'An Issue of Legacy': Groups Demand TVA Drop Plans to Build New Gas Plant and Pipeline

A coalition of more than 100 environmental advocacy groups on Wednesday urged the Biden administration to take executive action to stop the Tennessee Valley Authority from building a new fossil gas plant and pipeline to replace a key coal-fired facility.

The TVA, which serves around 10 million people in seven states, announced last October that it would replace its aging coal-fired plant in Cumberland City, Tennessee. Generating enough electricity to power more than a million homes each year, Cumberland is the TVA's largest coal-fired plant. Closing it is part of the agency's plan to shutter all five of its coal-fired facilities by 2035.

"The EPA can either use its legal power to advance the clean energy economy or, given the alternative of no action, can needlessly sign off on dangerous fossil fuel expansion."

To replace Cumberland, TVA plans to build a fossil gas plant in Stewart County that will be supplied by a 32-mile fracked gas pipeline running through three Tennessee counties. Pipeline builder Kinder Morgan has a lengthy history of leaks, pollution, labor violations, and other offenses against the public and nature. Many local residents warily recall a 1992 pipeline explosion that injured five people and burned 400 acres of land less than a mile from the proposed pipeline's route.

The 112 groups argued in a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and a trio of White House advisers that Section 309 of the Clean Air Act stipulates that if the EPA chief "determines that any such legislation, action, or regulation is unsatisfactory from the standpoint of public health or welfare or environmental quality, he shall publish his determination and the matter shall be referred to the Council on Environmental Quality."

Therefore, the letter's signatories want the EPA to refer TVA's proposed plant and pipeline to the council, which is part of the Executive Office of the President.

"This is a matter in which the Biden administration has power—and no required 50th Senate vote as a roadblock—to make good on its promises to tackle the global climate emergency," the letter argues. "It is an issue of legacy where the EPA can either use its legal power to advance the clean energy economy or, given the alternative of no action, can needlessly sign off on dangerous fossil fuel expansion."

According to the watchdog group Revolving Door Project:

The decision to replace two TVA coal plants with a new gas plant and pipeline was made by TVA CEO Jeff Lyash, who was a fossil fuel CEO for 17 years before joining the TVA. Under his leadership, Duke Energy leaked toxic chemicals into the sole source of drinking water for nearly one million North Carolina residents. Lyash's TVA still generates 21% of its energy from coal and 26% from methane gas. It projects that it will emit over 34 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2038.

"The enormous response to this letter from the TVA's own customers, and across the country, shows that Jeff Lyash does not have anything like a popular mandate to expand fossil fuels at the TVA," Revolving Door Project climate research director Dorothy Slater said in a statement. "Administrator Regan needs to step up and faithfully execute the laws, as is his mandate."

TVA is a federally owned electric utility established by Congress 90 years ago during Democratic then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs aimed at tackling the Great Depression. Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, it is the nation's sixth-largest power supplier.