The Continuing Injustice that is the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

Last week, I posted a video of a volunteer being harassed, detained, and arrested by TVA constables after driving a Swan Pond resident home from an ash spill Q & A session.

PiTW's Brantley Hargrove has an extended litany of other indignities TVA is heaping on the neighborhood where it spilled its toxic fly ash last December:

Matt Landon was driving an elderly woman named Eva Hewitt home, who spoke that evening before a community question and answer session in Kingston. Hewitt lives on Swan Pond Road, one of the most heavily affected areas of the TVA ash spill. Q & A session might be a bit generous, since all the comments had to be written then approved by Mayor Troy Beets--the same TVA sycophant who drank tap water at a press conference right after the spill and declared it safe.

Since the spill, Hewitt has developed a nasty cough, skin rashes and headaches--this last symptom is not unusual with exposure to arsenic. She needs to go to a lung doctor, but has been told by several that she should see a TVA lung doctor first. Here's the catch: If she does see a TVA-paid doctor, she must sign a contract promising not to sue.

On the way to Hewitt's home, Landon passed a checkpoint without any visible TVA police. They followed and arrested him shortly after. He was taken before a magistrate and charged with trespassing (on a public road). Landon was transferred due to overcrowding and spent the next couple of days in the county jail in Cleveland, Tenn. Before local law enforcement released this menace to society Saturday, he was transferred back to Roane County.

The TVA medical bribery of health care in exchange for a release from lawsuits is particularly neanderthal in its heavy-handedness. Shame on TVA for holding a person's own health and welfare over their heads.