Tag: Scott Banbury

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: xAI Emissions, Social Bikin’, and ‘Insanely Rampant’

Posted to Facebook by Scott Banbury

Memphis on the internet.

xAI Emissions

Longtime environmentalist Scott Banbury posted a video to Facebook this week showing “the un-permitted turbines currently running at Elon Musk’s xAI facility in Memphis, spewing low-level ozone-forming emissions into our air that is already out of attainment [of national air quality standards].”

Social Bikin’

Posted to Reddit by u/ChillinDylan901

The Memphis Social Bicycle Club meets every Thursday at 7 p.m. at Veterans Plaza in Overton Park, according to Reddit user ChillinDylan901. “The only important part is to make it to our destination before they run out of beer!” the poster said. 

‘Insanely rampant’ 

Posted to YouTube by Versed

Video essayist Versed compared the Memphis and Nashville economies in a YouTube video in July. The GDP of the cities were both around $65 billion in 2000, he said. Nashville exploded to $136 billion in 2023 versus Memphis’ $69 billion that year. Memphis’ “insanely rampant” crime and a consolidated Nashville government were two reasons given for the difference. 

He also mysteriously shows a shot of the Hennepin Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis and pronounces it “Appalakkian Mountains.” So … y’know.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Nuttery From Nashville

If it’s February, I’m probably going to be writing at least one column about the Tennessee General Assembly, which gets rolling in late January each year. That column usually includes a rundown of the latest goofy bills brought up for consideration by our reliably loony GOP legislators. This year is, unfortunately, no exception. So here goes …

Last week, Representative James Van Huss (who prefers to go by his “prophet name,” Micah) proposed the following bill, which … Well, just read it:

“Resolves to recognize CNN and The Washington Post as fake news and part of the media wing of the Democratic Party, and further resolves to condemn such media outlets for denigrating our citizens and implying that they are weak-minded followers instead of people exercising their rights that our veterans paid for with their blood.”

The impetus for this stellar bit of law-making was apparently the fact that Van Huss learned that a CNN pundit and a WAPO columnist had dared to suggest that some Trump supporters may not be, er, very bright or sophisticated.

By putting this bill up for consideration in the state House, Trumpster Van Huss pretty much proves the pundits’ point. In fact, Van Huss is the same Einstein who, during last year’s session, read aloud an article from The Onion as the basis for taking a position on another bill, not realizing it was satire. Oops.

But it’s not like Van Huss is breaking new ground here. The stupid has been burning in Nashville for some time now. In recent years, the General Assembly has considered: a bill that mandated abstinence-only sex education; a “gateway body parts” bill that prohibited teachers from using words such as “gay”; a bill to allow teachers to abstain from teaching evolution or climate change; a bill cracking down on “saggy pants”; a bill that addressed the possibility of a mop sink in the capitol building being a possible “foot-washing” sink for Muslims. And on it goes.

In this year’s session, Governor Bill Lee has already signed a bill that would allow some adoption agencies to deny LGBTQ couples the right to adopt, despite enormous pushback from the state’s largest corporations and business interests, who fear that such backward legislation will make it more difficult for them to lure employees to Tennessee, and that it will chase off major conventions and events, such as, say, the NHL or NBA All-Star game.

The legislators are also debating whether to leave a bust of KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest in the capitol building or perhaps replace it with one of Dolly Parton. You can’t make this stuff up.

But it’s not all fun and games and bigotry and racism. There are also the usual attempts to screw over Memphis. And this one is a doozy. Consider, if you will, this bill, which came to light on Monday: “Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 69-10-112, is amended by adding the following as a new subsection: In granting a certificate of exemption under this section, no home rule municipality or county operating under a county charter form of government may exercise authority or power over landowner riparian water rights and reasonable use for water to which a landowner has a riparian water right.”

In plain English, this means that in Tennessee a county or city would no longer have control over local water rights. It means, for example, the recent successful efforts by activists such as Save Our Aquifer and the Sierra Club to convince local authorities to prohibit the TVA from drilling into the Memphis Sand Aquifer would no longer be possible. The state would make the call on Shelby County water rights, instead of having it under local control. I have no doubt that the TVA would have won that battle if it had been decided at the state level — and we’d already have five wells dug into our aquifer next to a toxic wastewater site.

The Sierra Club’s Scott Banbury agrees: “If this were in effect when we fought the TVA, the Shelby County Health Department would not have been able to take their groundwater wells away from them,” he said. “This bill would take away Shelby County’s authority to deny well permits or institute any ‘conservation fees’ on private wells. It would undo all the work of the Shelby County Groundwater Board, Shelby County Health Department, and Protect Our Aquifer.”

Enough, already. There needs to be an all-hands-on-deck resistance mounted to stop this bill in its tracks. The mayors, city council, county commission, and all local House and Senate legislators should have their hair on fire about this. This is beyond party. Memphis’ unique and bountiful aquifer is one of its greatest assets. Do we really want to have it controlled by the likes of James Van Huss?

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News News Blog

New State Bill Could Remove Local Control of Water Protection

CREDIT: Corey Owens/Greater Memphis Chamber

Tennessee Valley Authority

TVA workers install water quality monitoring wells near the Allen Fossil Plant.

A new Tennessee bill could ”un-protect our aquifer,” removing Shelby County’s ability to control wells drilled into the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the source of the area’s famously pristine drinking water.

The bill was filed last week by two West Tennessee Republicans, Sen. Delores Gresham (R-Somerville) and Rep. Curtis Halford (R-Dyer). The bill would prohibit cities and counties from exercising authority over a landowner’s water rights on “certain drilling requirements.”
[pdf-1]
A detailed explanation of the bill was not available on the Tennessee General Assembly website Monday. The legislature was not in session Monday, thanks to the Presidents Day holiday, and lawmakers could not be immediately reached. Also, request for comment on the bill was not immediately returned by Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus.

Scott Banbury, Conservation Programs Coordinator for the Tennessee Chapter of the Sierra Club, said he had not spoken to the bill’s sponsors as of Monday afternoon. But the bill is “about whether or not Shelby County has the authority to regulate groundwater wells within its jurisdiction.”  Facebook

Scott Banbury of Sierra Club Tennessee

“If this were in effect when we fought the (Tennessee Valley Authority), the (Shelby County Health Department) would not have been able to take their groundwater wells away from them,” Banbury said.

