Historic Disaster: 10 Years after the Kingston coal ash spill

[@UncleWally3]

As a Canadian, over the past few decades spending a lot of time there, I’ve grown to adore Tennessee, the land, the people. But, there’s a cultural undertow that I can’t understand - a type of death wish or attraction to “actual and cultural carcinogens” that extends to politics and pretty much everything else. Guns and God are sacred, but facts and science? Not so much. And while Tennesseans (Butternuts) can be the most intelligent, informed and entertaining of anyone I’ve ever meet on this planet, there’s also a fidelity to a willful blindness that baffles the likes of me. All that said, God Speed my friends to the South, you’ve stolen my heart - and this video just makes it break all,over again.

[@dopamine261]

My step grandfather died to complications after working on the cleanup, it happened 3 miles from their house yet no one in the area seems to be angry about the sheer damages that has happened to our own land.

[@kgbeezr75]

There's so much ideology and team sports that goes into what flies, what doesn't and issue after issue gets piggybacked onto others. It sounds reductive, but it isn't...if you're conservative leaning then you support unconditionally things like coal power, you condemn government agencies like the EPA as being part of "big government" (until of course, the time comes that you need them)...and there's so much of the same stubborn adherence to and aversion of certain things on the left. The human animal often suspends any real individual analysis when it comes to things that are essentially political, and coal power is politics (so is every other form of generation). It can't be avoided. So, of the two teams, conservatives (the majority in the south) are bought and paid for by the coal industry, if you're a conservative then while you may be slightly more pragmatic than other people in the Republican party (where most conservatives congregate), you still support the team, and the team supports coal. Period.

[@UncleWally3]

@@kgbeezr75That’s very interesting but I still wonder what gives birth to the single issue/tribe-bound voter? Is this type of voter a simple victim of ignorance or is something more sinister in play, like a conscious fidelity to unfettered self-interest? What enables one issue to become sufficient enough that it overrides all other considerations? Admittedly, these questions go beyond the scope of a KZbin comment box but, like many other people, I search for an explanation of current events.

[@kgbeezr75]

​@@UncleWally3 Yeah, great questions and I could never claim to be an authority on any of it, i'm just a sideline observer and participant to the best of my own capabilities. I'm in a strange situation myself...i've been a lifelong Democrat since I registered to vote in 1995 at the age of 20, voted Dem in every election since, until this year, I changed to Rep and voted for Trump. I can only say the events of the last year opened my eyes to so much, but really on both sides, or "teams" as I would call them. They truly are teams in the sense that both sides seem to be made up mostly of people who are *not* "issues" voters, but instead just team players. To an extent with both groups you take on the opinions of each and dissenters, or even question askers are discouraged from doing as much. Most recently i've seen this far more on the left than the right, and it was part of the reason I switched. Blind obedience and a reluctance to ask questions (ie. groupthink) is very scary to me...I can think of few things more frightening than masses of people who follow without any duty to due diligence, and this happens on both sides, again most recently i've seen it concentrated on the left. The right is a group-think, but the left is an even more obedient group think. There's probably hundreds of years of American government and history to go back over, it doesn't make any sense without context, and I do believe that much of what we see today is all continuation of issues that have evolved (however perversely) over time. Just from my own observation, energy, like anything else has become politicized. Conservatives as a collective are in the pocket of big oil, and the left is in the pocket of "green energy"...there's so much foolishness with no footing in reality such as "green energy is a plot by liberals to keep good Americans from prospering"...(and again, keep in mind I just voted for Donald Trump). It seems like these notions get sold from the top down, and people with too little ability to question them from a place of knowledge (even if said knowledge just means doing one's own footwork and not being compelled toward confirmation bias) just go along with the party-wide narrative. It probably sounds like i'm selling people short, and that's true, I am, I'm diplomatically saying that most voters are idiots, either willfully or by no fault of their own (they operate to their full individual capacity) and they vote. I don't believe that climate change is a plot by liberals, we have enough evidence to strongly suggest that climate change is man made, and that we have to do something to mitigate the damage done. But I still had to choose, and the right makes the most sense right now. The people pulling the strings know what they're doing...and it is a puppet show, one would be hard pressed to establish otherwise. Luckily for the people operating the puppets it takes very little effort. The human animal is still very wrapped up in tribalism. Me personally? I'm not very far right in truth, and I see the issues with fossil fuels and the ways that they're working to our detriment, but we have two teams and pick we must. We're limited, and that is the fault of voters. We won't get better until we demand better. I'm laboring under no misapprehension that things will ever change in my lifetime, I already know that they won't. So we have to do the best we can in the interim. I know that doesn't really help, i'm as interested in the conversation as you are.

