Alabama

Decision to dump TVA’s spilled coal waste in Alabama community sparks resistance

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 […]

Rural county asks EPA chief not to make it ‘The Ash Hole of Alabama’

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 […]

Pennsylvania rejected TVA coal ash that’s going to poor communities in Alabama and Georgia

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 […]

Building green in Birmingham

“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.

What's it going to take to enact proactive energy and environmental policy?

While the TVA hand-wringing went on at Senate hearings in Washington, D.C., another coal pond broke last week at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Jackson, Ala.

Not that we didn't know: Widow Creek was listed in a recent Environmental Integrity Project report as one of the worst 50 coal-fired power plant pollution "wet dumps" because of its toxic metals.

The "spill," this time in Alabama, according to the first reports, leaked "only gypsum."

Earlier this week, coal sludge was released into the Ocoee River Gorge in eastern Tennessee, as the TVA sought to repair a sediment dam. According to the state Department of Environment and Conservation, "Forest Service employees were walking the stream bank picking up what dead fish they could find ... No live fish were seen."

These accidents beg the question: How much longer are we going to sit back and allow crisis management to determine our energy and environmental policies?

What's it going to take? Dead bodies?

As Appalachian Voices editor Bill Kovarik pointed out, "The effusive praise in the hearing Thursday morning Jan. 8 went beyond the standard courtesies afforded witnesses in Senate hearings, perhaps because it was clear that the TVA's CEO was a relic of a bygone age who would need to be handled with respect and care as he was ushered out the door."

Instead of courtesies and crisis management, we need to:

• Phase-out all wet storage of toxic coal ash.
• Inspect all toxic coal ash storage and disposal units.
• Enact federal regulation of all toxic coal ash storage and disposal.

In the meantime, the EIP report found:

Alabama’s Bankhead forest next?

Until today I was ignorant of the spread of this nasty sort of mining. Its impact is well documented in the antelope and sage grouse country of the intermountain West, leaving a trail of ruined land and poisoned wells. But companies are also drilling and fracturing this stuff out of the ground in the East, too.

Umbra on writing to reps about climate change

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 […]

How poultry producers are ravaging the rural South

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 […]

Turtle Wane

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 […]