Blog chatter: are charter schools faux reform?

I've been frankly disappointed by the deafening silence among Tennessee Democrats on the question of privatizing public education by means of charter schools. As far as I can see very few are bucking the White House, which is firmly committed to "education reform" via charter schools. Instead, they seem more interested in the partisan game of slamming Republicans for vouchers rather than acknowledging that their own milquetoast party often offers nothing bolder than GOP-lite education policies.

So, I sit up and take notice when a Tennessee Democrat goes against the grain. Trace Sharp has honest questions based on her rural experience for her fellows who advocate charters and others:

• Was collective bargaining for teachers dispatched out of the way to set charter schools in place? (In my opinion, the answer is absolutely yes.)
• Why would a for-profit company be better for school children than public education?
• How will data on the actual retention skills of information of students be measured? If charter schools don’t have to follow the regulations of public schools, what is their model and WHY is it better?
• Once again, if a county only has one or two high schools, what determines which one will be a charter school, which one won’t and how will public funding be distributed? There are a lot of counties with only one or two high schools that go back back to the consolidation that occurred in the early ’90s where small, community schools closed and moved to larger-based schools.
• Who will monitor the profits of the charter schools? Who will regulate the curriculum?

It is clear to me that privatization of public schools is the extension of Republican logic that business models are the solution to social problems and policy challenges. Democratic support of charter schools strikes me as a kinder and gentler form of rejection of government services, the utter resignation of the idea that public education is by definition guaranteed to all comers. They may use buzzwords like public-private partnerships, but privatization is more like leveraged buyout. They may shroud it with non-profit philanthropy, but it is remains private enterprise with all of its limitations. The Godfather of charter school philanthropy is Bill Gates:

[Bill] Gates' leveraged philanthropy model is a public-private partnership to improve the world, partly through targeted research support but principally through public advocacy and tax-free lobbying to influence government policy. The goal of these policies is often to explicitly support profitability for corporate investors, whose enterprises are seen by the Gates Foundation as advancing human good. However, maximum corporate profit and public good often clash when its projects are implemented.

(And I won't even go into the problem of the reactionary funders of school reform as Trace ably did; go read her post for that). Business models for education do not simply solve problems in public education.


As Molly Ivins used to say, business excels at creating wealth. That does not guarantee that it does everything else well (although it can buy enough public relations experts and political strategists to brand it a cure-all). Business models also invite new problems, like treating people strictly as either consumers or commodities, like reducing all good (classically a broader moral and social idea) to financial goods. Private companies and wealthy individuals buy greater influence while besieged and beleaguered communities, parents, teachers and students have only their own bodies with which to fight, assuming they have the time and energy to do so.


The private enterprise end of the private-public partnership naturally pushes the process to let entrepreneurs take control. As a result public education gets sold off to the highest bidders, who like Bill Gates, also wield political clout. Nashville lawyer Jamie Hollin underscores the problem:

No matter how nice candidates are, how long or how little they’ve lived in the community, whether their kids go to public school or not, whether they work for a company already receiving public tax dollars through contracts, how brilliant they may be, who they’ve worked for or with in the past, or who endorsed their candidacy, the ultimate goal of the monied-interests behind them is privatization. And, there’s lots of money to be made in privatization ....

I am not willing to completely dismantle the public school system in Nashville like the individuals and groups supporting these candidates are so hell-bent to achieve.

While Nashville abdicates to a kinder and gentler form of school reform, other cities like Philadelphia are moving with ruthless, heartless efficiency to privatize public schools. In a letter to Philly's school district "recovery" officer, a mother of children in district and charter schools calls education reform what it is, a conservative expression of the shock doctrine:

You’re not speaking to me with this brand of disaster capitalism that tries to shock a besieged public with unproven, untested, and drastic action couched as “solutions.” You’re not speaking to me when you invoke language like “achievement networks,” “portfolio management,” and “rightsizing” our schools – and say not a word about lower class sizes or increasing the presence of loving support personnel or enriching our curriculum.