The TVA had drilled five wells into the aquifer near its now moth-balled Allen Fossil plant and intended to pump about 3.5 million gallons of water from them each day to cool its new gas-fueled power plant. Those wells were close to contaminated areas of the TVA site. TVA agreed to not use the wells in December 2018. By February 2019, the health department placed explicit rules on TVA using the wells in the future.

If the new bill was made law, Banbury said landowners would have to apply to the state for a permit. Shelby county would likely administer the program but local authorities would not be able to deny permission for any well being drilled here as long as it met state code. He said the proposed law would “remove Shelby County’s ability to do the right thing” in regard to protecting its water.

Ward Archer, president of Protect Our Aquifer, said the bill would “un-protect our aquifer” and “set us way back about 50 years” before local well controls were established here.

JB

(l) Ward Archer of Protect Our Aquifer displays some of the sand particles which, at several deep layers (this sample from 400 feet down) filter the near-pristine drinking water enjoyed by Memphis and Shelby County; (r) Jenna Stonecypher and Linda Archer sell a T-shirt to the Sierra Club’s Dennis Lynch. The shirt, bearing the non-profit group’s logo, says, ‘Save Water/Drink Beer.’

“We need (local regulation) because we are the largest city in the country getting all its water from the ground,” Archer said. “It’s not that way in Nashville. It’s not that way in Knoxville. It’s just not the way they get their water; theirs is mostly surface water.

“What we’re trying to do is not just conserve our water but to protect it from getting contaminated. So, that’s why you have to have a well program.

“We’ve got to manage that process tightly to make sure that if someone drills a well 800 feet down into the aquifer — and doesn’t do it properly — it can become a conduit for contaminants.”

The Senate bill was passed on to the Energy, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Committee but is not on the calendar for this week’s meeting. The House is not on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting of the House Agriculture and Natural Resources committee.

Categories
News News Blog

TVA Finds High Arsenic, Lead Levels Near New Wells

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

High levels of arsenic and other toxins have been discovered in ground water beneath monitoring wells near the Allen Fossil Plant in south Memphis. According to the TVA, which first reported the levels to Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation department in mid-May, arsenic levels were more than 300 times higher than federal drinking water standards. Lead levels in the water were also higher than federal safety standards. The pools were originally installed to monitor pollution from nearby ponds containing slag and ash generated by the plant’s coal-burning.

The TVA’s old Allen coal plant

The polluted groundwater is little more than a quarter mile from five recently drilled TVA wells that will provide cooling water for the agency’s soon-to-be-completed gas-fired power plant. While TDEC officials contend that the polluted groundwater is constrained from contaminating the Memphis Sand Aquifer by a layer of clay, local Sierra Club spokesman Scott Banbury begs to differ.

Here is a statement from the Sierra Club:
The Tennessee Valley Authority has found high levels of arsenic,
lead, and other toxins in groundwater beneath the Allen Fossil Plant, where thousands
of tons of coal ash and boiler slag are stored in massive ponds.
The arsenic was discovered in monitoring wells at the plant at levels more than 300
times the federal drinking-water standard. Excessive amounts of lead were also
detected.

Scientists have linked long-term arsenic exposure to health problems including heart
disease, diabetes and several cancers. Exposure to high lead levels can severely
damage the brain and kidneys in adults or children, and can also be fatal.
The tainted groundwater was found about a quarter-mile from where TVA recently
drilled five wells into the Memphis Sand aquifer, the primary source of local drinking
water. TVA plans to draw 3.5 million gallons a day from the aquifer to cool its gas plant,
though their original plan was to cool the plant with “grey water” from the nearby
Maxson Wastewater Treatment facility.

Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation officials said they don’t think
the arsenic and lead are impacting drinking water, but have asked the Memphis Light,
Gas and Water to test samples anyway.
Justin Fox Burks

Scott Banbury (file photo)

In response to the findings, Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator for
the Sierra Club in Tennessee, released the following statement:
“This contamination is exactly what we feared when TVA decided to use our pristine
drinking water source to cool its fracked gas plant. We still don’t have enough
information about existing breaches of the clay barrier that protects the aquifer, or about
whether pumping from these wells could pull contaminants into the Memphis Sand
Aquifer.

“TVA should immediately contract with MLGW to use municipal water to cool their new
plant, or reconsider their original plan to use grey water, and should contract with the
University of Memphis Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research to
do an extensive geophysical study of the area around TVA’s ash ponds to make sure
there’s absolutely no risk to the drinking water and public health of Memphis families
and children.

“We also call on the Shelby County Health Department to immediately reconsider their
decision to issue TVA’s well permits in light of this new data.”
Ward Archer, president of Protect Our Aquifer, also weighed in on the findings:

“We suspected the groundwater beneath the Allen plant was already contaminated, but
this is even worse than we had imagined. TVA’s plan to pump Memphis Sand Aquifer
water from beneath this contaminated site is irresponsible and endangers our drinking
water supply.

“These contamination findings reinforce our commitment to encourage TVA to find an
alternative cooling water solution, and we will continue to work to protect our drinking
water aquifer by supporting scientific investigation, raising public awareness, working
with our elected officials, and, when necessary, initiating legal action.”

Categories
Cover Feature News

Stormy Weather

CREDIT: David Kabelik

” Clouds are gathering over the campus of the University of Memphis as I arrive at the office of Dorian J. Burnette, professor of meteorology, climatology, and extreme weather. The Wichita, Kansas, native grew up in the heart of tornado alley. “That’s how I got into it, running from tornados,” he says. “Now, I take students, and I run toward tornados.”

Burnette’s the kind of person who sweats the details — you have to be if you want to be a successful scientist. When he talks about combing through 150-year-old documents for historical weather data, his enthusiasm is infectious. It helps to be passionate when your job involves looking deeply into the greatest existential threat human civilization has ever faced.

“Anthropogenic climate change — global warming — really shows itself from 1950 to the present,” he says.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for energy generation and transportation has been subtly changing the chemistry of our atmosphere. The carbon dioxide released from tailpipes and smokestacks absorbs heat more efficiently than does the nitrogen and oxygen that makes up most of our atmosphere. As we add more CO2 to the air, it gets hotter.

