Nashville News Blog

Rep. Joe McCord: He sprinkles selenium on his oatmeal every morning.

In a bizarre turn of events, the House has just declined to bend over for corporate polluters. The latest environmental nightmare from the mind of Rep. Joe McCord fell one vote short of a majority. After a couple of hours of debate, only 49 lawmakers were willing to vote to weaken standards for the amount of selenium that coal mines may release into Tennessee streams. Critics warned it could cause massive fish and wildlife kills and jeopardize human health, too. The Senate had voted 26-6 for the bill.

McCord, the unlikely chairman of the House Environment Committee, assured his colleagues that selenium is perfectly safe. In fact, it's so good for you they put it in vitamin pills. You need "your daily dose of selenium," McCord said.

Rep. Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga, did a little quick Googling on selenium and declared that he had ascertained: "If you have dandruff shampoo, you rubbed it all over your head this morning."

"I do not think this is an effort to destroy our environment," McCord said, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

Rep. Jeanne Richardson, D-Memphis, called the Republican claims an embarrassment: "We have had more bad science quoted today. If there were a group of scientists watching us, they can't even hear us anymore because they are laughing so hard."

The Bredesen administration, in yet another display of gutlessness, took no position. But House Democratic leader Gary Odom called it "a horrible precedent." He said, "My gosh, I can't believe we're even debating this on the floor of the House." And Rep. Mike McDonald, D-Portland, gave a lengthy, impassioned speech in opposition to the legislation, which would have imposed on the state a failed proposal from the anti-environmental Bush administration.

"It is not for the public good," McDonald said. "It's for the benefit of a coal company. It's polluting our waters. ... You hunters and fishermen are going to love this. We may poison 85 percent of the fish and aquatic birds in the streams, which have selenium from coal mining or from coal ash. ... Why on earth would we ever even think about jeopardizing the health of our citizens? Selenium poisons the water and the fish, and humans eat the fish."

Rep. John DeBerry, D-Memphis, said the House, which he called "a laughingstock," would make itself look bad again by doing the coal industry's bidding. "We're doing nothing but diminishing the reputation of this body that already has a black eye," he said.

"This may be the worst bill I've seen up here in my 10 years," House Democratic caucus chair Mike Turner said. "We'll have the most polluted streams in the country."

"Who brought you this bill?" Turner asked McCord.

"I got this bill from people in the coal industry," McCord replied without a trace of shame.

What does it say about our legislature when the chairman of the House Environment Committee is a lapdog for the coal industry?