You’re not speaking to me when you plan to close 25 percent of our schools before my son graduates high school. You’re not speaking to me when you equate closing down 64 schools – many of them community anchors – as “streamlining operations,” yet you’ll expand charter populations willy-nilly despite a national study showing two-thirds of Philly charters are no better or worse than District-managed schools.

You’re not talking to me when your promises of autonomy come minus any resources, and when the best you have to offer parents is “seat expansion” – which just means larger class sizes without extra funds.

You’re not talking to me when you say all schools are public schools. They are not.

We are indisputably facing a real crisis in education. As author Naomi Klein points out, crisis destabilizes communities, throws people off their guard, forces us to grasp desperately for answers, and in some cases, to panic, which gives wealthy, powerful and patient special interests the chance to rush in with sweeping "reforms" that tend to favor them more than the grasping masses. Likewise, conservative agendas rush in to fill the vacuum. School reform is no different. It is not a community-based, democratic or (regardless of what its adherents claim) progressive model of education, but a business-oriented, charity-bent, venture-philanthropy-funded model of keeping underserved populations compliant to the larger social structures that define their place in the first place.

"The governments don't rule the world. Goldman Sachs [Music City Center financier] rules the world."

A trader describes how the big financial institutions believe "the market is toast" and how Goldman Sachs does not care, but is prepared to make a lot more money off the coming crash:





If Goldman Sachs believes "the market is toast" and they don't care about the victims of the carnage, might they be hedging and betting against subsidized capital developments here in Nashville?


UPDATE: Ray Medeiros underscores the problem. Goldman Sachs is like a plague of locusts that comes in so bent on devouring what they can get that they destroy links in the food chain vital for everyone:

Companies like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, hold more influence on a company than the consumer or the small investor, like average people that have a 401(k). Wall Street firms are in the business of investments, and they need to make as much money as possible, even if it ultimately ends up destroying the manufacturing sector of the United States economy.

Even if it ultimately ends up destroying various local economies in Nashville, TN.

These are the companies that the Mayor's Office, and Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling in particular, are looking to for guidance on large-risk finance decisions like the new convention center. Supporters of Mayor Dean tell us to trust the process and that we don't have any choice but to work with companies like Goldman Sachs if we want Nashville to grow.

But every once in a while we get a glimpse like in the video above of how far out on a limb the Dean administration may have stuck us. For their part, Goldman Sachs wagers on when that limb could break, reserving the privilege to walk away with Metro dollars either way. This is all too precarious.

A one-two punch to public education

Metro Nashville Public Schools has been flying to "education reform" money and influence at the federal and state levels like a duck on a June bug. Starting with custodians and extending to charters they have been privatizing to flip public obligations to millions in corporate dollars. They have enlisted organizations that have impeded and eroded public education in other states. It has been consistent with David Sirota's framing of education policy in terms of Shock Doctrine:

as the overall spending pie for public schools is shrinking, the piece of the pie for high-tech companies -- who make big campaign contributions to education policymakers -- is getting much bigger, while the piece of the pie for traditional education (teachers, school infrastructure, text books, etc.) is getting smaller.

... the spending shift isn't producing better achievement results on the very standardized tests the high-tech industry celebrates and makes money off of ....

Tech companies give the politicians who set education policy lots of campaign contributions, and in exchange, those politicians have returned the favor by citing tough economic times over the last decade as a rationale to wage an aggressive attack on traditional public education. That attack has included everything from demonizing teachers; to siphoning public money to privately administered schools; to funneling more of the money still left in public schools to private high-tech companies.

This trend ... is a deliberate strategy by corporate executives and their political puppets, a strategy that uses the disaster of recession-era budget cuts as a means of justifying radical policies, knowing that the disaster will have shellshocked observers asking far fewer questions about data and actual results ....

Or as [education consultant Tom] Watkins explains, social pain is an opportunity: "Let's hope the fiscal crisis doesn't get better too soon. It'll slow down reform."

.... according to the Obama administration, standardized tests are the perfect tool to judge and punish struggling schools and the teachers who work with low-income kids, but they can't be used to similarly judge technology products that are making Obama's high-tech donors lots of cash.

