On Friday, February 5th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation jointly filed a federal lawsuit seeking damages under the federal Clean Water Act and the state Water Quality Control Act.

After a review of records from Memphis’ wastewater treatment and collection programs, the EPA deemed the city in violation of the Clean Water Act. From January 2005 to September 2009, the city's Maynard C. Stiles Waste Treatment Plant on North Second Street reported 1,170 overflows in which a total of 23 million gallons of raw sewage leaked into city streets, yards, and the Mississippi River and its tributaries. In addition, a sewage line broke in April 2008 and leaked 45 million more gallons of sewage over a 25-day period.

The city’s sanitary sewer system encompasses 3,600 miles of pipe, delivering an average of 150 million gallons of wastewater for treatment each day. The system dates back to the 1870s. Regarding the lawsuit, city attorney Herman Morris said: “In an effort to demonstrate our full cooperation with the EPA, our immediate and urgent steps lie with developing a consent decree to correct the concerns that are raised in the lawsuit.”

For more on the city’s wastewater problems, read Bianca Phillips’ earlier story.]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

It's not exactly LGBT-specific news, but supporters of equality should note that a Tennessee House Employee Affairs subcommittee is set to discuss an "equal pay for equal work" bill on Wednesday, February 10th.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Turner (D-Nashville), increases penalties for denying equal pay for equal work based on gender. The Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition strongly supports the bill.

Rep. Mark White, a Republican from Memphis, sits on the committee.

We spectators tend to judge a sport in part by measuring how we might handle the challenge: I could never hit Tim Lincecum’s curve ball, but I can shoot free throws better than some first-ballot Hall of Famers. When it comes to the Winter Games, I’d be a mess in every last competition (including that bobsled). I’ve been on skates and skis and stick-handled a hockey puck (on roller blades). And it gets ugly.

I love the way the Winter Games stand out in a fan’s memory. Whether it’s athletes skiing with rifles on their back, a speedskater sliding 50 feet — at 50 miles per hour — on his backside, or a hockey team making us believe in miracles, the Winter Olympics somehow do the memory equivalent of bookmarking our brains. (It may have something to do with February otherwise being among the slowest sports months on the calendar.) Even the settings for the Winter Games are more memorable than their summer counterparts. How often have you uttered the words Nagano or Torino, much less paid attention to the charms and history of these cities? Huge metropolitan centers draw the Summer Games every four years. But for the Winter Games, we all get to call a village our home for two weeks. (Okay, Vancouver’s a good-sized city. I paint with broad strokes.) [image-1]

The first Winter Olympics I remember were those of Sarajevo in 1984. The ravaging of the war-torn city that ensued only makes the champions of ’84 seem that much more distant. Scott Hamilton was the figure-skating star of those games, with Bill Johnson playing the perfectly American role of underdog and winning the downhill, the most glamorous of all ski races, an event never won before by a Yank.

In 1988, I gawked with my college buddies at the beauty of Katarina Witt. Consider that: freshmen in college putting the books and beer down long enough to see who might be crowned Olympic ice princess. Witt was that gorgeous. This was also the year speedskater Dan Jansen — a favorite in two races — fell twice after losing his sister to cancer.

Kristi Yamaguchi stole the show in Albertville, France, in 1992, becoming the first American woman to win a gold medal in figure skating since Dorothy Hamill in 1976. Jansen returned, but was again denied a medal.

The Winter Games made a quick comeback in 1994, the new schedule now alternating the summer and winter Games every two years. And in his final race — the 1,000 meters — Jansen became an Olympic champion. Bonnie Blair won her fourth and fifth golds in Lillehammer, Norway, but Jansen is the skater who bookmarked my brain 16 years ago. Try waiting six years to honor a lost sibling. (As for the shenanigans between a pair of rival American skaters in ’94, I’ve officially placed that memory chapter in the blessedly tiny tabloid section of my noodle.)

Tara Lipinski made me feel old before my 30th birthday when she won figure-skating gold in Nagano in 1998 ... before her 16th birthday. Apolo Ohno emerged in 2002, along with a new sport — short-track speedskating — that brought some NASCAR (and the possibility of crashes around every turn) to the Winter Games. Then in 2006, in Torino, Italy (a city I called home for a magical year of my youth), Shaun White and his snowboarding rivals made the fabled Winter Olympics a modern extravaganza in every sense.

A new memory bookmark will be made later this month from the scenes in Vancouver. As unlikely as it is that I’ll be able to relate to the bookmark-worthy performance, it’s just as certain the event — and the new hero — will last a lifetime.]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

• thefoodmag.com

Spotted on eater.com: a picture of Three 6 Mafia and chef Wolfgang Puck, previewing the March issue of Food Magazine. In addition to this celebrity pairing, the site includes Three 6's music video "Feel It," from their upcoming album Laws of Power.

