Support Citizen-Scientist Sampling and Education Events in Tennessee

Dr. Michael E. Ketterer at the Davy Crockett Lake Sampling Event (Greeneville, TN), August 17, 2010.

By Linda Cataldo Modica
At-Large WILPF-US Member and VP of the Erwin Citizens Awareness Network

One of Erwin Citizen Awareness Network’s (ECAN’s) most important projects—an extensive citizen-scientist program of environmental sampling—is about to resume and it needs WILPF’s support!

Started by the Christian Peacemaker Teams’ Stop-DU Campaign and continued by ECAN, a renewed effort to educate the public on the offsite contamination caused by Aerojet and Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) will begin at the end of October 2018.

In the last week of October, Chemists Michael E. Ketterer, PhD, and Scott C. Szechenyi, will be visiting northeast Tennessee to collect samples that they will bring back to Northern Arizona University to analyze with mass spectrometry. (See this academic article they published about using mass spectrometry to detect transuranic elements.) Using this technique, the scientists are able to identify the source of contaminants in samples of soil, water, creek sediment, and attic dust because atmospheric fallout has one fingerprint while NFS’s nuclear waste has another and Aerojet’s yet another.  

During this next sampling visit, ECAN and its ally and supporter, Appalachian Peace Education Center, plan to publicize Ketterer’s prior findings of widespread contamination for the purpose of public education. Even though Ketterer and Szechenyi donate their time and laboratory work, now that they are retired from academia, their travel costs from Colorado, and their hotel stay in Jonesborough, need to be covered. Expenses including food, local transportation and shipping of heavy samples will be picked up by ECAN. Appalachian Peace Education Center has agreed to pay the scientists’ airfare, and it is hoped that WILPF might contribute funds for their hotel.  

Two Dangerous Businesses

Clustered within 20 miles of one another in the mountains of northeast Tennessee are two dirty, dangerous businesses. Combined, they form a radioactive weapons complex that is intentionally situated midway between the Savannah River Site and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The first is Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee, the US Army’s largest depleted uranium weapons supplier, which located its operations in a farming community outside of Jonesborough in 1970.  Across the Nolichucky River and on the other side of Embreeville Mountain is Nuclear Fuel Services, the sole supplier of nuclear fuel for the Navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered air craft carriers and submarines since 1964.  

Both Aerojet and NFS are situated near the Nolichucky River which has its headwaters in North Carolina. Nuclear Fuel Services is licensed to operate by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and has been permitted by the State of Tennessee to discharge liquid nuclear waste directly into the river. Aerojet is permitted by Tennessee to operate and to flush its radioactive waste water into the Little Limestone Creek which then flows into the Nolichucky.

The source of drinking water for thousands of families, this river was named by the Cherokee.  “Nolichucky,” which is translated as “river of death,” “man killer,” or, more benignly, as “rushing waters.” Since NFS’s founding in 1957 and Aerojet’s in 1970, added to the river’s natural rapids and treacherous currents are man-made poisons that also have the capacity to take lives. While our community understands the Nolichucky’s natural dangers, we resent the government-sanctioned poisoning of the river by weapons contractors.   

Over the years, sporadic resistance to NFS’s and Aerojet’s dirty and dangerous businesses was raised by the Christian Peacemaker Teams, by the New South Network of War Resisters, by the Sierra Club, by Natural Resources Defense Council, and by regional groups like Friends of the Nolichucky River Valley and Appalachian Peace Education Center. But it wasn’t until Erwin Citizens Awareness Network (ECAN) formed that citizen watchdogs have sustained a community-based effort to minimize the damage these corporations are doing to our environment and personal health.  

In this new round of citizen-supported sampling, a downwind community in North Carolina called Shelton Laurel will be investigated for the first time, and Bumpass Cove, a former landfill where illegal dumping of nuclear waste was reported by the community, will also be explored. Additionally, to assess the degree to which homes were contaminated by airborne effluents, attic dust will be collected and analyzed.  If, as in Hanford, Washington, used air filters can be obtained from local cars, the exposure to drivers and riders to airborne radioactive waste will also be assessed. (See this Seattle Times article about finding contamination in air filters related to the demolition of the Hanford nuclear site).

Finally, during a previous sampling event, highly-enriched uranium with NFS’s signature was found in the Greeneville municipal water supply. Because this finding was so serious and because Greeneville, as well as Jonesborough, have their water intakes on the Nolichucky, ECAN will be collecting tap water from homes in Erwin, Jonesborough, Bumpass Cove, and Greeneville over the next three weeks.

By helping expose the damage done to our environment and health by the nuclear weapons complex, we will be building demand for disarmament together and moving forward toward the critical will needed to end the whole nuclear era.  

For more information, contact Linda Cataldo Modica at lcmodica@aol.com.

Inset photo: Linda Cataldo Modica at the Nolichucky River in Northeast Tennessee.