Critics accuse TVA leaders of arrogant mismanagement

Critics accuse TVA leaders
of arrogant mismanagement

From staff and wire reports

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Critics accused TVA directors of arrogant mismanagement Wednesday as the board approved more waterfront development while moving ahead with plans to eliminate funding for environmental protection.

TVA is so intent on selling electricity that it is opening its lands to private enterprise and abandoning efforts to protect the environment, said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Tennessee Valley Energy Reform Coalition.

Speakers also criticized TVA Chairman Craven Crowell for his January proposal to divest TVA of its remaining congressional appropriation — a $109 million annual appropriation to its nonpower programs.

However, TVA retirees came out in support of the budget plan. Crowell called their backing a "watershed event."

"I'm getting positive feedback, particularly from the business community, everywhere I go," Crowell said.

A delegation from northwest Alabama expressed fears about a nonpower program that could be affected by the budget proposal, the Environmental Research Center in Muscle Shoals.

The center, which employs 200 people, already plans to be self-sufficient by 1999. But eliminating all nonpower funding could remove a potential safety net.

"We are concerned about the future of the TVA area as we know it, and particularly the Shoals area," said Robert Potts, president of the University of North Alabama.

Several citizens groups called for a board-imposed moratorium on the land transactions until a task force can take a broader look at TVA's future after electric utility industry deregulation.

Crowell said the land uses would be addressed in TVA's lakeshore management plan that is drafted now. He said each incident is assessed on its merits.

TVA Director Johnny Hayes said while there had been two or three recent proposals, such cases were "nothing new because TVA has done this forever."

Much of the comment Wednesday centered on the board's decision to let the city of Scottsboro lease 44 acres, which TVA once owned, to private developers for construction of a resort-motel on Guntersville Lake. TVA drew heat in January for a similar proposal in which the Huntsville YMCA sought to sell 50 acres of its Camp Barber property on the same lake to a private developer for $1 million.