Three 6 Mafia are set to debut their reality show Cooking Ain't Easy on VH1 sometime this year.

The sad truth, though, is that the converted baskets were applauded because there were considered rarities by those familiar with watching Henderson-Niles play.

• Larry Kuzniewski
• Pierre Henderson-Niles

The big center was dismissed from the team Monday night with merely eight regular-season games remaining in his college career. Coach Josh Pastner released a formal statement that didn’t specify any rules violation or legal issues. Which leads one to assume this was a matter of friction over Henderson-Niles’ declining role on the team. "Moving forward, we will do all we can for Pierre as he finishes up the academic work toward completing his degree,” Pastner said in the statement. “We wish Pierre nothing but the best."

Ironically, no Tiger player benefited more from John Calipari’s departure than did Henderson-Niles. Had Calipari remained in Memphis — and brought DeMarcus Cousins with him — Henderson-Niles would have been planted on the bench, likely a third-string center who would average no more than the 12 minutes of playing time he did as a junior.
But when Calipari took his 2009 recruiting class with him to Kentucky, a slot opened up that led to the Ridgeway alum starting 16 of the Tigers’ first 23 games. Having lost nearly 70 pounds last summer — after having Calipari in his ear about weight for three years — Henderson-Niles ran the floor better, and with more stamina, than he had since childhood. (He confessed to me in November that the hardest part wasn’t losing the weight, but keeping it off.)

• Mayor A C Wharton got a basket of goodies Monday from Green Bay, Wisconsin, while that city's mayor, Jim Schmitt (center), got dibs on the Zippin' Pippin from the famous ride's custodian, Steve Mulroy of Save, Libertyland!, Inc.

Only the famous roller-coaster ride that tested the mettle of innumerable Memphians since 1923, when it first showed up at the Fairgrounds, won’t be preserved on its home grounds. Rather, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a town heretofore more famous for football than for free fall.

As head of the ad hoc group Save Libertyland! Inc., Mulroy has been trying since 2006, the year he ran for — and won — his District 5 commission seat, to prevent the legendary attraction from going extinct along with the rest of the vintage Fairgrounds properties as the site’s amusement park core headed for shutdown.

After Mulroy, a University of Memphis law professor, and his fellow Pippin enthusiasts had done a good deal of shopping the Pippin out to various amusement parks in their spare time, the mayor of Green Bay, Jim Schmitt, got wind of what was going on and asked for a look-see. On Monday, Schmitt (who is surely used to inclement weather) braved the snow, ice, and slush of Memphis to examine the property, arriving in town along with other Green Bay officials.

He and they liked what they saw, and Schmitt announced at the end of the day that, upon returning to Green Bay, he would recommend to his city council that they buy the Pippin. In practice, that means the name, the ride’s basic architecture and physical plan, and its historical association will be sold — with new boards and other materials to be supplied by the Wisconsin city.

Tentatively, the transplanted Pippin would reopen in 2011 at the Bay Beach site in the Green Bay area, and Schmitt estimated the deal could be wrapped up within 60 days.

Helping to midwife the deal was Memphis mayor A C Wharton, who met with Mulroy and Schmitt on Monday — though the city itself had no claim to ownership over Pippin, which had become the sole property of Save Liberftyland!, Inc.

Though Mulroy estimates that millions will be lavished on the Pippin during its restoration at Bay Beach, he acknowledges that the purchase price was quite a bit smaller — maybe even a token sum, especially in comparison to Mulroy’s own fundraising efforts for his reelection bid, which, he wanted it known, are subject to no Pippin-like rise-and-fall but are going straight up, along with several key endorsements, and…..

But that’s another story, which — if the oh-so-bashful commissioner assents — may get told at some later point.

Winner of this year's "Icarus Award" — "for the guac that soars closest to the sun, only to fall the farthest" — went to GWARcamole.

• guacbowl.com

The cast is ideal, the direction is thoughtful and the costumes are absolutely fabulous but what in the hell kind of cleaning products were being freebased when the playfinding committee scheduled this pointless obscurity to appear on Theatre Memphis' Lohrey Stage?

• South Main Street - 1961

This nighttime view of South Main Street — taken by an unknown photographer and discovered in a box of Kodachrome slides tucked away in the Lauderdale Library — shows the Warner Theatre in 1961. I know the date because that's when the movie Parrish, promoted on the theatre's stunning marquee, was showing. The drama starred Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, and Claudette Colbert, and lobby cards proclaimed that it depicted "More Than a Boy ... But Not Yet a Man!"

