Displaying items by tag: ray zimmerman

In the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2008, the earthen wall of a containment pond at Tennessee’s Kingston Fossil Plant gave way. The breach released 1.3 million cubic meters (1.7 cubic yards) of sludge, infiltrating a nearby river and damaging dozens of homes.  NASA Earth Observatory

Journalist’s book offers deep sweep of 2008 coal-ash disaster at TVA’s Kingston coal plant

CHATTANOOGA — Jared Sullivan’s book, Valley So Low, is “A courtroom drama about the victims of one of the largest environmental disasters in US history — and the country lawyer who challenged the notion that, in America, justice can be bought.” Those words from the publisher’s dust jacket sum up the story, but the pathos of workers, certain that they got sick on the job, and the lawyer’s struggle against a well-funded corporate defense, is in the details.

Most residents of the Tennessee Valley remember the 2008 disaster when a wall of a coal ash slurry rushed out of the Kingston Steam Plant, flooding the Emory River and inundating 300 acres of the surrounding countryside. 

Sullivan offered insight into the story to an audience in Chattanooga in October. When workers fell ill after the cleanup, local personal injury lawyer Jim Scott challenged Jacob’s Engineering, a private company the Tennessee Valley Authority contracted to manage the cleanup. Scott was the only lawyer willing to take their case, according to Sullivan. 

In Hellbender Press interview, heralded writer describes the way natural sounds shape our world

David George Haskell encourages you to pay attention to the sounds of the natural world.

It’s what led him to write four books; two have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, including his latest book, “Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction.” 

A link on Haskell’s website provides a gateway into natural sounds he describes in the book through the essay “The Voices of Birds and the Language of Belonging.” Visitors to this essay’s page can read the piece or listen to a recording of Haskell reading it, accompanied by recorded bird songs providing a soundtrack for the topic.

Haskell is fascinated by sound. His dissertation, written in the 1990s, was a study of bird sounds. Predators hunt birds largely by ear, which has influenced the evolution of birdsong. His writing is a powerful and beautiful way to understand our relationships with the world through bird sounds.

Kids snorkeling on the Little Tennessee River.  Courtesy Jason Meador

The Blue Ridge Snorkel Trail gets you down with Southern Appalachian fish

ASHEVILLE — Snorkeling and looking at freshwater fish are great ways to enjoy Southern streams, and visitors to Western North Carolina will soon have better access to it courtesy of North Carolina Snorkel Trail. Stream access points in numerous locations will boast signs about snorkeling, safety and fish identification.

The concept began with North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Mountain Habitat Conservation Coordinator Andrea Leslie, and Luke Etchison of the Western Region Inland Fisheries Division, which surveys aquatic animals by snorkeling. This allows them to look at populations of fish, crayfish and mussels. 

Leslie told Hellbender Press she wants to encourage snorkeling tourism because people love streams, waterfalls and swimming. The sights below the waterline may be less familiar to the general public. 

Southern mountain streams have fish as vibrant and exciting as the Caribbean Sea.

During winter migration, visitors to Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge can view thousands of greater sandhill cranes.  Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency via Appalachian Voices

Beyond festivals, sandhill cranes pass through Southeast in increasing numbers

BIRCHWOOD — Every year in mid-January, a few thousand people gather here for The Sandhill Crane Festival because the cranes have returned. The community center at Birchwood is filled with vendors selling wildlife art or promoting conservation. The nearby Cherokee Removal Memorial at Blythe Ferry offers a chance to celebrate Cherokee culture and learn the story of indigenous people who were taken from their homes and sent on a long journey to Oklahoma.

Meanwhile, there are opportunities to see and appreciate these amazing birds through February in East Tennessee and beyond.

At least 20,000 cranes gather or pass through Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, having come from their nesting grounds in southern Canada and the upper Midwest to winter here in the American South. Many spend the winter there, but some will continue southward to Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and the Gulf Coast.