Denial is a river in east Tennessee, not New Jersey

Sympathy for the duress that Harriman, TN residents are under with the TVA ash spill is called for, but red state denial is too ugly to let pass without comment. It seems that this fellow is misplacing his anger at the industrial northeast:

This wasn't what Thomas had in mind when he bought his retirement home nine years ago.

"It's like something you'd see in Cleveland or damned Newark, New Jersey," said Thomas, a 62-year-old Georgia native. "Not east Tennessee."

The fact is that Tennessee's free market/anti-regulation climate in tandem with the federal government's apathy toward compliance created the conditions for what is known now as a Tennessee-style disaster. That insult belongs to us.

I googled "Cleveland and Coal Ash" and could find no evidence of any kind of fly ash accident there. What I did find out is that hundreds of tons of coal ash went into the cement structure of Cleveland's Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

As long as TVA can pitch fly ash as a viable building material, they can justify storing it in large, hazardous quantities. As long as the building and coal industries can make money and donate to political campaigns, elected leaders are not bound to regulate fly ash until a disaster shatters innocent people's lives.