Burnett’s specialty is dendroclimatology. He spends a lot of time examining tree rings under a microscope. “We see a pattern of wide and narrow rings. The wide ring is when the tree liked the environment. A thin ring — or maybe no ring at all — is when the tree hated the environment and was really super stressed. Those matching patterns of wide and narrow rings are consistent over large areas.”

David Kabelik

Dr. Burnette coring a bristlecone pine tree in Colorado for a tree-ring project.

Examine enough trees over a large enough area, and you can reconstruct the history of the climate. “Here is the Southeast, and we can get back several hundred years to potentially a thousand years, depending on what part of the Southeast you’re talking about. There are some kinds of trees that can go back 2,000 years in the Southwest.”

The evidence for man-made climate change, Burnette says, is clear, and not only in the tree rings. He sees it in daily weather observations made by Army officers dating back to 1821, in the National Weather Service records from the 20th century, and in NASA satellite observations from the 1970s.

“Each one of these separate metrics have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they’re not necessarily the same. And yet we get a similar answer when we carefully evaluate all of the data. But the most compelling evidence that the Earth is undergoing change is to just observe the natural world itself. Most of the glaciers are retreating. There are non-migratory species who are moving … 90 percent of physical and biological systems are responding in a direction that is associated with warming.”

TENNESSEE IN 2099

Across town, at Rhodes College, Sarah Boyle, chair of the Environmental Studies and Sciences program, is grading projects from students in her Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class. Dr. Boyle is a biologist; her speciality is deforestation. “When I was younger, I was primarily interested in primates — monkeys and apes. When I was in college, I pursued my interest in that area. I lived in the Amazon for a couple of years and tracked monkeys through areas that had been deforested and through areas that were not as impacted by humans to see what the differences were in tree species composition, which primates were there, which ones had gone locally extinct, which ones remained. How did their behavior and biology change?”

Like all plants, trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. To absorb the excess CO2 we’re releasing into the atmosphere, we need more trees. Instead, humans are cutting down forests at an alarming rate. “Deforestation reduces the available carbon sinks,” she says. “Sometimes people burn [the forests], which releases a massive amount of carbon dioxide.”

The students in Boyle’s GIS class come from all majors, not just STEM fields. “Just recently, they were looking at different climate predictions for the state of Tennessee in terms of, under different scenarios, what would the temperature and precipitation look like in 2099?”

Giovanni Boles is one of Boyle’s students. “I was born and raised in the Netherlands, so climate change has always been a topic of discussion,” he says. “The Netherlands has always been threatened by the rising sea levels, especially considering that a third of the country is below sea level. Climate change has to be on the agenda for everybody, regardless of their location.”

Boles and the others fed a trove of historical climate data into a computer model that used realistic estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about future population and economic growth, land use, technological advancement, and, most crucially, oil and gas consumption. “They went through and modeled it out in all the areas of Tennessee to see overall what the changes would be. Based on this model, you do have a rise in temperature and a rise in precipitation. But it’s not uniform across the state. … They could see immediately that the southwestern areas of the state are quite different than the eastern part of the state.”

Dr. Sarah Boyle in the Amazon

Boles’ results indicated an almost seven-degree-Fahrenheit rise in average temperature, both minimum and maximum over the course of the century. “Looking at the gradient, some of them were shocked to see the huge range,” says Boyle.

Burnette says this pattern is consistent with predictions made by climate scientists for decades. “We have high uncertainty with certain aspects of anthropogenic climate change, but there are things that are really robust in the literature. Depending on what part of the globe you’re in, your average annual total rainfall may not change too much, but you’re liable to get more rainfall in heavier amounts, with longer, dryer spells in between. The fact that heat waves will become worse, that keeps coming out in the literature as well. Winters are not going to be as bad, because winters are warming faster than summers are.”

FALSE SPRING

So it will get warmer. So what? Maybe more rain and shorter winters will extend the growing season and give us more crops. Not so fast, says Burnette. “You put yourself in danger of a ‘false spring.’ We saw that this year. It gets warm really, really early — like January and February — and refuses to cool back down. Then, all of a sudden, in March, you get a late-season shot of cold air. That’s damaging to the plants that are starting to bloom. You can see it on the trees right outside. The leaves are kind of sickly looking in spots. That’s a function of the hard freeze we had after the trees had already started developing their leaves.”

The chaotic climate will stress food crops. “The tropics are going to get hit the hardest, right away,” says Burnette. “If you warm up the temperature just a little bit, it will make it unsuitable for crops. There will have to be a shifting of the growing belts down there. Up here, there will be a little more room for warming. That’s where that 1.5- to 2-degree shift starts popping out. Once you get above that, you start seeing declines in yield. That implies that, if we warm up the planet a little bit, we can initially see some increases in yields in certain crops because of a longer growing season. But once we pass a certain key threshold, you start to lose the gains. Then if you warm up a little bit more, you have to shift. Do we want to take some crops that are relevant to the state budget and give them to another state? That’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of politics.”

The scientific consensus is that we need to prevent global average temperatures from rising more than 2.0 degrees C on average (about 3.6 degrees F). “The reason we chop it off right there is because we start seeing some issues with the planet itself, the biosphere of the planet, once you reach that threshold.”

Beyond the 2-degree threshold, the climate models lose coherence. Burnette says there is potential for disaster of unimaginable scale. “The Younger Dryas event has been studied significantly. It happened about 12,000 years ago. There was an abrupt cooling phase and then an abrupt warming phase at its start and end points. Some of the indications suggest that you can go from general warming conditions back to full glacial conditions in as little as 10 to 50 years. … There are tipping points, but you can’t really see one until, oops, you’ve moved across it already. Now, it’s too late to deal with it.”

DECEPTION + DENIAL

“I find the political aspect really interesting,” says Boyle. “In cities where people have been really impacted by these extreme climate effects and changes, the general populace says, yes, this is an issue. Insurance companies think this is an issue. But at the [political] party level, it’s this ‘yes or no’ fight, which is really unfortunate.”

The landmark Paris Agreement of 2015 set out goals and methods for each country to meet the crucial 2-degree target. But the 2016 election of climate-change denier President Donald Trump has thrown that process into chaos and uncertainty.

