TVA critics step up pressure after 3 mishaps in 3 weeks
By Pam Sohn and Dave Flessner psohn@timesfreepress.com
Online: Hear former TVA Chairman S. David Freeman. Read previous stories. Comment. Critics of the Tennessee Valley Authority say aging facilities, a cost-cutting mentality and resistance to oversight may have contributed to the agency’s three environmental spills in as many weeks. “It hurts me to see a great agency like TVA getting a black mark this big,” said former TVA Chairman S. David Freeman, a longtime utility executive who often criticizes TVA for not taking a lead in adopting alternate energy policies. “I guess hardening of the arteries occurs in organizations just like it does people.” Mr. Freeman said the Kingston and Widows Creek steam plants — where two ash spills took place in the past month — were built more than a half century ago and have outlived their useful life, normally about 30 years. “TVA’s DNA is for low-cost
power, and the aging coal plants are a way to try to keep power costs down, even if the plants don’t meet today’s standards for clean air and reliability,” said Mr. Freeman, who began his utility career in 1950 at the Kingston plant. TVA officials insist the agency overall has a solid safety record and is subject to both state and federal regulations and Congressional oversight. “Effective maintenance at our coal plants is one of the reasons they continue to provide about 60 percent of the power TVA generates,” agency spokesman John Moulton said. “Safety and regulatory requirements get top priority when we consider capital projects.” The Kingston plant’s wet ash landf ill unexpectedly dropped more than 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash laced with toxic metals into the Emory River and onto 300 acres of land in Harriman, Tenn., on Dec. 22. Eighteen days later, TVA responded to a smaller, 10,000-gallon gypsum and ash spill at Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Stevenson, Ala. In the same week, TVA workers drawing down water in the Ocoee River for hydropower dam repairs released copper mining-tainted sediments and sludge onto the Ocoee’s Olympic Whitewater Course. PENNY WISE, POUND FOOLISH? Rick Parrish, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said TVA’s troubles are the result of being “penny wise and pound foolish.” “There were studies done years back pointing them to better ways to handle the ash,” he said. “They chose not to go that way, and now they’re paying the price.” Stephen Smith, director of the Alliance for Clean Energy, said TVA resistance to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s push for newer plants with better coal pollution controls would have saved money for ratepayers and taxpayers in the long run. “Everyone thought they should be moving on to new technologies, but TVA kept these things propped up,” he said. “Managers and operators made decisions to maximize short-term benefits over longterm needs.” The agency is midway through a three-year effort to cut $400 million in operating expenses from its budget by 2010. TVA CEO and President Tom Kilgore said last month — before the Kingston spill — that the utility may have to make tens of millions of dollars in additional cuts over the next year if power sales continue to slump. Under the strategic plan adopted by TVA directors last year, the federal utility has set a goal of not raising operating and maintenance expenses more than the increase in power sales. Now TVA will have to shoulder the Kingston cleanup costs — running now at about $1 million a day — at a time of declining electricity demand and sales. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said TVA, as a federal agency, may have received “exaggerated deference” from state regulation and oversight in the past. Eric Schaeffer, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Integrity Project and a former director of EPA’s office of civil enforcement, agreed with the governor’s assessment and said TVA cultivated an untouchable image. “With TVA, you combine federal agency with utility culture,” said Mr. Schaeffer, who resigned from EPA in 2002 to protest what he said was the Bush administration’s political interference with efforts to enforce the Clean Air Act. TVA is “a little bit their own ship,” he said. “If the (U.S.) Justice Department can’t take them to federal court, I think it starts to affect their culture ... There’s not really a culture of accountability.” Mr. Moulton said TVA follows all regulations from state departments for air and water quality, the EPA, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and numerous other bodies. “TVA has multiple levels of accountability and oversight. ... TVA is accountable to the U.S. Congress and the (presidential) administration, and we are accountable to the people of the Tennessee Valley.” NOW WHAT? Now, coal ash ponds storing waste created by burning coal are not subject to federal regulations, and state oversight varies from state to state. But on Wednesday, legislation was introduced in Congress to regulate the disposal of coal ash, and Lisa Jackson, the incoming EPA administrator for President-elect Barack Obama, pledged more attention to coal ash regulation. Gov. Bredesen, whose state regulators on Tuesday issued an order demanding TVA reimburse the state for its sampling and oversight in the wake of the Kingston spill, said he hopes TVA again will show its leadership with environmental fixes and alternative power sources. “I think maybe if TVA is moving away from being one more big utility run by some graybeards to produce all the cheap power it possibly can into something that once again reflects kind of a forward-looking view of energy generation ... it could be a nice thing to do,” the governor said Wednesday. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, RChattanooga, a former chairman of the TVA Congressional Caucus, said the agency “is at a crossroads” after the spills. “If TVA devolves into a super-duper private power company without a mission of land and water stewardship and economic development for the region, then they are not carrying out their original charter, and that’s the fear for me,” he said. Staff writer Andy Sher contributed to this story.
Staff Photo by Patrick Smith Remains of a coal ash spill, which blanketed more than 300 acres around TVA’s Kingston steam plant site.
