Energy sources

Energy sources
EDITOR: 11/22/00

When the Martin Coal Corp.'s holding tank burst in October it released nearly a quarter million gallons of coal sludge into a river system in eastern Kentucky.

The sludge, containing mercury, chromium and other poisonous mining waste left thousands of persons without drinking water in two counties. It smothered fish, turtles, salamanders and other river life in the affected streams.

Not many readers may have thought much about the connection between our own way of consuming energy and likelihood of such disasters. Yet, it might be wise to do so, especially in the season which seems always to produce a veritable carnival of light all around us.

Effortlessness of turning the light switch and elegance of some light displays can mask the toll which electricity consumption causes. The Southeastern producers' electricity comes mostly from coal burning. TVA's coal comes mostly from Kentucky. Mining coal means land lost or degraded for other uses, mountains sheared off and streams polluted, and several hundred waste holding facilities, like Martin Corp.'s failed tank, in the region.

Burning it for electricity means air pollution which damages human health, trees and crops, and accelerates the climate-warming process we unleashed in the last century.

A person who, at current kilowatt hour rate pays $100 a month for electricity, average in Johnson City, uses approximately, 1,000 pounds of coal each month. Perhaps because TVA generates energy cheaply, Tennesseans use it more lavishly per capita, than people anywhere else in the country.

Not to call rain on our parade — a thoughtful approach to energy use behooves us. Until we can draw it from sources less environmentally damaging, the more we light up heedlessly, the more the lights go out for our fellow creatures on the planet, and the dimmer the future may be for those who follow us.

FRANCES LAMBERTS
Jonesborough

Stop sprawl

On the same day in April two items were published in a local newspaper.

One announced a donation fund to raise $7,500 for increased rent for the Rocky Fork Wildlife Management Area. This, 10,000-acre area owned by Timberland Company includes a bear sanctuary and is being maintained for public hunting by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

The agency also held spaghetti-supper events to help raise the needed $7,500. Total annual rental fee for Rocky Fork is $25,000.

The second item was a local legislator's listing of road projects approved and funded. Fifteen of these, involving interchange construction or modification, road widening or resurfacing, intersection improvement and others, completed since 1997 or under construction, cost a total of $36,595,865. Nineteen additional, similar projects were under development. The three-year road funds in one district would secure public hunting access in Rocky Fork, at current price, for 1,440 years.

Thirty-five years ago, Lyndon Johnson sought congressional funding for the beautification of America. By this he meant curbs on urban sprawl, assurance for communities of control over their countryside and for citizens of the right to live in decent surroundings.

When cities reach out into the countryside, destroying streams and trees and meadows as they go, and modern highways wipe out the equivalent of a 50-acre park with every mile, President Johnson saw the beauty of our land degraded and the dignity of man's spirit diminished.

A proposed and unneeded, additional airport road would gobble up the land and money equivalent for many a 50-acre park. Nashville government would do well to heed Benjamin Franklin's advice on bulging coffers and profligate spending: "Whenever an office, through increase of fees or otherwise, becomes so profitable, as to occasion many to apply for it, the profits ought to be lessened by the Legislature."

Frances Lamberts
Jonesborough