RSS Feed
Everyone who loves clean water and healthy fisheries should celebrate and breathe a big sigh of relief that a coal industry sponsored bill to allow more toxic pollution in Tennessee waterways failed to get the votes needed to pass the House of Representatives today. It could be a short lived victory since an attempt might be made to bring the bad bill back to floor for another vote tomorrow or the next day. But for today at least, water and wildlife lovers won big while corporate polluters had to slink off to the shadows to regroup and lick their wounds.
It all started when environmental groups took legal action against coal companies for polluting Tennessee waterways with more selenium than the law allowed. Rather than clean up the dangerous levels of selenium, the coal companies decided to try and change Tennessee law to allow them to put higher levels of the toxic pollutant in streams and rivers. Sadly, the Tennessee Senate quickly caved in to the coal industry lobby and passed the bad selenium bill by a 26 to 6 margin in April.
And TDEC, the Tennessee State Agency in charge of protecting the environment utterly failed to provide any guidance to legislators by refusing to take a position on the bill. They spinelessly opted not to stand up to the coal industry and tell the truth about the dangers of selenium poisoning even though they have documented evidence that 20% of juvenile fish collected from TVA ash ponds at Kingston have such toxic levels of selenium that they have serious physical deformities. They simply sat on this information and to this day have yet to provide it to the public or to legislators.
So when government failed to protect the public and caved in to polluting interests it was time to put feet in street and get busy. After the Senate vote and the TDEC failure to provide important information about the level of selenium toxicity in Tennessee fish, a big coalition of many people and organizations who care about clean water and healthy fisheries started working hard to stop the coal industry. We knew how important it was to stop them from their deplorable attempt to pollute Tennessee waterways with so much selenium that potentially 85 % of fish and aquatic birds would be poisoned. Here at Watauga Riverkeeper/Appalachian Voices, we released water, sediment and fish tissue data from samples collected on the Emory, Clinch and Tennessee Rivers clearly showing that fish were at toxic thresholds for selenium poisoning due to the massive coal ash spill at the Kingston Coal Plant. In short, we made it clear that the fish around Kingston couldn’t take any more selenium.
One of our research partners in the release of this data was Dr. Dennis Lemly, a national expert on selenium toxicity to fisheries. Dr. Lemly made the long drive to Tennessee from Wake Forest University to testify before a House Committee considering the bill. He told legislators that the bill was “not scientifically defensible” and “significantly under protective”.
Meanwhile, citizens groups & bloggers urged members and readers to call House members and ask them to vote no on the bill.
The combined efforts of many people were just enough to deny the coal industry the votes they needed to pass the bill–by only one vote. One phone call, one email, one blog post, one important piece of data or testimony could have been the one thing that made the difference. So everyone who took action should celebrate. We congratulate and honor all the people and organizations who made contributions to this effort. For one night at least we can be happy for Tennessee’s waterways and wildlife.
Since there is a strong possibility the bill could be brought back for another vote tomorrow, we promise, we will be watching and continue doing all we can to help protect the beautiful waterways of the Appalachian mountain states.
For more info, see these stories:
Pigs Fly and Corporate Polluters Lose Fight in State House