Oh, how many times that same phrase has been used to describe ME — usually by my team of psychiatrists. The pills they gave me just do no good at all.

There's wasn't much traffic on Main Street on this evening. Though the Warner is long gone, the old Lawrence Furniture building next door (originally constructed in the late 1800s as the Lemmon & Gale Building) is still standing on Main Street, as are many of the other structures dimly visible in the old photograph.

Read the rest of the review here.]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The incumbent sheriff, Jack Owens, had just created a vacancy by the most dramatic means imaginable: He had committed suicide, blowing out his brains with a handgun in a parked car.

Owens, who had been a dramatic innovator — most notably by personally leading “jump-and-grab” drug raids within the city limits of Memphis — had been considered a shoo-in for reelection that year (“One Good Term Deserves Another,” would have been his slogan) and a contender for the office of Memphis mayor in 1991.

Though various irregularities in the Sheriff’s department were subsequently pinpointed as possible causes of Owen’s mental discontent, the full and complete reasons for his suicide remain unknown. But the manner of his leaving office focused everybody’s attention on the question of a successor.

A large field of well-known public figures — including former sheriffs and politicians like then city councilman and current Circuit Court clerk Jimmy Moore — competed for the job, which was ultimately won by A.C. Gilless, who had been Owens’ deputy. Gilless would encounter scandal during his three terms and would retire under a cloud, embodying in his own way a position that is part law-enforcement and part old-style politics.

When Gilless’ successor, Mark Luttrell, announced last week that he would be seeking the office of Shelby County mayor this year, he professed confidently, “Eight years ago, Sheriff’s Department was a mess. The Sheriff’s Department is no longer a mess.” Now, opined Lutrell, the department required only “maintenance” to stay on the high side.

Be that the case or not (especially at a time when “functional consolidation” is the watchword), contenders for the job will shortly be lining up for the nearest thing to a full-scale donnybrook since that hotly contested, multi-candidate race in 1990.

Candidates for sheriff, a constitutional position, were expected to meet state certification requirements relating to law enforcement background as of last week. Among those who did so and are expected to file by the February 18 deadline are a sizeable number of former contenders,

One is Randy Wade, a former deputy who ran for sheriff as a Democrat in 2002 and who in recent years has been right-hand man locally for 9th District congressman Steve Cohen. Word is that Wade will announce by the end of next week.

Another Democrat running (and already announced) is Reginald French, well known as a longtime aide to former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton and the Democratic nominee in 2006, when he gave Luttrell something of a run for his money.

Yet another likely candidate is Bartlett alderman Bobby Simmons, who as a sheriff’s deputy had been one of Luttrell’s opponents in the 2002 GOP primary.

And current chief deputy Bill Oldham, a former interim police director, has also pulled a petition to run for sheriff as a Republican.

Others who have pulled a petition include: Floyd Bonner, Bennie Cobb, James Coleman, Larry Hill, and Elton Richard Hymon (Democrats); William S. Cash, Dale Lane, and Ernest Lunati (Republicans); and Erick Snyder (independent).

Reminded me what’s important, even on game day.

The Tigers had a chance to pull the upset today, and played with the energy you’d expect from a team that smells a surprise for their home crowd and a national-television audience. They were on top 14 minutes into the game, though after shooting from both sides that would make only a mother proud (the score was 15-13 with six minutes to play before halftime). And despite falling behind for the next twenty minutes of play, Memphis grabbed the lead (on a goaltending call against the Zags’ gigantic Will Foster), 53-51, with under five left on the clock.

Some missed free throws down the stretch, though, closed the deal. (The Tigers missed 12 of 26 from the line.) Matt Bouldin led the visitors with 19 points while Wesley Witherspoon had his second straight exceptional game on offense, with 26. Elliot Williams, though, was held to 11, and no other Tiger reached double figures.

• I was struck by the crowd roar on two occasions incidental to game action. When sophomore Angel Garcia made his long-delayed debut four minutes into the game, the crowd acted as though Keith Lee had returned for one more battle. It was actually pretty touching, and reveals much about just how engaged Tiger Nation is in its squad. Had Garcia drained the three-point attempt he let fly shortly after breaking a sweat, the place may have cracked in two.

Then with just under eight minutes to play in the game, the Tigers down by seven, coach Josh Pastner finally lost his cool. (At least on a Pastner scale.) After a series of borderline calls went against his team (primarily of the offensive foul variety), Pastner took several steps toward each of the three officials, each time intercepted by a player or assistant coach. When he raised both arms in exasperation, his adoring throng of 17,000 let loose with empathy. Again, touching to see a home crowd ready and willing to share fury with its fearless, if outmanned, leader.

