Tennessee | Grist

The risky plan to dump coal ash in an old Tennessee mine 0
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago A company is pushing a plan to use dry coal ash from the Kingston plant to fill an abandoned coal mine in Tennessee -- but environmentalists are raising concerns about the proposal's health risks.
Nuke it

Lamar Alexander loves the earth too much to support solar and wind 12
Posted 2 months ago
One of the few Congressional Republicans who talks about the need to address climate change makes an interesting argument against wind and solar energy. It's a bogus argument, but still interesting.
Back to 10th-grade history

US Chamber of Commerce calls for ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ on climate change 19
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants to put climate science on trial. This is an attempt to disrupt the effort to fight global warming with a culture war, tying the science of climate change to fundamentalists’ unease with evolution.
ashes to ashes, dust to dust

Study details health risks from TVA’s spilled coal ash 0
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago
Exposure to dust and river sediment in the area of the massive coal ash spill from the TVA's Kingston power plant could present a health risk to local communities, found a new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Prison Farms and the Future

Canada set to close important asset: its prison farms 0
Posted 3 months, 1 week ago
In February 2009, Canada's Public Safety Minister and the country's Correctional Service announced a planned closure of all six of the prison rehabiliation farms because "prison farms are training people in skills that are 50 years behind the times."
how will key senators vote on a climate bill?

Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) 2
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago
Sen. Bob Corker came out swinging against the climate bill that the House passed in June. Yet he understands that climate change is a problem and has called for legislation to address it. His preferred approach is a carbox tax.
how will key senators vote on a climate bill?

Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) 0
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago
"I am one senator who thinks climate change is a problem, humans are causing it, and we need to deal with it," Sen. Lamar Alexander said recently. But he hates the climate bill the Democratic leadership pushed through the House, and he's spoken out against the cap-and-trade approach in general.
West Virginia, Kentucky miners boycott Tennessee over proposed mountaintop removal restrictions 3
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago
There will be no more excursions to Dollywood for Roger Horton, a coal miner who lives in West Virginia -- at least not until U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) drops legislation he's sponsoring that would limit mountaintop removal mining.
ashes to ashes

Crackdown on coal ash 0
Posted 3 months, 4 weeks ago
The crazy quilt of regulations governing coal ash disposal across the United States got a new patch this week when North Carolina lawmakers passed a law requiring stricter regulation of coal ash impoundments.
alabama's ashhole?

Decision to dump TVA’s spilled coal waste in Alabama community sparks resistance 0
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago
The EPA 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.
You'll be sorry, Ms. Jackson

Rural county asks EPA chief not to make it ‘The Ash Hole of Alabama’ 2
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago
The residents of Perry County in central Alabama are none too excited about the prospect of their home becoming "The New Ash Hole of Alabama."
smoke in the water

Coal ash contamination imperils July 4 festival goers in Tennessee 0
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago
Slip Slidin' Away

Was the Tennessee coal ash disaster really a once-in-a-lifetime event? 0
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago
A new report from an engineering firm hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority identified factors behind last year's disaster that unleashed more than a billion of gallons of toxic ash from a massive storage pond at the federal company's Kingston plant. It claims that the disaster was a one-of-a-kind event -- but skeptical coal ash watchdogs are calling for a more thorough investigation by federal authorities.
Audit finds Tennessee Valley Authority misled on ash spill disaster 0
Posted 5 months ago
The Tennessee Valley Authority's Inspector General released a critical audit this week on the federal company's response to last December's massive ash spill disaster at its Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee's Roane County. The incident involved a failure in a coal ash containment pond that released more than a billion gallons of toxic waste into a nearby community and river.
Black Tide

Must-read new story on the Tennessee coal ash disaster and the myth of “clean coal” 4
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
A blockbuster story in the new GQ takes a comprehensive look at the Tenn. coal ash disaster of last December and the mockery it makes of "clean coal." An early contender for Year's Best Journalism.
Hot potato

Pennsylvania rejected TVA coal ash that’s going to poor communities in Alabama and Georgia 2
Posted 6 months ago
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.
Runaway Joe

Debate: Roberts v. ‘clean coal’ flack Joe Lucas 0
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago
Here's an online debate between me and clean coal spokesflack Joe Lucas, originally run by the PBS show NOW.
TVA: making Bozo look good 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
TVA watchdogs arrested, harassed 3
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
TVA could have planned for a normal accident such as the coal ash spill in Kingston, Tenn. 3
Posted 10 months, 1 week ago