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More TVA fact v. fiction from the TVA PR department at KNS
Submitted by R. Neal on Mon, 2006/03/27 - 3:26pm.
The Knoxville New Sentinel TVA Public Relations Service ran a big article on the front page of the business section yesterday praising everything TVA is doing to keep the air clean and make it cleaner. It is apparently part of an urgent PR blitz in response to North Carolina's recent lawsuit against TVA for being a "public nuisance" because of their air pollution.
First of all, it's puzzling why Bill Baxter and his PR staff at the Knoxville News Sentinel are so defensive about this. It seems more like a publicity stunt by the NC attorney general. Maybe it was a slow news day and Bill Baxter hasn't seen his name in the paper enough lately?
Along with the usual puffery about what TVA is doing to fix the problem, Baxter goes on the offensive, saying that NC should clean up their own act. And, you won't hear us say this very often, but he's right. Duke Power and CPL are just as bad or worse than TVA.
But the problem is that TVA is the Goliath among utilities, and it's operated by the Federal Government. And while the Federal Government may not have enough sense to know better, you would think they have enough money to do better.
According to an analysis by KnoxViews of 30 utilities around the South, TVA generates 20% of the coal-fired electricity and 23% of the nitrous oxide (NOX) emissions, as compared to Duke which generates 9.3% of the power and 7.9% of the NOX pollution and CPL which generates 3.5% of the power and 6.3% of the NOX pollution.
And as far as all the miraculous reductions in pollution Bill Baxter likes to brag about, his PR team at the Knoxville News Sentinel forgot to mention a few facts about performance at some of their plants:
Allen: 27% increase in sulfur dioxide (S02) emissions from 2003 to 2005, 11% increase in NOX emissions from 2004 to 2005, 6% increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 2004 to 2005
Bull Run: 31% increase in SO2 emissions from 2004 to 2005, 44% increase in NOX emissions from 2004-2005, 43% increase in CO2 emissions from 2004 to 2005
Colbert: 16% increase in SO2 emissions from 2004 to 2005, 16 % increase in NOX emissions from 2004 to 2005, 17% increase in CO2 emissions from 2004 to 2005
Shawnee: 4% increase in NOX emissions from 2004 to 2005
The other thing they forgot to mention was that TVA's overall CO2 emissions (a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming) increased 1.5% from 2004 to 2005. At that rate we'll have beachfront property here in the Smoky Mountain foothills in our lifetime. They also forgot to mention that TVA has SO2 emissions controls on only 7 of their 59 boilers, and no NOX emissions controls on 10 of their 59 boilers.
TVA does get credit for doing better on NOX emissions, but it is only because the government has been trying to force them to do so for more than 30 years, and TVA has fought them tooth and nail in the courts the entire time.
And you'll note that they're not doing much on SO2 emissions. That's probably because there currently isn't any real regulation of SO2 emissions. It's mostly a voluntary program based on "cap and trade" schemes which let TVA buy credits from a windmill operator in Wyoming to keep increasing their capacity and the resulting SO2 emissions.
Bill Baxter and his PR staff at the KNS also like to brag about how efficient TVA's fossil plants are. It's not clear how they measure that, but KnoxViews analyzed the pollution generated per megawatt of power for 30 major coal-fired power plant owner/operators around the South. We found that TVA ranked 15th in SO2 efficiency, 19th in NOX efficiency, and 16th in CO2 efficiency.
Of course, Bill Baxter would instruct his PR team at the KNS to remind you that CPL ranks dead last in all those categories. But that's TVA's defense? "We're not as bad as CPL!"?
And incredibly, the Knoxville News Sentinel TVA PR staff even got Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy to go along with the program and pat TVA on the back for all the great things they are doing. Has Smith gone over to the dark side?
So, while we appreciate TVAKNSPR's efforts to "inform" us and put things in "perspective," we keep wondering when they will report any other side of the story, or maybe even go out and find some facts on their own instead of relying on summarized talking points from the faxes they receive on their TVA Batphone.
We wonder when they will run an editorial asking why the Federal Government doesn't just throw $18 or $20 billion at the problem and fix it instead of wasting more time suing each other while kids and old people and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are getting sick and dying from air pollution.
Submitted by tennesseevalues... on Wed, 2006/03/29 - 7:30pm.
Personally, I don't know what the NC Attorney General has against me. Why am I considered a nuisance? I spend tourist dollars in the Tarheel State regularly.
Personally, I don't know what the NC Attorney General has against me. Why am I considered a nuisance? I spend tourist dollars in the Tarheel State regularly.
Oh, wait...he meant that other TVA?
Nevermind...
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