consider two landfills for dumping the ash -- in Perry County, Ala. and Taylor County, Ga. -- raised environmental justice concerns because of the social vulnerability of the communities targeted.  

Georgia's Taylor County is an agricultural area where almost 41% of the population is African-American and more than 24% of residents live in poverty, according to census data. Alabama's Perry County -- part of the historic "Black Belt" -- is 69% African-American with more than 32% of its residents living in poverty, making it one of the state's poorest counties.

TVA reportedly considered moving the coal ash to two communities in eastern Tennessee that are predominantly white and with lower poverty levels, but the company sought regulators' approval only for the Georgia and Alabama sites. TVA's announcement regarding the Alabama landfill's selection said the choice was made after an evaluation process involving more than 30 companies.

In a letter to Facing South following publication of our May report, Peyton T. Hairston Jr., TVA's senior vice president for corporate responsibility and diversity, took issue with the story:

To write that TVA has made decisions on where to transport ash from the Kingston coal spill based on the racial composition of a community is simply wrong.

For the record, the story did not say TVA made its disposal decision because of the community's racial composition. But the effect is the same: TVA -- with EPA's approval -- has chosen to move toxic waste from a predominantly white and relatively well-off community in Tennessee to a poor and majority-black community in Alabama.

Meanwhile, Perry County District Attorney Jackson is not the only Alabamian raising concerns about the dumping decision. The Tuscaloosa News editorialized against the move in a piece titled "Coal ash dump site in Alabama not welcome":

Why is it that the cheapest, politically easiest option for dumping this toxic waste is to put it in a poor, rural county in Alabama's Black Belt?

Local residents are also voicing opposition -- some in creative ways. When TVA held a public meeting last month in Harriman, Tenn. to discuss the ash disposal plans, Perry County resident Betsy Ramaccia showed up wearing a protective suit and breathing mask to denounce the decision as "an environmental injustice and a social injustice," WVLT-TV reports. To view the segment, which was produced before EPA approved the disposal decision, see Jonathan Hiskes' recent report here at Grist.

And residents of Uniontown, the community closest to the Alabama landfill, got an opportunity to speak their piece about the dumping plans via www.ashholes.org, a website created by Project M, a socially responsible design firm that's also behind the innovative PieLab community space in nearby Greensboro, Ala. It features a short video of Uniontown residents, including the man in the still shot above, delivering a simple message to the EPA administrator.

"Lisa Jackson, will you protect us?"

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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Kingston, Tenn., coal ash spillThe Environmental Protection Agency is still figuring out what to do with the millions of tons of coal ash that spilled through a broken levy levee in eastern Tennessee last December. But it looks like much of it may be shipped to Perry County in central Alabama, where residents are none too excited about the prospect of their county becoming “The New Ash Hole of Alabama.”

Alabama activist Betsy Ramaccia, dressed in a haz-mat suit, handed out fake newspapers with that slogan at a Tennessee Valley Authority meeting in Tennessee last month. And the Web site www.ashholes.org has a simple, direct, and powerful video of Perry County residents asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to protect them from the toxic elements in fly ash, a byproduct of coal-fired electricity plants.

The short clip is worth a view. Knoxville’s WVLT TV also has a solid report on Ramaccia’s work and the environmental questions surrounding moving the spilled ash.

"It's an environmental injustice and it's social injustice," Ramaccia told WVLT about shipping the waste to Alabama. "We're concerned about a new group of citizens about to be affected by this ash spill."

Perry County is 69% African-American, and more than 32% of its population lives in poverty, Sue Sturgis reports. She wrote that earlier plans to ship the ash to Pennsylvania were nixed because of worries it would contaminate groundwater.

(Hat tip to Ramaccia for pointing us toward the videos.)

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Some of the more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash that spilled from an impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee last December is making its way to landfills in poor and black communities in Alabama and Georgia, as we reported last week at Facing South.

It turns out that TVA also looked into sending the waste to Pennsylvania for dumping into abandoned mines -- but that state's Department of Environmental Protection rejected the ash as substandard.

