The lawyer that Hizzoner is, he won't do much more than he is legally obligated to

Disturbing patterns keep popping up in the Mayor's behavior: he excused Metro Water's dump of toxins near Salemtown saying that they complied with the state's environmental standards; he excused Metro's lack of robust remediation of soil excavated for the new Sulphur Dell ballpark insisting that he was in communication with the state and soil like Sulphur Dell's existed everywhere Downtown.

Now his response to the American Indian Coalition's frustration with his handling of sensitive archeology in the area of the new ballpark seems to be cut from the same legalistic thought:

the group wants Metro to delay or stop construction at Sulphur Dell because of its deep Indian history. Representatives from both sides met Thursday for another discussion on the issue.

So far, the city has made no plans to stop construction. Instead, they're offering to construct a wall along the greenway to honor the history of the area, as well as some artwork to go near the end of Fourth Avenue.

"That to me is minimalization and we're tired of being minimalized, American Indian people. We are tired of being just given the very least,” said Albert Bender with the American Indian Coalition.

The Office of Mayor Karl Dean said it’s complied with all state regulations for building on ground containing artifacts.

Doesn't bold leadership require at some points going above and beyond lawyerly arguments of what is required of Metro by state law? Instead of strictly what the law demands to protect the wealthy financial interests backing this project, why not try to strike a balance with all parties as equals in this debate? AIC has excellent points about the costs of culture and history that eclipse mere temporary motives of developers:

"There is evidence of a huge, huge Native American city - Native American metropolis, ancient American area," said Albert Bender, with the American Indian Coalition.

Archaeologists were excited when some Native American salt vessels recently turned up at the Sulphur Dell construction site.

They would like to see the construction of the new Nashville Sounds stadium put on hold to further study the findings, but that is unlikely.

"That's our priority that they will open up the excavation process so that more field recovery work can take place, because there is a treasure trove of knowledge waiting to be unearthed. And the knowledge is incalculable compared to any type of delay that may result from the construction of a ballpark," Bender said.

The artifacts include broken pottery from a salt factory dating back to 1150 A.D. But the digging to find more artifacts has stopped and construction of the ballpark is moving ahead.

"Now we've capped that with some dirt, and we suspect there are other things out there. But it's not going to be coming into place as part of this construction process," said Ronald Gobbel, with Gobbel Hays Partners, Inc.

Again the parallel is striking: when the Dean Administration was covering its collective ass on its new toxic landfill near the Cumberland River here, the bureaucrats justified it by insisting that they were going to "cap" the carcinogens with some dirt. So, down below dirt in our community is a toxic dump that we need protection from and a prehistoric metropolis that should be a source of pride and continuity of place. Karl Dean would rather bury both and appeal to the law in his defense.

This Mayor's term is nearly up and there is no hope of him changing his pharisaical ways any time soon. He wants to get this ballpark done before he leaves office so that he can throw out the first pitch as the guy who built it. It will be The House That Dean Built. We can only hope that the next Mayor is less prone to sticking to legalistic ways of governing this city. We can only hope that she or he has a vision that encompasses the past as well as the future.

Stringing North Nashville along

Last week Mayor Karl Dean decided it was time again to grace North Nashville with his presence. So, he joined Sharon Kay on Jazzy 88 WFSK (Fisk University) for an interview about the job he has been doing.

He framed his customary economic development pitch with the statement that he considers his administration's spending on upgrades to the water and sewer system an important part of what creates economic development. That seemed to be a departure from his standard stump about economic development as providing more opportunities and subsidies for business. He even broached the subject of the increase in water service fees to pay for the upgrades.

As usual, what Karl Dean did not say about his spending on upgrades was more significant than what he did say.

First, just like in his recent speech on his new budget, Karl Dean discussed the Metro Water upgrades as if they were his own initiative, which they they are not. Metro Nashville has been mandated from above to comply with state and federal clean water regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency required the Mayor to commit $1.5 billion to comply:

federal and state officials approached Metro about the need for additional sewer investments. Shortly after, the EPA and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation filed a consent decree in federal court requiring Metro to comply with a list of environmental regulations. By March 2009, the consent decree was approved, setting aside a schedule whereby Metro must submit a long-term plan to address the issue.

So, the Mayor can talk as if he has ownership of the clean water issue, but what are the chances the Dean administration would have "spent far more on water mains, sewer lines and storm water projects than it cost to build the Music City Center" if a government mandate had not been imposed? It was not too many years ago that Mayor Dean attacked the idea of government regulations. It seems disingenuous to embrace spending that he has been forced to accept now.

The other thing omitted from his comments to Ms. Kay had to do with his reference to raises in water fees. Mayor Dean failed to acknowledge that his water fee increases are regressive: Metro charges big businesses less for higher volumes of stormwater they shed than Metro charges smaller operations like, well, Fisk University. Those who can afford to pay more actually pay less in Karl Dean's world.

Hizzoner came off dubiously at other spots like where he said that the wealth he has helped business generate in Nashville trickled down to ordinary people during the construction phase of the Music City Center. Explain that one to me.

However, his touting of the money spent on water and sewer is dishonest if not looney. After the 2010 floods he told us that what saved Nashville from the catastrophe was not the federal government but local volunteers helping people. His mantra is voluntarism even when it warps the truth.

In this case, it was not local volunteers who created the stormwater upgrades. And it was not even the Dean administration's own initiative to start forking over revenues for water despite the credit he expects us to give. Water and sewer improvements are the result of mandates from the federal government that actually caused Nashville to break with a past of soiling its own run-off in order to protect the environment.

If he wants credit for ponderous capital projects like Music City Center then let him claim it, even if it does not sell in places he visits outside of Downtown. But the real record on water infrastructure should not go without saying anywhere.