In this oxymoron, we see who the corporate "reformers" in government really believe they work for, and whom they shape public policy on behalf of. It's not the average parent or student or voter. It's the Disaster Capitalists, who now have their sights set on your local schoolhouse

And now comes word that President Obama is working on a jobs plan in which even more money will be pumped into education within the larger context of education reform:

State and local governments, facing budget shortfalls, have turned to school systems to make up the difference. Only three states increased funding for education in FY 2012 -- the rest cut it by millions. California, in a particularly alarming example, laid off an estimated 19,000 teachers as of this spring ....

The refurbishing of schools could have an even larger economic multiplier effect. Currently there is an estimated $270 billion to $500 billion backlog in school maintenance and repair projects nationwide ....

Sources familiar with White House deliberations have said that advisers to the administration are weighing the merits of the Fix America's Schools Today (FAST) program, which would fund the maintenance and repair of public schools. The distinction between school construction and repair is an important one. The former would involve enhanced federal assistance and longer-term investment. Repair would have lower capital costs and less of a federal imprint.

What drives progressives like me crazy is that Obama usually talks a good progressive game plan (and he no doubt will when he offers the job plan), but the execution of his actual policy is conducted by those in his inner circle invested exclusively in the world of high finance. They are pulling the strings in the "reform" that is shaking public education to its foundations. The jobs bill will provide just enough inertia to highlight the connection between education and jobs, but it will also open the door to more education reform.

So, my sense is that FAST money will likely go to school repair/construction projects that advance the interests of business first. Outside of a few short-term jobs that temporarily stimulate the economy, buildings used for non-traditional uses will get more attention than most of the public school infrastructure. The scope will not be wide or long-term and implementation will prey on the general desperation people feel for jobs in this climate.

Hypothetically, if money comes to Metro Nashville, my guess is that it would be earmarked not to fix buildings in traditional public schools but that it would go to projects like those that renovate existing school buildings for charter and non-traditional schools. Leaking roofs will continue to leak. Long put-upon students still won't have lunchrooms or gyms. The prevailing trade winds here blow directly away public education. Take a recent groveling Tennessean story by Julie Hubbard hawking education reform:

Charter management groups took over troubled schools in New Orleans, Los Angeles and other American cities, with those districts seeking a fresh approach to long-term problems.

They’ve been dubbed the kings of turnaround, and now those groups are coming to Tennessee.

Metro Nashville hosts the concept on a small scale — LEAD Academy, a charter school, runs one grade of Cameron Middle School this year and will take over a grade a year. But many more charter groups are submitting bids, due Sept. 15, to run some of Tennessee’s worst-performing public schools ....

With about half of America’s 3 million teachers on the verge of retirement by the end of the decade, this could be the time to make dramatic changes to teacher recruitment and compensation ....

The new structure should shift from an industrial-era, blue-collar model of pay to one that rewards effectiveness and could include paying high-quality teachers with increased class sizes more money.

Tennessee is taking a shot at this sort of performance-based pay plan this year, giving 13 districts the ability to award bonuses to teachers who move their students well ahead of average gains.

Aside from writing like she is bucking for a future job in public relations, Ms. Hubbard seems to resort to code when replying to teachers and their right to collectively bargain: "industrial-era, blue-collar" makes teachers unions sound regressive, even antique. As if business-influenced politicians are naturally going to pay teachers fairly without any pressure to do so. In reality, teachers unions are the primary obstacles to Disaster Capitalists completely overrunning and dumbing down public education to suit their profit motives.

But reading the Tennessean in an exploding context of education reform in Nashville, of the millions poured into charter schools here and of the pandering speeches of Mayor Karl Dean and MNPS Jesse Register to business groups like the Chamber of Commerce, I see one sexy option the Obama Administration might want to consider just a few blocks down:

While the Civic Design Center suggested a magnet school, a charter school might maximize returns. So, after a slight tune-up, this concept would present a robo-growth combination: a ballpark designed above all to make wealthy local developers wealthier book-ended by a privately-run public school with no "blue-collar" unions to hassle MNPS and lots of new contracts to sign with education corporations and consultants. Government money would stream ineluctably into both projects.