“Trump’s belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax should alarm everyone and epitomizes his proclivity for baseless conspiracy theory,” says Scott Banbury, Conservation Program Director for the Tennessee Sierra Club. “In fact, China is making enormous investments in clean energy, and Trump’s threatened abandonment of the Paris Climate Accords will result in the U.S. being less competitive in the future.”

It’s not just Trump. In March, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander went on a 12-minute tirade in the Senate, railing against TVA’s plans to buy wind power — which does not add any carbon dioxide to the atmosphere — from Clean Line Energy Partners, operators of a wind farm in Oklahoma. He claimed that the deal would impose an unnecessary $1 billion cost on Tennesseans over a 30-year period. “TVA should not agree to buy more wind power, which is comparatively unreliable and expensive,” he said.

Banbury and the Sierra Club disagree. “Senator Alexander’s opinions on wind power are based on very outdated information. Clean Line is offering fixed, long-term rates that are cheaper than the current cost of generating electricity from coal, will undoubtedly be cheaper than natural gas in the near future, and free of the financial and environmental risks of nuclear.”  

Denying the reality of climate change has become an article of faith among most Republicans. Fossil fuel industries have thrown big money into sowing doubt among the conservative flock. Burnette says a favorite Fox News tactic is to exploit scientists’ unwillingness to speak in absolutes. “You listen to a scientist, and they’re going to caveat themselves constantly. We allow for these little probabilistic things that could technically happen.”

But on TV news programs, “They’ll bring on a climate scientist, and then they’ll bring on another person who may be a Ph.D., but he’s not necessarily super credentialed, and if you look at his publication record, he hasn’t contributed to the peer-reviewed literature at all. They bring these two head to head, and the audience sees one scientist arguing against another and think there’s discrepancy between the scientists.” This creates the impression that 50 percent of scientists think one way, and 50 percent of the scientists think another way. “It’s somewhere in the 90 percent range that think anthropogenic climate change is real, it’s a threat, and it’s us,” says Burnette.

STORMY WEATHER

“I was shocked. I didn’t see it coming,” says Nour Hantouli, of the election of Donald Trump. “I was hoping that Hillary was going to get into office so we could talk about how we needed to go even farther than that. Now, we’re starting from absolute ground zero with Trump.”

Hantouli is one of the founders of the Memphis Feminist Collective, a three-year-old organization active in community organization before and after the election. “Activism in Memphis is getting a lot more traction. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was the Women’s March, the Immigration March, they had thousands of people. We haven’t seen that in decades.”

Hantouli is one of the Memphis organizers of the March for Science, a national movement to push back against Trump Republicans’ proposed gutting of government science research. First on the chopping block are the EPA and NASA’s climate science programs.

“Our goal is to highlight the national goal of bringing science to the public, by reaching out and bringing them in,” says Hantouli. “We want to let folks know why these intersections are important and why we have to unite against these policy changes and the toxic cultural climate that’s going on.”

Scientists prize objectivity above all else. Politicization of science is a major taboo, and for some, that even extends to taking political action in self-defense. “You say you’re not into politics, but politics is into you,” says Hantouli.

The initial March for Science organization was done by a coalition between scientists and academics, who had little experience in the field of direct political action, and experienced social justice organizations such as Hantouli’s Memphis Feminist Collective. Tensions mounted over methods and priorities, and the internal conflict came to a head with a proposal to rally in Health Sciences Park adjacent to the University of Tennessee medical campus. Unfortunately, that is also the site of the grave and statue of Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. The debate split the group, and as a result, there will be two separate March for Science demonstrations in Memphis on April 22nd. One, a march from Gaston Park to LeMoyne Owen College, and the other a rally at Civic Center Plaza.

“If your life has been touched by science, if you want to meet Memphis STEM professionals and educators, or if you want to discover and contribute to the inclusivity of the Memphis STEM community, this is a first of its kind event in our lifetime to make that connection,” says Rally for Science Memphis spokesman Colin Kietzman.

“The problems we’ve been seeing here in Memphis are not unfamiliar to everyone else. The scientific community and their relationship to the public has been an issue. That’s something we have to work on,” Hantouli says.

KEEPING HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

“People ask me, ‘How can you study what you study without being horribly depressed?’ I think as you work toward the problems, you have to have some optimism that the work you’re doing will provide some positive changes in the future,” says Boyle. “I see that in the students. They know how dire the issues are, but I think they have that optimism to work toward a goal for a better future.”

“We’ve had some good news of late,” says Burnette. “Emissions are not as high. That’s good. That’s buying us a little bit more time. That’s the encouraging thing. I try to look at it from an optimistic point of view. It’s certainly not too late, and that’s not just optimism talking. But the problem is, the longer we wait, the correction is going to have to be much more draconian to fix the problem. That’s the reason why I wish a certain group would stop arguing about the science and start talking about policy.”

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Strickland Pondering City Action on Aquifier Dispute

CREDIT: JB

JB

The Sierra Club ‘s Banbury and Mayor Strickland (seated) at recent Water Board hearing

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland is researching local water-permit procedures with an eye toward giving the city some power of approval over future permits — and simultaneously to ascertain the city’s wherewithal under existing rules.

Strickland, an opponent of TVA’s plan to use water from the Memphis sand aquifer, source of the Memphis area’s drinking water, to cool a new power plant, had prepared to speak at the Shelby County Water Quality Control Board’s meeting two weeks ago in which the Sierra Club’s appeal of well-drilling permits for TVA was unanimously rejected. But he was informed the night before that the Board meeting, chaired by special presiding officer Bob McLean, was “not a public hearing” but a judicial one with strictly formalistic rules.

The Mayor was allowed to attend the hearing but only as a spectator, along with other members of the audience.

The outcome of that hearing has not sat well with Strickland or with other local public officials, including state Senators Lee Harris, a Democrat, and Brian Kelsey, a Republican, who oppose the drilling and have announced plans for bipartisan action to hash out the matter publicly.

And a freshly incorporated Protect Our Aquifer organization, including the Sierra Club, whose members regard the TVA drilling as potentially contaminating to the Aquifier water supply and whose appeal had prompted the Water Board hearing, plans to challenge the board’s decision in Chancery Court.

Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator for the Sierra Club in Tennessee, plans also to suggest to the Shelby County Commission new and stricter rules for granting well permits, including more advance public notice regarding applications.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Wellspring Politics in Memphis

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As Scott Banbury, the indefatigable conservation program coordinator for the Sierra Club, has it, the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board is an honorable and capable enough group, comprised of business people, conservationists, public officials, and just plain citizens, but up until now it hasn’t wielded the clout that the county’s Land Use Control Board, in theory, an equivalently purposed and composed group, has.

The difference undoubtedly lies in the fact that the latter group is, with reasonable frequency, asked to judge on zoning matters relating to commercial or residential developments, while issues relating to groundwater control are correspondingly rare and hardly ever regarded as so momentous.

All that is due to change next Wednesday, November 30th, when the Groundwater Control Board meets at Shelby Farms [9 a.m. at the Construction Code Enforcement Office, 6465 Mullins Station Road] to hold a hearing on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s intent to drill two new wells into the natural Memphis sand aquifier that is the source of the famously pure drinking water available to Memphis-area citizens via MLGW.

Public reaction against that intent has not yet reached the intense 24/7 focus of previous (and ongoing) Save the Greensward efforts, but, to judge by the turnout at a Protect the Aquifier meeting Sunday at the Abe Goodman Golf Clubhouse at Overton Park, one of several recent meetings to protest TVA’s plan, it’s quickly rising to that level.

Next week’s hearing with the board is the result of an appeal filed by Banbury back in August when he learned that TVA, without advance public notice and with non-existent fanfare, had issued a supplement to its existing plans for a source of water to cool the operations at a planned new natural gas power plant, one that is set to open in 2018 to replace the old TVA coal-burning plant, which is being phased out because of pollution concerns.

Jackson Baker

Dennis Lynch provides illumination as Scott Banbury reads out the names of Groundwater Control Board members.

The supplement called for a total of five wells to be drilled into the natural sand aquifier. This was an abrupt change from the TVA’s original proposal to use wastewater from the nearby Maxson Wastewater Treatment Plant as its basic coolant. Arguably, nobody would have regarded that original TVA proposal to use wastewater as constituting a problem for Shelby County.

But the TVA began to see the wastewater plan as economically problematic, given what spokespersons for the authority said would be the millions of dollars necessary to spend in detoxifying the wastewater. Accordingly, TVA reversed course after consulting what Banbury describes as a “slim document” from the U.S. Geological Survey concluding that the Memphis aquifier could without undue strain supply the same amount of water for the authority’s purposes.

For the record, that would be around 3.5 million gallons of water a day, an amount that Randy Blevins, who, with Banbury and Ward Archer, conducted Sunday’s meeting, called “preposterous” and dangerous and —  the authority’s protestations notwithstanding — a strain upon the capacity of the aquifier. At Sunday’s meeting, Archer highlighted an additional grievance — that the natural-gas plant being constructed  by TVA was being “over-built” to larger specifications than necessary, apparently for the purpose of selling electricity to geographical areas far outside the immediate service area of the plant.

And, as Banbury demonstrated at some length on Sunday, the TVA wells into the aquifier would be clustered and operating at such levels as possibly to strain the clay walls surrounding the aquifier, inviting seepage into the city’s drinking-water supply of “young” and relatively polluted water from the Mississippi River alluvial basin. (Incidentally, the alluvial basin itself has been suggested by critics of the new TVA plan as an environmentally acceptable source of water for the new plant’s coolant purposes, but, as Banbury noted Sunday, has apparently never been considered that way by TVA.)

In any case, the Shelby County Health Department — which, according to existing county policy, rules on all requests to drill wells into the aquifier — had, by the time Banbury or other citizens at large learned of it, already given approval this year to five separate requests from TVA  for permits to drill as many wells. “As far as I can tell, the approval was done by a single individual,” said Banbury.

The statutory time limit for anyone to appeal such a permit is “within 15 days of its issuance,” said Banbury, who added, “Nobody has ever appealed wells before because there was never any public notice of them.” The time limit for any public questioning had already expired for three of the wells, the permits for which were issued in May, June, and July. It is only the permits for the last two wells, issued in September, that Banbury was able to file a timely appeal against.

And it is that appeal which is to be considered next Wednesday by the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board. The hope for those protesting is that a turn-down by the board not only would abort the two new wells whose permits are still hanging but might cause TVA to reconsider the idea of using the three acquifier wells that have already been drilled but are not yet in operation.

In answer to a question from one of the attendees at Sunday’s meeting, Banbury said it was the hope of the Protect the Aquifier ad hoc group that TVA might be moved to reconsider the idea of using wastewater as a coolant for the new plant, or, failing that, to use water from the Mississippi River alluvial basin.

The three organizers of the ad hoc Sunday meeting at Abe Goodman — Archer, Blevins, and Banbury — urged those attending to contact members of the Groundwater Control Board prior to next Wednesday’s hearing, and to recruit friends and neighbors to the cause. “Protect the Aquifier” T-shirts were on sale Sunday at Abe Goodman.

If that kind of preparation suggests something like a political process, it’s because it is. It’s true grass-roots politics — or perhaps “wellspring politics” is a better name for it — geared not to an election day as such but to a day of reckoning all the same. As Banbury explained, whichever way the hearing goes, the loser — be it the protesting citizens or TVA — is sure to appeal, and the case will likely move on to Chancery Court.

A further political aspect of the protest is that elected officials and public bodies are becoming actively involved in the outcome. Both the Memphis City Council and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen have formally suggested that TVA consider alternatives to its intended aquifier drilling, and the Shelby County Commission, which has the power to alter the rules by which groundwater drilling permits are issued, has indicated it will place that matter on its agenda in the near future.

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News News Blog

Shelby County Commission Wants to Study New Rules for Drilling Wells into Aquifer

TVA is replacing the Allen coal plant (above) with a new gas plant, and they’re looking at drilling wells into the Memphis Sand aquifer to cool that new plant.

The Shelby County Health Department has already issued three permits to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to drill wells into the Memphis Sand aquifer to access cooling water for its new gas-powered Allen Combined Cycle plant.

