To understand the downside of backing away from the Clean Power Plan and the need for tightening, not loosening, regulations intended to keep coal waste out of streams and rivers, one need look no further than the rivers of Tennessee.
The rivers of Tennessee bear the brunt and cost, both environmentally and fiscally, of the Tennessee Valley Authority's leaking coal ash ponds. Burning coal is not just an air and climate destroyer, it also is a time bomb for our rivers.
Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Bill Johnson said Thursday it would cost $900 million and 24 years to comply with a court order to move coal ash from unlined and leaking pits and ponds near the Cumberland River to a lined landfill on the site of the Gallatin Fossil Plant.
That's not much less than the at-least $1.2 billion TVA paid over the past decade to clean up after the Kingston ash spill, when 1.1 billion gallons of slushy and toxic muck slid out of a breached 84-acre landfill built 60 feet above the Emory River in East Tennessee in 2008. The ash tsunami tore down homes and docks as it covered 300 acres of land and another 100 or so acres of the river.
The costs continue. Now more than 50 sickened workers and workers' survivors are suing Jacobs Engineering, the $12 billion-a-year California company that handled the cleanup for TVA. The workers say they were told the drying ash blowing in the air as they worked was safe and that they were discouraged from wearing protective masks because the community might be frightened. At least 17 of those workers are dead, dozens more are dying, and the conditions under which they worked are being blamed.
But both our U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and TVA persist with stall tactics that continue to cost both taxpayers and electricity ratepayers - not to mention the very real cost to our health and future safety.
In August, a federal judge ordered the leaking Gallatin ash pond be excavated and removed, saying it is leaking pollutants into the Cumberland River in violation of the Clean Water Act.
TVA, instead of complying, is appealing the order, hoping it can instead cap the unlined ash ponds over 12 years at a $200 million cost. TVA says that option would be "environmentally friendly" since it wouldn't risk a spill while crews excavate and move the polluted material.
Environmentalists and the federal judge say capping risks further pollution since it will do nothing to stop the deep leaks.
And in April, TVA joined the power industry in asking Donald Trump's EPA and its Trump-appointed chief, Scott Pruitt, to put the brakes on an Obama administration requirement that coal plants limit toxic water pollution to our rivers and streams nationwide.
Pruitt did so, and he announced last month that he plans to repeal Obama's landmark Clean Power Plan that was meant to address both dirty coal and climate change.
Between the Trump administration and TVA's consistent delay-and-dodge tactics, the chances of ridding our air and water of coal pollutants look grim.
Amanda Garcia, a Nashville staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, notes that the EPA's move to loosen the coal waste rule "threatens to have an out-sized effect on Tennessee."
In addition to the Gallatin and Kingston coal power plants in Tennessee, the Volunteer State also is home to the biggest mercury-polluting power plant in the country: the Cumberland Fossil Plant, which in 2015 dumped 120 pounds of mercury into the Cumberland River.
TVA's coal plant wastewater and ash contain toxic pollutants that included mercury, arsenic and selenium, all known to cause an array of health problems, including developmental delays in children.
That means it's up to us - taxpayers and ratepayers - to demand that the board of directors of TVA make good on the agency's own promise to protect our clean water, Garcia wrote in a May op-ed for the Nashville Tennessean.
Eight years ago, the TVA board acknowledged that the catastrophic Kingston coal ash spill "has eroded public trust in TVA and called into question TVA's commitment to environmental stewardship," Garcia noted. In response, the TVA board promised to switch to dry handling of its coal ash waste at all of its coal plants.
Now it's time to lean on TVA harder to make the agency make good on its pledge to do the right thing.
TVA needs to rise above its past mistakes, not only to keep its pledge of environmental stewardship but also to embrace cleaner forms of energy - sooner rather than later.