Two groups urged the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for more transparency and more public input this week, reminding that the power giant is a public agency.
In a letter, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) objected to TVA’s “effort to evade meaningful public engagement” around its decisions on where to store coal ash from the former Allen Fossil Plant. Protestors locked arms in Knoxville this week, demanding TVA “immediately resume public listening sessions” at board meetings, which were suspended on Covid-19 concerns.
Toxic coal ash ponds at the former Allen Fossil Plant near Presidents Island threaten the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the area’s source of its famously pure drinking water. TVA has agreed to remove the ash from the site.
But SELC attorneys say the process of finding a location to dump the ash has not been transparent and the utility has not engaged well with neighbors who may be affected by the selection. The group watches these decisions closely and said it was surprised in late July to find that a dump site — the South Shelby Landfill — had been selected and that construction of a new landfill for the project had been completed already “without ever having disclosed its selection of this specific landfill.”
The SELC is now asking TVA for an additional review of the project. It says TVA did not adequately seek out other sites for the ash. TVA also ”violated federal regulations by depriving communities in South Memphis the opportunity to provide input on the disposal plan.” That plan will run trucks from the Allen site across several South Memphis neighborhood to the landfill (close to the corner of Holmes and Malone).
“TVA’s decision will impose nearly a decade of additional traffic, noise, air pollution, and public safety impacts on predominantly Black, low-wealth communities in South Memphis that already bear more than their fair share of environmental burdens — including the cumulative burdens associated with sixty years of TVA’s burning of coal at the Allen Coal Plant and TVA’s ongoing operation of the Allen Combined Cycle Plant,” reads the SELC letter.
Earlier this week, protestors gathered in Knoxville with a demonstration called “Locked Out, Locked Arms,” seeking access to TVA board meeting.
The meetings have been mostly virtual through much of the pandemic, but some board members are gathering in person once again. However, the board has not resumed public listening sessions at meetings.
“Unlike legislative bodies and government agencies across the country that have adapted and adopted virtual participation and public comment in response to Covid-19, TVA’s board has not held any public listening sessions since it shifted to virtual board meetings in May 2020,” reads a statement from the Tennessee Valley Energy Democracy Movement, a collaboration of environmental groups throughout TVA’s service area.
The protestors also displayed a paper chain made with a selection of 4,000 comments submitted by members of the public on subjects ranging from climate change to transparency.
“I am requesting public listening sessions,” wrote Trish Marshall of Nashville. “No ‘backroom’ decisions made in secret. TVA is a public entity! Enough of the ‘covertness’ more transparency!”
A TVA official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
