TVA focal point of fiery debate

TVA focal point of fiery debate

Critics of Crowell plan demand outside study

By Dave Flessner
The Chattanooga Times

The Clinton administration has given TVA six months to come up with a plan on what to do with its lands and lakes if taxpayer support is cut off in two years.

TVA Chairman Craven Crowell, who last month initiated the idea of weaning TVA from federal support so the agency can focus on power operations, has directed top managers to plot a new future for the utility's nonpower programs.

But many don't trust TVA to do the planning. U.S. Rep. Bob Clement, a Nashville Democrat who served on the TVA board from 1979 to 1982, wants to create a federally funded commission to study the whole agency. A coalition of consumer and environmental groups is pushing for a Regional Energy Policy Commission to restructure TVA.

The idea of an independent look at TVA — and the possible rewriting of the 64-year-old act that defines the federal utility — is gaining support from both TVA customers and critics. Even one of TVA's strongest Congressional supporters, TVA Caucus Chairman Zach Wamp, R-Chattanooga, is anxious to involve more people in planning TVA's future.

"There are a variety of interests and they need to be heard and involved somehow," Wamp said. "TVA needs to do a better job of explaining what its intentions are."

TVA has established a 19-member task force to develop a plan to make its Environmental Research Center in Alabama and Land Be-

between the Lakes in Kentucky self sufficient in two years.

The group is also looking at turning over navigation of the Tennessee River to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and management of recreational facilities on Chickamauga Lake and other reservoirs to the National Parks Service or other state and federal agencies.

Dr. Kate Jackson, executive vice president of TVA's resource group and chairman of the task force, said Thursday that her group will begin meeting in mid March. "One of the first things we will do, in consultation with the TVA Congressional Caucus, is talk about ways that we can involve other people and agencies in this process," she said following a speech to the Chattanooga Rotary Club.

But Steve Smith, executive director of the Tennessee Valley Energy Reform Coalition, still worries that the task force is being controlled by "high-paid executives of TVA who are looking out for themselves, and not necessarily the people of the Tennessee Valley."

"Because TVA has no public utilities commission or state legislative body to answer to, customers and competitors alike are in the dark relative to important information necessary for planning," Smith said.

Smith and other environmental groups have set up a citizens hotline (1-888-2-FIX-TVA) to draw more attention to the issue.

Clement also wants a broader look at TVA and has called for a study commission similar to one that helped change the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Ore., last year. Crowell's suggestion that TVA give up its $106 million of appropriated funds for non-power programs won't lessen criticism of the agency from those outside the Valley, Clement said.

"Chairman Crowell's proposal opens up a Pandora's box to much broader and challenging issues than merely saving TVA's appropriated dollars each year," he said. "It will now be our task to defend TVA against those who will say, 'If TVA is now just a federal utility, why should it not be privatized?'"

TVA still wants a couple of years of taxpayer support for its river management, recreation and development programs and Crowell wants TVA to be a model for public power. The White House has proposed that TVA receive $106 million in each of the next two years.