Articles by Jeff Biggers

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:

Green jobs: Boon for Native America

A network of over 250 Native American organizations recently issued an important challenge to the Obama administration for any green recovery plan: Look to the First Nations.

The reality is that the most efficient, green economy will need the vast wind and solar resources that lie on Native American lands. This provides the foundation of not only a green low carbon economy but also catalyzes development of tremendous human and economic potential in the poorest community in the United States -- Native America.

As the recent scandalous decision to expand coal strip mining on Black Mesa in northern Arizona revealed, Native Americans have been saddled with a toxic legacy of fossil fuel and uranium development.

According to the statement released by the Native organizations, including Honor the Earth, Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, International Indian Treaty Council, and Indigenous Environmental Network:

Former MSHA investigator Tony Oppegard discusses the TVA coal investigation

No one is watching the fallout over the TVA coal ash disaster more closely than Kentucky attorney Tony Oppegard. As the former adviser to the assistant secretary for Mine Safety & Health Administration (U.S. Department of Labor) and former general counsel for the Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals, Oppegard served as the lead investigator for MSHA during the Martin County, Kentucky, coal slurry impoundment failure in the fall of 2000.

As a political appointee, Oppegard lost his job in January 2001 after George W. Bush took office. A career MSHA employee was brought in to take his place and the "investigation" ended quickly, despite the fact that the Martin County coal disaster was one of the worst in history.

I asked Oppegard a few questions about the TVA coal ash disaster, the impending investigation, and what we had learned since the Martin County coal accident.

Biggers: You were the lead investigator of the Martin County Coal Corporation slurry impoundment failure in 2000. Why do you think that disaster received such little media attention?

Oppegard: Primarily because it occurred in rural eastern Kentucky -- and few people outside of those who live there really care about what happens to the land and people of Appalachia. If the impoundment failure had happened in California or New York, it would have been front page news in The New York Times and the Washington Post. Can you imagine emergency rooms in Los Angeles being shut down because of a lack of clean water? Instead, it was deemed "not really that important" by most of the mainstream media. When wildfires consume beautiful homes in the hills of California, it headlines the CBS evening news. But when creeks are fouled and thousands of people go without water for weeks in Appalachia, somehow it's not considered "newsworthy."

Biggers: Why do you not like the term "spill," as it is being used with the TVA coal ash disaster?

TVA coal disaster is toxic wake-up call

An estimated 500 million gallons of coal-ash sludge are seeping along the I-40 Knoxville-Nashville corridor in eastern Tennessee, after an earthen wall gave way on Dec. 22 at the TVA […]