Tag: TVA wells in Memphis

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News News Blog

New Rules on Deck for Drilling Wells, Protecting Water

CREDIT: Corey Owens/Greater Memphis Chamber

Tennessee Valley Authority

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

Changes could be ahead for the way wells are permitted in Shelby County — changes intended, in part, to help protect the area’s drinking water.

The Shelby County Groundwater Control Board (SCGCB) has been working on updates to its permit process for months. The move to review the rules came after a controversy over some wells arose in 2016.

The board and the Shelby County Health Department approved five well permits for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 2016. TVA hoped to pump 3.5 million gallons daily from the Memphis Sand Aquifer — the source of the area’s pristine drinking water — to cool a new energy plant here.

Protect Our Aquifer, a local advocacy group, and the local branch of the Sierra Club tried to appeal two permits issued by the board and the health department. The board denied the appeal. The groups filed a lawsuit on the matter but it was dismissed.

Corey Owens/Greater Memphis Chamber

All of it, though, raised public awareness about the wells, TVA’s plan, and the local permit process.

Public comment on the permitting process ended this week. Officials with the health department are now compiling those comments for review by the public and the members of the water control board. The board will vote on the new rules in the coming weeks.

Some of the major changes in the rules include new classifications for different types of wells (depending on how much a user intends to draw from them), siting guidelines for new wells, and limits on water use.

For example, one proposal would broaden a rule that said water pumped from only certain types of wells would be limited to “reasonable use” to include “any water well.”

Big changes could come to the way that large wells — like the ones TVA drilled — are permitted. Permits approved by the health department would be automatically appealed to the ground water board for a hearing.

Notice of those hearings would follow the same rules as many elected bodies. Notice of the hearing and information about the well to be reviewed would be published in newspapers, the Shelby County website, and it would be emailed to interested parties. The public would be invited to speak at the hearings.

Well permits would only be approved by the board if the applicant can prove that the local, public water supplier “is unable or unwilling to supply the amount of water required by the applicant.”

The applicant would also have to hire experts to prove that alternative sources of water aren’t suitable because of its chemical makeup or because there’s not enough of it.

Recently, the TVA decided to buy water from Memphis Light, Gas & Water instead of pumping water from its five wells. A coal ash pond about a half of a mile from those wells is leaking toxins into groundwater. Some fear running the wells would pull those contaminants into the area’s drinking water.

A proposed rule change says, “the proposed well will not accelerate or enhance the migration of a known source of contamination into the aquifer.”

Tennessee Valley Authority

The depth and amount of the contamination, according to the TVA investigation.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Kelsey, Harris File Legislation to Regulate Future Water Policy in West Tennessee (UPDATED)

CREDIT: JB

UPDATE: (Bill would not directly affect already approved applications like proposed new TVA wells, though ongoing lawsuit from Sierra Club and Protect Our Aquifer might.)

Though currently approved projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan for operating five wells to draw water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer won’t be affected, a piece of legislation filed by two Shelby County legislators could substantially affect future water policy locally.
JB

Senators Lee Harris (l), Brian Kelsey

State Senators Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Lee Harris (D-Memphis) have filed a bill that would establish a Memphis Sand Aquifer Regional Development board with approval powers over any pumping of more than 10,000 gallons of water from the aquifer, source of the Memphis area’s drinking water.

A TVA plan to drill into the aquifer via five new wells has been sanctioned by the Shelby County Water Quality Control Board but is still opposed by a group of environmentally minded citizens, who are concerned about possible leak-through contamination of the aquifer, among other issues.

The expressed purpose of the TVA drilling is to obtain some 3.5 million gallons of water daily from the aquifer to serve as coolant for the Authority’s forthcoming natural-gas power plant. Though the bill presented by Kelsey and Harris will not offset the Shelby County Water Control Board’s previous approval of that project, it was directly inspired by environmental concerns and would impose stringent new conditions for any future such proposals.

And a current lawsuit filed in Chancery Court by The Sierra Club and the Protect Our Aquifer nonprofit group challenges the Water Quality Board’s action and offers a possible means of reversing TVA’s license to pursue with its aquifer-drilling project.

As Ward Archer, founder of Protect Our Aquifer, explains in a memo to the Flyer:

“On February 1, 2017, Protect Our Aquifer, along with the Sierra Club, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in Shelby County Chancery Court seeking judicial review of the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board’s decision upholding the issuance of well permits to TVA to draw potable water directly from our Memphis Sand Aquifer.

