Live Streaming Senate TVA Hearings Now

C-SPAN isn't covering it but you can catch live-streaming of the hearings at WATE.com.

UPDATE: Also available on the Senate Environment & Public Works website here.

UPDATE: Okay not there. Now I'm getting a prompt that the page is down for maintenance. If I had a tinfoil hat I'd be wearing it now. Boy it sure is hard for people in Tennessee to watch these hearings. I wonder why that is?

[UPDATE] 1:

My connection sucks but sounds like Lamar Alexander just said we need a series of "mini Manhattan projects" to figure out how we can safely use coal. Throws out recapturing carbon -- Um, Senator, that's what a billion gallons of just flowed into the Emory River. The question is what do we do with it when we recapture it? It's filled with arsenic, mercury, and other poisons, and it's believed to be even more radioactive than nuclear waste.

Last night I talked with a TWRA biologist who told me they are actually selling this stuff for use with gypsum to make drywall. Drywall! Made out of radioactive toxic chemicals!! Doan want!!!!!!

[UPDATE] 2:

Well it appears if you want to watch these hearings you need to take a fucking plane to Washington DC because it appears the live stream has been yanked. Thank you, everyone, for continuing to keep us ignorant and uninformed. Hey we're just a bunch of hillbillies, who cares, right?

I think I'll go kick something now.

OK maybe it was just me .... sigh .... I really miss public access television.

[UPDATE] 3:

Lamar Alexander is questioning Tom Kilgore on the cost to produce electricity, "in the spirit of turning this from an environgmental disaster into a longterm technological opportunity." He asks what it cost per kilowatt-hour to generate electricity, including the costs of building the plants.

Kilgore's answer:

coal -- 4.5 to 5-cents per kwh, for older plants.
nuclear -- 4.2 cents
natural gas -- 10 cents
hydro -- a few dollars
solar -- they don't have a figure as they buy it from other folks
wind -- 70 cents

Now Senator Alexander is asking Kilgore if "clean coal" is possible. Of course his answer is yes. I think Sen. Alexander has an agenda here but that's just me.

[UPDATE] 4:

Sen. Barbara Boxer: You have big problems. You’ve got to clean up your act there. Literally!

What about the coves? The homeowners say you have no plans to restore the water in the coves, you just plan to cover it up. Is that what you consider a clean-up for those homeowners?

Kilgore: No, that’s not a cleanup, to be blunt. There are two coves, one had deeper water than the other. I was asked if we would make that back into an embayment. I said until we could study that I couldn’t answer that directly. I didn’t want to make a promise until I know what the best options are for the environment and the neighbors.

Boxer: But my point is, at this time you have no plans to restore those coves?

Kilgore: But we don’t not have a plan, madam chairman.

Boxer: That’s not an answer! I don’t think you’d send your grandkids out to play in an area like that.

[UPDATE] 5:

Sen. Carper (D-DEL) is now throwing softballs at Kilgore. i.e., “Let’s look at best practices in the industry for dealing with fly ash. What are things you are doing that’s cutting edge and what are others doing?”

Apropos of nothing, FollowTheCoalMoney.org says Big Coal contributed $35,000 to Carper, most of it in 2005-2006.

I don’t understand why Senators are asking about scrubbing emmissions from smoke stacks. There is still waste. This is the crap that ended up in a sludge pond that broke and polluted a huge area. Do they not get it?