TVA’s Shift from Empowering Communities to Seizing Farmlands
Tracy O’Neill and Chris Carnevale | September 12, 2024
| Fossil Gasoline, Tennessee, Utilities
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was based in the course of the Nice Despair to carry inexpensive electrical energy and financial uplift to rural communities. Nonetheless, in recent times, TVA has shifted its focus in the direction of methane fuel vegetation, sacrificing its authentic mission in pursuit of revenue.
The proposed methane fuel plant in Cheatham County highlights TVA’s disregard for native communities, as they push ahead with environmentally dangerous tasks and aggressive land acquisition techniques, threatening the very individuals the utility was created to serve.
TVA was not only a energy utility; it was a lifeline for the agricultural communities within the Valley, a logo of American resilience and ingenuity.
The Nice Despair looks like eons in the past, however it actually wasn’t all that way back. A few of our mother and father and grandparents lived by it, and it was one of many hardest eras within the Tennessee Valley’s historical past. Amidst this hardship, TVA was born as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933. TVA’s mission was clear and noble: to enhance the standard of life for the area’s inhabitants by flood management, reforestation, and the technology of inexpensive electrical energy for rural communities. TVA introduced mild the place there was darkness, hope the place there was despair, and progress the place there was stagnation. For many years, TVA remained a beacon of public service, reworking the Tennessee Valley right into a thriving and electrified area. It constructed dams, managed flooding, and introduced energy to 1000’s of farms, properties and households.
Nonetheless, over time, TVA has strayed from this authentic mission. At present, it’s the largest public energy utility in america, and its priorities have shifted. TVA is now closely targeted on the event of methane fuel vegetation, a transfer incentivized by the multi-million greenback wage buildings of its executives. The proposed 900 megawatt methane fuel plant on a farm in Cheatham County is a stark instance of this shift.
This shift comes with vital environmental and social prices: methane fuel vegetation emit dangerous pollution, contribute to local weather change, and sometimes disproportionately impression low-wealth communities and communities of shade.
Secrecy-Shrouded Planning Course of
TVA quietly bought the 286-acre farm in rural Cheatham County the place it plans to construct the fuel plant in the course of the pandemic when everybody was preoccupied with the novel menace of Covid-19. The world is predominantly agricultural, and the property bought by TVA is zoned agricultural. When phrase received out that TVA purchased the farm, the county mayor was stonewalled when in search of solutions. The one response he might get from TVA was the location could be for “future use” and certain some form of photo voltaic assist.
Three years later, TVA printed the primary publicly accessible details about its intention to construct a 75 acre methane fuel plant in an obscure announcement within the Federal Register, which is a publication by the Nationwide Archives and Information Administration (NARA). Though this can be a public doc, it’s not one thing most of the people – or any neighborhood members – would typicall observe to see the publication. Not one individual from TVA reached out to the County Mayor, members of the County Fee, and even adjoining and adjoining landowners to tell them of their plans to construct the plant. Neighbors and area people members discovered of TVA’s plans by a non-profit environmental group, not from TVA, solely days earlier than TVA held the primary public assembly in regards to the venture. Including to the secrecy, TVA didn’t disclose the bodily location of the property within the Federal Register announcement, merely saying it will be on “TVA owned property” in Ashland Metropolis, “alongside Sycamore Creek,” and many individuals assumed it was close to the dam at Cheatham Lake (the Cheatham County dam is owned and operated by the US Military Corps of Engineers, not TVA).
TVA unveiled its fuel plans for the county at a public open home in Ashland Metropolis on June 21, 2023, at a gathering area the place they anticipated attendance of 25 neighborhood members. TVA proclaims they need public engagement. They declare they worth and think about the opinions and feedback from most of the people, but their open home assembly was scheduled to happen after the remark interval would shut.
The variety of attendees at that June 21 assembly varies relying who you discuss to, however it’s estimated that over 300 individuals confirmed up. The room was lined like a cattle corral with skilled poster board displays and specialised specialists, and the place was packed wall to wall with involved residents making an attempt to get solutions. There was a seemingly limitless line snaking across the parking zone with extra ready to get in.
Cheatham Group Overcomes TVA’s Roadblocks To Participation
Shortly after the open home, dozens of neighborhood members met and commenced organizing a area people group now often called Protect Cheatham County, which grew to over 2,000 members inside a 12 months. Group members rapidly mobilized towards the menace and labored with native officers to move a Cheatham County decision opposing the methane fuel plant and the associated pipeline and demanding an extension of the remark interval. Only a few within the Cheatham County neighborhood knew what NEPA (Nationwide Environmental Safety Act) was, what a remark interval was, what a scoping report was, what an EIS (environmental impression assertion) was. This was all new and horrific and fairly frankly, offensive that TVA merely got here right into a neighborhood, with none warning, with none communication to native elected officers, with none regard to native zoning, and is making an attempt to do no matter they need.
Extra Questions Than Solutions
The June 21 open home resulted in way more questions than solutions, and neighborhood members demanded the TVA return for a public city corridor to straight face the neighborhood. After months of negotiation, they agreed to return, and TVA secured the Cheatham County Center Faculty for the city corridor on February 13, 2024. Organizers with Protect Cheatham County urged TVA to make sure a format that was inclusive and allowed neighborhood members to ask questions and obtain solutions in actual time. As soon as once more, TVA underestimated the priority and blocked off half of the gymnasium for poster boards as an alternative of members, leaving dozens of residents standing towards the wall and sitting on the ground.
