Shorter coal industry:

"If we all tell the same lie at the same time often enough maybe they'll believe us"

Fact: The EPA proposal for special designation of coal ash is called Option "C" in their regulatory proposal. It was specifically formulated to allow all beneficial reuse processes of coal ash. The Industry is simply making S*** up and claiming that such a designation would prevent recycling. This is a lie! What Option "C" would do is to create a federally regulated standard for handling and storing coal ash evenhandedly across the entire country.

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My testimony after the break.

I first want to thank the folks at the Environmental Protection Agency for having this meeting and taking comments on the results of their hard work in creating reasonable and effective regulations for the handling of coal waste. You have scheduled a thirteen hour meeting to listen to us and for that we thank you.

As I read the proposed regulations one thought kept coming back to me, “Why is anyone opposed to this, particularly after the disaster that we in Roane county are suffering through and trying to recover from as a result of improperly handled and stored coal ash?” Why would anyone not want a level playing field for all of the businesses that make money from coal and coal ash? Why would these corporations and their lobbyists not willingly accept oversight that would guarantee to the public that they are operating safely and that the health and welfare of the people living near coal sites is being watched out for?

This army of hired corporate spokesmen has come before you and whined that adequately protecting the public will cost too much, or cost jobs, or make coal ash seem like a bad thing, we even heard the words stigma on coal ash as a result of all this regulation, and so on. Well if you want to see “stigma” just come out to Roane County and see what it is like trying to put your life, business, and property values back together after you get hit by the mother of all stigmas. All of their testimony against doing the right thing will boil down to five words…”It will cost too much.”

The corporations opposed to Option C argue against having solid Federal oversight saying that they can be trusted to do the right thing…That state agencies will make sure they handle their coal ash just fine… That a system where citizens having to sue them state by state through a hodge-podge of state courts is better than comprehensive and consistent federal regulations in which the EPA has the power to inspect and enforce… and it will cost too much.

I come here to speak as strongly as I can for Option C. When I read the EPA cost benefit analysis I thought, “Why is anyone opposed to this?” The reason is that it makes the people who make the money creating coal ash waste will have to pay more of the true cost of coal power instead of shifting it to the people who live on the shores of Watts Bar Lake or rural Alabama or even in your personal neighborhood. Nobody in this room or anywhere in America can escape the consequences of this decision.
Roane County Tennessee is my home. It is a most beautiful part of America. It is also the site of the Kingston TVA coal ash disaster, the largest in American history, where millions of cubic yards of improperly handled and stored coal ash waste destroyed a way of life during the night on December 22, 2008.

This disaster was caused by incompetency and willful negligence at multiple levels but mainly in the financial decisions of a corporate bureaucracy focusing on short sighted cost savings and a complicit state agency that allowed it to operate a massive coal storage facility without adequate oversight. For a savings of less than 20 million dollars a large coal fired generating facility now faces over a billion dollars in fixing things that in reality cannot ever be completely fixed. Somewhere between 150,000 and 1.5 million cubic yards of coal ash, depending on whose numbers you choose to believe, will never be removed from Watts Bar Lake… It would cost too much.

Entire communities are gone now. Hundreds of Dream homes on the banks of the Emory and Clinch Rivers now belong to the Tennessee Valley Authority and the people moved away…The lucky ones only lost a couple of years out of their lives, others whose homes TVA refuses to purchase wait for the lawsuits to wind their way through the courts. For those left in the community, TVA promises things better than ever in five more years out of their lives.

This disaster was a textbook example of a coal fired power producer refusing to pay the true cost of coal by cutting costs in coal ash disposal and storage. Instead that cost is put upon the lives of good people in Roane County Tennessee, who pay the true cost of coal ash in the upheaval of their lives, the loss of precious years of security and peace and constant emotional torture wondering if they and their families are truly safe.

There are no cost savings in inadequately protecting innocent people’s lives and livelihoods. There is no justice in shifting the cost burdens from businesses which profit from coal power to innocent members of surrounding communities. We don't trust coal companies, power companies, or the lobbyists who serve them. We trust strong regulations at the federal level that are strongly and evenly enforced.

Roane County stands as testament that To do less has an unbelievably higher cost than to do more.

Option C is the only moral or financially sound choice.

More later as I get the pictures processed.