“The case was assigned to Chancellor Jim Kyle. On February 9, 2017, Chancellor Kyle signed an order instructing the clerk of the court to issue the writ requiring the board to submit the record from the administrative proceeding to the court within thirty days.

“This is the first step in the appeal process.”

The petition from Sierra Club and Protect Our Aquifer can be accessed here:

[pdf-1]
And here is the news release announcing the Kelsey/Harris bill:

(NASHVILLE), February 14, 2017 — State Senators Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Lee Harris (D-Memphis) have filed legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly setting up a Memphis Sands Aquifer Regional Development Board to protect water supplies in West Tennessee. Senate Bill 776 also requires board approval to pump more than 10,000 gallons of water from the aquifer to ensure its long-term viability.

It is sponsored by Rep. Ron Lollar (R-Bartlett) and Rep. Curtis Halford (R-Dyer) in the House of Representatives.

“Clean drinking water is very important to our citizens and our future,” said Sen. Kelsey. “This legislation aims to ensure the aquifer remains a clean and reliable source for future generations.”

The action follows approval given to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to pump approximately 3.5 million gallons of aquifer water each day to cool its new power-generating plant in Southwest Memphis, a move which is deemed controversial by some scientists and environmentalists.

Under the bill, the board would have all of the powers, rights, and privileges necessary to manage, conserve, preserve, and protect the aquifer, and to increase the recharge of, and prevent the waste or pollution in, the aquifer. The nine-member board would be fairly comprised of the mayors of Shelby and two other West Tennessee counties overlying the aquifer. The governor would appoint the remaining members with two from the agricultural community, two from commerce, and two from the environmental/research community.

“This board would also help ensure that the flow of rain and water into the aquifer prevents pollution and waste,” Kelsey added. “I believe this legislation provides a well-balanced approach to ensure the aquifer is protected for many years to come.”

In addition, Senate Bill 886, sponsored by Harris and Kelsey, requires anyone planning to drill a well to give at least 14 days advance notice to the state commissioner of the Department of Environment and Conservation with the notice published on department’s website. Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), Rep. Lollar and Rep. Halford are sponsoring the bill in the House of Representatives.

Senator Harris said, “Everyone should know that our aquifer makes West Tennessee a very special place, as compared with other areas of the country. We need to work to preserve that asset. We know that there’s enough drinking water for today’s generation, but that’s not the worry. We want to make sure that the aquifer is preserved for future generations. That means we need to be careful with respect to the precedents we set today, since those precedents have a funny way to leading to negative consequences later. Because this aquifer is so special, we also want to do what we can to make sure that the public knows what’s happening with it and how it’s being utilized. When there are proposals to use that resource, we need to have a serious conversation with the public, and sometimes we need to be able to modify or even reject some of these uses.”

The water stored in the Memphis sand aquifer, which is also known as the Middle Claiborne, first fell as rain 332 BC. It covers 7,500 miles in portions of seven states, including 20 West Tennessee counties. Although aquifers are used for drinking water by more than 100 million Americans, Kelsey said the quality of the Memphis aquifer is unsurpassed.

The bill itself (SB0776/HB0816) may be seen here:

[pdf-2]

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Buddy System

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In both our editorial and in this week’s cover story there are a few oblique references to a phenomenon that seems to be on the rise, in Nashville as well as in Washington. And that is an increased readiness of elected public officials to shake somewhat loose from their ideological preoccupations and habits of gridlock — long enough, anyhow, to work effectively to the public good across party lines.

A first-class example of this is the recent joining together for a worthy purpose of two local state senators, each with some claim to political prominence and each with a past record of intense partisan loyalty.

It is still too early to determine just what concrete results might be achieved from the joint efforts of Senator Lee Harris, a Memphis Democrat, and Senator Brian Kelsey, a Germantown Republican, in publicly challenging the intentions of the Tennessee Valley Authority to employ five newly constructed wells in siphoning off from three to five million gallons of water a day from the Memphis Sand aquifer.

TVA’s stated purpose with the wells is to use the water pumped up from the aquifer to cool the machinery of their soon-to-be natural-gas power plant on President’s Island, currently under construction and slated to go online in 2018, replacing the authority’s existing coal-powered plant.

Environmentally knowledgeable citizens, like Ward Archer of the ad hoc Protect Our Aquifer organization and Scott Banbury of the Sierra Club, have been waging a campaign of resistance to TVA’s plans, warning of posssible damage to the clay layers surrounding the aquifer and potential contamination of its contents, the famously pure Memphis drinking water.