"This ash material was accidentally released from a disposal impoundment and mixed with unknown materials in the river water and bottom sediment," Pennsylvania DEP Secretary John Hanger announced last week. "DEP only certifies coal ash for mine reclamation in Pennsylvania that is not contaminated with other materials and can meet our stringent chemical requirements."

But experts say that Pennsylvania's toxicity standards for coal ash used in such projects are not particularly high -- at least not high enough to keep the ash from damaging water quality in the vicinity of the dump sites.

"PADEP is hurling boulders through their glass house with their public rejection of TVA ash as too contaminated for mine disposal," Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans told Facing South.

Evans is one of the authors of a 2007 report that found widespread contamination of groundwater and surface water across Pennsylvania due to dumping of coal ash waste into abandoned mines as part of its land reclamation program. The report by the Clean Air Task Force found degraded water quality at two-thirds of the sites examined, with levels of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, zinc and other pollutants found to exceed drinking-water and other water-quality standards.

A Pennsylvania newspaper reports that the material was apparently being considered as fill for an amphitheater construction project underway on abandoned mine lands in Hazleton, a predominantly white community in the northeastern part of the state that gained fame in recent years for its controversial efforts to drive out illegal immigrants.

The Hazleton Standard-Speaker quoted a TVA spokesperson as saying the federal company decided on its own against sending the ash to Pennsylvania because the site where it was to be used lacked a liner to prevent the material from contaminating groundwater. Abandoned mines where coal ash waste is being dumped across Pennsylvania typically lack liners -- one of the reasons why CATF's report found such widespread water contamination.

Instead, TVA is sending the spilled coal ash waste from Tennessee to landfills in in Taylor County, Ga. and Perry County, Ala. The choice of these communities for disposal of the waste raises environmental justice concerns, since almost 41% of Taylor County's population is African-American and more than 24% of its residents live in poverty, while Alabama's Perry County is 69% African-American with more than 32% of its population in poverty, according to the latest census data. Residents had no voice in the decision-making process, given that there was no opportunity for public comment.

The landfill officials have pointed out that their facilities have synthetic liners and systems to collect and treat the liquid runoff known as leachate in order to help prevent groundwater contamination. But even lined landfills with leachate collection systems provide no guarantee that the materials dumped into them won't eventually impact groundwater.

In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- which is now overseeing cleanup of the TVA spill -- has acknowledged that all landfills eventually leak. The Environmental Research Foundation points to a Federal Register notice from EPA that states:

There is good theoretical and empircal evidence that the hazardous constituents that areplaced in land disposal facilities very likely will migrate from the facility into the broader environment. This may occur several years, even many decades, after placement of waste in the facility, but data and scientific prediction indicate that, in most cases, even with the applicaiton of best available land disposal technology, it will occur eventually.

Unlike many constituents of ordinary household garbage, the toxic elements in coal ash waste -- arsenic, lead and the like -- do not break down over time. That means that once the landfill liner deteriorates and springs a leak, those chemicals will be present to leach into the groundwater.

In addition, the leachate collection systems used in landfills are far from foolproof, ERF notes. For one thing, the systems have a tendency to clog up and/or corrode after a few decades. And as the fluid builds up and puts pressure on the bottom of the structure, it increases the likelihood of liner failure.

There's no doubt that TVA needs to clean up the spilled ash. The results of independent tests conducted on samples collected downstream from the spill that were released today found dangerous levels of toxic elements present in the water, sediment and fish, with some water samples showing arsenic levels 260 times and lead 16 times drinking water standards. The scientists also found fish with lesions and lost scales, which could be attributed to contaminated water.

But TVA's choice for disposing of the ash is not without its problems, either. Despite assurances by the company and government regulators that their plan is safe, the ash waste presents a very real risk to the communities where it's being sent for long-term storage.

At the very least, the authorities should acknowledge that fact.

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“People think a green-constructed home is going to look like a mushroom or have solar panels everywhere. But you won’t be able to look at it and tell it’s a green-constructed home.”

—Emmit Stallworth, Alpha Home Builders, Birmingham, Ala.