Two more permits for wells are being considered, but at a Shelby County Commission committee meeting on Wednesday morning, Commissioner Steve Basar asked the Health Department not to issue those permits without coming to the commission first. Basar and Commissioner Heidi Shafer also recommended the formation of a committee that would look at updating the codes for drilling wells into the aquifer — the source of the region’s drinking water.

“What was acceptable 10 to 20 years ago may not be acceptable now. We need to evolve and move on and change the way we’re doing things,” Basar said.

At that meeting, Bob Rogers, manager of the Health Department’s pollution control program, told the commission that current codes say that if a company or resident wants to drill a well and has the proper design and installation plan, the department generally issues a permit. He said there are some restrictions, including a restriction on water use for non-circulating systems, meaning the water is used and discarded.

At issue are the permits TVA has requested to drill into the Memphis Sand aquifer for up to 3.5 million gallons of water per day to cool the new, under-construction gas plant. In 2014, when the TVA approved plans for the Allen Combined Cycle gas plant that will replace the Allen Fossil coal plant in 2018, they said they’d be using wastewater from the nearby Maxson Wastewater Treatment Plant for its cooling water system.

But those plans have turned out to be too expensive, according to a report from TVA, since using wastewater would first require treatment due to pollutants in that water. The TVA looked a few alternatives  — either drilling five wells into the aquifer and pulling water directly from the ground, purchasing potable water from Memphis Light, Gas, & Water (MLGW), or some combination of the two. If potable water is purchased from MLGW, that water would come from both the Memphis Sands and the Fort Pillow aquifers, but the TVA environmental assessment report says MLGW cannot sell the TVA enough water to meet peak demand.

The TVA published a supplemental report on those proposals in April, but the entity did not seek public comment. That’s not required by law, but TVA did seek comments for its original report detailing the options for switching from a coal plant to a gas plant.

Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator for the Tennessee Sierra Club, spoke at the county commission meeting, and he said those new codes should include public notice for drilling permits. 

At a Sierra Club-hosted panel discussion on the issue in August, MLGW President Jerry Collins told the crowd that if TVA had to take water from the aquifer, he’d prefer the entity buy potable water from MLGW rather than pump directly. Either way, it comes out of the aquifer, but Collins said a purchase from MLGW would allow for more oversight.

“That would keep your rates low, and we could monitor how much they’re using. Also, we take out the iron and add phosphate, which makes it much less corrosive,” Collins said at that panel meeting. 

At the Shelby County Commission committee on Wednesday, Tyler Zerwekh, administrator of environmental health services for the Health Department, revealed that the department has issued 25 well permits in the past 12 months, and that includes wells for residential and industrial use. In total, there are 841 quasi-public wells (meaning at least some of the water is for public use) in 641 locations. That does not include wells for residential use.

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TVA Board Approves Retiring Allen Fossil Plant, Replacing with Gas Plant

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

A coal shipment at TVAs Allen Fossil Plant

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board of directors voted to retire Memphis’ Allen Fossil Plant in Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park and replace it with a 1,000 megawatt natural gas plant by December 31st, 2018 at their regular meeting on Thursday morning in Knoxville. The new plant is expected to cost $975 million.

The TVA is under a consent decree from the Environmental Protection Agency to either close the Allen coal plant or install emission controls by that 2018 deadline. Over the past few months, the TVA has been taking public comments on the decision. An Environmental Assessment report studied various options, including replacing Allen’s generation capacity with renewable power sources, such as wind, solar, and biomass.

At the board’s public listening session, several environmentalists spoke about their wishes for the TVA to focus more on wind and solar power.

But TVA president Bill Johnson said, while the TVA hopes to work more with renewables in the future, “we need utility-scale support.” In other words, the TVA wants a more reliable source of generation now, but it may add more renewable generation sources later on.

“If we ever hope to do work with Clean Line, we need to have this plant behind it,” Johnson said.

Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners has proposed the Plains and Eastern Clean Line, a 700-mile overhead direct-current transmission line that would deliver 3,500 megawatts of low-cost wind power from the Great Plains to Tennessee and other areas in the Southeast. It wants to build its energy delivery station in northeast Shelby County. Clean Line is working under a memorandum of understanding with the TVA to study the benefits of how it could be used as a power supply source for its overall grid.

The TVA’s Environmental Assessment suggested a natural gas plant ranging in capacity from 600 to 1,400 megawatts, but the board chose the 1,000 megawatt option.

Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator for the statewide Sierra Club, is calling the move a win because the smaller generation capacity for the gas plant leaves more room for the TVA to work with solar and wind options. Johnson said at the meeting that they plan to diversify their generation portfolio with more renewable options as they become more reliable and cost-effective.

“We can save money, decrease pollution and ensure that the proposed gas plant is used sparingly with strategic investment in key renewable resources, like wind, solar and energy efficiency,” Banbury said. “These twenty-first century solutions to our energy needs will save consumers money while creating good-paying jobs right here in Tennessee.”

The closure will mean a reduction in jobs at the site. The Allen coal plant requires more workers than a natural gas plant will, but TVA’s Ashley Farless has stated that the company will work to shift displaced workers into other jobs with TVA or try to help them find new jobs using the skills they have gained at the TVA. Banbury has previously stated that if the TVA adds more renewable capacity, those displaced workers could take jobs in the wind and solar sectors.

To read more about the TVA’s decision, check out last week’s Memphis Flyer cover story.

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Cover Feature News

Burning Questions for the TVA’s Allen Plant

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

The ads have been appearing in newspapers across Tennessee. They feature the three-pronged blades of a white wind turbine against a blue sky and fluffy clouds juxtaposed with a sinister-looking black-and-white photo of a rusty coal smokestack with the words “Let’s Turn, Not Burn.”

The Sierra Club has been running the ads to urge Tennesseans to contact the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) about its board’s upcoming vote to replace Memphis’ 60-plus-year-old coal-powered Allen Fossil Plant with a natural gas plant.

Environmentalists from the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) say a mix of renewable energy from wind and solar power with a smaller gas plant is the way to go.

But the TVA’s Environmental Assessment, a 150-plus-page report studying multiple options for retiring the aging coal plant in Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park, points to building a new natural gas plant near the coal plant site with an output ranging from 600 to 1,400 megawatts of electricity. The current net capacity of the Allen plant is 750 megawatts.