• The loss all but rubber-stamped the Tigers for the NIT. It was the last chance for Memphis to grab a meaningful nonconference victory. Barring at least a regular-season C-USA championship, the only way this team makes the Big Dance is by winning the league tournament at season’s end.

The Tigers next host UCF on Wednesday night.

• JB

Such uncertainty as still existed concerning the reality of a congressional race by Willie Herenton seemed to go out the window for good Saturday, The former Memphis mayor kicked off his candidacy for the 9th district Democratic nomination before a sizeable — and almost entirely African-American — crowd at the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn on Central Avenue.

In keeping with the composition of his audience — and with the reality of a contest that requires him to unseat a sitting incumbent, U.S. Representative Steve Cohen, whom he once supported — Herenton pitched his remarks squarely on the theme of “proportional representation” for blacks in the 9th District.

Noting at one point that there were eleven congressional seats from Tennessee — two in the Senate and nine in the House — Herenton said, “We just want one!” — the “we” being identified as “people who look like me.”

The event was in many ways a throwback to his first race for mayor back in 1991, when Herenton was regarded as an underdog in his challenge to incumbent mayor Dick Hackett and relied out of necessity on grass-roots blacks like those who predominated in the ballroom crowd on Saturday.

The ex-mayor reminded his listeners of that come-from-behind triumph in that first of his five victorious mayoral races and ended up telling them, “We will win this election!,” and like some terminator returned to “retrieve what we lost in representation.,” assured them, “I am back!”

Along the way he spelled out some of his mayoral achievements — $89 million in the city’s financial reserve when he left office as against $3 million when he was sworn in; the conversion of a “desolate and barren” downtown into a “flourishing” one; the “dramatic transformation” of dilapidated housing projects into vibrant new developments.

But the gist of his remarks dramatized his personal situation in ways he related to the history of blacks in America. “When Herenton arrived, black folks arrived in high places,” the first elected black mayor said. But:” I’ve been the target of people who want to dismantle what we’ve built...all because I’m a man, all because I served the people and broke barriers and have been independent.”

Herenton cited the lengthy legal jeopardy he had endured because of his role in a “private investment” involving the sale of Greyhound Bus property and the local terminal’s relocation, contrasting it with his well-publicized charges that erstwhile Beale Street entrepreneur John Elkington had misappropriated funds and with weekend news about the indictment of three former Animal Shelter employees.

“The FBI spent millions of dollars trying to send me to jail…but there are $6 million unaccounted for…and they’re trying to lock three black folks up about some dogs.” Herenton also referenced what he charged had been a blackmail plot by political enemies — one, however, that had not resulted in formal indictments. “I thought ‘criminal intent’ was a crime. It is for black folks, but it ain’t for white folks,” the ex-mayor said bitterly.

(Two members of Herenton’s audience Saturday were African-American entrepreneur Elvin Moon of Los Angeles, whose involvement with Herenton in the Greyhound transaction had put him, too, under investigation, and Marty Grusin, one of Herenton’s legal advisers. Both said they said been assured that Herenton’s legal jeopardy was at an end, though no explicit announcement to that effect has been made by Department of Justice authorities.)

At one point in his speech, Herenton gestured toward a group of children who stood behind him on stage, holding red-and-white “Herenton/Congress” campaign signs, The former mayor and would-be congressman said, “They ought to have opportunities in America. Every opportunity that African Americans have got to serve as leader, we’ve got to go after….They need to see people that look like them in positions of leadership.”

Herenton did not refer directly to Cohen but indulged in several dismissive statements meant to belittle the professed achievements of the congressman, who sponsored a congressional resolution apologizing for the former institution of slavery and who has actively sought to rename various public properties for eminent local African Americans.

After mentioning slavery, segregation, and discrimination, Herenton said, “The residual of those shames is still with us. I’m not going to ‘apologize.’…I’ll try to make conditions better.” Instead of naming buildings, he would “help black folks to own some buildings.” Instead of naming highways, he would get African American firms involved in the construction of them.

Herenton included in his speech an appeal to “fair-minded” whites to “understand us and join us” and made a point of saying that his mayoral administrations had been “inclusive” without regard to race and gender.

But in most regards Saturday’s kick-off event evoked the political atmosphere of 1991 when black and white voters were starkly divided along racial lines. One difference between then and now, as both Herenton and his longtime political ally, Shelby County Commissioner Sidney Chism, somewhat scornfully acknowledged, was that considerable numbers of blacks had aligned themselves with Cohen, who won reelection handily in 2008 with overwhelming majority support in black precincts.