They, aided by experts like Brian Waldron, director of the Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research (CAESER) at the University of Memphis, have done their best to make sure that such possible consequences are recognized and taken into account, and have argued that TVA has several alternative sources for its cooling water, all readily at hand — in the Mississippi River, in a nearby alluvial basin, and from the Maxson Wastewater Treatment plant.

And TVA also has the option of purchasing the water it needs directly from MLGW. Arguing that all of these methods would be costlier than drilling water directly from the Sand aquifer, TVA has plugged on with its plans and won approval to do so from the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board, which levied its judgment not on the pros and cons of the matter but essentially on whether TVA had gone through the right protocols in applying for its drilling permits.

Enter Harris and Kelsey, who joined such other public officials as Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, in calling for TVA to take no chances with the Memphis aquifer and to pursue one of the other aforementioned options to secure its coolant water.

Harris and Kelsey did more than merely protest; they led a pilgrimage of local media last week to several of the local sources relevant to the TVA/aquifer controversy, including an MLGW water-processing plant, the site of one of the newly drilled wells, and the TVA’s naural-gas facility, nearing completion.

At the latter site, Kelsey noted for the attendant media that the new TVA plant would be “a great thing,” given its ability to operate without the gross air pollutants produced by the coal-operated plant it will replace. But, he warned, the gains in environmental safety could be offset by a “bad thing,” the danger of contamination to the source of Memphis drinking water, should TVA follow through on its plans for drilling into the Sand aquifer.

As Kelsey put it earlier, succinctly, “There’s no point in trading bad air for bad water.”

Even those in the environmental movement who had mistrusted some of Kelsey’s other political positions as being overly conservative are grateful for his intercession, and for his active ad hoc alliance with Harris, a political opposite number in every sense. The two of them together are using a bully pulpit to make their concerns known, and it remains to be seen what the results of that will be.

And, given his political connections and concerns about pollution, Kelsey might well be a source of corrective advice for the Trump administration, which, according to a news item last week, has the option of making enough new appointments to the TVA board this year to form a governing majority on it.

According to sources, the new administration is said to favor TVA’s continuing with coal-burning plants. Memphis has moved beyond that stage, but other sites in TVA’s coverage area haven’t.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

TVA Wells

On Wednesday morning of this week, a meeting of true moment for Memphis-area residents was scheduled to be held in the county-government complex on Mullins Station Road in Shelby Farms. The purpose of the meeting, at the Construction Code Enforcement Office building, was for the Shelby County Water Quality Control Board to hear an appeal by Scott Banbury of the Sierra Club of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s intent to drill two wells into the Memphis Sand aquifer.

However the Board should rule on this, one of the two entities contending in the matter — either TVA or the members of the local environmentalist movement associated with Banbury — will be certain to appeal the finding. So the saga will continue until some kind of ultimate resolution is achieved.

That being the case, our point here is to regret that the ground rules for Wednesday’s hearing were unduly restrictive, in that the meeting, at TVA’s request, was not to be held under the Tennessee Administrative Procedures Act, which would have allowed the appellants the right of discovery and the ability to subpoena witnesses. Moreover, the appellants were denied in their request for a modest continuance so as to allow several of their pre-arranged expert witnesses to return from a professional meeting that was being held in Ecuador this week.

The circumstances of the hearing were thus not ideal for either a full presentation of facts nor a sense of what we see as a clearly mounting community sentiment questioning TVA’s intent to use water from the aquifer to cool its forthcoming natural-gas power plant. At issue is whether TVA’s plans are a) unnecessary in light of other available coolant possibilities and b) possibly hazardous to the aquifer’s supply of famously pure drinking water. 

Both matters go way beyond mere legalistic concerns and deserve the fullest possible even-handed public vetting. We trust that such will be allowed to take place.

 

The Recounts

While we have made our peace with the presidential-election results and don’t foresee any likelihood of overturning them, we find no harm in the ongoing efforts by the Green Party’s Jill Stein and others on behalf of official recounts in three key Midwestern states where the vote outcome was unusually close.

Given the anomaly of a relatively large popular-vote margin — 2.2 million and growing — for defeated candidate Hillary Clinton over electoral-vote winner Donald Trump, the need for the fullest possible accounting is both obvious and, as we see it, necessary to put to rest the ongoing doubts and recriminations. 

That President-elect Trump does not see things in that light and has resorted to ill-tempered and ad hominem tweets against the recount process is, we think, unfortunate and likely to further the sense of political divisiveness in the country. We can only hope that whoever it was in the Trump campaign that got temporary control of the candidate’s tweeting finger in the last stages of the presidential campaign can now prevail on the president-elect to cease and desist in his objections until the counting is over and done. That’s in his interest, too.