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An 18-year water war between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida has come to an end of sorts: A federal appellate court has voided an Army Corps of Engineers agreement that would have given Georgia the rights to nearly 25 percent of federal reservoir Lake Lanier as a source of drinking water for metro Atlanta. Alabama and Florida had sued over the plan, saying it would siphon off water that would otherwise flow to their states. Atlanta, which has been accused of not being mindful of water resources while encouraging rampant growth, is "the big loser here," says water-law expert George William Sherk. The three states are negotiating a new division of water, as a record drought continues.

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Dear Umbra,

I want to send a letter to my local representatives about global warming and how our whole city and state should take part in stopping it, but I don't know what to say or how to approach this. Please help!

Hillary Schwartz
Birmingham, Ala.

Dearest Hillary,

Hmm, I can think of a few things to say. But you might get escorted out of Alabama if you put them in a letter.

Post haste.

Photo: iStockphoto

So on to more constructive advice. First, some general tips. A handwritten or typed letter is more effective (and prettier) than email. It's best to keep to one page, and to be clear about who you are and the issue that concerns you. Don't be afraid to get personal -- not in the "your mama's a yellowhammer" way, but in the "here's why I'm worried, and here's why I won't vote for you again unless you do something about this" way. With the election coming up this fall, that last part might carry a wee bit more weight than usual.

Since you have limited space, focus on how this gigantic global problem will hit home. (I am going to give 'Bama-specific info here, but take heart, ye letter-writers in other states: oddly specific factoids abound.) According to our friends at the Union of Concerned Scientists, sea levels on the Alabama coast could rise 15 inches by 2100, and extreme weather events may become more frequent and more intense. The EPA tells us [PDF] that protecting Alabama's coast could cost $60 million to $220 million, and that climate change could increase asthma-causing ground-level ozone -- which has long been a fly in Birmingham's ointment. And the National Wildlife Federation thinks changes in Alabama's habitats could have a significant impact [PDF] on your lucrative fishing and tourism industries. Tourism, by the way, supports about 148,000 jobs down there -- perhaps even your own. There's a chance to insert that personal touch we talked about.

It doesn't look like anyone from 'Bama has seen fit to join the emissions-reducing U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement -- which is a shame, since 275 mayors representing 48.2 million Americans have. Maybe your mayor would like to be the first in the state! Your senators also do not appear to be climate all-stars, as they have recently voiced support for offshore oil drilling and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling. You'll want to check out where your local representatives stand -- your state conservation voting league is a good place to start -- but I'm getting a funny feeling about your odds.

Still, it can only help matters if these folks hear from you. The tide is turning on climate change, and many politicians are beginning to understand the need to take some kind of action.

Here's a nice, juicy quote that might help more than any factoid could, something ecologist Pat Byington of your Environmental Management Commission told the Birmingham Times a couple of weeks ago: "This is a moral issue. It's something we all should be concerned about. We should all try to understand it." Indeed.

Dixily,
Umbra

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A person driving through the South might notice the chicken houses dotting the hills and flatlands. He might marvel at the larger ones, as long as a football field. He might react to their gagging stench for a moment, and then forget as he travels on. But those who live near the structures -- stuffed with as many as 25,000 chickens each -- combat the odor and health hazards daily.

Not yer pappy's chicken coop.

Photo: USDA.

"There's a horrible odor, a stench, and I have flies and rodents digging in, trying to get into my house," says Bernadine Edwards, whose 39-acre farm near Owensboro, Ky., is surrounded by 108 chicken houses within a two-mile radius. "It is unbelievable."

The 65-year-old school bus driver, who recently bought a purifier to help her breathe easier in her home, says the value of her property has plummeted since the chicken houses arrived in the early 1990s. "I'm too old to start over," she says. "I can't afford to. My house is paid for."

Edwards is not alone. Over the last 15 years, the country has seen a boom in chicken farming. Today, the industry is serving a cocktail of injustice and pollution to rural residents, and most of them aren't in a position to fight back.

Since the early 1990s, observers say, thousands of chicken houses have cropped up across the South as consumer demand for poultry has grown. Today, the U.S. is the world's poultry leader, with production of broilers, turkeys, and eggs valued at $29 billion in 2004, according to the National Chicken Council. Broilers -- chickens raised for meat -- generated $22 billion of that. The leading broiler production states in 2004 were Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, which is home to the world's largest poultry producer, Tyson Foods.