TVA Urgent Forward, Brushing Off Group Considerations
After all of the opposition and all of TVA’s assurances that county members are being heard, just some months later, TVA is pressuring landowners with threats of condemnation to entry personal property for area surveys for as much as 45 miles of latest excessive voltage transmission strains to assist the brand new methane fuel plant, signing secret offers to contract out miles of latest fuel pipelines, and planning to commandeer much more farmland for entry roads and development pathways. Within the TVA Board of Administrators assembly in Florence, AL final month, they even introduced plans to buy generators for the plant earlier than doing due diligence in contemplating alternate options, conducting environmental evaluations, or formally approving the plant. Landowners who’ve resisted TVA’s badgering for property entry are actually being sued in Federal Court docket. This aggressive method utterly disregards the issues and opposition of native residents. It not solely threatens the atmosphere, but in addition undermines the very communities the TVA was created to serve.
Ratepayers Bear The Prices
Vitality technology is undeniably complicated, however the monetary burden of the proposed multi-billion-dollar, decades-long methane fuel growth is positioned straight on the backs of the individuals. Each month, ratepayers are footing the invoice. Just lately, TVA’s Board of Administrators accepted two consecutive fee hikes inside a single 12 months to assist cowl the huge bills of their fuel plant expansions. This speedy push for extra methane fuel vegetation unfairly shifts monumental monetary dangers onto ratepayers, resulting in increased utility payments and locking in many years of air pollution. In the meantime TVA’s place in recent times has been blocking clients from reducing their payments by rooftop photo voltaic, rejecting shopping for extremely low value clear wind vitality, and constantly lagging in deployment of low value photo voltaic vitality. It is a far cry from the TVA’s authentic mission of offering inexpensive electrical energy to rural communities.
The TVA’s antiquated bias towards methane fuel poses vital environmental dangers. We all know methane, the primary part of methane fuel, is a potent greenhouse fuel, and its manufacturing and use contribute to local weather change. The environmental degradation attributable to these vegetation, together with upstream contamination the place the fuel is fracked and transported, will increase air, water and soil air pollution, and additional harms the communities that the TVA was meant to guard.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, as a part of the federal authorities, is the President’s flagship utility. As an alternative of destroying farmlands and greenspaces and pocketing the earnings from these dangerous tasks, TVA needs to be investing in rooftop and neighborhood photo voltaic, pursuing distributed vitality sources, and aiding rural communities with agrivoltaics. By integrating solar energy with agricultural actions, TVA can assist native economies like Cheatham County, promote vitality independence, and shield the atmosphere, all whereas staying true to its foundational objectives.
These sustainable vitality options can be found now. They’re dependable now. They’re resilient now. And so they’re inexpensive now.
Not solely would renewables scale back environmental impacts now, however additionally they higher align with the TVA’s authentic mission: to assist farmers. Simply final 12 months, TVA began turning the tide on vitality effectivity. After years of underinvestment and neglect, TVA introduced a $1.5 billion funding into vitality effectivity over 4 years, which is able to assist spend money on peoples’ properties and companies and decrease their payments. We have to see TVA make these identical sorts of strides on reducing individuals’s vitality prices by renewable and clear vitality.
Not Simply NIMBY
It’s straightforward to label the opposition to the proposed methane fuel plant in Cheatham County as a basic case of “Not In My Yard” (NIMBY). However this struggle isn’t nearly defending native property or preserving the pristine great thing about rural Tennessee. That is about authorities overreach and an abuse of energy by an unregulated monopoly sanctioned by the federal authorities. TVA’s plans in Cheatham County are only one piece of the corporate’s bigger effort to construct the nation’s largest growth of polluting fossil gasoline energy capability in the complete nation this decade.
Altogether, TVA is within the strategy of including eight separate methane fuel vegetation throughout its system whereas on the identical time sluggish strolling photo voltaic vitality that may decrease individuals’s payments and scale back air pollution.
Cheatham County Mayor, Kerry McCarver stated it finest, “There isn’t any manner on earth that the county would ever approve to place one thing like that there. And since they’re TVA, they really feel like they’ll do it and simply push us apart. And I believe tonight, the voice was very loud that we aren’t going to be pushed apart that simply.” And resistance to TVA’s backwards plans isn’t restricted to native residents in Cheatham County. It’s shared by involved residents from throughout the Tennessee Valley. Folks from Memphis to Chattanooga, Knoxville to Huntsville, are talking out towards TVA’s plans – not only for the sake of Cheatham County, however for the way forward for our total area. These communities see the larger image: TVA, a public utility, has a accountability to be good stewards of the land and lead within the clear vitality transition. But, as an alternative of investing in sustainable, renewable vitality sources, TVA is doubling down on dangerous and outdated fossil gasoline tasks. This isn’t only a gamble with the atmosphere – it’s a monetary threat that ratepayers from throughout the Valley should shoulder as evidenced by the 2 current fee will increase accepted by the TVA Board of Administrators.
Folks everywhere in the Tennessee Valley need to see TVA grow to be a clear vitality chief, not a laggard. They need to see their hard-earned cash going towards tasks that construct a sustainable future, not locking them into many years of dependency on extra fossil fuels. The opposition to this fuel plant isn’t nearly Cheatham County – it’s about demanding higher for all of us.
Look To Your Roots
As we replicate on the historical past of energy technology within the Tennessee Valley, it’s vital to recollect the TVA’s roots. TVA was created to serve the individuals, to uplift rural communities, and to guard the atmosphere. It’s time for the TVA to return to those core values, cease the fuel construct out, and to prioritize sustainable and equitable vitality options.
