TVA’s Kilgore shuns Congressional hearing?
June 5, 2009
In an intended or unintended snub to Subcommittee Chairman Eddie Bernice Johnson (Tex-D), the TVA was represented by a lower level official to report and respond to their questions June 3 in Washington, D.C. Perhaps the mostly Democratic panel did not offer much in the way of questions to John M. Thomas III, a TVA vice president, because TVA CEO Tom Kilgore wasn’t there.
Another reason and this probably is the main one, is that TVA does not require federal appropriations. Others providing testimony with Thomas represented agencies with vested interests in getting more federal money and were looking for a favorable review of their planned expenditures for the coming budget year.
There was only one pointed question to Thomas and that was by Chairman Johnson. Asked Ms Johnson,
“Mr. Thomas, the TVA announced that it would complete its root-cause analysis on the Kingston coal ash storage failure in June of 2009, but your oral testimony indicated it would be later this summer. When do you think there might be a specific date that this report will be completed?”
In a typical TVA “avoid a direct answer”, Thomas said,
“I’m sorry, we do believe it’ll be sometime towards the end of June, but at this point we just do not know the specific a (sic) date and when I stated later this summer, it was intended that it would be June but there’s the likelihood that it could go further.”
The very next day at a TVA board meeting in Young Harris, Georgia, CEO Tom Kilgore said it would be “two to three weeks” before a final report would be available. You can bet the latter is being penciled in on calendars by a lot of people.
Undoubtedly Kilgore was watching the hearings the day before.
Meanwhile, Subcommittee Chairman Johnson has scheduled a visit to Roane County, Tennessee on June 7 to listen to the residents affected by the Kingston disaster. She also promised to have hearings on the TVA about every 30 to 60 days after that.
My impression of Mike Duncan’s first TVA board meeting on Thursday as its chairman was that it looked a bit eerie. The video, mostly black, focused in on each speaker; Duncan studiously made sure each agenda item was properly adopted (“motion, second, question, vote, etc.”) and as expected all votes were unanimous having been previously agreed to.
The meeting seemed to have a quiet air of inevitability, of resignation, about it; the minimum number of board members were present, five, but Duncan said there “soon” would be others joining the group to make the full complement of nine members.
The famed TVA veil of secrecy was clearly evident because the “listening session” before the regular board meeting was cut out of the video. There were several comments during the meeting that referred to that session.
A question to TVA, “Why not include in the video the listening session where others are allowed to speak?”
At first, TVA allowed comments from the audience after the regular board meeting but then changed it some months ago to hearing comments before the meeting in a show of magnanimity. Now, the “outside” comments are not even available.
TVA is hunkering down and no doubt was happy to hold its June meeting out of town in the beautiful North Georgia Mountains.
The main item approved at this meeting was to build a new combined cycle gas-fired plant in East Tennessee that could take the place of the John Sevier plant at a cost of $820 million. TVA says the Sevier plant cannot be upgraded by 2011 as mandated by federal judge Lacy Thornburg. Gas fired plants pollute the air at about 40% of a coal-fired plant. This would entail the delay or cancellation of two gas plants; one in Mississippi and the other in Tennessee.
Clearly in response to the federal mandate to reduce pollution in the Sevier plant and three others nearest the North Carolina border, this is a typical “behind the curve” reaction of TVA’s management.
It should be noted from the Columbus, MS newspaper, The Commercial Dispatch, that the TVA appears to be welching on another deal. In a special Lowndes County Board of Supervisors meeting, Neal Wagner reports,
“Supervisors also took action to remedy one of the area’s economic shortfalls. During the past two years, the Tennessee Valley Authority has failed to pay about $1 million per year in fees-in-lieu to the county while the TVA has leased a General Electric-owned combined cycle plant in Caledonia, according to [Board President] Sanders.
“Just because TVA is operating that plant doesn’t mean they don’t have to pay that money,” Sanders said, noting TVA has leased the plant since April 2007. “I think TVA is looking for ways to save money at our expense.”
“We called the state tax commissioner and he said our representatives were aware of it and were going to take care of it,” Sanders added. “They say the squeaky wheel gets greased, so I think we need to go down to Jackson and start squeaking.”
Could this be the same plant TVA was “replacing” for the new plant in East Tennessee?
While the federal judge in the NC case excluded seven other coal-fired plants in NC’s suit because they were too far away from NC, he did not rule that they did not likewise pollute the air around and in the wake of those seven plants. This is a clarion call to the attorney’s general of other affected states; Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and maybe South Carolina to take similar action against the TVA.
If one or more of those states brought a suit similar to the one in North Carolina, what reactive move would TVA then take? It cannot just shut down all of its ageing coal-fired plants.
Here’s what a former TVA supervisor wrote:
“What makes me mad is what is TVA going to do with their aging coal fleet. No other major utility operates coal plants this old. On top of this, the majority of the plants do not have scrubbers or SCRs. Once again, no major utility operates this amount of MWS without scrubbers and SCRS. Some examples:
1. John Sevier- 750 Mws without scrubbers or SCRs.
2. Colbert 1200 MWs with only a SCR for U5, no scrubbers.
3. Gallatin- 750 Mws without scrubbers or SCRs
4. Shawnee- 1300 Mws without scrubbers or SCRs
5. Widows Creek 1-6 600 Mws without scrubbers or SCRs
6. Johnsonville- 1300 MWs without scrubbers or SCRs
7. Allen- 750 Mws without scrubbers or SCRs.
“This is indicative of TVA's disregard for doing what is right. TVA will always move in ways to suit their needs and only their needs. Why does it take a judge's ruling before they will build a clean burning and efficient plant?” he said.
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
http://norsworthyopinion.com