Happy Trails, Coal Ash Spill!

You heard it here. The coal ash spill is dead. None of the horror predictions came true.

I’m not an idiot, by the way. I know that we’ve got to keep a careful monitoring on the medium and long-term effects on the fish in the river. That being said, it’s time to pronounce the short-term effects of the coal ash spill dead.

I need a Big Board for this…

• Duke Energy is now locked into an agreement with the EPA to pay for the cleanup. Yes, there’s still a lot for them to do to get rid of the other coal ash threats and they’ve been horribly irresponsible. But one of the scare tactics was “Duke Energy is going to get away with this and not pay the bills.” FALSE.
• Remember the stories of large numbers of turtles dying? FALSE.
• Remember the stories of large amounts of clams dying? Turns out that happens every year in the Dan River and it’s the natural process. Another FALSE.
• The untreated water has been tested and ruled safe to use for crops and livestock.
• The treated water has always been safe to drink before, during and now after the spill. The Danville water treatment plant folks were easily able to stop any potential problems that arose.
• There’s been absolutely no health effects from what little coal ash dried up on the riverbank. The Riverwalk Trail is just as safe as it has been before.
• You’d still be just as stupid to jump in the Dan River and go swimming just as much as you would have been before the coal ash spill. Nothing’s changed.
• Since the coal ash is diluted at an exponential rate the further it went down the river, places like South Boston and Buggs Island Lake never had a serious threat at all.
• The environmentalist groups have now gone mostly silent after all of their potential horror stories have not came anywhere close to coming true. Perhaps now, people will see that these environmentalist groups use hysteria and scare tactics to panic people who are gullible enough to believe what’s told to them without factchecking.

Like I said before, I’m not an idiot. I knew and still know that this is a still a problem that’s got to be corrected, but the correction process is well underway. You can complain about federal bureaucracy and inefficiency, but the EPA has taken charge and done their job well. All the VA & NC agencies have also worked together to keep the public informed well.

That being said, it’s time to move on and learn some lessons from this incident. The biggest lesson to be learned from this is to not trust anybody or any group that tries to advance their agenda using fear-mongering tactics… but I already knew that.