On TVA – Will the real Attorneys General please stand up?
April 20, 2009
Attorney General Roy Cooper blazed the trail for them, fought the TVA monolith who believed that it was immune from prosecution of merely being a “public nuisance”.
A very bad mis-read by TVA. Now a federal judge agreed with North Carolina’s Cooper that, indeed, TVA’s pollution was causing sickness and premature deaths of NC citizens and ruled so in January. It took three years before this judgment was reached.
TVA thought about appealing but decided to just get the judge to extend the period set by the court to repair four coal-fired plants in Tennessee and Alabama. The judge said no.* TVA says it can’t comply. Does this bring yet another showdown this time between a federal judge and TVA, a federal agency?
TVA must have taken the course, Whackiness 101, receiving an “A” in it. Take one step back and look at what brought on the NC suit against TVA. NC has a Clean Smokestack law that provides a timetable for cleaning up the air in that state applicable to all utilities.
AG Cooper contended that TVA also should abide by that law to protect the health and safety of NC citizens.
For about 2-1/2 years TVA fought to have the case from coming to trial mainly on the grounds of sovereign immunity. In other words the “king” is above the law, above prosecution. TVA’s first shock came when a federal court said the case could move forward, a bone shattering precedent.
At trial, the TVA still believed the case would be dismissed and, again, TVA was shocked when it was not. It is informative that some of TVA’s witnesses were far from credible. One of them stated, under oath, that TVA’s pollution stopped at the NC border!
The real showdown of whether the TVA is fish or fowl is yet to come. The Supreme Court cases never got to the point of the constitutionality of the TVA Act of 1933, only on peripheral issues.
TVA, over the years, has decided sometimes it is a fish, sometimes a bird and never quite sure which.
The Kingston disaster has caused many to bring suit against the TVA, after all, they merely are following the law which states TVA can “sue and be sued”, TVA has changed hats again even with the NC case staring it in the face which says they are not immune from prosecution.
Until the federal judge’s ruling in the NC case, TVA jumped from the fish bowl to fried chicken at will depending on what they thought was best for the TVA, not necessarily what was best for the people.
And if ever proof was needed, this last action by the TVA clearly states their self-serving position that they, again, are immune from prosecution!
In the North Carolina case, the judge said that four of TVA’s eleven plants in the original filing that were nearest the NC border had to be cleaned up by a date certain. It seems clear that citizens living near the other seven similarly polluting plants should be up in arms about their state’s inaction in bringing suit against the TVA. The North Carolina Attorney General saw that it was important, he persisted, and won the case for the health and safety of NC citizens.
Where’s the outcry from the chief law enforcement officers (AG’s) from Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky?
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
http://norsworthyopinion.com
*U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg said the other plants, seven of them, were not close enough to North Carolina’s border to definitively state that harm to NC citizens came from those other plants. What the judge did not say, however, was that the pollution from these other plants did not present a hazard to surrounding communities.
EN