Tue
Jan 6 2009
11:48 am
EPA slow-walking environmental testing results?
By: R. Neal

Jack Lail:

The Society of Environmental Journalists is urging the Environmental Protection Agency be more transparent and release all its data regarding the TVA coal sludge disaster in Roane County, Tennessee.

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rikki's picture

I agree. I've had more than

Submitted by rikki on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 12:22pm.

I agree. I've had more than enough of seeing test results described as "within acceptable levels" with no reference to what the standards are or how close the results were those levels. Show us the numbers, assholes.

R. Neal's picture

Yeah, and as it says at the

Submitted by R. Neal on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 1:00pm.

Yeah, and as it says at the link, 11 days seems a little excessive to get test resutls.

rikki's picture

Given that two of those days

Submitted by rikki on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 1:33pm.

Given that two of those days were Christmas and New Year's Day, I'm willing to cut a little slack on the delay, but if they are not willing to produce numbers, how do we even know they have results? Are we going to find out in another week that someone misread a decimal or confused the selenium standard with the arsenic standard, and, gosh, some of the levels were too high?

I'm not all that worried about drinking water supplies, but it's almost insulting to pretend levels in the lake are acceptable. The turbidity alone must be lethal for many creatures.

R. Neal's picture

The turbidity alone must be

Submitted by R. Neal on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 1:46pm.

The turbidity alone must be lethal for many creatures.

My guess is that's the reason for the initial fish kills, which TVA is now acknowledging (the kills, not the reason).

I don't know enough about it to know what they can do about the toxins. I guess they have to scoop as much of it as they can off the bottom and contain it, and the rest they just have to flush on down the river and dilute it best they can?

WhitesCreek's picture

The results are posted faster than that

Submitted by WhitesCreek on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 1:34pm.

Here is the EPA summary link:

(link...)

rikki's picture

Wonderful. So EPA are not

Submitted by rikki on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 2:31pm.

Wonderful. So EPA are not the assholes...

It looks like arsenic and thallium are the main problems, with many of the other metals remaining bound to solids. Looking over just the 12/23 report I found one thallium column that should be highlighted for exceeding TN standards.

WhitesCreek's picture

Thallium exceeds standards

Submitted by WhitesCreek on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 3:00pm.

Thallium exceeds standards for what, Rikki?

My problem is that these are stand alone data and it's tough to compare them to meaningful standards. United Mountain Defense meant well, but they went off screaming about arsenic levels at 300 times drinking water standards, only their sample was the soup at ground zero not our drinking water. It created panic in some folks and served no good purpose for the community. Our drinking water was and is just fine. Even the intake water at the treatment plants meet the contaminant standards even before processing. (Before and after test data is posted)

There's so much hysteria about this that we are having trouble zeroing in on what we really should be looking at.

WhitesCreek's picture

And could you link to the

Submitted by WhitesCreek on Tue, 2009/01/06 - 3:05pm.

And could you link to the report you saw high Thallium levels on?

Thallium general info

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