"The beauty of this valley and its rivers are special to all of us at TVA and you have TVA’s continued commitment that our environmental restoration efforts will continue in earnest to restore this area as the land and rivers you know, care for, and enjoy."
-- Tennessee Valley Authority President Tom Kilgore
In this issue
1) Take Action: Avoid a Repeat of the TVA Disaster 2) Take Action: Tell EPA to Regulate Toxic Formaldehyde 3) Victory: Dynegy Abandons Coal Plans 4) Oil Shale: Groups Fight to Protect Wilderness
1) Take Action: Avoid a Repeat of the TVA Disaster Coal is not clean. Period. Need proof? On December 22, hundreds of millions of gallons of coal ash sludge and contaminated water, the waste product of coal-fired power plants of the Tennessee Valley Authority, spilled over a retaining area damaging 45 homes and contaminating the water with dangerously high levels of arsenic. This disaster is another stark reminder of the environmental, health and economic hazards of our over-reliance on coal as an energy source.
Contact President-elect Obama and urge him to adopt our Clean Slate Energy Agenda, which will help us move beyond coal and avoid other disasters like this from happening in the future.
Ask President-elect Obama to adopt the Clean Slate Agenda!
2) Take Action: Tell EPA to Regulate Toxic Formaldehyde After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, more than 141,000 families were placed into FEMA trailers with high formaldehyde levels that caused many people to get sick. The illnesses resulting from the toxic FEMA trailers exposed what has been an increasing problem in the U.S. -- a failure to regulate the amount of formaldehyde in wood products, like those used in the trailers. In addition to FEMA trailers, formaldehyde can be a problem in temporary classrooms, other types of modular buildings, RVs, mobile homes and even children's furniture.
Please tell the EPA to protect our health and to regulate formaldehyde by adopting California's standards for formaldehyde emissions from wood products.
3) Victory: Dynegy Abandons Coal Plans Dynegy, the largest new coal plant developer in the country, is pulling out of its joint venture with LS Power and abandoning plans for six of its eight proposed coal-fired power plants. These six plants, planned for Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Iowa and Arkansas would have emitted 37 million tons of global warming pollution into the air each year. Dynegy’s decision, and LS Power's announcement today that it too is abandoning plans for the plant in Iowa, come after a year-long Sierra Club grassroots campaign to force the companies to clean up their act.
Learn more about our work to move beyond coal.
4) Oil Shale: Groups Fight to Protect Wilderness A coalition of conservation groups, including the Sierra Club, is fighting to protect fish, wildlife and wilderness areas in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming from a last minute Bush administration regulation that would open public lands to oil shale development. Opening these areas to dirty energy development could cause serious damage to waters, wildlife and lands in the West, including some of the best hunting, fish habitat, and recreation in the Rockies.
Learn more about our efforts to protect wild places.
|