The Slug

UTK to Close Sutherland and Golf Range Apartments

2009-02-19T18:13:41Z

The University of Tennessee will be closing the Sutherland and Golf Range graduate student apartments as of May 2010.
According to the press release just sent out, the two apartment complexes, each of which has 420 apartments, will be closed because of funding concerns. The Sutherland buildings are over 40 years old and the Golf Range buildings are over 50--all are in serious need of repair or replacement. University officials say that building new would cost $80 million dollars, and full renovations even more.
The two complexes are currently the only university-owned apartment (as opposed to "apartment-style residence halls") the university has.

"The demand for university-provided graduate and family housing has declined over the years. As we looked at our options for renovating this property, the current advantage of rental rates would be lost, putting us in direct competition with the private market," said Ken Stoner, executive director of university housing for UT Knoxville, in the press release.

However, according to the 2007-2008 UTK Fact Book, Golf Range and Sutherland had an 89 percent and 88 percent occupancy rate, respectively, as of the fall of 2007.

The decision comes amid major projected budget shortfalls for the university--at one time estimated to reach as much as $100 million, though expected to be alleviated somewhat by the nearly $4 billion the state is expected to receive as part of the recently passed federal stimulus package.

The statement says that the university will be studying the feasibility of razing the buildings--which now cover 40 acres--and replacing them with "student recreational fields."

Residents were informed of the decision last night, said UT spokesperson Karen Collins.

[TVA Board Meeting] More Public Statement Highlights

2009-02-12T18:36:04Z

The following highlights are from the "public listening session" following the formal board meeting.

"I expect a federal agency to do a better job protecting the environment than a private, profit-making corporation. And I expect TVA to make decisions that are sustainable for 100 years. I'm shocked that TVA had a non-sustainable approach to ash storage and ignored the warning signs that the dam could break."

--David Reister, Head of the Knoxville Chapter of the Sierra Club

"I live along the Emory River. I've been there 30 years, and I've had to get out of there in 10 minutes. Everyone who lives along that river knows how much rain can come ...The thought that this ash might increase the flooding there is kind of terrifying ... What if the hundred-year flood occurs? And if the ash is not cleaned up by then, what's it going to do to my town?"

--Barbara Majors, Harriman resident

"If you want to make a lot of money capitalizing on cost-to-risk ratios, move to Las Vegas and stop gambling with our lives and our land ... You have been serving us devastation in the form of costly and ready electricity, and this must change. You should be ashamed of yourselves and your PR machine."

--Amanda Cagle, Chattanooga Earth First and Mountain Justice

(Note: Cagle also presented the board with an open letter to TVA and President Obama, a call for a "green new deal" and a call for Kingston disaster relief. If or when she sends these documents to me, I'll post them here.)

[TVA Board Meeting] Statement from Chris Irwin

2009-02-12T17:47:59Z

The following highlights are from the "public listening session" following the formal board meeting. (Note: Matt Landon, of United Mountain Defense, and Amy Broyles, of Knox County Commission, were scheduled to speak but were not there when called. I would have liked to have heard from both of them.)

Chris Irwin, Staff Attorney, United Mountain Defense, began by criticizing the meeting itself.

"If you all are serious about increasing public participation in these meetings, consider having weekend meetings. A lot of people work for a living. The only reason I could be here is I work over at the courthouse. It means taking a day off work."

Then he moved on to meatier stuff. Earlier in the meeting, TVA CFO Kim Greene discussed renewable energy sources, saying they were "more expensive" than traditional sources. Irwin took issue with that.

"Well, looking at the coal spill as well as the destruction of the highland watersheds

for the coal that you all are consuming, specifically in Campbell, Scott, and Claiborne Counties, in terms of the long-term costs, renewables are a lot cheaper," he said. "There's no such thing as clean coal. I think that's become very clear."

"But, nuclear doesn't seem like the option, like the alternative," Irwin said. "The fact that you all had trouble engineering and keeping a mud dam operational does not instill a lot of faith in the public that you'd be able to handle an unforgiving technology like nuclear.

Irwin also attacked the ARAP (Aquatic Resource Alteration Permit) application that the utility filed with TDEC. The permit application details TVA's river dredging plans, calling the ash removal calculations inadequate. Go here for details.

