With a canoe and a camera, AP journalists told story of coal ash spill

[n2doc]

by Kristen Hare



After a long day of reporting, Michael Biesecker sat by himself at a table at Outback Steakhouse in Danville, Va.

“And they brought me a big glass of water,” said Biesecker, a reporter with the Associated Press, in a phone interview with Poynter. “And I knew the water was drawn and treated from the river, and everyone around me was drinking that water.”

That water, he discovered earlier that day, was thick and dirty with toxic coal ash stored in a coal ash pond that had leaked into the Dan River. Biesecker asked the waitress if she’d heard of the spill. She hadn’t. Hardly anyone had.

I need to tell people what’s going on here, he thought. So he wrote fast at that table, with a salad, a baked potato and a bottle of water nearby.

more

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/240813/with-a-canoe-and-a-camera-ap-journalists-told-story-of-coal-ash-spill/

[Botany]

1. Good God

"Since the leak was first discovered by a security guard Sunday afternoon, Duke estimates
up to 82,000 tons of ash mixed with 27 million gallons of contaminated water has spilled into
the river. Officials at the nation’s largest electricity provider say they cannot provide a time-
table for when the leak will be fully contained, though the flow has lessened significantly as
the pond has emptied."

[rhett o rick]

2. This is insane. While whistle-blowers get tortured and prison time, CEO's of companies

that destroy our environment get bonuses.

[grntuscarora]

3. Kick, kick and kick.

Without real journalists doing real journalism, we're in the dark.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. As a native Buckeye...

born across the river from West by god Virginia, they are poisoning some very beautiful land, and it makes me angry.