Press Mention Associated Press October 4, 2001
SACE Quoted
TVA plans $1.5 billion investment in smokestack scrubbers
In this mention
The Tennessee Valley Authority announced a $1.5 billion commitment to install five smokestack scrubber systems at coal-fired power plants in Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by over 200,000 tons annually. Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, praised the decision as significant and good news for the Tennessee Valley. Installation of the scrubbers is not expected to begin before 2005, as TVA completes related pollution-reduction projects.
This is a significant move. It is really good news for the people of the Tennessee Valley.
Stephen A. Smith
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Full transcript
TVA plans $1.5 billion
investment in smokestack scrubbers
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD
Associated Press Writer
KNOXVILLE (AP)—The Tennessee Valley Authority announced Thursday a $1.5 billion commitment to further reduce acid rain and haze-forming emissions from its coal-fired power plants.
The federal utility said it will install five smokestack scrubber systems at its Bull Run and Kingston plants in eastern Tennessee, its Colbert plant in north Alabama and its Paradise plant in western Kentucky.
Together, the systems should reduce TVA's sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 200,000 tons a year. TVA's 11 coal plants released about 700,000 tons of sulfur dioxide this past year.
Environmentalists called the decision an investment in the health of the Tennessee Valley and a step toward improved visibility in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
"This is a significant move," said Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "It is really good news for the people of the Tennessee Valley."
Don Barger, regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, said "this commitment by TVA will begin to lift the huge burden of pollution on the parks."
State: Although design work will begin soon, installation of the new scrubbers won't begin before 2005, said John Shipp, TVA general manager of environmental policy.
Shipp said most of the construction resources and equipment needed for the scrubbers will be occupied until then in a related pollution-curbing project. TVA also is spending $1 billion on 18 selective catalytic reduction systems to cut nitrogen oxide emissions.
When the planned projects are done, 18 of TVA's 59 coal-fired boilers at six of its 11 fossil plants will be connected to scrubbers, and 25 boilers will be hooked up to SCR systems.
"We are in compliance today and these (decisions) will certainly help insure that we remain in compliance," Shipp said of meeting federal Clean Air Act requirements.
Smith agreed, but noted that TVA used some 200,000 tons in pollution credits this past year to stay within those limits.