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It's a news story that many people might have missed, since it came out over Christmas--the catastrophic coal slurry impoundment breach which occurred December 22nd in Roane County, Tennessee. Despite the epic scale of the disaster--today's revised estimate by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) puts the spillage at 5.4 million cubic yards of slurry (that's around 1.09 billion gallons of soupy sludge)--it didn't make it into many national news sources until Christmas day. Some of this delay might be explained by reduced staff in news services from economic cutbacks and/or the Christmas holiday, or the lack of staggering numbers of human casualties or personal property destruction. No one died in the avalanche/flood, and because of the limited population density only a few houses were destroyed. The devastation is measured in ecological terms: forests and wildlife decimated, fish kills, lakes and streams choked with the muck or completely obliterated.
It's hard to conceive of the scale of this disaster. For comparison, the Exxon Valdez incident was 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled, so this is around 100 times as much material released into the Tennessee river system and deluging the countryside.
It is a departure from my topic to write about this in La Bricoleuse--ostensibly my topic being restricted to areas of professional costume craftwork for performance. On rare occasions though (such as this one), I do depart from the subject. I do have a personal concern for what's going on--I grew up in east Tennessee and my family has lived here for generations; I went to undergrad at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, literally just up the highway from the affected area, and had many classmates and friends from the Harriman/Roane County area. My grandparents live a couple counties over. This has happened to a place i call "home."
Really though, this *is* somewhat related to the general focus of La Bricoleuse, because what i want to use the disaster to explore is the idea of hazard information dissemination and evaluation of hazard info in terms of personal precaution and protection.
( Read more... )
It's hard to conceive of the scale of this disaster. For comparison, the Exxon Valdez incident was 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled, so this is around 100 times as much material released into the Tennessee river system and deluging the countryside.
It is a departure from my topic to write about this in La Bricoleuse--ostensibly my topic being restricted to areas of professional costume craftwork for performance. On rare occasions though (such as this one), I do depart from the subject. I do have a personal concern for what's going on--I grew up in east Tennessee and my family has lived here for generations; I went to undergrad at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, literally just up the highway from the affected area, and had many classmates and friends from the Harriman/Roane County area. My grandparents live a couple counties over. This has happened to a place i call "home."
Really though, this *is* somewhat related to the general focus of La Bricoleuse, because what i want to use the disaster to explore is the idea of hazard information dissemination and evaluation of hazard info in terms of personal precaution and protection.
( Read more... )