What goes for NYC goes doubly for Nashville

New York City has a new progressive mayor to replace the neo-liberal Republican Mike Bloomberg, and noted architectural critic Michael Sorkin acknowledges the transition with an open letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. I excerpt significant parts here because Nashville Mayor Karl Dean tends to mimic the "public-private partnership" approach to governance that Bloomberg exercised and at which Sorkin takes aim, calling it the "post-Reagan turn against government":

It's time to reintroduce communities into the planning process. New York must move beyond the oppositional model of planning that has too long dominated .... Although there is no contradiction in planning both inductively and deductively, our process is too skewed toward money and away from people: the capacity of neighborhoods to meaningfully participate in planning their own destinies—and that of the larger realms we all share—is fundamental. Wisdom doesn't belong to any particular group (although needs are best assessed locally), and a mayor must empower everyone ....

Let the de Blasio planning department pay better attention, return to the task of physical planning attuned to local desires, and more aggressively pursue architecturally significant outcomes. Instead of simply being the adjudicators of the circumstances for construction, our planners should produce more facts, more designs—and should set priorities that are both concrete and truly visionary.

For the past dozen years, the real power to plan has resided with the city's Economic Development Corporation, which, operating more like a private entity than a city agency, stands outside full scrutiny and control and acts as the mayor's creature. This tilt toward understanding government's role primarily as the facilitator of private initiatives has special consequences for the public realm—a space shared by the city's many publics—and it's time for a more transparent use of public money. There's something dispiriting about celebrating the fact that the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge Park was produced not by the Parks Department but by a special corporation financed by the inclusion of superluxe condos and a hipster hotel within it. Forcing the public realm to effectively produce its own revenues on the spot is a formula for assuring that the best public spaces will be in neighborhoods that can most afford them. The role of planning should be to equalize opportunity and community assets, and any system that either privatizes revenue collection or steers it too locally risks deepening the rift between our “two cities.”

The past two mayoral terms in Nashville drifted away from sustaining agencies in Metro government that advocate for community-based and neighborhood-based interests.

Says Dean: "Maximize tourism and entertainment"

Before Karl Dean took office and started remaking government into a public-private composite, the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods acted as an arbiter between the community and municipal departments. Now most of the energy is going to the Mayor's Office of Economic and Community Development, an intimate partner of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, which spearheads much of what passes for Metro policy. The Office of Neighborhoods has shrunk to the standing of PR gadget.

Consequently, Mayor Dean is experiencing blow-back from his seemingly singular dependence on economic development, and he is having to stave off questions concerning his spending on public infrastructure. There are perceptions that the Mayor is the Mayor of the more privileged parts of the city, but not of the entire city. Nashville has it's own reputation of being "two cities" to live down, but the leaders are not living it down gracefully. Take last week's Nashville Ledger:

Dean is quick to point out that the bulk of his spending plans have focused on basic infrastructure needs, such as sidewalks and paving, as well as projects that provide direct services to residents, including new police precincts, libraries, schools, parks, greenways, bikeways and open space ....

His capital spending plans have also invested $373 million in schools and allocated more than $40 million to improving Nashville’s walkability.

And a capital program begun in 2010 will spend more than $1 billion on a backlog of water, sewer and storm water infrastructure projects throughout Davidson County that were needed to preserve safe, clean drinking water.

But Hizzoner overplayed his hand. If I were Mayor and taking some heat for spending more on subsidizing big business than on serving the community, I would point out if I could how much more I have spent on sidewalks, library buildings and schools than the previous "Neighborhoods Mayor". To me it is telling that Karl Dean does not.

As for the spending on schools, what Mayor Dean failed to mention was that chunks of the $373 million went to aid his program of privatizing public schools by helping charter corporations and corporately-partnered "academies" effectively designed to limit public education for all.

Also, keep this in mind about the water infrastructure: it had been violating the Clean Water Act and getting negative attention from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for years before Nashville made a concerted effort to upgrade components that predated Abraham Lincoln's administration. The Mayor was forced from the top-down to make changes to Metro Water infrastructure to avoid costly and embarrassing EPA fines that threatened the Nashville brand. There also might be a couple of Metro Council members who should get credit for their efforts at shepherding water upgrades and sensitizing constituents to the need for changes.

If Hizzoner really is not getting the benefit of the doubt on policy that seems focused on handing entitlements to wealthy special interests, then he has earned the reputation. The current planning process is overrun and corrupted by Mayor Dean's exclusive commitments to business over community. Developers continue to enjoy greater advantages over communities than ever before. Wealth tips the balance of power.

If reintroducing communities into the planning process and taking the spotlight off public-private partnerships goes for New York City, the idea goes doubly for Nashville. We have seen a 2-term stretch in which Karl Dean has acted like a mini-Mike Bloomberg and asserted business models over a more democratic community process that should have more influence over growth and development than currently allowed.

Metro has not planned to test for and properly dispose of contaminated soil found on ballpark site

Look what we dug up!

Earlier this year, Metro was caught by the news media quietly dumping toxin-laced water treatment building debris and contaminated soil into a new landfill near Salemtown and Germantown. They were also busted for downplaying the levels of toxicity in the soil. At the time, the Mayor's Office minimized the level of contamination and possible exposure of neighbors and watershed by saying something to the effect that he had been told by his underlings that everything was fine. Nothing to see here.

And so Metro Water Services continued to dump contaminates in a hole near the Cumberland River and around the corner from our home; and everybody moved on.

Except that now we are hearing about more soil in the area found to be contaminated by barium and lead (removed by the state). The location of the findings: adjacent to the proposed Sulphur Dell ballpark site. In the name of public safety and environmental stewardship the common sense thing to do before construction starts is to test the ballpark site for heavy metals and other toxins, right?

