Smith Lake Topics: Gorgas

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	Name:	waterph -
	Subject:	Gorgas
	Date:	1/15/2009 7:01:21 PM

Comments from Tennessee newspapers about TVA that might also be applicable to APC or other utilities.

1. 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.

2. “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

3. 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 long-term needs.”

4. 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.”