COVID-19 Update: Read about the most recent Sierra Club guidelines here.
Tennessee News
TVA makes equipment upgrades to prevent repeat of its worst power outage. "TVA announced Thursday it plans to move forward with a Valley Pathways study that will look at ways to accelerate the clean-energy economy in its seven-state region for both better power and a better economy. TVA President Jeff Lyash said TVA is partnering with the University of Tennessee's Baker Center for Public Policy to help better define the pace of electrification and how to build a resilient and more carbon-free sustainable region." Read more by Dave Flessner - Times Free Press - Feb. 16, 2023.
3 takeaways from TVA's report to Tennessee lawmakers about December's rolling blackouts. "On Dec. 23, TVA ordered the 153 local power companies it supplies to start rolling blackouts to preserve the electric grid, sparking sharp criticism from customers and public officials across Tennessee and the parts of six surrounding states the utility serves." In a briefing for a Tennessee House subcommittee, TVA representatives explained that: 1) TVA has made repairs to its system since the December storm, 2) TVA will have its review of the blackouts done early this year, and 3) critical instruments froze at coal and gas plants during the storm.
Read more by Anila Yoganathan - Knoxville News Sentinel - Feb. 8, 2023.
To reduce trash, some states charge the companies producing it. "Nashville is growing, and so are its piles of trash. The Middle Point Landfill, in nearby Murfreesboro, collects most of the solid waste in Middle Tennessee, but it could be full by the end of the decade, sending Nashville and other communities scrambling for a place to put their garbage." Read more by Good Good Good - Feb. 23, 2023.
Could vehicle-based mileage fees make up for shortages in Tennessee’s falling fuel taxes for roads? "With state fuel tax revenues already failing to keep up with Tennessee's current highway needs, let alone future demands and pressures, state senators this week heard testimony from experts advocating the state consider implementing mileage-based user fees on a pay-per-mile basis...Mileage-based user fees are also known as vehicle miles traveled fees. Drivers are charged a fee based on the number of miles driven as opposed to taxing motor fuel, long the workhorse for federal and most states' transportation infrastructure spending."
Read more by Andy Sher - Times Free Press - Feb. 2, 2023.
Save the Date! Tennessee Chapter Spring Retreat at Fall Creek Falls April 28-30. Enjoy the company of other environmentalists during the peak of spring wildflower season! Be a part of the fellowship, hikes, fireplace chats, and meetings. Don’t miss the Saturday evening program, silent auction, and the informal social gathering that follows. We particularly encourage families to bring children of all ages to introduce them to the wonderful natural landscape of the park! We're planning some special nature activities just for kids. Weather permitting, we will have a bonfire where we can make s’mores!A detailed agenda will be sent out and advertised before April 22nd. Early bird registration by April 22. Learn more here!
Beautiful Fall Creek Falls. Photo credit: Todd Waterman.
Will new Biden-appointed TVA board members guide TVA towards sustainability?
Report on Feb 15-16 TVA Board Listening Session & Board Meeting
By Joe Schiller, JoAnn McIntosh, and Kent Minault
The TVA Board Meeting in Muscle Shoals, AL on February 15-16 was well attended by a wide range of stakeholders. On February 15 those stakeholders had an opportunity to share their opinions and concerns at a Listening Session with the TVA Board. Six new, Biden-appointed Board members have been seated since the last meeting: Beth Geer, Michelle Moore, Bobbie Klein, Bill Renick, Joe Ritch, and Wade White; that's probably why the Listening Session seemed to have a larger attendance than usual. Stakeholders who spoke included local power companies (LPCs) and large industrial customers; environmental advocates, including gas line opponents and solar businesses; and agricultural concerns.
