Environmental Groups Hail TVA Settlement On Coal Waste Water

The Tennessee Valley Authority has agreed to much tighter restrictions on the discharges from three coal plants. The utility settled long-standing court cases brought by environmental groups.

TVA is a defendant in several Clean Water Act cases, so it can get confusing, but this one dates back to 2009. It specifically involves coal plants in Gallatin, Bull Run and Kingston and the water that they’re allowed to pump into the nearby rivers.

Groups including the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy had challenged the agency for the amount of toxic metals that were showing up in discharges.

But in the middle of the drawn-out court battle, the EPA issued new guidelines. So TVA stopped fighting and settled the case since it was going to have to abide by the new federal rules anyway.
According to environmentalists, this settlement will cut the amount of arsenic and selenium in the water discharges by roughly 95 percent.

Before the recent update, the EPA hadn’t issued new water quality guidelines for coal plants since 1983.