Another option given consideration would be to continue running the Allen coal plant but only after installing scrubbers designed to control sulfur dioxide emissions and other contaminants.

Either way, TVA has to do something. It’s under an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, to reduce emissions at its coal-fired plants by December 2018. The TVA board will vote on how to meet that agreement on August 21st at its monthly meeting in Knoxville.

Coal Vs. Natural Gas

Just two miles away from T.O. Fuller State Park in South Memphis, which was the first state park open to African Americans, are the three coal-fired units at the Allen Fossil Plant. On a clear day, one can see steam emitting from the long, cylindrical towers.

For years, TVA’s Allen plant has topped the Sierra Club’s “Terrible Ten” list of the worst industrial polluters in Shelby County, due to its emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other air pollutants. Carbon dioxide is one of the primary causes of global warming, and sulfur dioxide contributes to acid rain.

And yet that source of pollution is currently responsible for providing the electricity that powers the homes of Memphis and Shelby County residents, as well as feeding the overall power grid for the multi-state region that the TVA serves. The TVA is a federally owned corporation that provides power to most of Tennessee and portions of Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) buys its power from the TVA.

“The Allen plant has three coal-fired units that put out 4.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. That’s enough to power about 340,000 homes,” said Ashley Farless, a National Environmental Policy Act specialist and the author of TVA’s Environmental Assessment studying options for retiring the Allen plant.

In 2011, the EPA and TVA agreed to resolve a dispute over how parts of the Clean Air Act applied to maintenance and repair activities at the TVA’s coal-fired plants. At the same time, the TVA entered into a judicial consent decree with three environmental groups — the Sierra Club, the National Parks Conservation Association, and Our Children’s Earth Foundation — and the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, and North Carolina, requiring the TVA to reduce emissions across its coal-fired generating system, including retiring some of the coal units.

Justin Fox Burks

Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator for the Tennessee chapter of the Sierra Club, points out the Allen Fossil Plant.

“There was sulfer dioxide raining down in the Smokies, and regulatory costs to other states. Tennessee ended up joining the [consent decree] because our rivers and streams were being impacted by sulfur dioxide,” said Memphis resident Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator for the statewide Sierra Club.

The EPA gave the TVA a deadline of December 2018 to make changes at the Allen plant. Although Banbury opposes a natural gas plant replacing the total output of the Allen plant, he admits that retiring the coal plant is a good move.

“Overall, this is great for Shelby County in terms of removing our largest single stationary source of pollution,” Banbury said. “But it’s Sierra Club’s position that we need to leave all fossil fuels, including gas, in the ground.”

The proposed gas plant would be built near the current Allen plant site, and although environmentalists are opposing that option, a gas plant would meet the EPA requirement of reducing emissions.

Justin Fox Burks

A shipment of coal arrives to feed the Allen Fossil Plant on President’s Island

“There are definite benefits [of natural gas over coal] in terms of air emissions,” Farless said. “We estimate that a gas plant versus the coal plant would reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 11,000 tons per year.”

And Farless says there are other environmental benefits to a natural gas plant located at that site. The proposed gas plant would rely mostly on greywater, recycled wastewater, from the City of Memphis wastewater treatment plant, next to the Allen plant. “We would stop taking water out of McKellar Lake, which sits behind the coal plant. That’s where the influx of water comes from for the [Allen] plant,” Farless said.

They would also be able to use the wastewater treatment plant’s biogas, a renewable fuel produced at such plants, to fuel the new natural gas plant.

“Typically, if there’s not a use for biogas, it gets burned. You may see what looks like an Olympic torch burning at a wastewater treatment plant,” Farless said. “That’s when they’re having to burn it off. We would design this natural gas plant to make use of that fuel and burn it to help fuel the plant.”

However, a natural gas plant would require far fewer employees to run, meaning some Allen Fossil Plant workers would be out of a job.

“It takes fewer permanent full-time employees to run a gas plant,” Farless said. “But the TVA has a very robust human resources department that has historically worked with individuals at plants to either help them find a good fit in another TVA job or provided resources to help them find another good spot using the skills they have acquired with us.”

Eco Options

While natural gas may be better for air pollution than coal, it comes with its own environmental concerns. Chief among those is the fracking that would be required to feed the natural gas plant’s fossil fuel needs. Fracking is a relatively new method of natural gas extraction, which involves injecting high-pressure fluid into a natural gas well to release the gas. “On a climate front, we are rapidly learning about the releases of methane that occur during [fracking] operations,” Banbury said. “Methane going straight into the air is worse for the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, [which is emitted from coal plants]. A lot of scientists are saying that in 30 years, fracking could contribute more to climate problems.”

That’s part of the reason the Sierra Club and SACE have called on the TVA to seriously consider renewable energy as a replacement for some of the Allen coal plant’s output.

“It’s our goal to see the TVA eventually 100-percent reliant on clean energy, but what we’re looking at in the case of the Allen plant is what will work today for the TVA, given its schedule to close Allen by 2018. The TVA needs to keep serving the people in Memphis with reliable electric power,” said John Wilson, director of research for the SACE. “It appears, based on our analysis and the conditions of the Memphis grid, that there is a need for generation at the Allen site. That said, we don’t think they need to fully replace the coal units at Allen with natural gas. We think partial replacement with natural gas complemented with renewables is feasible.” The TVA didn’t ignore renewables in its assessment. Multiple renewable options were studied, including replacing the Allen plant with a wind or solar plant in Memphis, relying solely on purchasing wind power from southwest wind farms, or converting the Allen plant to run on renewable biomass fuel. But only the natural gas plant replacement was given serious consideration in the report. The reason? Cost and time. The report states that building a wind or solar facility in Memphis to replace Allen was not a viable option “because of capital cost, the required amount of land, and system operation issues,” and because the timeframe to complete the project “would be 8 to 10 years,” which would fall past the 2018 EPA deadline. Similar concerns were raised about the other renewable options studied.

But environmentalists say the TVA is looking at renewables the wrong way. The report only studied what it would take to have solar or wind completely replace the Allen plant’s output.