"Wrong!" says the Mayor. Someone forgot to tell Hizzoner that it's not easy being green:

In spite of the problems, Mayor Karl Dean does not plan for environmental studies on the land under the ballpark.

"Well, we've already been in communication with the state about the environmental issues. But the environmental issues are what you would find almost anywhere downtown," Dean said.

Dean was asked if the city budget for the project includes money for soil remediation, should the city find it has to remove contaminated soil from underneath the Sulphur Dell stadium.

"Right now, we think we're in fine shape," Dean said.

Hidden costs are already a concern to some members of Metro Council.

Mayor Dean's pass-the-buck refrain sounds familiar for those of us following the Metro Water landfill. Then Metro Water argued that high levels of toxins could be found in bricks bought from Home Depot. No big deal. Likewise, contaminated soil can be found anywhere downtown. Feel safe now, downtown residents? Metro Water had not budgeted to truck their toxic soil to approved landfills. It was cheaper to bury it in the basement of a demolished building on their property. Likewise, the Mayor has not budgeted money for testing and remediation of soil on an historically industrial site next to brownfields found to be contaminated and possessing an unstable landfill. This is like a broken record skipping back to the same refrains when health and safety is at stake: money trumps environmental protection and political accountability.

I certainly hope that concerned members of the Metro Council step up and start to put stipulations on Erica Gilmore's Sulphur Dell bill that make the Mayor more accountable for the risks of this project.

For my part, I wrote another letter to CM Gilmore to do just that with her bill:

CM Gilmore:

On their 6:00 report tonight, Channel 4 reported that the state has found soil on properties adjacent to the proposed ballpark site at Sulphur Dell that contains toxins and heavy metals. They also reported that Metro does not plan to test the ballpark site soil for contaminants in order to properly dispose of them.

Given the recent fiasco at Metro Water Service's new landfill near Salemtown in which they were reportedly dumping soil known in the past to be toxic without testing it again, I am concerned that this sort of dumping could be repeated with possibly tainted soil from ballpark construction. I am particularly concerned that the soil could be added to MWS's recent dump between the Cumberland and Salemtown without any of us ever being warned by Metro officials.

Please amend any ballpark legislation to include requirements and funding for properly testing soil for contaminants and for disposing of any contaminated soil in approved landfills. Public safety and protection of our environment are worth the costs of proper disposal.

Thanks.

Regards,
Mike Byrd

Given her silence on Metro Water's toxic dump, I would not be surprised if she ignored me on this one, too.

Titanic feudal peonage

A long time ago Nashville started paying subsidies, including millions out of each year's Metro Water budget, to attract and keep the Houston Oilers / Tennessee Titans here. Supporters acknowledge that the economic impact of pro sports teams is negligible, given the subsidies, but somehow, their logic stipulates, the community spirit teams create (when they win, of course) makes the financial expense worth the blow to the pocketbook.

But given an October Atlantic article about how the public subsidies alone (without ticket sales or merchandising revenues) make a few people wealthy beyond the unending wealth they already possess, how good can the transaction be for the community?

Judith Grant Long, a Harvard University professor of urban planning, calculates that league-wide, 70 percent of the capital cost of NFL stadiums has been provided by taxpayers, not NFL owners. Many cities, counties, and states also pay the stadiums’ ongoing costs, by providing power, sewer services, other infrastructure, and stadium improvements. When ongoing costs are added, Long’s research finds, the ... Tennessee Titans have turned a profit on stadium subsidies alone—receiving more money from the public than they needed to build their facilities. Long’s estimates show that just three NFL franchises—the New England Patriots, New York Giants, and New York Jets—have paid three-quarters or more of their stadium capital costs.

Almost none of the NFL football teams are publicly owned. All are owned by wealthy families, which means that Bud Adams, owner of the Titans, is "converting public subsidies and tax favors into high living for a modern-day feudal elite."

Say what you will about the so-called "intangible" benefits of having a professional team in your city. The feudal lords of the National Football League soak up most of the tangible benefits that the NFL's serf-cities hand them.

I wish she had put as much energy and enthusiasm into stopping Metro Water's new toxic landfill near Germantown

CM Erica Gilmore predictably is super excited that the Mayor is finally coming out of the closet on Sulphur Dell. So super excited that spell-check eluded her:

Today, Council Lady Erica Gilmore reported the 19th  District constituents are thrilled with the idea of a proposed new Sounds stadium at Sulphur Dell. Sulphur Dell is the original home of professional baseball in Nashville, and minor league and Negro league teams played there dating back to the 1860s.

After many months and years, “I am excited the Mayor is moving forward with this proposal, stated Council Lady Gilmore.” This challenge is a tremendous opportunity for the North Nashville area. This proposal will create more jobs and will be a valuable community asset with the ability to expand economic development.

Council Lady Gilmore stated, “We are grateful that Sulfur Dell is being considered in District 19 and know this will be a Homerun for the North Nashville area.” [sic]

I am glad CM Gilmore broke with her seeming indifference in the past about planning quality and smart growth at the intersection of Jefferson and Rosa Parks (given that she was willing to welcome a predatory lender and bid farewell to the National Museum of African American Music).

On the contrary, she expresses no interest in or insight on transit questions which plague the idea of building a ballpark at Sulphur Dell. Would not bus rapid transit from downtown be a perfect compliment to a new ballpark? But, oh, she has already gone all in on the Mayor's bus rapid transit connector between East and West Nashville; the plan that leaves North Nashville out of the transit equation. What a squander.

The aspirations of Megan Barry: how has being a cautious progressive helped her?

