Time to tell the truth about Nashville’s environment

If Nashville leaders want to have a dialogue about the state of the environment in the city, they need to begin by speaking frankly. Nashville is one of the most polluted counties in one of the most polluted states in the country.

For all of our elected leaders’ recent bravado about environmental progress and green initiatives, Nashville is arguably decades from being able to even compete for being the greenest city in the South.

It is time for so-called “progressive” members of Nashville’s leadership class to face some very disturbing facts.

As our newspaper first reported, a new draft of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s 303(d) report on the status of the state’s waterways has nothing but bad news for Nashville. Over 60 bodies of water in Davidson County, including miles and miles of the Cumberland River, are classified as a “5” on the report — the highest rating for pollution.

Perhaps even more disturbing is that the reason for this pollution is almost uniformly either runoff from development or the failure of Nashville’s municipal sewer system. Both of these are functions controlled in part or totally by the very Metro government that has so recently been touting progress in the fight to make Nashville’s waterways clean again.

Also released last month was a study by the Brookings Institution in conjunction with the Southern Environmental Law Center. That study put Nashville No. 6 on the list for cities in America with the highest per capita global warming emissions. It appears Tennessee native son Al Gore’s message on global warming is reaching the rest of the world but not his adopted hometown.

All of these bad statistics become that much worse when considered alongside Metro government’s abject failures over the last 20 years when it comes to developing infrastructure that can mitigate pollution.

The best estimates show that Nashville needs somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million in combined sewer and stormwater infrastructure expansion and upgrades to make our wastewater systems ecologically sound. A good $84 million of that alone is allotted to stormwater management, something that not only ruins waterways and overflows sewers but also ruins the quality of life for many neighborhoods in the city.

Then there is the apparent folly in mass transit called the Music City Star, an expensive investment that has been anything but a star when it comes to mitigating commuter traffic and accompanying pollution in Nashville. Ridership figures are well below estimates, as Wilson County residents seem largely uninterested in riding the train to work in Nashville. Who could blame them since being dumped at the riverfront pretty much rules out commuting by train and working anywhere but the first 10 blocks of downtown Nashville. Now, in the midst of a massive budget crunch, the city’s bus system is cutting back routes and raising fares.

All of this bad news seemed to escape Metro Council members as they gleefully engaged in a good-natured swim across an actual clean section of the Cumberland River to celebrate environmental progress in the city. The city’s media was largely complacent and compliant with this shameless publicity stunt, failing to ask any questions or dig for any answers about the true nature of Nashville’s environmental state.

Let’s start telling the truth. Nashville is a dirty, polluted city. All of the government talk about green roofs, greenways and environmental offices cannot change the science behind this city’s true environmental status.

It is time for sewer rates to increase. It is time for a serious investment in infrastructure that fights pollution. It is time for Metro’s elected leaders to start telling the truth about this city’s air and water even if it is painful to admit.