The multiplex Sulphur Dell concept is pure gold; unless you're on the business end of education reform's one-two punch, watching your dignity siphoned off by misplaced logic that your education sucks and watching your district's resources siphoned off to propped up, unaccountable charter schools.

The radiation catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi and Mayor Karl Dean's "essential" travel

Since I last posted on Mayor Dean's trip to Japan on Friday in the immediate wake of earthquakes and tsunamis, things continue to get more critical for the island nation with the number of Japanese missing or dead topping 5,000. Tonight at a nuclear power plant 135 miles from Tokyo (where Mayor Dean and his family are staying) plant workers and news media have been ordered to evacuate because radiation has reached 400 times the legal limit. To compound the disaster, winds are reportedly blowing from the leaking plant toward Tokyo, and Geiger counter readings in Tokyo rose to "worrisome" levels at one point.

As the situation gets more and more grave in Japan's crisis, the questions a handful of us have been asking about the wisdom of Karl Dean's mission to Japan become even more poignant.

I am not the only blogger raising these issues. Catherine McTamaney blogged an impressive list of reasons why Mayor Karl Dean's trip to Japan right now is outrageous. They are all worth a read, but I particularly wanted to draw your attention to her point that Japan's cultural code of honor would have obligated Mayor Dean's hosts to say "yes" if he had asked whether he and his family should have come to Japan last Friday in the wake the quakes. The ball really was more in the Mayor's court to take the initiative and postpone this ill-advised trip while assuring Japanese officials of support during these catatrophes.

Mayor Karl Dean left for Japan today. What part of that trip is essential given earthquakes and tsunamis?

Visiting Japan after an earthquake is essential. Visiting Antioch after February tornado, not so much.

Common sense dictates that, after the 5th largest earthquake in international history hits Japan producing destructive tsnamis and causing the declaration of emergency at 5 different nuclear reactors, travel to Japan at this time might not be the wise choice. But you do not even have to have common sense. The US State Department advised American citizens to avoid "non-essential travel" to Japan today.

Town hall meeting erupts: "When the oil's comin' around ... y'all send the plane, and y'all are fuckin' sinkin' it"

Important civics lessons can be learned locally by watching someone else's community meeting with power brokers. Video after the jump to my tumblr page.

How big would BP's Deep Horizon oil spill be if spilled on Nashville rather than on the Gulf Coast?

[Source]

Vultures circling "opportunities" in wake of Haiti quake

Jeremy Scahill surveys the mercenaries who bear down on Haiti looking to score some bling:

What is unfolding in Haiti seems to be part of what Naomi Klein has labeled the "Shock Doctrine." Indeed, on the Heritage Foundation blog, opportunity was being found in the crisis with a post titled: "Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S." "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region," wrote Heritage fellow Jim Roberts in a post that was subsequently altered to tone down the shock-doctrine language. The title was later changed to: "Things to Remember While Helping Haiti" and the wording changed to "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti should address long-held concerns over the fragile political environment that exists in the region."

TVA has too much too lose not to remain willfully, blissfully self-ignorant

Sour Persimmon has a theory on the probable cause of the Kingston ash spill last Christmas that also likely explains why it's not TVA's theory:

When there is a hard freeze, ice forms on the surface of mud or soil. The expansion of water as it freezes causes a pressure drop that pulls water from below the surface. As the photo above illustrates, this pressure can draw out a considerable amount of water, which freezes into crystals or ribbons. The rupture in the ash pile started in the northeastern corner of the pile where the curvature maximized the surface area, providing more exposure to the cold air. The wicking pressure would be strongest in the corner, and the flow created as ice formed on the surface of the pile is just the sort of trigger engineers were looking for. Since they failed to consider the cold weather, they were unable to find a cause.

