Anniversary of TVA Coal Ash Spill as Forgotten as the Disaster Itself

Truthout.org - On the third day before Christmas in 2008, the people living along the Emory River in East Tennessee were listening to songs about a "white Christmas" like everybody else in the country, trying to look forward and not back. A new president was in the White House who promised "hope" after eight years of war and unprecedented corruption, as well as the increasing economic hardship that was squeezing the middle class like a juggernaut.

Instead of a white Christmas, though, people like Steve Scarborough of the Dagger Kayak and Canoe Company woke up to a black-gray mess of epic proportions, a river full of toxic coal ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority's coal-fired power plant at Kingston, Tennessee.

"There are no excuses for this," Scarborough said. "One of the dumbest thing humans do is dig coal out of the ground and burn it." Read more.