I am a recovering supporter of Megan Barry, so I took some interest in a recent Tennessean editorial on her bid to woo the business class kingmakers over at their reportedly favorite watering hole. First, erstwhile journo Bruce Dobie claims that the suits are fretting about their choices next time for Mayor. Before droning on about Barry, I have to point out that there is a certain irony in Dobie maintaining that these are the people who actually do the choosing of executives to run county government--votes be damned--and yet, their own system has left them without a candidate to run county government.

But I digress:

Second, progressive goo-goo [a.k.a., "good-government"] front-runner Megan Barry makes them nervous.

Barry, a Metro Councilwoman, has been the most public and out-front candidate to date. A resident of the not-so-mean streets of Belmont-Hillsboro, Nashville’s ground zero for left-leaning politics, Barry is known for successfully sponsoring a workplace anti-discrimination measure for the city’s gay and lesbian communities. She also was the force behind the proposal for Metro Government workers to receive a “living wage.”

Such accomplishments have prompted the Jimmy Kelly’s biz crowd to order a second martini and continue the search.

Dobie goes on to compare CM Barry to blast-from-the-past Betty Nixon because both appear to have the same genitalia as well as interest in being Mayor (in the interest of fairness, why didn't Dobie bring up a "youthful" mayoral candidate from the past to compare to Jeremy Kane?).

Without fail, Dobie falls back on that dated label of "goo-goo" to compare the two. Of course, he has in past columns mentioned Ludye Wallace as a favorite of good-government types, a claim that is a laugh riot to some of us "goo-goos" who have actually been Ludye's constituents. Dobie's dependency on a twenty-year-old term, as Ms. Nixon pointed out this week, is practically archaic. It also may show that he is more in touch with the bar at Jimmy Kelly's than he is with politics unfolding on the ground in Nashville.

While I am not cynical enough to label CM Barry's initiatives as symbolically liberal, they do strike this observer as incremental at best. Her living wage plan upset some council conservatives, but it did not help more than a dozen folks who work for Metro government. What about the many who were not as lucky as those few? Likewise, she hammered home demands of nondiscrimination against Metro employees, but she was barely a blip on the radar when the question turned to nondiscrimination for private companies contracting with Metro government.

Any credit she might get from me for taking boldish stands on strictly social-progressive issues is overwhelmed by my memories of her support of the conservative growth policies of Karl Dean. She voted for the new regressive stormwater fee structure that charged property owners who created less stormwater (mostly residential) more than those who generated more stormwater (mostly business). After going through the motions of holding a couple of community meetings on the proposed Music City Convention Center, she supported the largest capital project in Metro history without making any demands on the Mayor or leveraging progressive perimeters for the project. She supported Hizzoner's bid to tear down the State Fairgrounds and to sell all but a sliver off to wealthy private developers, which would have had the double-barreled effect of eradicating a working class entertainment venue and of making some potential campaign donors even more wealth. Megan Barry has mimicked, over and over, Karl Dean's market-driven habits of governance.

And where has it all brought her now that she is facing down the Jimmy Kelly's deciders? They still do not trust her.

Megan Barry has never remotely resembled a populist progressive concerned about class disparities, quality employment, equal opportunities for working people or the alienating effects of unfettered gentrification in urban areas. She has never even taken a stand as a "loyal opponent" of the Dean administration. She stays close to the social issues that are stylish among Nashville top-shelf progressives: the rights of women, equality for gays and lesbians, immigration opportunities. Granted, those kinds of issues do not risk the primary flow of money and power in Nashville; or at least they are not as risky as are unflinching looks at unequal growth, environmental justice, power imbalances in land development and class inequities. In my opinion, any future Nashville mayor worth her salt has to have taken some risks toward the left. I do not see that level of boldness in CM Barry's resume.

I don't know if Megan Barry would have been able to pull together a coalition giving her higher levels of popular votes to offset any donation losses she might have experienced by being even a part-time populist. I do see that being a full-time social progressive in lock-step with Karl Dean is not pulling her any closer to the Mayor's Office she covets. As conservative as she has been, she is still not conservative enough for the suits.

AMPlifire: Hizzoner lumps concerned opponents of his westward-friendly BRT line with people who do not care for the environment or mass transit

Now there's going to be people who disagree. There are going to be people who are against change, who aren't interested in the environment, who aren't interested in other people being able to move around. That's fine. But I think most Nashvillians are.

--Mayor Karl Dean to Channel 4 News

Yeah? Well, if Mayor Dean cared about the environment in North Nashville, why would he permit Metro Water to dump toxins and contaminants into a new riverside landfill near Salemtown? If he cared about moving North Nashvillians around, why wouldn't his AMP proposal include us?

More neighborhoods line up against Metro Water Services' new landfill on the Cumberland River and MWS defends itself again

While attending the Salemtown Neighbors meeting this week, I found out that more neighborhoods than the news media has divulged are questioning Metro Water Services' scheme to bury toxic materials in a landfill outside of Salemtown. According to the association, the Buchanan Street and Historic Buena Vista associations have joined Salemtown in opposing the chemical dump. Historic Germantown, Inc, which Tennessean reporter Bobby Allyn reported was not concerned about North Nashville's newest landfill, is said to be taking "a hard look" at the problem in the wake of Salemtown's expressed opposition.

While SNNA leaders also reported that Council Member Erica Gilmore has been working on a solution to the problem, I have no evidence myself to support that. Like has been her past pattern on my expressed concerns about environmental inequities in North Nashville, she has been generally unresponsive to my email pleas to stop the dumping and to fund removal of the debris.