[@buglover-qb1dq]

Walter Wilkins, I'm wondering if the past 3 years have given a more understanding view of some of our "Southern blind" loyalties ? Was saddened to hear when all this, happened in 2008

[@tetchuma]

Lack of EPA oversight Lack of Federal Regulations Lack of preventative maintenance Lack of concern for nearby residents All for the sake of saving money? In the end, it cost more than the necessary upgrades to ensure its safety. Today, they are still burning coal, with the same byproduct. Was it all worth it?

[@kgbeezr75]

Executives and shareholders don't care about the long-range, they never do...because the long range doesn't affect them personally. They're there to capitalize as much as possible for their own sake in the short term, and whatever happens down the road will likely be after they've made their money, divested, and disappeared.

[@Gesus111]

I just heard about this for the first time in a new documentary about the Ohio train derailment

[@Gesus111]

Makes me sick

[@sandgaijin]

I just read about this in Men's Journal magazine. Such a sad story. That whole place should have been evacuated.

[@Gesus111]

I just found out

[@thekaerichtexas]

What happens to the training coal ash they covered with the topsoil??? Why not remove it all? Will the remain coal ash seep or leach?

[@tonymidkiff2108]

I have seen myself new ash pits in Nc that are lined But in the bottom of those pits is a drain with a valve when the ash eats up the valve look out

[@newfound_adventures]

Wow.

[@TicklerDude]

Trump approves of this video.

[@cathychercourt6875]

My Brother who was just 1 of the workers Almost Died from this Disaster. PAY IT IP TVA! A Lot of workers have died from this catastrophe!!

[@Gesus111]

Very sad I never heard of this until now

[@gigisead1621]

Actually there was a car on the road. My mother was driving to my grandmothers house. She was passing by literal minutes before it happened.

[@nazfan01]

I lived and grew up in Midtown not far from the steam plant. I thought about that many times about WHAT if someone was driving through there at that moment. . Way back in the days, especially during the 1980s, a friend and I used to run arond at night and we would go from Midtown amd drive through Swan Pond to South Harriman. Man just the thought of getting caught in that is scary. Memories take me back to a time when this 16 year old guy I went to school with was racing someone in 1979, He hit those railroad tracks there behind TVA close to the ash pond was and was killed. My grandfather was a painter and moved from Dayton (Rhea Co.) to Midtown in 1953. He partially helped in construction of the steam plant but was then given a contract and became official painter for TVA for years. He used to paint those smaller smoke stacks on the tip red. I think through the help of TVA he then gotten a contract from Department of Energy (Y12) as a painter for K25, Y12 and X10. The reason I mention all of this is because a cousin of mine was a scientist for Y12. They had him test soil, water, plants and even dead animals for radiation within a 50 mile radius of Oak Ridge. I know he went to as far as Crossville or so. He told me he tested the ash pond and found radiation in there but came to find out that there were some WWII military jeep and equiptment in that pond. He told Y12 about it and he was gog to expose this. He was fired. So, it seems TVA and DOE were working together

[@alliereddit3163]

I used to run on the coal ask pits

[@creightonleerose582]

7:31 -THAT comes outtve his EARS every 12 hours!