Why does it matter? Just a couple years prior to the spill, an outside consultant warned TVA of this danger and recommended that they lower the water content in the pile during winter months to prevent a freeze-triggered collapse. They did this the previous year, but TVA cycled managers to other plants during a reorganization in 2008. Apparently institutional memory was lost and the pile was not dewatered last winter.

One of the latest aerial photos of clean up of TVA coal ash spill disaster site

From the EPA website via RoaneViews via R. Neal:


More photos after the jump.

Shoot-First Usually Takes Out Innocents

If local blogger Nathan Moore called me "pro-looter" in the immediate wake of Katrina for challenging the shoot-first-let-God-sort-them-out that he and other right-wing bloggers promoted, can I accuse him in hindsight of being pro-malice-aforethought? It seems that guns used generated as much anarchy as order and the callousness of police failed to protect at least one father of four.

Commissioner Warns of Scheme to Dump TVA Kingston Disaster Coal Ash in Cumberland County

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A Cumberland County Commissioner warns that residents in the area could see the arrival and dumping of spilled, toxic TVA fly ash without too much local control over the project and under conditions that include a former state Senator making money off someone else's hardships:

It has been brought to my attention that Crossville Mining Company has asked the Cumberland County Commission to review a proposal to build a hazardous waste dump on Smith Mountain. This proposal will be reviewed by the county commission's environmental committee on Wednesday, May 5, at 4:30 in the small courtroom.

Crossville Mining Company has proposed that they be permitted to dump ash from the Kingston disaster into a quarry in their Cumberland County mining site. Although not made public, my sources have revealed that the county will be paid at least $2 million in "load" fees if the commission approves this. In addition the coal company has promised to improve the road system leading to the quarry. About 180 dump trucks of ash a day will make its way from Kingston to Cumberland County. My sources also tell me that the trucking firm involved in the potential contract is owned by former state Senator Tommy Kilby of Morgan County.

Under the "Jackson law" once the full commission votes a yes to the proposal, the state takes over and there is no further county input to stop the company from using the quarry as a hazardous waste dump site. There are dozens of questions that should be asked and answered before a decision is made by the county. These questions include, "What else do you plan to put at the site? What levels of radiation are emitted by the ash? What risk is posed by the dust particulates to the residents in the area? How much mercury and arsenic are contained in the waste materials? What is your safety plan for dealing with problems that might occur such as the leaching of contaminants into the county's aquifer? What is the environmental impact on the area? How will road accident and spills be handled?" If approved without the appropriate information, under state law, the county has no repeal options.

HT: lifeonswanpond's journal

Not exactly a primer in good community policing

From Roane County and the TVA disaster area via R. Neal:

Developer's donation to Tennessee State University amounts to low-risk campaign contribution to help build May Town Center

Lacking from last week's media showcase of a bid by Jack May and Tony Giarrantana to take the wind out of a General Assembly bill--that would preserve Bells Bend acreage as rural and natural parcels--by making a money and land donation to TSU was perspective. When the media broke the story that the Bells Landing Partners team was going to give $400,000 and 250 acres to the university to start an academic program on sustainable agriculture, it did not bother to ask whether the cash would bring Jack May a hefty tax deduction or whether it might constitute the actual purchase of influence from friends of TSU. As for the acreage, the mainstream media neglected to point out that a donation of "riverfront" property on the Bend means giving away flood plane parcels on which no high-density residential or mixed-use corporate campus could be built.

So, leave it to social media to point out the May Town Center warts that the mainstream media ignores. A commenter at the Nashville Charrette questions the risk assumed and opines:

A real risk would be buying up the east riverbank land, between the interstate and the river north of the Ellington interchange, and turning it into a model urban class-A office space redevelopment. Being honest about the impact of MTC, and asking the public to weigh the costs of development against the costs of NOT developing MTC: that would be real risk. But buying up farmland that another developer was already told to leave alone for a fraction of what convenient, commercially zoned land with updated infrastructure would cost, making laughable claims about the public cost, access, traffic, future plans, and environmental impact: that's not risk. It's cowardly stuff, and the days when threats and mockery and sowing fear of what happens when we don't give the wealthy everything they want could distort the public interest: those days are over. To MTC supporters: be honest about the effects of Bells Bend development, pro AND con, and be honest about your motives, or go home like Tony G (whose primary motive seems to have been a lobbying payment from the Mays).

