There's No Such Thing As Health Food Either-It All Makes You Shit!

The towns of Harriman and Kingston Tennessee and surrounding areas got more than a lump of coal for Christmas this year-they got about five hundred million gallons of
coal sludge when the retaining wall of a damn broke, sending the refuse cascading through the region, much of it emptying into the Tennessee River in a disaster that dwarfs the Exxon Valdez incident. The following video is aerial footage of the disaster which destroyed three homes, engulfed the entire area, but luckily took no lives. It was taken by one of the local television stations.



The culprit seems to be the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the lack of oversight of the government agency which supplies power to large portions of Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. This disaster was preventable, but the damn that contained the dust, which is basically a by-product of the process by which coal is burned to produce electricity, was not properly maintained. The constant rain, totaling nearly eight inches over the last week or so, was just too much.

They have been quick to reassure area residents the problem will be cleared up relatively quickly, and that there seems to be no unsafe levels of heavy metals or other pollutants on the ground or the drinking water. Hopefully, they will make good at compensating victims in quick fashion.

Just as maddening however is the attitudes of certain environmental groups who see this not as a tragedy, but as an opportunity. The prevailing meme that has spread throughout the environmentalist and leftist blogosphere and web-sites-

This disaster shows that the term ‘clean coal’ is an oxymoron. It’s akin to saying ‘safe cigarette.’ Clean coal doesn’t exist.

Of course, like I said, this coal dust and sludge is in effect a by-product, the waste that resulted in the process of burning coal in producing electricity. You would get this result whether or not you underwent a process of producing clean coal. Of course the natural by-product of such a process is, and will always be, a waste product. And, by the way, this waste product in and of itself is also put to use. It is used in road construction and paving. Therefore, despite what the radical environmentalist left might assert, it is not as though this is some kind of poisonous material with which we are forever doomed to stand guard over, lest some hideous curse be unleashed upon the earth and the environment.

For these people to use this disaster in order to further their agenda is not just inappropriate, it is insensitive and self-serving. It makes me wonder if there possibly might be some sabotage involved.

Plus, their reasoning is just plain stupid, if taken at face value. It's like saying, "hey, there's no such thing as healthy food, because if there was, it wouldn't make you shit."

By the same token, the TVA needs to step up to the plate and quickly compensate those whose properties were damaged and destroyed, and for that matter they need to kick in some extra for pain and suffering. Then they need to make sure this never happens again, here or anywhere else. Bottom line, companies and regulators first concern should be the safety, health, and welfare of the public, as well as their property.

The environmentalists need to stop short of the celebrations. They may not be the villains here, but they are certainly not heroes. Their deeds are in fact in many instances what I would have to describe as toxic.