After the Tennessee ash spill several Christmases back, TVA shuttled all of the arsenic-laden fly ash to the backyard of another Alabama African-American town. Their residents now have symptoms of toxicity from infiltration into the water supply.
The extensive legal liability is an easy reason for both Obama and Trump to advocate privatization of TVA. The next civil rights movement, badly overdue, may spring from a few good lawyers. John Grisham should quit writing novels snd go write some litigation for these people. He, of all people, might be able to afford reduced rates or pro bono.
Biogas has a lot of uses, and the process doesn’t have to be as technical as the Danes make it out to be (though theirs is spectacularly thought out). There are plenty of rural places that use simpler systems, based on the same principles.
Biogas (methane generated from human and animal waste) has been called Deep Green Energy for its many benefits in rural human ecology.
Biogas Systems:
• destroy methane, the highly destructive greenhouse gas, so
it does not go into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming;
• provide clean-burning fuel for stoves and lamps instead of
using wood or dung which lose their soil building and fertilizing value when burned;
• reduce labor, since women now spend one day a week to
collect a backbreaking 60 - 80 lb. load of scarce wood or fodder.
• protect the remaining forests by reducing the need to gather
firewood;
• reduce respiratory disorders caused by smoke from cooking
with firewood which especially affects women and their small children;
• improve village hygiene, since the attached toilets lead to
the pathogen-destroying digestion tanks of the systems;
• yield more potent fertilizer than the original constituent
wastes like the dung collected by children at right;
• motivate users to contain livestock which otherwise consume
forest regeneration as they graze;
• provide lighting needed for evening study, literacy classes,
home and community activities.
In Kevin McCloud’s Man Made Home, he builds an off-grid shack with a composting toilet outside. He harvests methane from the toilet to fuel the gas stove.