Like chemical companies and industrial hog farmers, poultry producers don't tend to place these concentrated animal-feeding operations, or CAFOs, in ritzy neighborhoods beside multimillion dollar McMansions. Instead, chicken houses commandeer spacious rural areas, where local residents need the income and their neighbors won't speak out against them -- or are unaware of the factories' environmental and health consequences.

"These companies seek rural areas where unemployment, or underemployment, is high and people are desperate for ways to stay on the farm," says Aloma Dew, a Sierra Club organizer in Kentucky. "They assume that poor, country people will not organize or speak up, and that they will be ignorant of the impacts on their health and quality of life."

The companies provide local growers, who work under contract, with chicks, feed, medicine, and transportation. Growers take care of the rest, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction, maintenance, and labor costs. When the company requires upgrades, the costs fall to the growers. The massive amounts of manure, too, are their responsibility. (In Arkansas alone, chicken farms produce an amount of waste each day equal to that produced by 8 million people.) Payment is results-oriented, based on measures like total weight gain of the flock. It's a system, says the United Food and Commercial Workers, that leaves 71 percent of growers earning below poverty-level wages.

A far cry from free range.

Photo: USDA.

If growers protest, companies can cancel their contracts, leaving farmers responsible for incurred debt, says Laura Klauke, director of contract agriculture reform at the North Carolina-based Rural Advancement Foundation International. And that debt can be substantial: since banks in the region will more readily loan money for poultry houses than other types of agriculture, Klauke says, some farmers put everything on the line, mortgaging their property to make a living this way.

"If those contracts are canceled -- and they can be if the farmer doesn't do what the industry wants -- then that farmer could literally be homeless," said Klauke. "I know farmers who have been in that situation." (Industry representatives did not respond to requests for comments on this or any of the concerns expressed in this story.)

More frightening than the economic balancing act may be the health and environmental hazards posed by chicken farms, from the arsenic, ammonia, and other chemicals found in feed and manure to threats from diseased animals. While traditional farming can carry similar risks, CAFOs are especially hazardous because of the tight confinement that defines them. "The fact is, you put hundreds of animals in a very small area, that creates problems that would not exist if these animals were distributed across the countryside," says Barclay Rogers, who successfully litigated a pollution case against Tyson in Kentucky in 2003.

Rogers says the industry grew rapidly with little regulatory constraint, and has been "riding roughshod" over land and people. While CAFOs must follow federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, he says, many growers try to "duck and weave" regulations. "The industry may stand up and say we are over-regulating, and that we have all of these permits, but the practical aspect is that they have devised many ways to avert pollution controls," said Rogers. "That's why we are seeing the fouling of water and air. We just now are coming to grips with these consequences, as people are catching up and realizing what has happened to them."

Last year, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson (D) filed suit against Tyson, Cargill, and several other poultry companies, seeking to stop water pollution caused in his state by soiled chicken litter dumped in Arkansas. Polluted runoff, also known as non-point source pollution, is the biggest remaining water pollution problem in the U.S., according to the EPA, which cites agriculture as the largest source of such pollution. Edmondson described the problem as "an economic development issue, an agricultural issue, and a quality-of-life issue." Not to be outdone, Arkansas Attorney General Mike Beebe (D) -- who is running for governor -- countered in November by suing the state of Oklahoma directly, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prohibit Oklahoma from forcing his state's poultry farmers to adhere to the stricter standards. Both cases are still pending.

This messy interstate situation is just one indication of the many unknowns at stake. "Some of the [environmental] consequences of these CAFOs are just not clear," said Van Brahana, a geologist at the University of Arkansas who studies groundwater. "What we do know is when you have a lot of organisms living in close conditions and you have a buildup of chemicals, you might get a cause-and-effect relationship. The scary thing is we just don't know right now."

The effects on those who work directly with the animals are clearer. "In rural America, the poultry companies can get workers for a song, and the workers are so grateful to get the jobs," says Jackie Nowell of the United Food and Commercial Workers. These workers -- usually poor, and often African American or Hispanic -- "are exposed to feces [and] any disease the chicken has," Nowell says. "There are also horrible levels of dust and dander inside these houses."