[TVA Board Meeting] Former RNC Head to Take Over As Chair

2009-02-12T17:27:21Z

Oddly, the most emotionally charged portion of today's board meeting (for the members, at least) concerned internal politics, not that other thing. TVA Board Chair Bill Sansom's term is up in May, so pursuant to the board's bylaws, they had to elect a new one today to take over.

Mike Duncan, who was head of the Republican National Committee until two weeks ago, was nominated, which caused a problem among members who didn't want a political "lightning rod" to lead up the board, especially with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in Congress. Still, though, they voted him in, with three members, Dennis Bottorf, Bill Sansom, and Bishop William Graves (who was teleconferenced in from California) dissenting.

"I have no intention of moving this board back to where it was," a politicized body, Duncan said. "I pledge to work with Congress and the new administration."

[TVA Board Meeting] Rate Cuts on the Way

2009-02-12T17:10:30Z

Non-Kingston highlights:

TVA electric rates will be cut about 7 percent in April, resulting from lower fuel costs, despite a litany of financial problems for the utility, detailed in the meeting by TVA's Chief Financial Officer Kim Greene.
TVA CEO will forego incentives for 2009, cutting his pay by about 50 percent from what he made last year (about $2.2 million).
As for the other 11,000 employees, the board decided to cut out corporate incentives, which account for about 30 percent of employee incentive dollars.
TVA's lost $3 billion on the market since 2007, depleting its nuclear decommission and PENSION funds by nearly 40 percent apiece, even as pension obligations rose substantially. Board members pledged to maintain a "healthy pension system" at TVA.

[TVA Board Meeting] Kilgore Says Cleanup Could Be As Much as $800M

2009-02-12T16:44:28Z

The TVA Board today spent more than an hour listening to updates and summaries of the past two months since the Dec. 22 Kingston Fossil Plant spill, which left 300 acres of Roane County Covered with more than a billion gallons of coal ash.

Highlights:

TVA CEO Tom Kilgore said that the cost of the cleanup could be anywhere from $525 million to $800 million. Oh, and that doesn't even count the unforeseen costs, you know, like legal settlements, governmental fines, and the like. They've already spent $31 million, he said. The board is looking into how to spread out such a massive cost among the ratepayers who will ultimately have to pay for it. That amount could be spread out "over generations," said board member Dennis Bottorf, who chairs the Finance, Strategy, Rates and Administration Committee.
A full report of the cause of the spill, prepared by the utility's Office of the Inspector General, is expected by this summer.
The cleanup staff, including contractors, is now at 570 people.
Cleanup crews have removed 200,000 cubic yards of ash from Swan Pond Road and Swan Pond Circle road so far.
Kilgore said that TVA has now purchased 20 properties from area homeowners. "We have offers out for about 20 more," he said. There are now 27 displaced families in long-term housing, provided by TVA.
TVA has 67 storage lagoons similar to the one in Kingston, operating right now. That may change. "I've committed to look at other facilities and whether we should convert them to dry," he said. Independent engineering firm AECOM will be helping with that analysis.
Kilgore will be giving the board a Kingston update every 30 days.

TVA Board Meeting Today

2009-02-12T13:40:41Z

(Sidenote: KNS' Scott Barker has a good story about a 1984 dike failure at Kingston)

In about 20 minutes, the seven-member TVA board will have its first public meeting since the Kingston Fossil Plant Ash spill.

But, as the Tennessean reports this morning, there have been some other meetings, maybe in violation of Sunshine Law (or at least the spirit of Sunshine Law):

Board members have been meeting privately in committees, and on conference calls and closed sessions over the past month and a half -- all without the public knowing. The Tennessean has learned of four meetings since Dec. 22 that the TVA describes as "briefings," in which board members were present in Knoxville or on conference calls with management. The same type of unannounced, private meetings occurred before the spill, too.

....

The board says it's all perfectly legal, and its lawyers have given their OK. No votes or actions have been taken in these sessions, they say.

...

Critics say the real business occurs in the closeted committee meetings. Four such meetings have been held since the spill. The committees report at open board meetings, but their minutes are not provided to the public.

...

Federal law governing the agency allows its four committees to meet without public notice because the committees are small enough that they don't constitute a board quorum that can carry out policy of the agency, according to the board.

