Today, a land collapse at a coal power plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin has
dumped a small hill's worth of coal slurry into Lake Michigan. Like similar spills in
Tennessee and elsewhere, this means untold amounts of arsenic, mercury, carbon compounds, and God knows what else is now floating in one of America's largest sources of fresh water. The company has in the last couple hours put some floating line around the spill to try to contain it and is negotiating with private contractors on a clean up.
Ironically enough, it was just two weeks ago that the House of Representatives passed a bill that would
remove most of the EPA's authority to control coal ash dumps, found in acres at every older coal power plant in the country, and leave responsibility both for containment and cleaning to the states. It hasn't passed the Senate (that I know of), and I can't imagine that it will, it just provides at awkward counterpoint. Interestingly enough, Oak Creek is in
Wisconsin's 1st District, represented by none other than Paul Ryan, Republican golden child champion of privatizing Medicare and Social Security and basically eliminating every government program and department he can name.
Anyway, that's your news for the day. Since I used to live on Lake Michigan, and I kinda have a thing about chemical spills, I'm watching this one pretty closely. Here we go again.
If we don't make tough decisions today our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.