Matt Landon - OnEarth Magazine, from NRDC

Kingston Coal Diary, February 7-10

February 7
United Mountain Defense volunteers started working on compiling a comprehensive list of all of the video tapes they have recorded to date. UMD volunteer Tom Swinford has volunteered to start the task of converting the Mini DV tapes into DVD’s and has begun reproducing the DVD’s for distribution.
United Mountain Defense has the most comprehensive video documentation of TVA’s response to the Coal Ash Disaster of Dec 22, 2008. United Mountain Defense has more than 60 hours of footage including two aerial videos and hours of local interviews.
February 8
United Mountain Defense volunteers were tasked with getting more medical release forms from residents who got free heavy metal exposure screenings. Their medical results are being analyzed and will be released as an anonymous pool of data. UMD volunteers got two more residents to sign release forms.
UMD volunteers also video taped the changes to the ...read full post

Comments (1) | February 26, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, February 3-6

February 3
Diana Anderson of the Tennessee Coal Ash Survivors Network and Matt Landon of United Mountain Defense arose bright and early, fought the Washington D.C. traffic, and caught our flight back to the big city of Knoxville, TN. The volunteers were coming back from a weekend of air quality training with the Global Community Monitor/ Bucket Brigade. The informative training session was video taped to provide a good reference for future trainings and community refresher courses.
After arriving back in Knoxville Anderson and Landon drove to TVA’s Bull Run Coal Burning Plant to document the coal ash piles on site. The coal burning dinosaur appeared to be in working order with a HUGE coal ash pile. Unlike TVA’s Kingston plant there were houses directly at the toe of the coal ash pile.
This weekend was a pleasant retreat from the dusty, toxic air of Harriman, TN. As the volunteers drove the back roads and approached TVA’s coal ash disaster ...read full post

Comments (0) | February 18, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 31-February 2

January 31
Diana Anderson of the TN Coal Ash Survivors Network and Matt Landon of United Mountain Defense traveled to Deleware today to receive training from the Global Community Monitor (GCM) organization.

Matt Landon of UMD video taped the entire two day training session so that other community members in Deleware, TN, and the world could review the training. Today’s training consisted of learning about the history and successes of the Bucket Brigade, GCM’s most notable air monitoring project. The community that hosted us today was plagued by numerous polluting industries and was in the first steps of beginning to self monitor the air quality. One of the first steps in the process was called a log sheet. A brainstorming session led to the development of the “I SEE, I SMELL, I FEEL” sections for residents to fill out for each air pollution event. Based on these pollution log sheets GCM and the ...read full post

Comments (0) | February 16, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 27-30

January 27
United Mountain Defense volunteer staff person, Matt Landon called all of the regulatory agencies to report the problems of coal ash tracking. Landon called TN Highway Patrol, TN Bureau of Investigation, Bob Alexander of TDEC, EPA criminal division. After speaking with the EPA criminal division Landon was told he would be called by TVA’s OIG in the next week. Landon learned that EPA can’t regulate coal fly ash tracking. EPA doesn’t investigate it because it is not a hazardous waste. After speaking with the TBI, Landon emailed the District Attorney about the tracking problem to file an official compliant.

United Mountain Defense volunteers worked on gathering releases from residents who received heavy metal exposure screening. They picked up disaster photos that were taken to Washington DC. Bonnie and Tom picked up some more human samples for the heavy metal exposure testing. These samples were kept on ice then refrigerated until they were ...read full post

Comments (1) | February 10, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 23-26

January 23
United Mountain Defense volunteers have been waiting to get new carpet put in the UMD volunteer house since we had an indoor flood on sunday night. We've still been helping organize between vacumming water and working with carpet specialists, and the insurance man.

So we have also been hounding TVA about the Material Safety Data Sheets AND WE FINALLY GOT A COPY OF IT TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The copies that we have are for Class F fly ash and for bottom ash. The main chemicals listed are aluminum oxide, iron oxide, calcium oxide, magnesium oxide, titanium oxide, and inorganic arsenic at varying ranges. We will try to get these sheets up on UMD's website and this blog.