MWS PR specialist Sonia Harvat eventually got back to me earlier this month in defense of her employer's dump in light of questions I asked her about testing frequency, procedure, and holding private contractors accountable for wasting taxpayer money. She wrote:

Metro Water Services staff monitors the outfalls, per TDEC requirement, once a quarter during a qualifying rain event - this could include events on holidays and weekends. As described in the previous email, the monitoring consists of grabbing a sample at each outfall and visually inspecting for the presence of potential contaminants, such as oily sheens, cloudiness, coloring, and odor.

Work has begun to characterize the large mound of soil removed from the biosolids construction site. The protocol, approved by TDEC, calls for soil to be segregated into piles of approximately 240 cubic yards. Multiple on-site tests are conducted on each pile to indicate the area containing the highest potential for petroleum contamination. A sample is collected from the portion indicating the highest potential and sent for laboratory testing. If the lab test indicates the sample is below the level of concern then the contractor may transfer that pile to the demolition site to be used for backfill in the basement. The results of the testing will be compiled into a report.

The material that had been placed in the basement prior to characterization has since been tested and is below any level of concern.

The contractor for the biosolids facility is responsible for testing and proper disposal of material associated with the project. Metro only has a contract with the prime contractor and not the subcontractor performing demolition. Therefore Metro holds the prime contractor responsible for proper testing and disposal, and the contractor must hold his subcontractor responsible.

So, MWS conducted the most minimal, compulsory monitoring for chemicals running off a dirt pile that itself had, according to tests, already shown high levels of toxins. If we take Metro Water at their word, in the past decade they conducted roughly 3 dozen tests of runoff from a previously characterized toxic pile into the Cumberland River watershed.

That may satisfy red-state TDEC, but it does not satisfy me because I live near it. It should not satisfy you, regardless of where you reside, because the Cumberland is your river, too.

The part about contractors and subcontractors strikes me as bureaucratic double-speak and question evasion. I mean, is Ms. Harvat's point that we paid taxpayer dollars to someone who paid someone else to clean up the contaminated soil and if someone else does not cough it up, then Metro Water is absolved from getting taxpayer dollars back? Or if Metro Water did hold the primary contractor responsible and got taxpayer dollars back, then why did she not just tell me straight up, "We got the money back from the contractor", regardless of what they got or did not get from the subcontractor?

It's a simple question: did Metro get us our money's worth when it paid the contractor to have the contaminated soil at the water treatment plant cleaned up? Why can't I get a straight answer to the simple question?

I am pleased that my own neighborhood association stepped up to spearhead the collective opposition to Metro Water's new backfill landfill. Too bad Metro government got in front beforehand of the controversy that they tried to avoid by quietly dumping their mess. Too bad the Tennessean colluded with Metro Water to broadcast the perception that nothing was amiss with dumping in North Nashville. Now our community has hard work to do to beat the injustice.

Metro Water's public relations specialist is no longer relating to my email requests for info

If you have been following the month-old, unfolding controversy around Metro Water Service's plan to bury toxic debris and contaminated soil 300 yards from the Cumberland River and next to Salemtown/Germantown, I do not have much to report.

I do not have much to report because after a string of email responses to my requests for information about the project, media communications specialist Sonia Harvat seems to have stopped replying to me altogether. (On a side note: CM Erica Gilmore's office is still not really offering me any insight on what she is doing about this either).

My last email was sent a week ago and I was fairly specific in my request for information (CC'ed to CM Gilmore):

Ms. Harvat:

So, MWS employees have measured the amount of chemicals or contaminants that could be running off the pile during every rain event since the pile was created 9 years ago? Including weekends and holidays? Is there written analyses or other documentation on that monitoring?

In your interview with Demetria Kalodimos you indicated that you did not know to what degree the pile was contaminated with petroleum even though construction workers told her that almost 100 loads of dirt from the pile had already been dumped into the incinerator basement. Have tests for levels been conducted in the weeks since that interview aired? If so, who has conducted the tests?

I noticed today that dumping is continuing in the new MWS landfill and that heavy machinery has also cut down the size of the petroleum-laced dirt pile. Is the dirt from the pile once again going into the incinerator basement with the debris or is the dirt being hauled offsite? If the dirt is going into the basement-landfill, is your agency testing to make sure that the dirt does not first need to be remediated for high levels of petroleum? Do you have documentation on those tests?

Was the private company that originally was supposed to deal with the petroleum-laced dirt pile paid for services they did not render? If so, is Metro Water making any effort to get those payments back or claim damages for failure to follow through since 2004?

Regards,
Mike Byrd

I'm just your average dolt with common knowledge about landfills and pollution, but I was hoping that Metro Water could explain to me how they can be sure that the contaminated stuff they are dumping down the street from my house is safe when contained in a basement, capped in a way that is reminiscent of Love Canal. I have the distinct impression that they prefer I just go away and let them dump as they intended to: quietly and with no blowback.

Are the Mayor's board appointees not supposed to express opposition to the Mayor?

Twitter exchange between two local reporters:

Karl Dean will not spare a dime to move toxic debris out of my neighborhood, but he can afford to hand a TV show $500,000

One of the hallmarks of Mayor Karl Dean's two terms at the helm of Metro government has been to dole out corporate welfare and subsidies for private companies even as he has complained that he simply does not have the money to fund Metro services the way they should be funded.

So, of course, Mayor Dean now wants to give the taxpayers' revenues, our money, to the ABC network's prime time soap opera, "Nashville", which has threatened to take its toys and go home to the west coast and in order to film the second season there if the Nashville will not give it a hand-out.

And who blinked first?

Mayor Karl Dean has ... agreed, on behalf of Metro, to provide a $500,000 cash grant for the production of the show, something that Dean’s office has previously referred to as advertising the city can’t buy ....

