Come out and offer guidance for TVA’s future direction
The Tennessee Valley Authority first formed as a quasi-Federal agency in 1933. In 1937, President Roosevelt dedicated the Chickamauga Dam, which was completed in 1940. The TVA Act listed needs to address flooding, provide navigability, help farmers with reforestation, fertilizer research, and proper use of marginal lands, seek industrial development, and to provide for the national defense by the creation of a corporation for the operation of Government properties at and near Muscle Shoals, and for other purposes.
It was felt that these steps would improve the deplorable economic situation for the poor, downtrodden people living in this part of the United States during the Depression. TVA bought the existing Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO) system, transferring it to Chattanooga as our local distributor, Electric Power Company (now EPB). EPB still provides local service, as do 153 other distributors across the Tennessee Valley.
Through an economic lens, one could say the TVA experiment has worked. After all, it has supported a larger population coupled with more jobs to deal with the higher demands for services coming from that increased number of citizens. Most people have enough food, clean water, and housing to comfortably live, although many still struggle to pay electric bills.
Looking through an environmental lens, the experiment may have not worked as well. River water is more navigable, but many mussel species no longer exist. Flooding is heavily controlled, but water, polluted with plastics, toxic chemicals, and radiation, is sometimes low on oxygen or too hot. This has impacted ecosystem health. Too, there is degradation from fossil fuels of air, soil, and forests with the bats and other mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, and amphibians, plus all the microbial fungi and bacteria with their complex interrelated systems.
These systems have been interrupted and segmented. While TVA has protected much green space along riverbanks and has reduced coal burning, many forests have been cleared and archeological sites destroyed for dam building, power lines, and electricity generation.
All along the way, citizens have debated TVA’s actions. As an early TVA director said, “TVA is controversial because it is consequential.” For sure! TVA fits that description because few people want to live without electricity and TVA reliably produces most of it. Since TVA provides public power, don’t we get to have input about how it gets to us and what resources are used?
That’s the controversial part. TVA seems to listen less to citizen concerns around ratepayer hikes, energy efficiency, and use of cleaner natural resources. TVA’s latest Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), a guideline for future action, totally demurred on an energy efficiency goal. Energy efficiency translates into lower bills for ratepayers, but TVA has chosen instead to increase its fixed rate fees, so you will pay a higher fee even if you turned everything off and went on vacation.
TVA produced the IRP suggesting several future scenarios. However, because TVA wouldn’t share in-house documents explaining how it came to the conclusions, the public couldn’t tell what assumptions were real when it came to costs. It’s hard to think that energy efficiency or solar generation wouldn’t be a bigger savings long term than the business-as-usual scenario preferred by TVA.
In this climate-constrained world, what is your vision for electricity generation and environmental conservation in the future? Tennessee Valley citizens who have to live with these decisions should have a say. You have an opportunity to join others in communicating a common future energy vision to TVA. On August 13, the Energy Democracy Listening Tour comes to Chattanooga meeting at 6 p.m. at the South Chattanooga Recreation Center, 1151 W. 40th Street.
Tour leader Appalachian Voices wants to hear how you think public power could better serve Valley communities. According to their press release, this free event will highlight energy reform efforts, discuss impacts of the TVA energy system, evaluate decision-making, and present film clips shown on—what else—a solar film projector. Then you can be part of vision creation. Chattanooga visions will be combined with visions from other Valley communities meeting during 10 or more tour stops and eventually shared with TVA.
TVA needs to hear ways to live up to its mission. This is an important and exciting gathering. It will be fun too. I think I’ll wear my old Crosby, Stills & Nash tee shirt I got during a 2012 concert. It came from Musicians United for Safe Energy, (M.U.S.E.), that supports organizations worldwide working to promote safe, alternative, non-nuclear energy. That seems appropriate.
Sandra Kurtz is an environmental community activist, chair of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway Alliance, and is presently working through the Urban Century Institute. You can visit her website to learn more at enviroedu.net