September12009
The Spectrum
I’ve been talking to people from what seem to be the two most important—for lack of a better term—citizen watchdog groups in the TVA region. One is the afore-mentioned United Mountain Defense (they of the TVA smokestack puppets), and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. But although they share some very broad environmental concerns, they take very different views of TVA.
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) is in pretty close contact with TVA, even with many of its board members. They advise TVA about the impact of TVA policies and make recommendations on how it can improve its standing with concerned citizens. This type of approach reflects a philosophy that, given the right circumstances, TVA will move toward more efficient and renewable sources of energy; that it has the ability to do more good than harm.
United Mountain Defense (UMD) on the other hand, would like to see TVA gone immediately. The Authority’s encouragement of mountaintop destruction and its contribution to poisoning local waters make it unacceptable. They prefer demonstrations, marches, and the occasional act of civil disobedience to negotiation. In their view, TVA is not at all concerned with the well-being of the Tennessee Valley, so negotiation serves no purpose.
I don’t know who’s right. No one person I’ve talked to seems to be able to give a complete picture of the TVA, its motivations, its history. The SACE people talk to me about board meetings, press releases, studies; the UMD tell me about FBI connections, hazardous chemicals, and TVA police “gestapo tactics.” (More on all that later.) Probably both kinds of groups are necessary for any kind of change to happen. Certainly, both get the attention of the media and TVA, and both have a noticeable impact.
But I also feel like both aren’t taking a very long view of TVA. SACE thinks they were essentially successful in accomplishing their original mission; UMD thinks it’s been “poisoning Appalachia since 1933.” Both seem like pretty simplistic narratives. As for who’s view of TVA turns out to be right, we’ll have to see.