“With beautiful scenic shots of our landscape and the portrayal of our unique music scene, more people, without a doubt, are visiting our city and spending their money here because they’ve seen this hour-long commercial for Music City that airs every week during primetime,” said Dean, in a prepared statement. “The city’s investment in Nashville this season is a recognition that this show benefits our local economy and is opening doors to further grow the film and television industry here.”

Entitled to Metro entitlements?

Money cannot buy that kind of advertising until it does buy that kind of advertising.

It would be one thing if the Mayor said, "I am going to take the subsidy that I usually pay the Chamber of Commerce and I'm going to give it to ABC producers to sweeten the incentive for doing the logical thing: coming back to Nashville to film a show called 'Nashville'". But no. He obviously does not see our revenue base as a trust that helps neighborhoods, that sustains the community, that bolsters the quality of life.

Mayor Dean sees our resources as fiat to exercise his own personal privilege to pass out corporate welfare wherever he sees fit. Companies are allowed to draw on the dole that is supposed to go back into building up our infrastructure and generating programs directly benefitting Nashvillians.

I wonder what fraction of $500,000 it would take to clean up Metro Water's toxic landfill near Salemtown? Karl Dean does not seem to see the fitness in that.

Salemtown's neighborhood association votes unanimously to oppose Metro Water's new landfill

Salemtown Neighbors president Freddie O'Connell told me earlier this evening that the association approved a motion to express opposition to the new North Nashville landfill Metro Water Services is putting on our doorstep. The group plans to send letters to Metro officials (including the Mayor's Office) and other area neighborhood associations asking that the toxic incinerator debris and contaminated soil be hauled out of our community. This is the first organized community opposition to the rationalized dump that I am aware of. I am pleased that my neighborhood is attempting to demand the right thing and advocating for public safety.

It's all-hands-on-deck for the Mayor's "Neighborhood Challenge" today, but how "environmentally conscious" does Karl Dean really want us to be?

With Mayor Karl Dean waltzing his big-ticket Metro budget items past the passive Metro Council once again, today he turns to the perennial afterthought in his 6-year administration: neighborhoods.

Keeping neighborhoods in their place: a subsection to the CEO

The official invitation to the Mayors Neighborhood Challenge Kickoff Event promises prizes for the best performance by volunteers:

Join Mayor Karl Dean, the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhoods, Metro departments and other community groups at the Music City Center to kick off the Mayor’s Neighborhood Challenge! Similar to the Mayor’s Workplace Challenge, this is an opportunity to evaluate how green, healthy and involved your neighborhood or community group already is, learn how to improve, and earn points for both as you compete with other neighborhoods. There will be prizes for first place in each category.

How green is your landfill?

How "green, healthy and involved" we are in the neighborhoods? I do not know whether my neighborhood association is participating in this, but it would be ironic if they are since the Dean administration is about to finish a landfill of carcinogens and fuel contaminants on our doorstep. Yet, the Mayor's Challenge is promoted as an event to make us more "environmentally conscious",  even as the Mayor ignores calls to stop polluting the environment around Metro Water Services outside Salemtown. My message to Karl Dean: "I am sufficiently environmentally conscious, Mr. Mayor, and I expect you to end the dumping here in North Nashville and haul the debris out."

In my opinion the Mayor wants us to focus on volunteering to pick up some trash or to report codes-violating neighbors (through the NOTICE program) in order to give us false hope and to ignore real environmental problems like Metro Water burying toxic debris 300 yards from the Cumberland River. That landfill happened without any feedback from the community. We cannot even report Metro Water to Codes through the NOTICE program, because Codes approved the dump without taking the community into consideration. In that context, reporting neighbors to Codes for their violations looks like small-potatoes and divide-and-conquer. How can dumping old tires or garbage on private vacant lots be worse than burying heavy metals below the water table on public land?

How healthy is Metro's toxic dump?

Mayor Dean has been banging the drum of about how we should be living our personal lives (his enduring focus on us getting healthy is a prime example), and ignoring our reservations about his policies, programs, and practices inconsistent with healthy living. But wait. Today he is buying more of our voluntarism with promises of prizes for the neighborhood that shows out the best. How voluntary can it be if people are prompted by prizes? Can healthy living be sustained on the promise of swag and block parties?

Many local organizations inside and outside Metro government, beyond neighborhood groups, are responding to the Mayor's call for all-hands-on-deck. The Neighborhoods Resource Center, which claims to "organize residents to obtain more power" (even when it seems to run silent on Metro polices that discourage popular power) is a "tool" in the Mayor's "kit". I am not kidding: the Mayor lists organizations, including the NRC in his "toolkit". Other organizations are promoting the Mayor through social media:

When organizations choose to stand with a powerful municipal executive, they will not stand with communities when the latter are casualties of municipal policies that are anything but "green, healthy and involved in the neighborhoods". No wonder Hizzoner needs to give away prizes in order to entice average citizens to this event.

UPDATE: Head of Mayor Dean's campaign war room Office of Neighborhoods, Courtney Wheeler, added a tweet to the stream on the Mayor's Neighborhood Challenge:

In related news, I received an email saying that Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association indeed plans to accept Hizzoner's challenge.

Metro Water claims to monitor runoff of their shrinking petroleum pile while they continue to fill their basement with toxic debris

Nothing now seems to be stopping Metro Water from landfilling incinerator debris and possibly contaminated soil a block or two outside my neighborhood and on the Cumberland River watershed. With military-like efficiency they are moving this dumping project toward its end and burying dreggy remnants underground. And there is no observable resistance.

I took the following pictures yesterday. In the first one, the pile of dirt excavated a decade ago from the biosolids facility site and put on a parking lot for remediation of hazardous levels of petroleum--with no explanation of where the fuel came from--is being moved by construction crews. All the vegetation that was growing on it is gone and the hill is shrinking.

