Seven States Press TVA To Clean Up Its Coal-Fired Power Plants

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON, DC, June 7, 2004 (ENS) – Attorneys general from seven states urged President George W. Bush on Friday to immediately require the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to install modern pollution controls at its 11 coal-fired power plants. A federal corporation and regional development agency, the TVA is the nation’s largest public power company.

The attorneys general called on the President to act because efforts to "remedy significant, on-going violations of the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review requirements" have failed and the subsequent pollution is harming public health and the environment.

"TVA is one of the nation’s largest air polluters and its emissions degrade air quality throughout the eastern and mid-western United States," said the attorneys general of Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. All these states are outside of the TVA's service area and do not receive electricity generated by the power plants at issue.

EDIT

As the Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned power company, the EPA believed it did not have the authority to take the federal entity to court and instead issued an administrative compliance order and brought the power company in front of the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board. The board said "TVA’s view of the breadth of the exception would swallow the rule that subjects existing sources to the requirement to install modern pollution controls when physical changes that increase emissions are made to these plants." Tne TVA refused to comply with the order to install new pollution controls and challenged the agency in federal court."

EDIT

http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=32362

[phantom power]

1. maybe this effort will

highlight for people how badly environmental regs have been gutted.

[NNadir]

2. Well, upgrades would be a start, but one really can't "clean up" coal.

We should be thinking of how to phase coal out, not how to clean it up.