Others, however, say most decisions -- if not literally pre-determined -- are largely made in this shrouded committee process before official board meetings take place.

The World of Eric Crafton's Nightmares

2009-02-05T19:36:58Z

Video, via the Nashville Scene.

Hail Xenu: Scientologists Actually Believe This

2009-02-04T17:34:18Z

Australian TV show Today Tonight strikes a major blow in the 75-million-year war for the control of Teegeeack by airing a 1968 tape of L. Ron Hubbard explaining Scientology's "secret" origin story. From Chanology Portal.

Today In Shocking: Mormon Church Funded Prop 8

2009-02-04T17:01:38Z

The Utah-based Mormon Church put $190,000 into the campaign to pass vile, backwards, bigoted, evil, hateful Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage ballot measure that recently passed in California. The problem, of course, is that it didn't disclose its contributions until after the November election was over. This could mean that the church violated California's campaign disclosure laws.

From McClatchy:

While many church members had donated directly to the Yes on 8 campaign - some estimates of Mormon giving range as high as $20 million - the church itself had previously reported little direct campaign activity.

But in the filing made Friday, the Mormon church reported thousands in travel expenses, such as airline tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals for the campaign. The church also reported $96,849.31 worth of "compensated staff time" - hours that church employees spent working to pass the same-sex marriage ban.

"As I read this report, it seems to raise more questions than it answers," said Fred Karger, who filed the initial complaint against the church with the Fair Political Practices Commission in November.

The California Supreme Court will revisit Prop 8 on March 5.

Mark Brown to Resign as Vice Mayor

2009-01-30T20:34:41Z

Hot off the press (release):

Vice Mayor and 6^th District City Councilman Mark Brown has accepted the position of Knox County Judicial Commissioner, which requires him to resign as Vice Mayor and his elected position on Knoxville City Council.
...

"I really appreciate the opportunity to serve the citizens of the 6^th District and the City of Knoxville, " said Brown. "While I would have preferred to complete the remainder of my term, I am nonetheless proud of all the work that we have accomplished over the past seven years," he said.

IFC Working On Kingston Doc

2009-01-30T17:00:20Z

As we know, Secret City Film Festival founder Keith McDaniel has announced that he will be making a documentary on the Kingston Coal Ash Spill. But, I just received a call from a company working on a documentary on the spill for the venerable Independent Film Channel. Pretty neat, huh?

A Clear Illustration of This Country's Wacko Priorities

2009-01-28T18:45:50Z

As noted in the Columbia Journalism Review. Yesterday the New York Times had a health piece about how so-called "crack babies"--a phenomenon that was deemed a massive health crisis in the 1980s and used as a sympathetic pretext for flushing millions of dollars down the drug war toilet--are, well, not doing all that bad.

Contrast that with this story, which appeared the same day in the Washington Post, about high lead levels in D.C. children. When high levels of lead were found in the city's drinking water in the early part of this decade, city health officials underplayed it, saying that "they found no measurable impact on the general public's health."

Yeah, there's no reason to invest in local and state infrastructure (except for prisons, of course).

Find Out Just How Fat Your Fat Kids Are

2009-01-28T18:33:24Z

By going to next week's meeting of the Knox County School Health Advisory Council. Item one on the agenda: The Release of the results of the 2008 Knox County School Body Mass Index Screenings by the Knox County Health Department.

When: Wednesday, Feb. 4, at 1:30 p.m.

Where: Halls Middle School Library

Dear Coal-Burning Utilities in the South

2009-01-28T18:12:12Z

From the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2009 Report Card on American Infrastructure:

Solid Waste C+

In 2007, the U.S. produced 254 million tons of solid waste. More than a third was recycled or recovered, representing a seven percent increase since 2000. Per capita generation of waste has remained relatively constant over the last 20 years. Despite those successes, the increasing volume of electronic waste and lack of uniform regulations for disposal creates the potential for high levels of hazardous materials and heavy metals in the nation's landfills, posing a significant threat to public safety.

Note: C+ was the highest grade received by any of the 15 categories. The worst three were Drinking Water, Levees, and Inland Waterways, all with a D-. The overall grade was a D. Ain't that America?