And local culture critic, Aunt B, speaks to the matter of the quality of the land given and its potential for flood damage, which restricts what could actually be built there:

I’d also like to point out that giving TSU 250 acres along the river is nice, but let’s not kid ourselves.  We have one dam upriver from us that the Corps is extremely concerned might break and they’ve just decided that the Stone’s River dam that holds Percy Priest Lake back is not performing like they’d like it to.

Now, I invite you to look at the terrain map of Bell’s Bend (if this Google link works).  The Mays family is giving TSU land along the river front.  They, however, will be building May Town Center up on the hills.  Hmm.  Gee, I wonder why that is?  And really, how much of a gift is it going to be to TSU if it’s in the floodplain.  Yes, you will be able to do agricultural work there, especially if you keep in mind that you could lose some of it to minor flooding pretty frequently and all of it to a major flood.  Unless you’re going to put up levees, but then we’re really talking about changing the landscape.

But the truth is that the May family gets to look generous–”Oh, we gave 250 acres to TSU, aren’t we great?  See, we do love Nashville!” while really giving them 250 acres that are designed by nature to flood (and, frankly, as someone who grew up along the Mississippi can tell you, are necessary to the health of the river to be allowed to flood).  I guess if TSU is gung-ho for studying agricultural techniques for floodplanes, this will be a great boon, but as an outside observer, I find it a little strange that this seems to be being framed like the May family is giving up something that they otherwise would have used.  For what?  The only thing a sane person would put there would be farmland.

Indeed, Army Corps of Engineers has online maps of the flood inundation zones that would result from the catastrophic failure of dams upstream from Bells Bend. The map that captures portions of riverfront holdings of the May Family graphically portrays that TSU's parcels would be underwater with Cumberland flooding:



Given that the new TSU property would likely become an extension of the aquatic lifeworld of the Cumberland River, it is clear that the developers were not going to have big plans beyond agriculture or selling it to Metro. TSU would be assuming some risk by taking control of the land. A huge portion of the 1,400 acres that the May family owns on Bells Bend is this kind of flood plane, and their bid to devote a large percentage of their holdings to a "conservation easement" in exchange for being allowed to build a second downtown does not look so genuinely green or highly principled after all.

At The Same Time Bling of America Was Asking for More Fed Bailout, It Was Approving Payment of Dividends to "Preferred" Stockholders

This news just makes my taxpayer's blood boil. How in the hell can already bailed out Bank of America afford to pay "preferred" dividends (which get paid before stockholders get their dividends) while they are begging for billions more in bailout capital to subsidize their foolish purchase of Merrill Lynch?

Matthew Goldstein prescribes the proper antidote:

why shouldn’t [BofA] be forced to cut its outlays to the bone first? After all, analysts are saying even banks with relatively healthy balance sheets, like Wells Fargo, may have to trim their dividends. As of right now, BofA, even after cutting its dividend in half in October, still boasts a hefty payout of 32 cents a share. Even at that reduced amount, the dividend is equal to the sum the bank was paying shareholders in 2003. When the bank slashed the dividend in October, it said the move would save it about $1.4 billion a quarter in badly-needed capital. By that math, eliminating the dividend altogether would say about $2.8 billion in capital a quarter. The bank declined to comment.

Of course, they declined to comment because right now the federal government is funneling them money with no strings attached. Why draw more critical attention to their gold digging?

Republican Deserts East Tennessee Communities in Their Hour of Need

An Oklahoma Republican thinks so much of the neighborhoods destroyed by TVA's coal ash spill that he walked out on testimony halfway through his committee's TVA coal ash spill hearing:

After listening to about 30 minutes of testimony from TVA CEO Kilgore, Sen. Inhofe then strode out of the committee hearing, before hearing any testimony from the "environmental extremist."