(One of Chism's milder passages, when he took the stage to convene the kick-off, went like this: "We’ve even got some of our preachers saying, 'Well, he could be polka-dot, he could be anything.' Look at your church and see what they look like!...…What is disheartening to me is people who look like me who tell me it don’t make no difference.")

The look and sound of things Saturday was clear indication that Herenton intends to re-gather the 9th District’s black vote into his camp, as monolithically as possible. His success or failure in doing so will largely determine the outcome of his current race.

Other than via the presence of a few candidates seeking election or reelection this year — something characteristic of any large-scale political event — there was no noticeable turnout Saturday of well-known politicians or public officials, black or white, and no public endorsement of Herenton save the obvious ones of Chism and attorney Ricky Wilkins, who shared the stage with the ex-mayor.

Willie Herenton clearly has his work cut out for him, but it has to be remembered that he is still unbeaten in political races. A defeat in 2010 would be his first.

Herenton on His Legal Predicament::

Herenton Predicts Victory

Camaraderie.

That was the word, or some variation of it, I kept hearing today at the National Barbecue Association Conference and Trade Show, which is wrapping up after four days at the Whispering Woods Hotel in Olive Branch.

"I'm not alone," Bertrand Newson said. "It's a pleasure to be around people who love barbecue."

Newson is one of the 300 attendees — backyard barbecuers, restauranteurs, caterers, competitors, and retailers — who attended the event, now in its 19th year.

I'm hoping that the insistent demands of a nocturnal infant will force me to be a more concise and efficient post-game blogger. Let's find out:

1. Playoff Hopes Taking a Hit?: As of this writing, the Grizzlies are 10th place in the Western Conference — two games out of the eighth and final playoff seed, three games from the fifth seed, and, amazingly, only 4.5 games out of the third seed, all with nearly half a season still to play. In other words, still very much in the thick of a very tight playoff race.

But I think you'd have to be less confident about this team earning a playoff birth after the past week. Not only have the Grizzlies lost four of their past five games, but have lost very costly home games to the Hornets and Rockets.

I missed a bad second-half meltdown against the Hornets and what was surely a thrilling win over the Lakers (probably the most significant Grizzlies home game that I wasn't in the building for), but I had a good excuse: My wife and I welcomed our second child and first son into the world. (His arrival roughly coincided with that meltdown against the Hornets, but I'll take no blame for that.)

I'll try to get into some broader team-related issues over the next couple of weeks, but for now I'm just going to dive into this game, a particularly important one against one of the Grizzlies' key competitors in the tight Western Conference playoff race.

Check back here later for a post-game report. In the meantime I'll chime in with occasional Twitter commentary during the game.

Let's do this.

Twitter Updates

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• Gonzaga enters Saturday’s nationally televised matinee with a record of 18-4, its most recent victory being a drubbing of Portland Thursday night. A loss at San Francisco last Saturday ended a nine-game winning streak for the Zags. Their other three losses were all to big-conference powers: Michigan State, Wake Forest, and Duke.

• The Tigers have won all four meetings since the annual series began on December 27, 2005. That was a battle of Top 10 foes, the 4th-ranked Tigers beating the 8th-ranked Zags, 83-72. Saturday’s game will be the first in the series in which Memphis is not ranked in the Top 20. (Gonzaga enters ranked 17th in the country.) When the U of M beat Gonzaga on January 26, 2008, it was the first home game after the Tigers were elevated to number-one in the country. (Gonzaga won the very first game played with Memphis, on November 16, 1998, part of the preseason NIT that year.)

• Senior guard Matt Bouldin leads Gonzaga in scoring with 16.6 points per game, with freshman forward Elias Harris contributing 16.0. Junior guard Steven Gray is scoring at a 13.5 clip and sophomore center Robert Sacre — a seven-footer — is averaging an even 10.0. Harris leads the club in rebounding with 8.4 per game. Bouldin contributes 4.2 assists per game.

• Tiger coach Josh Pastner has looked all season for a game in which all his offensive weapons are on target. (The closest was the victory over Houston on January 23rd, when five players reached double figures.) In the big win over UAB Wednesday night, Elliot Williams and Wesley Witherspoon combined to score 54 points, but Roburt Sallie and Doneal Mack contributed a total of 15. A more even distribution of the scoring load will add to opponents’ match-up difficulties.

• Memphis is looking for a second straight win over a team in the RPI’s top 30. Gonzaga is currently ranked 29th. (The Tigers are 70th.)

• A victory Saturday would be the 1,400th in Tiger history.