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.

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.

"Customer service" as in "Don't accuse customers with legitimate concerns about their safety and water quality of being terrorists"

If the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has not damaged its reputation enough by approving questionable landfills (like the one near Salemtown), misleading the public about safety risks or releasing post-catastrophe test results not quite as revealing as others, now comes word via one of their bureaucrats that criticism of TDEC's handling of our water sources may lead to being branded "terrorists":

In an audio recording ... TDEC Deputy Director of the Division of Water Resources Sherwin Smith says, “ ... you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered, under homeland security, an act of terrorism.”

TDEC spokeswoman Meg Lockhart said in a written response to questions that Smith regrets his choice of words.

“The department is working to address this issue, and to provide broader customer service training for all employees,” Lockhart wrote.

Aside from TDEC's rather feeble attempt to repair the department's marketing strategy to its "customers" (which seems really just more of the same foolishness) how is Mr. Smith keeping his position while falsely accusing Tennesseans with valid concerns about their water quality of being terrorists? And terrorism has come to mean so many things when attempting to quash dissent, that it means nothing at all:

Anything is an act of terrorism, even complaining about water quality. If the state disagrees with the public's assessment that the water is so hard it's best consumed with a chisel and a fork, they're now on The List and should know that any attempts to board a plane in the future will require a full-blown molestation of their person and carry-on luggage. 

I realize that because they are bureaucrats, government officials can often go on absorbing these embarrassments with an wavering sense of job security, but eventually the hubris and intimidation has got to catch up with them, even in a red state.

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.

Council Member Gilmore says she opposes Metro Water's placement of toxic landfill in the North End

In the wake of the bad news that Metro Water, Codes and TDEC approved of a new landfill for banned chemicals near Salemtown, I wrote my council member early this morning:

CM Gilmore:

I am deeply troubled by news of Metro Nashville's unannounced, nontransparent plan to bury old water treatment building debris, laced with PCBs, lead and arsenic, down the street from my house (http://goo.gl/cm186) and 300 yards from the Cumberland River, which in 2010 backed up through and underneath the water treatment plant and into my neighborhood before receding. Metro Water and Codes officials try to put the most publicly appealing face on this penny-pinching chemical dump. However, they admit that they intend to put a "protective cap" over the carcinogens, which seems to me to be an acknowledgment that we need protection from what they are filling the old basement with. And make no mistake: they are siting a new landfill next to Salemtown, even as they tell television reporters that they are trying to avoid siting new landfills.

I am also upset that I had to discover this information secondhand from a TV journalist instead of from Metro government, which should have been more honest and forthcoming about the extent of the contamination at the water treatment plant. As a taxpayer, as a parent, as an active, responsible neighbor, I believe that I have a right to know what kind of risk a municipal agency is posing to my community before reporters force it to be accountable.

Likewise, I am of the opinion that our council members are supposed to protect constituents from Metro departments that make decisions based more on their narrow interests in saving money and cutting corners at the expense of broader public health and welfare. In [this] spirit I would ask you, please, do whatever you can to leverage change of Metro Water's plans to create a new North Nashville landfill to bury banned toxins and carcinogens so close to my family's house and so near the Cumberland River. Please resist Metro government's historical habit of treating North Nashville as a dumping ground for the rest of the city's wastes.

At the very least, next year's budget should include a provision to pay for moving all contaminated debris from the old water plant site to an approved, regulated landfill. Metro should abide by the same rules it applies to anyone else who demolishes old buildings. The current water treatment site needs to be reclaimed and renovated for the sake of our local community and of those who rely on the Cumberland watershed. Please do what you can to make sure that revisions to the Mayor's budget include such a provision and the necessary revenues to pay for it.

Regards,
Mike Byrd

Within hours Erica Gilmore replied to my email saying that she is also "very concerned" and that she "will never" support the opening of a landfill in North Nashville. She writes that she will "have monies placed in next year's budget". Good to hear that my council member is on the right side of this issue.

I hope that each of you will consider writing a letter to Metro Council, the Mayor's Office, and/or Metro Water protesting the location of a landfill next to the Cumberland River in North Nashville. Even if you do not live near my neighborhood you still would be affected by the storage of chemicals by Nashville's major water source.