Inhofe, who has claimed that "environmental extremists exploit the [global warming] issue for fundraising purposes, raking in millions of dollars" has taken over $400,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry since 2003, and over $218,000 from electrical utilities since 2003, according to opensecrets.org.

Coal company Murray Energy is listed as Inhofe's second-highest campaign contributor for the years between 2003-2008. Cleveland-based Murray is best known for the 2007 Crandall Canyon mining disaster which resulted in the deaths of six coal miners and three members of an MSHA rescue team. Murray CEO Robert E. "Bob" Murray also made news when he allegedly threatened federal mine inspectors, stating that Kentucky Senator "Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and the last I checked, he was sleeping with your boss," a reference to McConnell's wife, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

I don't care what you think about global warming and energy, it is bad form to desert the important discussion of this coal ash spill. And don't taxpayer dollars pay him to attend these committee meetings?

Can rate payers join the class action suit against TVA?

Think you pay too much for utilities already? Get ready to pay more, and TVA is guaranteeing you will pay more for their Kingston mess:

The tab for a toxin-laden ash flood at a coal-fired power plant in Tennessee could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, and ratepayers for the nation's largest public utility will probably be stuck with the bill.

The total cost of cleaning up last month's accident isn't yet clear, but the bill will be staggering. Extra workers, overtime, heavy machinery, housing and supplies for families chased from their homes and lawsuits are among the costs that are piling up.

And with few other places for the Tennessee Valley Authority to turn to cover the costs, the utility's 9 million customers in Tennessee and six surrounding states will bear the brunt in higher electricity rate hikes in the future, TVA Chairman Bill Sansom told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Don't even think about demanding anything else. They have a CEO to pay.

And just remember this next June when Metro budget discussions roll around and we start hearing about the necessity to raise revenues to pay for other utilities; like Metro Water's stormwater run-off infrastructure. Once TVA is through forcing us to pay for their mistakes (Nashville "imports" electricity from TVA), where are we going to locate and how will we muster the will to take care of our other aging utilities? TVA's lack of diligence is going to trickle down and probably crush lots of worthwhile and pressing initiatives that we might have been willing to brook. Thanks again, TVA, for nothing.


UPDATE: Tennessean picks up the story.

Exxon Valdez Survivor: TVA survivors MUST get guarantees "in writing in legally-binding agreements"

Alaskan Riki Ott advises Harriman, TN survivors:

put in writing exactly what it will take to make you whole as families and as a community. Use your list as a benchmark so when the media return in one-five-ten and twenty years for "anniversaries," you will have a way to gauge recovery.

Working together on something for the greater good will hasten healing. So pick a focus, whether it's dealing with the mental health and social trauma, environmental trauma, or economic trauma. Form a core working group and figure out what you need to do to short-circuit the harm--or else you'll be wallowing in it for years. Such Peer Listening Circles are tools that shift people from victim mode to survivor mode--a vital change that can literally save lives--and rebuild a sense of community. Take it from a sibling injured community: this works.

And heed our warning--lawsuits do not work to recover losses! The legal system is currently broken. Better to invest your time in mediation. Calculate your short- and long-term economic harm and the harm to quality of life. Balance these against spending the next twenty years in litigation. Make demands and make concessions, but be sure to do both as a community. Insist on a process where the people represent themselves and the lawyers take a back seat. Process is important to healing.

Remember how Republicans made fun of community organizing last year? Community organizing is exactly what Harriman residents and property owners need right now, especially with two Republican U.S. Senators who are have their hands in the TVA cookie jar and who may not act in the community's highest interest.

Also, go read Ott's open letter to see how even the oil industry's claims that no long-term damage to the wildlife were betrayed by long-term reality.

HT: @daveburdick

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.

"You believe what these people down here are telling you" unless they're telling you what TVA doesn't want to hear

TVA spokesperson calls Feb. 2008 inspection report of pond wall failures "misleading." He doesn't cotton to the descriptive term "blowout," and he insists that engineers (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) know the term is not that big of a deal. I guess it wouldn't be that big of a deal for those who are not at the business end of failing pond walls.