This disaster occurred when I was out of state so all I had to go on was what flashed across the screen on CNN, MSNBC and FNC as my Father was controlling the remote. I kept trying to figure out which ‘coal’ company was responsible. I had to go online to KnoxNews to learn the truth. It was not a coal company it was the Federal utility TVA responsible for this disaster.

Have you noticed that the media just isn’t interested. There’s no 24/7 coverage as the media hyena’s usually do with a private industry type disaster. The Governor of Tennessee took 9 Days to visit the site! There was no condemnation of Tennessee Governor Bredesen for this lapse. I was incredulous the media had nothing to say about why it took Governor Lurch so long to get to East Tennessee.

It all ties in though to the media failure in reporting on this disaster. I still don’t understand but Business Media has an interesting take on the why.

Tennessee Sludge Spill: Government Disaster 30 Times Worse than Exxon-Valdez
Media ignore fact that New Deal utility is run by the government.

By Julia A. Seymour
Business Media Institute
1/14/2009 2:32:44 PM

A new, New Deal may very well be on its way, but one of FDR’s own New Deal creations, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), is in big trouble.

Federally-owned TVA, the nation’s largest utility, recently made headlines for spilling more than a billion gallons of “thick black� coal sludge that literally “swallowed� up homes as it spread out over hundreds of acres in eastern Tennessee. It destroyed three homes and damaged dozens, forcing evacuations just days before Christmas 2008.

snip……But news coverage on the three broadcast networks and three major newspapers barely mentioned that the TVA is under federal ownership – making this environmental tragedy the government’s fault and the taxpayers’ liability. Since Dec. 24, only 2 out of 18 (11 percent) newspaper reports in The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times admitted that fact. The ratio was slightly higher for the networks with 2 admissions out of 15 broadcast stories on ABC, CBS and NBC(13 percent).

Tennessee residents affected by two separate sludge spills, the huge one on Dec. 22 and a smaller one on Jan. 10, blasted the TVA.

snip…….Despite the government’s culpability, most of the news reports portrayed the disaster as a failure of the coal industry. They included left-wing environmentalists’ attacks on coal and calls for more regulation of the utility industry, instead of blaming the government for failing to police itself.

Coal, Not Government, Gets a Black Eye

The only rightful target for blame was the TVA itself which allowed the spill to happen, and the bureaucracy that failed to govern the government utility.

According to Nashville newspaper, The Tennessean, five years ago there was a blowout of the wall of a “massive, above-ground coal ash landfill� at TVA’s Kingston plant. The TVA had to find a way to stabilize it’s sludge and according to state records and TVA documents, “top officials rejected solutions that were deemed ‘global fixes’� for that problem.

TVA’s CEO Tom Kilgore admitted to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that “the most expensive solution wasn’t chosen … Obviously, that doesn’t look good for us.� That solution would have cost the TVA $25 million – only $5 million more than the current estimate for cleaning up the mess and nowhere near as much as lawsuits might cost.

snip…..But a Tennessee policy group pointed out the underlying problem. Shaka Mitchell of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research addressed the TVA spill in a Jan. 7 op-ed. Mitchell wrote, “If there is one thing we can all learn from the disastrous toxic ash spill in Kingston, it’s that when government-run companies fail, no one is held accountable, but everyone pays.â€?

“Where’s the outrage? Where are the special hearings and calls for resignations?� Mitchell asked.

There certainly wasn’t outrage against government on the networks. Much like the 2008 coverage of another FDR creation, Fannie Mae, broadcast journalists criticized industry and called for more government intrusion rather than pointing out the failure of government.

In fact, one-third of the broadcast stories presented environmentalists’ attacks on the entire coal industry – as if a private industry had anything to do with the Tennessee disaster!

NBC “Nightly News� quoted a Union of Concerned Scientists spokesman condemning the “oxymoron� of clean coal on Dec. 24. CBS’s Mark Strassman said “the industry touts its cleaner product,� but turned to the same UCS critic for a rebuttal.

NBC even asserted Dec. 27 that the TVA spill was giving “the coal industry’s clean coal campaign a black eye.� But the spill should have given a black eye to the concept of government-run businesses.

snip…..TVA: Fact and Fiction

As William Chandler wrote in his book, The Myth of TVA, despite the folklore surrounding the New Deal experiment, incomes grew as fast or faster in neighboring non-TVA areas, and manufacturing, electrification and running water installation all progressed more slowly under the TVA than in those places. Chandler’s conclusions were cited in a report from the Northeast Midwest Institute (NEMW).

According to reports by NEMW, the government corporation has been in desperate need of reform for years.

In 2003, NEMW warned that TVA had accumulated billions of dollars in debt, was the “the nation’s worst violator of the Clean Air Act, and was virtually unaccountable. “Their decisions are not reviewed by state regulators or federal agencies,� wrote Dick Munson, then Director of NEMW. The TVA’s monopoly power also prevents them from being held accountable to market forces.

Two years earlier, in 2001, Munson wrote that “TVA is literally above the law. It is exempt from at least 137 federal statutes, ranging from workplace safety to hydroelectric licensing.�

TVA’s 1999 annual report explained who regulates its actions: “a Board of presidential appointees who are charged first and foremost with serving the public interest.�

Yet here we are in 2009 with another FDR wannabe entering office who is a purveyor of socialist policy. And just like in the 1930’s politicians (both Democrat and Republican) and media have lined up in lockstep behind this slide into Socialism.

After reading “The Forgotten Man” I realize this country is repeating the idiotic belief that government and not capitalism and the free market is the cure for this economy. Government intervention created this economy and more massive government intervention will only sink the US economy (and the world) further.

I’m not looking forward to WWIII to pull the United States out of a depression!

Obama, New new deal, The Forgotten Man, Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA, Great Depression, SCHIP, Reinvestment Act, TARP, TARP II, Gov Bredesen, Media Malfeasance

One Response to “Media are blaming TVA Sludge Spill on Coal Industry instead of Federal Utility ( FDR’s New Deal)”