TVEC serves as TVA watchdog

By Pat Moore · The Knoxville Journal

In this mention

The Tennessee Valley Energy Coalition (TVEC), founded in 1979 by concerned citizens protesting TVA rate increases, has grown to over 6,000 members across the TVA service region. TVEC Director Joanne Thompson describes the organization's strategy of collective advocacy and its successes in limiting rate increases, halting nuclear plant construction, and blocking undesirable TVA board appointments. The article highlights TVEC's role as a watchdog holding TVA accountable through professional procedures and congressional testimony.

They felt that a collective voice would be best. People always say there's nothing they can do. There's a general apathy, not just in this area, but in the whole country. But when people come together, they have more self-confidence. We generated support for an 18,000-signature petition to protest the proposed rate increase.
Joanne Thompson

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TVEC serves as TVA watchdog

By PAT MOORE
Journal Reporter

In 1979, a group of concerned citizens banded together to question a proposed Tennessee Valley Authority utility rate increase. In the six years since, that group has grown to more than 6,000 strong and presently calls itself the Tennessee Valley Energy Coalition.

No longer confined to in-state members, TVEC membership is now drawn from all areas served by TVA and includes senior citizens, low income citizens, environmental groups and others consumers.

Bill Troy, a minister; Lucille Thornburg, a senior citizens' spokeswoman; Bob Allen, a Sierra Club member; and Henry Adkinson, a retired worker, were four of TVEC's founders. They combined forces in the late 1970's when TVA proposed its second 12-to-14 percent rate increase in 12 months.

"They felt that a collective voice would be best," explained Joanne Thompson, current TVEC Director. "People always say there's nothing they can do. There's a general apathy, not just in this area, but in the whole country. But when people come together, they have more self-confidence. We generated support for an 18,000-signature petition to protest the proposed rate increase."

Thompson, who was a teacher at the University of Tennessee at the time, said that the group strategy paid off.

"At the first board meeting, the room was packed with older people carrying signs around and the board was shocked that the rate payers would protest. Every meeting since then they've used their large auditorium," Thompson said.

"They were very reluctant to listen to consumers. But now we have a fairly good working relationship with TVA."

Although the war continues, TVEC has won its share of the battles. After that first TVA meeting, the agency was forced to accept a lower rate increase than asked for.

Other victories include helping limit TVA to only one large rate increase in four years; helping halt the construction of nuclear power plants by raising questions of overbuilding; blocking TVA board appointments of people seen as undesirable; and launching the most ambitious voter registration drive in the state when 30,000 voters were registered in 1984.

In the future, TVEC will concern itself with nursing home reforms, plans to finance indigent care across the state, plans to make voting easier for the handicapped and elderly, questioning the storage and clean up of nuclear waste in Oak Ridge, as well as continuing to question the accountability of TVA decisions and appointments to the board.

"TVA is not subject to oversight," Thompson said. "The staff makes recommendations and the board adopts them. They don't have to answer to the Public Service Commission. We've always said that TVA needed oversight. They're talking about an internal agency. That's not what we want. TVA needs to be accountable to somebody."

TVEC has gained the respect of not only government agencies but the public as well through its thorough and professional procedures. The group has an excellent conservation program and has provided testimony to congressional commissions in support of that and other issues.