To be fair, Bethesda is in the suburbs of Washington, DC, so every major news organization has plenty of reporters there.

I don't think CNN has a Roane County bureau.

That doesn't justify it, but it does make it a lot easier to cover the Maryland water main break.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." -- Will Rogers

Just a minute people, I've seen pictures and comments on CNN & . MSNBC.

I think some of the sketchy coverage may be due to the holidays. Probably fewer reporters working at the national bureaus and definitely less experienced ones.

CNN.com posted the story last night, and for most of the night it was the top story on CNN.com, finishing in the top 10 for the day. I saw the story several times on the network during the day today as well. And Rachel is right about the holidays -- there was nobody to send.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/23/tennessee.sludge.spill/index.html

.. there has been very little coverage of the dozen or so major environmental disasters related to coal tailing ponds, and no national coverage of mountaintop removal lining.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28382451#28382533
The report includes the admonition for those effected to boil their water. As someone on a relected thread earlier pointed out, this will do nothing to make the water safe. Boiling is only effective against bacterial and viral contamination.

Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!

SteveMule

I don't know if SteveM's link rotates those MSNBC videos at random or what, but the first one I got was a story about sand vs. salt road treatments in the Seattle area.

Here's a link about NBC's apparently belated coverage. The boiling water advice is repeated, though.

I was reading a story on nytimes.com when a story came on All Things Considered this afternoon.

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

Major top of hour story on NPR this morning. Don't know if it's a replay of yesterday's report. TVA says it's not really a problem for residents who are surrounded by ash, and "no evidence" there's any problem with drinking water. Residents are skeptical. Alarmist university (eco-wacko liberal) "scientists" warn ash is toxic and carcinogenic.

Oh, and TVA states that some water samples taken somewhere nearby meet state limits. So that's a relief!

I heard a segment this afternoon. Are they repeating the same one? At any rate, NPR seems to be all over it.

Brian A.
I'd rather be cycling.

I'm from Knoxville, class of 49, and have lived out west in NM for 36 years. Out here we steal our coal from the Indians, same as always it's really true, and they say from space the only man made pollution you can see is the smoke coming out of the San Juan generating station. Of course its conveniently located in the Four Corners area which is Indian country. We, the collective WE, that use electricity in such unthoughtful and wasteful lifestyles that most of us live, will not get over coal burning technologies until we associate a real $ cost with coal burning or rather alternatives to coal, and then we have to pay those costs. We aren't geniuses out here either, since 95% of our power is from Indian coal. Indians don't get rich on selling the utilities coal because their own crooked leaders gave it all away under very long term contracts back in the 80's, but they are getting rich taking White Man's money at the casinos. Photovoltaics(big word) and wind power, start reading about them. If you go west on I-40 past Amarillo,TX you will see two of the biggest wind farms on the planet. Way cool, as the towers are 300 ft. tall! I was Blown Away, literally, as its real windy there. All the best to TN peoples, we have endured incredible pollution out west at the hands of miners and utilities and are in solidarity with you all.

I haven't been watching much TV news over the holidays, but I gather from comments here and elsewhere that this disaster has gotten more coverage during the last two or three days. It seems odd to me that it gets more air time now than it did immediately after the incident, but I'm glad that people are paying attention.

Hopefully the publicity will ensure a proper cleanup, and steps are taken to avert this kind of damage in the future.

Brian A.
I'd rather be cycling.

Something seems strange on the local coverage by the KNS of the TVA sludge spill. Both Google and Yahoo show very little of the KNS coverage. Now Jack McElroy asks on his blog if the national media is underplaying the story. The bigger question is, is the KNS underplaying the story?

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/editor/2008/12/national_media_underplaying...

Why for this particular news story does the KNS insist on putting the story in the Business Section? Isn't that a strange place for a local story? The Business Section has been used in the past to bury news stories so the plausible deniability gambit can be played. The old "we published it, but it's up to you to find it" game.

Is the KNS deliberately using robots.txt to exclude this TVA news story from search engines?

Does this seem strange?

http://www.google.com/search?q=TVA+sludge+spill&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&r...

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=TVA+sludge+spill&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&...

Now compare the searches to the number of stories the KNS has printed.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/business/tva-pond-breach-roane-county/

That is much more coverage than the search engines show. Of course this may be moot in the next web crawling later today as it is predictable the robots.txt will be expanded. But this morning it looks odd. Very odd. As does the practice of placing one of the biggest stories of the year in the Business Section.

Never fear though, the KNS will win another Scripps award for outstanding journalism. Well Rosebud, look at what journalism has become.

Is there any subject in the world that you don't think is really about the KNS and/or Ragsdale?

BTW, everyone wants an electric car to save the planet and their money. Where will that electricity come from?

Excess capacity that already exists at night, when cars would be charged.

...a better allocation of energy and resources would be gas gasification to fuel our cars. I could explain it, but you wouldn't be able to understand it.

It would be a stupid explanation since it's a stupid idea. You could read this, but you wouldn't understand it.

6 News talked with an environmentalist who says TVA is not doing enough to warn people about the potential danger of fly ash.

The sludge has swallowed more than 300 acres in Kingston. Doctor Stephen Smith, Director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says he's stunned that TVA officials are not going out into the community to explain to residents what's in it.

"They tend to be downplaying the significance of this," says Smith, "I think that is irresponsible." Smith calls it a monumental disaster.

He says the fly ash left behind can be dangerous. "I would not be there right now. I have small children and I don't think it's safe to be there."

Fly ash is a by product of coal. It can contain many toxic metals like arsenic, lead and mercury. "They need to tell people fly ash has elevated levels of these toxic materials," adds Smith, "And they need to get out into the public and talk about it not to create panic, but just to be responsible."

The biggest problem arises after the ash dries out. Then it can become airborne and cause health problems if inhaled. That's why environmentalists have been pushing for years for fly ash to be regulated as a hazardous material, kept in a lined, covered storage area.

Dr. Smith says with tough regulations, this disaster could have been prevented. "Just having it behind an earthen dam and hoping it's not going to leak and stacking it over 50 feet into the air is an irresponsible way to deal with it."

http://www.wate.com/global/story.asp?s=9582711

Seems only special people can take pictures.