I spend most of the this morning catching up on news – I haven’t thought about the environs out side of the 494/694 loop since before the holidays. Everything seemed fairly typical, no surprises, until I read about (and watched a movie of) last week’s gigantic TVA coal ash spill near Knoxville on a Minnesota professor’s blog. 

Crazy that its not all over the national news, maybe it was last week and I missed it. I did find a couple articles on the Chattanooga Times Free Press. And here’s the TVA’s page of shame.

Houses were swept away, and toxins are oozing down tributaries toward the Tennessee River. The utility companies are saying the drinking water hasn’t been contaminated yet – but I don’t think I would drink it. And if I have my rivers right, the Tennessee flows in the Ohio, which flows into the Mississippi – so there’s a local-ish connection.

While 25,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer dumped into the Mississippi is a very depressing event, it does bring the River and its environmental status to the forefront of the public’s mind. Making it the perfect time for a press release or home page online news story. 

To see if anyone was taking advantage of this opportunity I checked the mostly likely websites (nonprofit and local and state gov.) and didn’t see any press releases or articles. It’s possible that I missed a response on those websites, but if I missed it the public and reporters may too. 

It would be great see an article or news release that addresses lingering questions: what effect may the fertilizer have on the river? does it make a difference that this happened in winter and not summer? What kind of clean-up and monitoring is Canadian Pacific responsible for? Has something similar happened in the past and how did it work out?  These questions could be used as lead-ins to whatever information your organization may what to get out to the public: “to learn more about water quality attend our program/check out our website”, etc. 

Here are some tips to help catch the wave:

1. Subscribe to RSS feeds to stay on top of the news (Minnesota Public Radio, MN DNR, ScienceBlogs, for example)

2. Keep an old news release or article handy so you can just fill in the blanks.

3. If a news release or article doesn’t get picked up by the media still post it on your website. Interested people will find it.