We’ve discussed the giant flood of coal ash and sludge that flooded towns and rivers when their containment pond burst forth last December.
I was recently browsing the National Resource Defense Council’s OnEarth website and came across video coverage of activists/researchers visiting the area in the aftermath to collect samples.
It’s a sad video and (spoiler!) near the end, the researchers/activists are escorted off of public waters by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) authorities, on land, by boat, and perhaps even the helicopter overhead belonged to the TVA.
Did you ever hear one word about it from a mainstream media outlet? The coverage was a far cry from proportionate to the magnitude of the disaster. Very little has been said and continuing coverage has been scant at best. That’s right: what continuing coverage?
One of the worst environmental disasters since the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill and we aren’t hearing about it one bit. I had to hear about it from The Nation, but most of us aren’t reading that. The Exxon-Valdez spilled it’s load in 1989, when I was in Kindergarten, but I still remember wall-to-wall coverage in our media and can still hear Dan Rather covering the story.
Why aren’t we hearing about this story? Who are the coal companies — yes, all of their attempts at a clean coal image is at stake here — paying to keep quiet? This would certainly fit the bill for over dramatic coverage; it’s real-life drama!
Not to harp on the point, but I thought our mainstream media loved to cover heartache and flooding. You have to watch actual video coverage to really get a grasp of how bad the situation really was. Think Katrina minus the storm and initial large loss of life, but plus a decade’s worth of highly toxic pollution: arsenic, lead, and chromium, among other chemicals in the sludge. That’s not exactly it, but it’s of that type of magnitude.
Check it out!
Have you seen other video coverage of this disaster? Share the links below and we might publish them here!
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