We have also spent the day working on figuring out the air quality thing. WE HAVE GOOD NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Swan Pond community is so much further ahead than other communities because of all their documentation, diaries, doctor's visits, and keeping track of ...read full post

Comments (2) | February 4, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 21-22

January 21
Today volunteers for United Mountain Defense traveled to Harriman, TN for a media messaging workshop. There were a few local residents who attended the media training. It was a very effective session where the residents crafted their message for the press conference and worked on their sound bites.

United Mountain Defense volunteers made follow up phone calls to the media that received press releases about the citizen's press conference. We also called other media outlets that were not on the email list.
January 22
Today started out as we facilitated an interview between a community member and GQ magazine. As we were driving up to the road block on South Swan Pond Rd we were halted even though we had a community resident pass. The TVA police officers questioned us about our intentions for driving onto the public road. Of course the rolling video camera may have had some impact on the situation. Our ...read full post

Comments (0) | January 29, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 18-20

January 18
United Mountain Defense's Harriman field team traveled to Knoxville for a board meeting that also served as a planning meeting for the next week. It was good to see our Knoxville friends and catch up on the latest news from the BIG city.

Later in the evening we traveled to the United Mountain Defense volunteer house to discover that a minor flood had occurred inside the house. We found a copper pipe fitting that had come loose and had been flowing for an untold number of days. There was about 3 inches of water in the wall to wall carpet. It has added another level of disaster to our list of tasks. We got 4 hours of sleep this night.
January 19
Happy MLK day!! So as the United Mountain Defense volunteers were vacuuming water logged carpets a lively statewide protest against TVA was occurring. There were protests in Johnson City, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville, TN.

There was an ...read full post

Comments (0) | January 28, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 15-17

January 15
Volunteers from United Mountain Defense went down to the American Legion and opened the doors at 10 AM to gather the samples from the Tuesday Jan 13, 2009 human heavy metal screening. The doors opened there was a steady trickle of locals who dropped off their samples. UMD volunteers stayed at the American Legion until nearly 3 PM.

At 3 PM we closed shop and began preparing for the TVA Open House at the Roane County Community College. A representative of the Knoxville Independent Media took his camera and began going from table to table asking hard questions of each of the representatives. The floor of the gym was divided up into different areas including air quality, water quality, independent contracting, TVA activities, TN Department of Environment and Conservation, TN Department of Health, and EPA.

The Knoxville Independent Media representative made an effort to go to each table and speak with and video tape all of the ...read full post

Comments (0) | January 27, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 12-14

January 12
It was nice to wake up in my own bed this morning though I as I laid there I couldn't figure out if I was in Knoxville or Harriman. It was one of those moments when I was trying to decide to be happy about breathing the air or not. I actually got to sleep in a bit today and fully awoke by 10 AM.

This morning I spent more time taking care of my "Regular Life." A disaster is such a weird thing. I am surrounded by people whose lives are still going on. A new Harriman friend is getting married on Friday. A new Harriman friend has a new granddaughter.

I went and finalized the details for a teaching position which I am to fill one day a week at a local highschool as I also have an art education degree. I will be teaching Fire Performance. We will create a Fire Sculpture which we hope to enter into the Dogwood Arts Festival in April.

Through the power of gasoline we were majically transported back to TVA's ...read full post

Comments (1) | January 20, 2009
Kingston Coal Disaster Diary, January 10-11

January 10
Volunteers with United Mountain Defense took Dr. Avner Vengosh and graduate student, Laura Ruhl of Duke University out into the field again today to gather more water and coal ash samples. We mainly focused our efforts along the Emory and Clinch Rivers downstream of the disaster site. We also located a whole bunch of springs previously buried by the coal ash which had emerged from their coal ash graves within the last few days. These springs had washed the coal ash away and their waters were cutting new channels in a meandering pattern through the gray muck. We also gathered a sample of a Swan Pond Circle Dr. spring that many residents had been drinking from for years which had been roped off with “Caution” tape two and half weeks after the coal ash disaster. In addition to the coal ash and river water samples we also gathered a sample of Harriman city water from a Swan Pond Circle Drive resident’s home tap.

On this day we ...read full post

Comments (0) | January 16, 2009