Nowell adds that researchers in the region are currently exploring the possible crossover of various viruses from poultry to humans, like avian flu. "That's a real concern. These workers and people who live near these houses will be on ground zero of an outbreak."

Flies cluster around a pile of
carcasses in Missouri.

Photo: USDA.

Workers in poultry processing plants also face serious dangers from machinery, carpal tunnel syndrome, and health hazards such as contaminated microorganisms and dust. "There are huge health and safety violations in every plant," says Jennifer Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. In 2004, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations to Tyson for alleged violations after an employee was asphyxiated when he inhaled hydrogen sulfide, a gas created by decaying organic matter. OSHA fined the company $436,000.

Poultry companies "hire relatively low-income people, immigrants who have less of an understanding of rights and health issues," Rosenbaum says. Simply put, she says, the companies are hurting the South's small towns while they fatten their own wallets.

Katie Tillinghast lives in rural northwest Arkansas. In early January, she received a call from a neighbor who told her he planned to put three large turkey houses on his property, 200 yards away. Tillinghast wants to stop the project, but the only plausible choice would be to buy her neighbor out at $3,000 an acre -- and he owns 73 acres. She can't afford that, and knows it's highly unlikely that a rich buyer will step in to help.

You'll never look at chicken nuggets
the same way again.

Photo: USDA.

Like other states, Arkansas does not yet have a law to protect residents from these operations, though several states have considered such legislation. So Tillinghast can't do much but worry -- about her drinking water, about avian flu, about noise and light pollution, about air quality. "I agree someone should be able to do what they want to do on their land," Tillinghast says. "But I don't think you should be able to do something that hurts your neighbors."

Many others agree with her, but local dynamics can make it hard for activists to issue a battle cry. "Often these plants are the only major industry in town," says SPLC's Rosenbaum. "Everyone goes to church together or went to high school together. Everyone knows everyone, and it's hard to fight that."

Groups like the Sierra Club have fought the poultry industry for many years, but only recently have they begun to collaborate with people on the ground. In 2004, a group of growers, workers, and environmental, public-health, religious, and social-justice organizations created the National Poultry Justice Alliance.

Do Good

The idea came from the Glenmary Commission on Justice in Ohio, a group of Catholic brothers and priests who have worked in the South since 1939. Marcus Keyes, the commission's director, says he was inspired by a statement from the Catholic Bishops of the South in 2000 about workers' rights. "These are moral issues -- the rights of workers, conditions of workers, pay and benefits," said Keyes. "These are human rights issues, and environmental [issues, but] in the end they are all moral issues." The group's members are working to strengthen the alliance before launching a major campaign.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit may come to trial in early April that could up the ante. While previous suits have dealt with pollution and workers' rights, this one tackles the issue of health effects on residents. In 2003, a group of citizens from Prairie Grove, Ark., a town of 2,500, filed a lawsuit against several poultry producers. Citing a connection between the community's high cancer rates and arsenic contamination from chicken litter spread as fertilizer, they are seeking damages from the companies that own the birds (not, it should be noted, from the local growers). Their lawyers say cancer rates in the small town are 50 times higher than the national average.

The Prairie Grove effort has grown to include about 100 plaintiffs in multiple suits, each of which will be tried separately. Supporters say that legal action may be the only way to bring these issues to light and hold the industry to higher standards. If the court rules in Prairie Grove's favor, the decision could provide ground for others to stand on. Until then, the only ones winning in this despair-filled industry are the mammoth corporations.

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Budget Cuts Could Mean Lax Enforcement at Alabama's Landfills

Proposed budget cuts to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management could spell the end of virtually all landfill and medical-waste facility inspections, state officials say. The state plans to cut $1.3 million of the $5 million it normally contributes to the department's budget; the remainder of the $46 million budget comes from federal money earmarked for specific programs, such as clean water, and cannot be used for the inspection program. Currently, each of Alabama's landfills is inspected four times per year; under the new budget, the state's 23 medical-waste facilities will not be inspected at all, and two inspectors will have to do their best with all 190 landfills. That's worrisome, says solid-waste division chief Larry Bryant, because "if a landfill operator knows that he might not get inspected for two years, he might cut corners to save money. There are a lot of ways to cut corners in a landfill."

