Complain About Your Tap Water? You Could Be a Terrorist

In Maury County, Tennessee yesterday, at a meeting convened to address citizens’ concerns over the quality of their drinking water, an official of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation said to residents, “We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously. But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints, you have a basis, because federally, if there's no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism [Italics mine].”

            Sherwin Smith is the Deputy Director of the TDEC’s division of water resources, and what he said to this group of concerned citizens is, in a large sense, true. If someone were to put poison in the aqueducts that bring Colorado River water to southern California, threatening the lives of millions, that could most certainly be considered terrorism. Correspondingly, if someone were to make the threat of poisoning the aqueducts or to make the false claim that they had done so, spreading fear and panic, under current law that could be considered terrorism as well.

            Smith, however, was not speaking to representatives from al Quaida hell bent on dropping anthrax into the local water tower. He was speaking to the Statewide Organization for Community eMpowerment, a civic group that had been working with Maury County residents to address water quality complaints. Some county residents have complained about cloudy, odd-tasting water for years. In recent months children have become ill; some say it’s because of bad tap water.

            Industry, some GOP politicians, and right wing rhetors have been quick to label folks that get in the way of industry as terrorist or eco-terrorists. Examples are here and here. And the FBI as made it easy to blur the line and label minor offenses as terrorism. This is the first time that I’ve run across a state government official doing the same. It’s seems to me that it was just his way of telling this group to shut up, to intimidate the citizens who showed up for this meeting. In this way, he is using this rhetoric of terrorism just as industry and right wingers do, as a verbal cudgel.

            It’s difficult enough to make a complaint to government officials. People should not have to fear that they will somehow be considered in league with Ted Kaczynski or Osama bin Laden if they call up someone at the water department to say that their tap water is cloudy and tastes funny. And considering that extractive industries are quick to attack those who question or criticize practices, it could be a facile tactic on the part of the oil and gas industry to pick op the ball from Sherwin Smith and label the folks who say that their wells have been fouled by fracking as nothing but a bunch of terrorists.