Are we still fanatical?

Welcome to the 21st century. (Ok, so I'm 10 years late or something.)

2000: October 11th, in Inez, KY. Where residents arise to over 300 MILLION gallons of coal sludge in their tiny town. Why? because this is America, and we like to burn coal for energy. For over 200 years! Sorry Inez, but in New York City, our lights are shining bright. The EPA calls this "one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the southeastern United States".

2004: December 26th, in the Indian Ocean. Theres an earthquake ranging from 9.1 to 9.3 on the Richter scale. This brings a tsunami over 32 ft. high to the coast of indonesia.

2005: August 29th, New Orleans, LA residents are greeted be Katrina, a formerly catagory 5 hurricane. Over 80% of the city is flooded. Mississippi's beachfront towns were 90% flooded. Katrina is refered to as the costliest hurricane, and one of the five deadliest.

2006: July  17th, once again in the Indian ocean, off the southwest coast of Java, Indonesia. Theres a 7.7 magnitude earthquake, causing a nearly 10 ft. tsunami, taking at least 668 lives.

2008: Begining on September 1st, Hurricane Ike is formed. Reaching category 4 status at various points in its journey,  finally making landfall over Galveston, Texas on September 13th as a strong category 2, with a category 5 like storm surge. Ike moved all the way up through the midwest on into canada in tropical depression, and extratropical status before finally exiting around the Labrador Sea. This was ranked the 3rd costliest hurricane, and brought hurricane like winds and rains to places that knew nothing of such things.

It's barely December 22nd in Roane county, TN. The coal slurry impoundment at the TVA fossil plant has a damn rupture into the Emory river. Over 1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry goes rushing through the Emory and Clinch rivers. Surrounding property was covered in as much as 6 ft. of sludge. This spill was more than three times the size of the 2000 martin county spill. They continue to battle clean up efforts to this day.

2009: January 9th, another TVA plant, this time in northeast AL, has a spill. TVA did not deny that the material entered the creek, but figures were not disclosed as they claimed to have "contained" it.

January 25th, Areas of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky are hit with an ice storm that lasted up to 5 days in some places. As much as 2.5 inches of ice can be found on trees and power lines. Over 2 million people lost power, over 500,000 in Kentucky alone, 100,000 of those without power for over a week.

August 4th, Louisville, KY and southern IN are hit with a serious flash flood.

September 30th, Just off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia theres a 7.6magnitude earthquake. Killing at least 1,115, destroying 135,000 houses.

2010: January 12th, there's a 7.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Leogane, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 6th deadliest earthquake in history, killing an estimated 230,000 people. Approximately 1,000,000 people were left without homes, and many many more were severly injured. In addition to homes and business' that were destroyed. The Red Cross estimates that as many as 3,000,000 people were effected by the quake.

March 5th, once again off the Sumatra coast in Indonesia, they experience a 6.8 magnitude earthquake. to be followed by a 7.8 magnitude quake on April 6th.

April 3rd, A large coal carrying ship runs aground off the coast of Australia damaging and leaking oil into prts of the incurredibly sensitive Great Barrier Reef.

April 20th, an oil drilling rig off the coast of LA explodes causing a large fire and massive oil spill that is on going to this day, currently releasing at least 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day.

May 1st and 2nd Excessive rainfall causes the cumberland river to overflow leading to flooding in KY, MS, and most affected, TN. As of May 2nd, there are currently 29 confirmed dead, but this too is "current", so those figures could, and probably will, change.

All of this makes me absolutely sick!
But I'm just an "environmentalist hippy", what do I know?

I really hope that theres something here for my children, when they're older.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_Sludge_Spill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2006_Java_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill
http://www.epa.gov/region4/kingston/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/09/second-tva-dam-breaks-at_n_156605.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2009_Central_Plains_and_Midwest_ice_storm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Kentuckiana_Flash_Flood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sumatra_earthquakes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2010_Sumatra_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2010_Sumatra_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Shen_Neng_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_drilling_rig_explosion
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FGLT3G0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2010_Tennessee_floods

and some progress is made...

Yes, I voted for Obama.
Yes, he's done a few things to disappoint me, such as opening up protected waters to off shore drilling (after insisting it was a terrible idea in his campaign) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/earth/31energy.html

But on April 2nd, 2010, he did something that made me really proud, or... his administration did anyways.