Many of the LPCs and industrial customers expressed strong concerns about the rolling blackouts TVA was forced to implement on Dec 23-24 due to winter storm Elliott incapacitating some of its coal and gas generation. Various environmental advocates, including Amy Kelly from the Beyond Coal Campaign, and Sierra Club TN Chapter members Kent Minault, Dana Moran, Todd Waterman, JoAnn McIntosh, and Joe Schiller, illustrated how positions we have advocated over the years would have mitigated or eliminated the need for those rolling blackouts, especially increased and incentivized energy efficiency, along with greater amounts of solar and wind and storage installation. We also continued to offer our assistance in charting a more sustainable and resilient path forward with TVA, which we were
able to discuss with CEO Jeff Lyash immediately following the session. The solar business community was well represented and also offered comments in charting a strategy for a more sustainable and resilient energy system going forward. Many agricultural interests expressed concerns about conversion of prime farmland to solar; however, at least one farmer invited the Board to visit his farm to see how solar has enhanced his farm’s operation. Many environmental advocates and some other stakeholders urged the board to reassert its authority to direct TVA’s policies.
Some Sierra Club members were able to attend the Board's business session the next day either in person or via the livestream, and noticed that TVA Ombudsman, Wilson Taylor, had significantly more environmental comments to report. The new Board's influence was also noticed, especially Board member Michelle Moore's direct and insightful questioning regarding energy efficiency in response to Kent Minault’s comments from the listening session. Lyash then responded by acknowledging that energy efficiency could reduce future load growth projections and eliminate the need for a new gas power plant.
Joe Schiller, co-author of above article, respectfully questions TVA CEO Jeff Lyash's numbers, as co-author JoAnn McIntosh listens to his left. Photo: Todd Waterman.
Environmental Updates
U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen talks manufacturing, clean energy in Tennessee. "U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touted President Joe Biden’s economic recovery plan in Spring Hill, Tenn. on Wednesday at a $2.6 billion manufacturing plant for electric vehicle batteries...Speaking to a small crowd of construction workers at the Ultium, LLC plant, which is slated to be operational by the end of 2023, Yellen stressed plans by the Biden Administration to improve the nation’s infrastructure, transition to clean energy and increase the U.S.’s manufacturing capacity." Read more
by Holly McCall - Tennessee Lookout - Feb.8, 2023.
TVA’s new board urged to reconsider move to gas after EPA declines to challenge Cumberland Fossil Plant plans. "Critics have long blasted the nation’s largest public utility over its preference to replace coal-burning power plants with ones reliant on gas, another fossil fuel. The same advocates are now frustrated that federal environmental regulators won’t stand in the way of the utility’s latest extensive project, which they claim clashes with the Biden administration’s directives to fight climate change." Read more
by Travis Loller and Jonathan Mattise - Associated Press - Feb. 15, 2023.
North Chickamauga Creek Gorge near Soddy-Daisy to get state park status. "Gov. Bill Lee will be designating the North Chickamauga Creek Gorge State Natural Area as one of four new Tennessee state parks and is asking lawmakers for $776,300 in his proposed fiscal year 2023-24 budget to provide for a park manager, three park rangers and five other staffers for the 7,093-acre area near Soddy-Daisy."
Read more by Andy Sher - Times Free Press - Feb. 10, 2023.
Louisiana company renews fight to build landfills on rural Maury County Superfund site. "A high-stakes battle over a private company’s efforts to bring a large-scale trash disposal complex to a federally-designated Superfund site along the Duck River is heading into yet another round." Read more by Anita Wadhwani - Tennessee Lookout - Feb. 27, 2023.
Stay informed about Legislative updates! You can receive weekly updates on the doings of the TN General Assembly from our lobbyist Scott Banbury by signing up here (scroll down to Tennessee Legislative Updates).
Health & Justice
EPA rule prompted by Kingston coal ash spill might be revised to include older landfills. "Residents living near old coal ash landfills might be better protected if the Environmental Protection Agency agrees to a settlement in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups...[The] lawsuit seeks to get the EPA to close a loophole in the law that now exempts inactive coal ash landfills from the kind of regulations active coal ash landfills must meet." Read more by Anila Yoganathan - Knoxville News Sentinel - Feb. 9, 2023.
