Articles by Sue Sturgis
Sue Sturgis is the editorial director of Facing South, the online magazine of the nonprofit Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C.
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Broken promises follow Tennessee coal ash disaster
It was one year ago today that a 60-foot-tall dam broke at a holding pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in Roane County, Tenn., dumping more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash onto a nearby community and into the Clinch and Emory rivers. The largest industrial waste spill in U.S. […]
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End TVA's special treatment under law, enviros urge Obama
Representatives from 15 environmental advocacy groups have called on President Obama to end the Tennessee Valley Authority’s immunity from federal prosecution for its Kingston coal ash disaster and other violations of federal law. In a letter [pdf] sent to the president Dec. 14, the environmentalists point to several examples of the utility flouting the law […]
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New data paints a more toxic picture of TVA coal ash spill
The disastrous coal ash spill that occurred a year ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee dumped a whopping 2.66 million pounds of 10 toxic pollutants into the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers — more than all the surface-water discharges from all U.S. power plants in 2007. That’s one of […]
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Toward a medically defensible energy policy
Pollution from coal is not only unhealthy for the environment — it also hurts the human body and contributes to four of the five leading causes of death in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic respiratory disease. So concludes a new assessment of coal’s health effects from Physicians for Social Responsibility. Titled “Coal’s […]
