On a cold and rainy Wednesday afternoon in mid-February, nearly 20 advocates and community members trudged to downtown Knoxville to speak and show support for our concerns as the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors met for its first public listening session of the new year. 

Although currently diminished in number due to unfilled seats, these six board members are set to take up TVA’s Integrated Resource Plan, a planning document that will serve as TVA’s roadmap for serving the energy needs of the Tennessee Valley for the next 25 years. And while TVA is a public utility beholden to its ratepayers instead of financial investors, quarterly public listening sessions are one of the only ways that the public actually has the opportunity to address these decision makers.

Our consistent presence and highlighting of our causes is making a difference. Fewer fossil fuel proponents can speak when we show up in strength. The breadth of our arguments in favor of a reliable, affordable and renewable energy future — personal, environmental, economic, public health, even spiritual — are tangible and harder to dismiss when consistently brought to these meetings. More impacted community members have been able to make their voices heard to the power brokers at TVA. When TVA’s  board, CEO, executive staff and planning staff talk about an impacted community, there are faces and names to the fight that they are now familiar with.

As Appalachian Voices, the CleanUpTVA coalition and many other partners have been highlighting for years, TVA’s public participation process is inaccessible in several ways. These public listening sessions happen quarterly, the day before the board of directors meeting, in rotating cities across the utility’s service area. There are only two hours for speakers, who must register to speak a week or two in advance; this window is not always announced prior to opening and the slots typically go quickly. The meetings are always on a Wednesday afternoon during business hours. There is no opportunity to speak if you cannot attend in person (although you can submit written comments via email). While the comments made are “public” in that they are made in front of others, they are not live-streamed, recorded, or made available on TVA’s website as the board meetings are.

And, perhaps most critically, they are a one-way conversation. The board does not respond, ask questions, or give clarifications. But we don’t let that dissuade us.

I was one of many people to address the board that day. In my comments, I mentioned the TVA Instagram social media account, which had recently shared a series of images from inside TVA buildings with the caption, “‘Built for the People’ is more than words in a powerhouse.” I told the board that as people who deeply believe in TVA’s founding mission, we strongly agree. But I questioned how TVA’s current policies could possibly meet this standard. 

“How can something that harms us, be built for us?” I asked. “How can a fossil fuel plant that pollutes the air we breathe be for us? How can another pipeline destroying our waterways and cutting up our farms be for us? How can relying on outdated technologies that are less and less cost competitive, saddling us with unpredictable fuel charges, be for us? How can keeping coal plants online to serve the needs of data centers be for us?” 

Other coalition speakers and community members also had strong perspectives to share.

Pat Cupples, Sierra Club Tennessee Chapter Director, spoke of the transformative moment at which we stand, much like the transformative impact TVA had at its founding.

“We have an opportunity to lead the Southeast in clean energy innovation, just as TVA led the nation in rural electrification nearly a century ago,” he said. “But these benefits, along with the cost savings of solar power, must be accessible to everyone, not just wealthy homeowners. When working families can access solar power and home weatherization without great efforts, we multiply the positive impact across our entire community while reducing energy burdens for those who need it most.”

Brady Watson, Union of Concerned Scientists, spoke to the myth that methane gas plants are needed to ensure reliability.

“We can’t put up a bunch of polluting resources and call them a bridge to renewables,” he said. “We have to go straight for the goal with resources that will steadily draw down the burden of pollution. TVA’s planned gas buildout runs directly counter to this necessity.”

Sue and Keith Havens are Morgan County residents in the impact zone of the proposed Ridgeline Pipeline, an Enbridge, Inc. methane gas pipeline that would be built to serve the proposed combined cycle gas turbines at the Kingston plant in Roane County. The Havens used to live in Michigan where they experienced one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history due to a rupture in an Enbridge oil pipeline and have been devastated to find their new home in Tennessee is threatened by the same company. 

Sue told the board, “So you can imagine my despair when I heard Enbridge wanted to add another pipeline that would cross hundreds of creeks, my creek and many others that are equally beautiful. Their plan to cross some of these sensitive streams and ecosystems on the [Cumberland] Plateau is an environmental disaster. I dread the possibility of another disaster on a river I love and care for.”

Her husband Keith shared a metaphor of the pipeline as a living threat, not just an existential one. “The other solution, which would be considerably more expensive, would be to release a poisonous snake into your home, which would live there and eat all the mice. This would also solve the mouse problem, but would create another problem. The snake might accidentally bite and kill you and your family.”

What’s Next

This listening session was unique, coming very soon after TVA’s CEO Jeff Lyash announced his upcoming retirement. A theme that emerged from a broad section of the comments was the importance of finding a new CEO who understands the public power model and the special needs of the utility. This was a particularly strong beat from those speaking on behalf of the local power companies across the territory. LPCs are the regional companies that buy wholesale power from TVA to sell to customers, such as Knox Utilities Board, Nashville Electric Service, or Memphis Light, Gas, & Water. The public power model is also very important to many advocacy and community-based organizations in the region, who support calls for hiring a new CEO from this background.

We anticipate that TVA’s final Integrated Resource Plan will be presented to the board at its spring meeting, May 7 and 8 in Cookeville, Tennessee. At that time, the board is likely to accept staff’s recommendations about the final plan and a path forward. We will, however, be showing up again at the listening session on May 7, to encourage the board to make certain requests to the planning staff, more information about which can be found here.

The board will also meet Aug. 19 and 20, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Nov. 4 and 5, in Oxford, Mississippi. We would love to have you there with us. If you sign up for the Appalachian Voices email list, we will send updates and reminders to you if you live near one of the upcoming listening sessions.