On December 22, 2008, a retaining wall burst at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-fired power plant, releasing more than a billion gallons of coal combustion waste-a volume of ash and water was 100 times greater than the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster. The water flooded more than 300 acres, and the cleanup cost has been estimated at over a billion dollars.
There are 44 coal combustion waste sites nationwide that EPA has identified as posing a "high hazard", but on Friday, Senator Barbara Boxer said in a press conference that the EPA says the locations cannot be released to the public--although it has notified local officials, including first responders.
EPA's refusal came after consultation with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security. Boxer praised the EPA for it's swift action in collecting the information, but strongly criticized the refusal to make the information public:
However, I am concerned that the EPA, after consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security, has indicated that they cannot make the list of "high hazard" sites public.
We are pursuing whether the handling of these sites is consistent with the handling of other similar facilities, because of the critical importance of the public's right to know about threats in their communities. If these sites are so hazardous and if the neighborhoods nearby could be harmed irreparably, then I believe it is essential to let people know.
In that way, they can press their local authorities who have responsibility for their safety to act now to make the sites safer.
This sort of secrecy was SOP under Bush/Cheney. Is it yet more "change we can believe in"?
This sort of Cheneyesque action has become so routine it's like it's not even eyebrow-raising any more. Of course, there's not just a public right to know issue here. There's also the fact that people alerted to such dangers could help contribute to grassroots opposition to further bogus "clean coal" scams, and the like. So it really raises questions about who's responsible for such decisions, and what sort of corporate or industry connections they might have.
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