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Alabama PCB Suits End in $700 Million Settlement

Monsanto Co. and its spin-off enterprise, Solutia, agreed yesterday to pay $700 million to settle state and federal lawsuits concerning five decades of PCB pollution in Anniston, Ala. From the 1930s to the 1970s, Monsanto (and later Solutia) used a plant in Anniston to produce PCBs, which are now banned in the U.S. because they are associated with health problems ranging from learning disabilities to cancer. The settlement involves two separate trials and more than 20,000 plaintiffs, who accused the companies of contaminating their bodies and properties with PCBs. In addition to the monetary settlement, the companies will fund an education trust, community development, cleanup and remediation, and a clinic and research facility in Anniston specializing in environmental medicine and providing some free medical care.

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Army Begins Burning Chemical Weapons in Alabama

To the dismay of environmentalists and many community members in Anniston, Ala., the U.S. Army on Saturday started incinerating millions of pounds of chemical weapons stored at an army depot in town, a process expected to take seven years. A federal judge cleared the way on Friday when he ruled that environmental and civil-rights groups had failed to show that the incineration posed an imminent danger. About 250,000 people live within a 30-mile radius of the plant, making it the most densely populated area where the Army has incinerated chemical weapons. A 1997 treaty requires the U.S. to destroy its chemical weapons stockpiles at eight sites around the U.S., but at many of those sites the Army will use a less controversial and presumably safer method that neutralizes the chemicals by mixing them with warm water or other nontoxic liquids, eliminating the need for smokestacks and high heat.

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Chemical Weapons Incineration in Anniston, Ala., Delayed

Just as local residents were scrambling for gas masks, the U.S. Army announced yesterday that it would delay startup of a controversial chemical-weapons incinerator in Anniston, Ala., until Friday, when a federal judge can consider an environmental group's request for a temporary restraining order against the facility. The Chemical Weapons Working Group argues that the Army violated federal law by neglecting to consider alternative disposal methods, including neutralizing the weapons with warm water or other nontoxic liquids. The Army's Anniston incinerator is situated near residential areas, schools, and businesses with a high percentage of poor and minority citizens, many of whom are very worried about the possible health effects from incineration or an accident at the facility. The Army insists that incineration is safe and that leaving the Cold War-era weapons intact would pose an even greater danger because they could leak or be a target for terrorists.

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Having depleted their own nation's once-plentiful turtle populations, Chinese buyers are now offering top dollar for turtles from the southern U.S. In the last three years, there's been a dramatic upswing in the number of turtles exported to China, where the animals' meat is considered a delicacy and their shells are ground up to make virility powders. In 2002, 23,000 turtles were extracted from the waterways of North Carolina, up from just a few thousand in 1999. So troubling is this trend that North Carolina is poised to impose a moratorium on turtle fishing. South Carolina is also considering a moratorium, and Alabama and Mississippi have put strict limits on turtle trapping. Southern populations of the slow-moving creatures don't seem to be in danger yet, but lawmakers want to act before it's too late.

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Roughly 1,000 miles of rivers and streams in Alabama could be protected as critical habitat for endangered species, under a new proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The proposal, which is designed to protect eight endangered and three threatened species of mussels, was great news for environmentalists and bad news for backers of dams, water diversions, dredging, and other projects that threaten water quality. Alabama is one of the most biologically diverse states in the country, thanks to its abundant aquatic life -- but it also leads the continental U.S. in extinctions. Mussels are particularly susceptible to mass die-offs or extinctions from pollution or sedimentation because they cannot move around in search of more habitable waters. Industry leaders have not yet decided whether they will try to fight the critical habitat plan.

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A federal appeals court has ruled that Alabama is failing to adequately enforce water-pollution laws, thereby paving the way for citizens of the state to sue under the national Clean Water Act. Under the terms of that act, citizens may go to court to enforce the law only if the state has failed to prosecute polluters and only after filing 60-day notice of intent to sue. But because Alabama is doing a poor job of enforcing the law, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that residents of the state may sue to enforce the law even if the state has already taken steps toward enforcement. Mike Odom, special projects director for the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation of Tallahassee, celebrated the ruling: "[T]he door has been opened wide and this will provide new opportunities for Alabama citizens to hold polluters accountable."

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