Check out what Mike Roselle is doing on this issue. Mike is the co-founder of Earth First!, Rainforest Action Network, Ruckus Society, and was a Yippie! once upon a time:
Standing in the front yards of local resident Sandy Jenkins, I can look out over the spill. Except it wasnt a spill and it wasnt a dam failure. A fifty foot high pile of toxic waste collapsed and took the dam with it. Except it wasnt a even a dam and it sure wasnt a pond, as the TVA calls it. It was a berm made of the same toxic material that was in the pile. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which built and manages the 50 year old plant, had covered it up with red clay, planted grass on it and some exotic pine trees at the base, and from Sandys yard it hadnt look very threatening. But he knew what was in that pile and he and other locals had been complaining that it was leaking for years. TVA responded by installing some more pipes to drain the seepage into the Emory River. Still, when the pile collapsed, no dam could have held it back. It was supersaturated and highly unstable. The dam was pushed across the river largely intact, across acres of riparian forests, and like a bulldozer scrapping everything in its path, it pushed what was a sanctuary for wildlife up against the hills above the opposite side of slough. Killed were not only fish, but frogs, turtles, rabbits, mink, muskrat and all of the wildlife you would expect to find in a slough where three creeks joining a large southern Appalachian River.
Large chunks of the dam survived the half mile trip across the floodplain until the twenty foot wave of ash and water crashed against hillside beneath Sandys house with force that cracked the walls of his basement a full 80 feet above the river. Here, the wavce action, deflected backwards, broke the dam in chunks the size of small icebergs. The pile of coal ash and other toxic waste continued to ooze out of the pile until half of it was now sitting in the river, backing up the slough and burying the mouths of three creeks. Water was still backing up and we watched as the TVA backhoes tried to dig channels and let the toxic stew drain out into the river. Out in the Emory River, a large rock weir is being built to hold back the muck, but it doesnt hold back the water, which continues to drain off of the sludge and into the current.
It will cost more to fix this foundation than the whole house is worth Sandy says, And even if TVA pays for it, theyre not going to fix this, there not going to put the slough back. All I have now is a house surrounded by a gravel pit. Indeed, his house is at ground zero, directly across from the ash pile. Other homes in his neighborhood have been badly damaged or destroyed completely and TVA crews are quickly condemning and demolishing the buildings, as if to hide evidence of their crime. They are just going to spread it out and plant grass on it.
The avalanche of sludge that damaged Sandys house also wiped out the train tracks leading into the power plant. Seven out of none generators have been shut down as the TVA feverishly works around the clock to replace the rails before they run out of coal. The coal trains will soon be bringing coal from Zeb Mountain to replenish the two piles that rise above everything on the site save the massive smoke stacks. This is the end of the line for the coal that is being ripped out of the Appalachian Mountains. From her, the clean invisible electrons will zip at dazzling speed through high tension wires to homes and factories across the country providing America with clean and cheap energy. Except it isnt clean and it sure isnt cheap. Every day, plants like this one will consume 10,000 tons of coal and release three times that much carbon dioxide into the air, along with mercury, arsenic and lead. What they take out of the stacks will be concentrated in the ash, and that ash will eventually wind up in a river, and this is all thats left of the mountain. All along the ways, laws and regulations designed to prevent this disaster were ignored by the TVA managers. They spent millions lobbing against treating this ash as what it clearly is, toxic waste.
So what do we do about this? Can we afford to sit by and watch this for any longer? Can we afford to wait and let the environmental movement and the democrats try to solve this problem with more studies, more press conferences, and more e-mail? I believe it is long past time for a non violent response to the ongoing criminal activity of the coal industry. It is time to shut them down. On Sunday, the 25th of January, I will be organizing civil disobedience in East Tennessee. If you are able to be there with me, please come. If you cant be there, contact me at [email protected] and find out other ways to offer support. For more information on the TVA ash spill and how you can get involved, go to http://www.unitedmountaindefense.org
Информация по комментариям в разработке