The EPA has greatly increased their standards for water quality and proclaims that very few valley fill permits will pass under the new guidelines (regarding water conductivity)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR2010040102312.html

Granted, this is one.... medium. step (we've been making small ones all along, and while this doesn't solve all our problems, its certainly) in the right direction. We still have huge strides to make, but alas, I am currently incredibly grateful for Lisa Jackson, and the EPA, for taking our neighbors water quality into account.

Thank you! to everyone and anyone that assisted in any fashion, to making this happen!

eastern ky

Last week, my family and I visited family in NC. Before baby #3 was born, I longed to drive through eastern Kentucky on our way home from NC sometime, but it hadn't happened for one reason or another. I really didn't plan or expect for it to happen this time either as baby #3 is still so young and not terribly fond of the car, I figured we'd be better off to just get home as quickly and safely as possible.

Well, the common route, through West Virginia, has a few ever increasing tolls, my husband wanted to avoid them, so we took the secondary route (to NC) which involves driving down I75 to I40, then on over to the coast. Much to our surprise, we were forced to take a detour upon our travels down I40, due to some rock slide which involved us going substantially out of our way. In any case, we arrived on the coast with little delay.

As we started the trek home I checked online to see the status of the rock slide (it seemed like they could just blow up these rocks and shovel 'em over the side or something, thats what they do with entire mountain tops, I couldn't fathom it being bigger than that.) and it seemed as though the though of it being cleared was a distant fantasy, so a long detour was still in the cards (that or tolls, which wasn't even an option at this point).

So we start heading on our detour, when my husband decides to make his own detour through all these small virginia towns. Finally, I proclaim that we should just go on through eastern Kentucky.

I made a deal with myself that there would be no camera involved. No pictures, not even with my phone. I was to take it in, with only my eyes and my mind this time. There will be a next time, I'll make sure of it, and next time, is when the camera comes out.
But this time. This time, I tried to drink it all in.
In some ways, I expected it to be worse. The folks in West Virginia said its much worse (eky) because theyll mine right up to the road side. Based on what i saw, this is partly true. The worst, was when we were on this curvy mountain road, that took us to the top of a hill. From that hill i could look in 3 directions (everywhere but behind) and see, quite clearly, an incredibly unnatural landscape, but there wasn't rubble pushed right up to the asphalt. Yet several miles later, on this same mountain road, we looked out at the most breathtaking landscape in all the world. Nothing but mountains, intact mountains. Clouds nestled in the valleys. It was as if nature made this little perch, on the side of this mountain, seemingly much larger than its surrounding siblings, solely for "us" to come to this point, and look out, and see just how glorious things can be, and are!

The West Virginians also commented on how much less hostile eastern Kentuckians are. Every time we'd have to stop for gas, or to use the rest room, my heart would race. Our hybrid import, slathered with activism stickers, manned by young environmentalists makes no attempts at being discreet in these situations, yet aside from a few cross looks, the worst we got was me overhearing a couple miners comment on how easy it is to say "that" when its not your pay check or what have you. (likely referring to the "topless mountains are obscene sticker") And while i didn't make any attempt to let them know, I can empathize with that. Alas, I married a marine, at my height of disent for the military. Sometimes we compromise a few values, for the sake of maintaining the highest value, feeding our family. There is often a thin line between a job, and a life style, but I can see that line, and i respect those that reside on the job side, even if i don't respect their job.

waste

the other day i was talking with someone that commended my work/activism for MTR.
she mentioned that she was from eastern ky, and her parents live in north eastern ky.

the significance? she mentioned that there was no coal (or at least none worth mining) where her parents currently live, but they still blow up the mountains there. why? for gravel.
as sad as it is that they blow up mountains for gravel, its just one more thing to add to the draw backs of MTR coal mining as far as im concerned.

from an objective point of view. if we HAVE to get the coal, and we HAVE to do it by removing the mountain top, it seems logical (and not only environmentally sound, but also economically) to harvest the trees, but instead theyre dumped over the side (into the streams).
and now that its brought to my attention how gravel is ... harvested? (why had i never thought of this?) all of the shale and sediment below the top soil (which is likely the richest in the nation and could probably be sold as well) could be gathered and sold as well, instead of blowing up completely different mountains for that.

all sorts of birds. one stone.

but instead, we strip forests from one area.
blow up mountains for gravel in another.
and distant from all that, were tossing mountains into valleys for coal.