Justin Fox Burks

Sierra Club Chickasaw’s Environmental Justice Coordinator, Rita Harris

“They looked at renewable options separately, but we’re looking at a mix, some wind and some solar working together in significant amounts,” said Sierra Club Chickasaw Group’s Environmental Justice Coordinator Rita Harris. “There’s not a proposal on the table right now that looks at a mix of renewables, and that’s what we’re trying to push the TVA toward.”

Wilson of SACE says the answer lies in replacing Allen’s output not with a single facility that generates just solar power or just wind power but with a mix of natural gas, wind, and solar.

The TVA is no stranger to renewable energy. A small percentage — 2.5 percent — of its overall power mix comes from wind, solar, and biomass, and 13.2 percent comes from hydro from the Tennessee River. TVA ranks in the top 10 utility leaders nationally for green power sales with its Green Power Switch program, through which customers can add a small fee to their utility bills to purchase power generated from solar, wind, and biomass.

But a much larger portion of TVA’s power still comes from fossil fuels and nuclear power. Coal generates 38 percent of that power, gas accounts for 8 percent, and nuclear power accounts for 31.7 percent.

“We’ve done a lot of work with renewables, and we’re looking to continue working with renewables. But for cities like Memphis, our largest customer, we have to have a baseline power here that’s 100-percent reliable. That’s why we have to look at a natural gas plant,” said TVA spokesperson Chris Stanley.

But the SACE believes there’s another answer. The environmental group did its own study and found that rather than replacing the Allen plant, which produces a net capacity of 750 megawatts of electricity, with a natural gas plant that could produce up to 1,400 megawatts, it could instead build a smaller gas plant that produces 800 megawatts, and then rely on solar for 750 megawatts and wind for 500 megawatts.

Although the TVA isn’t sure yet the final capacity for a proposed gas plant, it’s considering building something with a larger capacity than Allen currently produces to meet future needs. But the SACE believes the TVA could meet that future demand with solar farms built around Memphis and wind purchased from wind farms elsewhere.

The Wind and the Sun

Shelby County may not be the best location for generating wind power, but one thing the region does have, with its infamous scorching summers, is sunlight. And Memphis is rich with brownfield sites, land previously used for industrial purposes that may be too hazardous to build on. The SACE is proposing that solar farms be built on those brownfield sites. With Memphis’ “distribution hub” status, the county also has an abundance of warehouse rooftop space, and Harris believes small solar installations on those rooftops could also feed solar power generation capacity for the TVA. ”I would like to see the TVA spend time looking at rooftop space and figure out how many warehouse roofs and government buildings we have. To me, that’s the low-hanging fruit,” Harris said. “That could be the beginning of a plan for a mix of energy, rather than just relying on gas.” In doing such a study, she believes the TVA could take a few pointers from another ongoing project, the Memphis Bioworks Civic Solar project. Memphis Bioworks is currently raising funds on the public project crowd-funding site ioby.org to study rooftop space on city-owned buildings for solar-producing potential.

The TVA has limited Memphis Civic Solar to producing just enough energy to power city buildings, so it wouldn’t be a viable option for adding to the power mix for Memphis. But Harris and Banbury pointed to it as an example of an energy project moving in the right direction.

At press time, Memphis Civic Solar has raised $9,475 of its $15,280 goal for the project’s initial analysis. Once that study is complete, a private investor has pledged to pay to install 1.5 megawatts of solar energy spread across rooftops of 30 city-owned buildings. Allan Daisley, director of entrepreneurship and sustainability for Memphis Bioworks, said they’re currently awaiting the city’s approval for the project.

“This will show the rest of the country that Memphis is forward-thinking in doing projects like this,” Daisley said. “We’re also using this as an opportunity to create jobs and train people in solar technology to put them back to work.”

Banbury believes those “green job” opportunities are also something the TVA could learn from. Since the Sierra Club’s “Let’s Turn, Not Burn.” ads began running in newspapers, Banbury and Harris have been receiving calls from workers at the TVA’s Allen plant, concerned that the club’s stance on a renewable option would further reduce the available jobs. But Banbury said if the TVA would add more solar to its power mix, there would be green jobs for local workers who may be displaced from Allen.

“[The workers who called] said they wanted some continued operation at the Allen site to provide jobs, even though it’s a third as many jobs. So I talked to them about opportunities as electrical engineers installing and patching solar panels,” Banbury said.

As for wind power, the TVA’s answer may lie in the Great Plains. Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners has proposed the Plains and Eastern Clean Line, a 700-mile overhead direct-current transmission line that would deliver 3,500 megawatts of low-cost wind power from the Great Plains to Tennessee and other areas in the Southeast. It wants to build its energy delivery station in northeast Shelby County.

“We’re really excited about the location for that facility, and we’ve gotten great support from Shelby County and the city of Memphis,” said Mario Hurtado, executive vice-president of Clean Line Energy.

Clean Line is working under a memorandum of understanding with the TVA to study the benefits of how it could be used as a power supply source for its overall grid. But even though the TVA is working with Clean Line, the TVA’s spokesperson Chris Stanley said the Plains and Eastern Clean Line wasn’t considered as a replacement for the Allen plant for one major reason — the timeline.

Although Clean Line has a goal of being in service by 2018, Stanley said, without that goal being a certainty, the TVA couldn’t rely on the project to be ready to replace the Allen plant by the end of 2018.

Even Hurtado admits that relying on that 2018 date for Clean Line is risky. “There is some risk to that date depending on how our permitting process goes,” Hurtado said. “But whatever decision they make for Allen, we think delivery of wind energy to the TVA is going to be a good option. The price will be very competitive, and it will also be very reliable.”

The TVA took public comments until August 5th on the proposals for replacing the Allen plant, and many of those comments came from environmentalists pushing the solar and wind mix. On August 21st, the TVA’s board will make the final call. The Environmental Assessment Farless completed for TVA recommends the natural gas plant as the best option, but board members could choose to install scrubbers and leave the Allen plant in operation. Or, as Banbury and Harris hope, they could consider the opinions of environmental activists and look toward a more eco-friendly renewable option.

“We’re not doing anything to help reduce climate change by switching to natural gas,” Harris said. “I believe in people power, and if we can get the community pushing [renewables], maybe it will nudge [the TVA] to the point of investing more resources into trying to make this work.”