TVA Director To Help Protect Jobs In Agency Shakeup

TVA Director To Help Protect Jobs In Agency Shakeup

By DAVID PACE
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — Tennessee Valley Authority Director Johnny Hayes promised Friday to help protect the jobs of TVA employees in programs that may be moved from the agency under a proposal to eliminate federal funding by next year.

Hayes, testifying at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said protecting employees is a top priority of the internal task force set up to study TVA Chairman Craven Crowell's plan to eliminate the $106 million annual federal appropriation.

"I give you my commitment ... I certainly am not going to displace employees and their families in any way," Hayes said. "I don't know what the task force will bring to us, but I can certainly tell you my commitment will be to work with these people."

The 19-member task force is studying the feasibility of transferring TVA's economic development, flood control, natural resource stewardship and environmental research programs to other federal agencies.

Those activities now are funded by the $106 million federal appropriation. Crowell's proposal to eliminate that funding is aimed at allowing TVA to focus on power production as it prepares for the expected deregulation of the electric industry.

Hayes sailed through the confirmation hearing with little difficulty. The only detailed questions came from Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who pressed Hayes about the future of TVA employees.

Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., chairman of the committee, and Sen. Max Bachus, D-Mont., the senior Democrat on the panel, offered no opposition to Hayes, who has been on the TVA board since 1993 and is up for a full nine-year term.

The committee is expected to vote on the nomination next week, sending it to the full Senate for action.

Sessions told Hayes that TVA has had a reputation of insensitivity in its dealings both with Congress and with people in the Tennessee Valley. And he warned him that the agency needs to overcome that reputation as it deals with this new proposal.

"The Tennessee Valley Authority has grown out of the people, it was created by the people, the taxpayers, and it must be responsible," Sessions said. "It must be sensitive to the thousands of people who have given their lives to it."

Hayes assured Sessions that TVA has no plans to move the Environmental Research Center out of Muscle Shoals, Ala. The center, which has been funded by federal appropriations in the past, is being weaned off federal aid and turned into a self-sustaining enterprise.

Sessions also told Hayes he wants the TVA board to find some way to utilize the Bellefonte nuclear power plant that was being built near Scottsboro, Ala., before TVA halted construction in 1994 after investing about $4 billion.

"That's an investment we simply cannot allow to go to waste," Sessions said.

Hayes said a TVA task force is studying options for the plant, which is about 80 percent complete, and is expected to make its report this fall. He said the plant could be converted to coal or natural gas, or finished as a nuclear facility if TVA can find a partner for the venture.