What's left of the petroleum pile, 06/20/2013

In the second photo, construction crews have recommenced filling Metro Water Services' new landfill (an old basement) with incinerator debris. And there are fresh piles of fill dirt. It is fair to gather (until I hear otherwise) that the dirt is coming from across the street, from the petroleum pile.

The landfill, 06/20/2013

After a long wait for answers to my questions about the storm drain at the foot of the petroleum pile--and I did confirm it is a storm drain, which means it runs straight to the Cumberland--Metro Water officials replied to me that indeed, runoff from the pile "may drain in that direction". They also claimed that MWS employees monitor the runoff during rain events. Employees "grab" a sample "at each outfall". Then they "visually inspect" the sample for "oily sheens, cloudiness, coloring, and odor". MWS insists that they have found no signs of fuel contamination in the runoff from the pile. They also maintain that the weeds and trees growing on the pile would have showed signs of distress if petroleum were present in high amounts.

I am just a layperson but this strikes me as a rather unscientific means of testing for petroleum in stormwater runoff. And the claim that they have tested an overgrown pile abandoned on a remote lot during every rain event for a decade defies common sense.

The clock seems to be running out on this contest. Council member Erica Gilmore is traveling all of June, and she never got back to me in May before she left about this problem. When I contacted the person in her office that her vacation notice said to contact, I had to send two emails to get the clipped, nebulous reply that they are "communicating by phone" and doing so "with representatives". Yeah, I have no idea what that means.

In the meantime, there remain unanswered questions:

• If the dirt going into the landfill is from the petroleum pile, has it been tested for levels of fuel?
• Was the private contractor paid ahead of time to remove the petroleum pile in 2004? If so, what is Metro doing to get that money back to avoid taxpayers from having to pay for removal twice?
• Did Erica Gilmore ever follow through with her commitment to try to get money to haul debris out?
• Why is Metro allowed to dump debris underground on public land when private developers are not allowed to do the same? Why is Metro Codes allowing this? Why is the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods not standing up for my neighborhood on this one?
• Why is Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association sitting this dance out?

Oh, yes. The Mayor's Office finally tips its hand on North Nashville's new landfill

Karl Dean has an annoying habit of taking credit for the positives and foisting the negatives on his agencies while pulling away from the blowback. However, the Mayor is essentially the CEO of Metro Government. Anything proposed by Metro agencies is properly vetted so as not to cause surprise or egg-on-the-face. That's the fact, Jack. His staffers need to hear that posing as if beholden to water services on that which the Mayor has already signed off insults the intelligence. The Mayor supports landfilling heavy metals and petroleum in North Nashville because environmental agencies allow his administration to get away with standards below what they plan in other parts of Nashville in order to save money.

The Nashville Scene contacted the Mayor's Office, which predictably insisted that everything is fine because Metro Water tells them everything is fine:

The mayor's office tells the Scene it has "been assured" by Water Services "that they are following all necessary protocols set forth by the environmental protection agencies."

That may strike Germantown neighbors as cold comfort, though, since the city keeps citing as a positive that the incinerator-burial plan has been approved by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation — an agency whose questionable regulation has come under fire from all corners of the state .... Most recently, in April, Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Carol McCoy ruled that TDEC Commissioner Robert Martineau approved permits for a landfill near a residential neighborhood in Camden, Tenn., without sufficient evidence local authorities had followed laws requiring public notice and local approval. To North Nashvillians, that might sound discomfortingly familiar.

Greeniness: Hizzoner poses with a solar panel.

Or not. It may not strike Germantown neighbors as cold comfort because, according to the Tennessean's clipped coverage of this metastizing problem, Germantown does not care what is going below its water table, otherwise they would naturally mobilize against it.

On Twitter, reporter Steven Hale clarified his Germantown observation when I brought up the Tennessean's blanket statements about the neighborhood. His point was that Germantown neighbors probably would not be satisfied by TDEC approval when they find out about TDEC's actual record. I have to admit, I get more appalled myself the more I hear about TDEC's track record on permitting unhealthy burials elsewhere. So, how can we have the same faith that Metro Water bureaucrats place in TDEC?

But TDEC's actual record? That is something else Tennessean reporter Bobby Allyn conveniently omitted in his kowtowed newspaper article on Metro's landfill plan.


Postscript: going back over my old notes, I rediscovered that this is not the first time I've questioned reporter Allyn's objectivity and fairness.

Update on Metro Water's petroleum pile and chemical dump

Thanks to those of you sending me emails offering to share costs of an injunction against Metro Water for risking our watershed with chemical debris and petroleum-imbued soil. While the resources look like they could be there via donors-to-the-cause, I am not willing to take time away from my family to mount an injunction as the only named plaintiff without a lawyer. Many of you know that my wife is about to start chemotherapy to treat breast cancer. Our 4th grader is going to need me, too, through this difficult time. Taking on a Metro agency in the courts by myself would not be realistic or prudent.

Organizations need to get involved in this, and frankly I'm surprised that they have turned a blind eye to the potential fouling of a major middle Tennessee water source.

I'm not expecting much from Germantown's association since they came right out in the paper and said they do not care what MWS is putting in its new landfill. Salemtown Neighbors has been curiously mum on the question. I understand that the mission of Cumberland River Compact is to focus on education and helping individuals do things on their own (rain gardens and stream clean-up) to enhance the watershed, but I cannot fathom why they might not at least express support for those of us who oppose a landfill 300 yards from the Cumberland. The North Nashville Political Forum has not issued any responses. The locally influential Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship has not given this problem any of its attention. The NAACP has also been silent. And as much as she makes a point of issuing public statements in response to various Metro actions, Sharon Hurt, Director of Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership (JUMP) has not said a word about this. This problem has not even come up for discussion on the Nashville Neighborhoods elist, which is predictably consumed with bus rapid transit (North Nashville problems rarely get any attention there, despite recurring expectations that I blog about West Nashville problems). Associations representing developers, realtors and business owners are practically invisible.

And yet, any change, whether prompted by the Metro Council or by the courts, is going to require the help and resources of organizations, not just individuals. These organizations will rue their current decision to sit on the sidelines in the future when studies start unfolding of higher incidences of cancer in the area around the landfill or when someone accidentally digs up something toxic that Metro Water buried decades earlier like they still do around Love Canal. Speaking of Love Canal, it was the homeowners association president there who ignored criticism that she was overreacting to clay-capped chemicals that were not believed to be a problem. In the end, her opposition made the federal government's tighter restrictions on dumping a reality. I just cannot believe that Metro Water Services and the Mayor's Office can get away with burying any carcinogenic debris or soil so close to neighborhoods and Nashville's major river 35 years after Love Canal.

Likewise, I just cannot believe that so many in this growing community choose to stick their heads firmly in the sand as the chemicals are being dumped and buried with faulty oversight.

In the meantime, I am getting no responses to my emails to Metro government for action on the new landfill. Metro Water is not responding to my last email asking them to clarify where the drain right next to the petroleum pile leads. After an initial response of opposition to the landfill, CM Erica Gilmore is not corresponding with me about any work she might be doing on this matter. Add that to her failure to get back to me 3 years ago about dark residue around the area's greenway at MWS.

After two weeks of this story gaining traction, responses and outcry seem to be dying down. That is good for the bureaucrats at Metro Water who want to sneak this problem through. It is bad for those of us in the community who will have to suffer the consequences of their irresponsibility.

Irony across the street from the new MWS landfill.

You are so Nashville if you give Midtown's new residents a $3,000,000 fitness center and Salemtown's new residents a cheap landfill

While we here in the North End are forced to abide a new clay-capped carcinogenic landfill via Metro Water, look what more affluent Midtown gets to enjoy: an expensive new fitness center at the Sportsplex.

The fitness center project comes on the heels of several proposed projects that will bring hundreds of new residents to Midtown. Southern Land Co. is building the six-story Elliston23 apartment and retail project at 2300 Elliston Place. Developer Tony Giarratana and an equity partner recently acquired two parcels at Elliston Place and 21st Avenue with plans to build apartments.

“When the sportsplex was completed, a fitness center was an afterthought,” said Tim Netsch, planning superintendent with Metro Parks.

 “It’s always been very popular, but small. Midtown is going to continue to grow with higher density and more residential. We thought it should be a priority to provide a new facility.”

West Nashville stands to get both bus rapid transit (with not a single guarantee for the future of lines along Charlotte Pike or in North Nashville) and a new fitness center to stay healthy, as if those people cannot already afford their own transportation and physical trainers. As if this were more than throwing money at sexy signature projects that Nashville does not need.

What do we get? Something else Nashville does not need: Metro Water's waste products buried along our watershed.

I'm sure Karl Dean's apologists will insist that Metro should pay for amenities for the bold and beautiful class along West End first, so that the wealth can fan out from there and trickle down to the third-class citizenry in North Nashville. Likewise, I can hear them insist that heavy metals and fuel contaminates have to be stored somewhere, and it sure won't be next to brand new brick-and-mortar projects along our city's western border.

Where has the stormwater runoff from Metro Water's toxic petroleum pile flowed in the last 10 years?

News that Metro Water Services has allowed fuel-contaminated soil to sit on a parking lot near my home for the last decade (and has now started to bury that soil underground nearby) got me to wondering where all the run-off from that soil went over the years. I have strolled the Downtown Connector Greenway that runs through the plant for as long as it has been open and I remember seeing a ravine and a drain near the parking lot where the pile is kept.

Look at the photos I recently took below that move progressively closer to the drain. The pile of petroleum soil sits but a few yards uphill from the drain at the bottom of the ravine. Where does the drain carry the stormwater from the parking lot? If it is a storm drain, it goes straight to the river. How much petroleum has been washed out of the pile and into the Cumberland River (assuming it is a storm drain) in the last 10 years?

Petroleum pile on the left in the photo; ravine on the right.

Ravine below the treeline; petroleum pile behind treeline.

Ravine with drain, downhill from petroleum pile.

If this is a stormwater drain, it goes to the river.

Again, I do not know for fact whether the drain that captures the pile's stormwater run-off carries the water straight to the Cumberland, or whether the water is contained below ground and remediated before it is sent to the Cumberland. If it is untreated stormwater, Metro Water has likely been polluting the Cumberland for 10 years by allowing the soil to stay heaped on the parking lot beside the ravine.

The situation would be better if the drain leads to some form of containment tank that keeps the untreated water from flowing to the Cumberland. Except that it would not have been better in May 2010. The photo below show that the ravine was inundated with floodwaters that come right up to the foot of the petroleum pile. If the drain leads to containment, that containment was overwhelmed by rising floodwaters and whatever was in it likely came out.

May 3, 2010 aerial photo of flooded ravine, inundated drain.

Metro Water has so many storm drains in the area, and I'm betting that the ravine was designed to send stormwater straight to the river. If that is the case, I hope that MWS has been monitoring the levels of uncontained petroleum that likely would have also spilled from the contaminated soil it allowed to remain for so long exposed during rainy periods.


CONFIRMED: It is a storm drain, and hence, runs to the Cumberland River, which is a stone's throw away.

How could burying petroleum, PCBs, lead and arsenic in a basement possibly be dangerous?

Flooded basement at Metro Water Services, May 2010
(emailed to me among other flood photos taken on MWS property)