The latest in the battle of over a pristine Tennessee creek? A public records lawsuit. "A lawsuit to obtain public records has been filed in the ongoing fight to preserve the Lick Creek waterway in Hickman County. Friends of Lick Creek, a community environmental group based in Hickman working to preserve the Lick Creek waterway from a proposed sewage treatment plant, announced Tuesday that it filed a lawsuit to obtain public records from the Water Authority of Dickson County after the company did not comply to “several records requests.”
Read more by Angele Latham - Nashville Tennessean - Feb. 2, 2023.
EPA plans cleanup of Superfund site. Neighbors ask, what about others in South Knoxville? "As the Environmental Protection Agency moves ahead with the long process of cleanup of a Superfund site in South Knoxville, neighbors recently quizzed representatives about the status of other contaminated properties that appear on the state’s cleanup list. Tennessee's Department of Environment and Conservation database shows three other sites nearby that are being addressed." Read more by Anila Yoganathan - Knoxville News Sentinel - Feb. 22, 2023.
Familiar chimney stacks at TVA’s Allen Fossil Plant coming down Friday. "Demolition is the final step in a four-phase plan to prepare the site for redevelopment. The implosion of the chimney stacks on Friday morning [Feb 3] will bring the TVA closer to repurposing the 500 acres of land it occupies in Southwest Memphis near McKellar Lake." Read more by Keely Brewer - Daily Memphian - Feb. 2, 2023.
TVA's Allen Fossil Plant in 2010. Photo credit: Wikimedia.
Events
Statewide environmental events listed chronologically.
Do you have an event you'd like publicized?
Send it to Enews.sierratn@gmail.com.
Tennessee Tree Day is March 17-18. Tennessee Tree Day 2023 is the largest community tree-planting project of its kind in America! Tennessee residents will collectively pick up and plant more than 95,000 native tree seedlings in all 95 Tennessee counties during the weekend of March 18th, 2023. The trees are yours to plant on your own property and will enhance our environment and communities for generations to come! Learn more here.
Native Plant Sale and Expo. Tennessee Valley Chapter of Wild Ones is holding a native plant sale in Chattanooga with a growing number of sponsors, nurseries, vendors and exhibitors. Event will be March 25, 9 am - 3 pm. Learn more here.
Eco-Adventure in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This "glamping" weekend will be held Sunday, April 30-Tuesday, May 2 near Gatlinburg, and all proceeds support DLiA’s (Discover Life in America) mission to conduct biodiversity research in Smoky Mountains National Park. All proceeds will help support DLiA, the non-profit organization coordinating the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) for GSMNP. More info here. Tickets ($950) are limited and registration closes on April 10th or until all tickets are sold.
Tennessee Chapter Fundraising Corner with Mac Post
The annual March Appeal fundraising letter either recently arrived in your mailbox or will shortly.It outlines several of the Chapter’s priorities for the year. They include:
Fixing state laws so local communities are protected from the reckless siting of fossil fuel pipelines, landfills, and confined animal feeding operations.
Ensuring the proper clean up of TVA’s coal ash impoundments across the state.
Advancing legislation that moves Tennessee toward a truly circular economy by keeping packaging waste out of our landfills and environment.
Working with local and state governments to see that Tennessee takes full advantage of the opportunities available through the federal Inflation Reduction Act.
To accomplish these goals, we need for you to pitch in and help fund our activities. If you didn't get the letter and would like to make a contribution now, you can visit the handy the online Chapter web form!
Special Features
Dear Eartha
Dear Eartha,
I’ve been reading your column for over a year now and I know you read a lot. What are some of the titles you read, view, follow, subscribe to, or just generally inspire you? –A Fan in Nashville
Dear Fan,
Like you, I do read a bit. There’s so much to stay apprised of in this world. Right now I’m reading a piece on the Inflation Reduction Act on The Atlantic’s Weekly Planet. I follow Bill McKibben’s pieces from The New Yorker and anything he prints anywhere. I’m also a member of Third Act Maine, volunteering as a writer on their communications committee, now that I live here. Ted Talks are delivered to my inbox and I recently listened to (while cooking) a piece on the ocean’s part to play in decarbonization and what the oceans have to teach us. I also recently listened to some of British author and mythologist Karen Armstrong’s new book Sacred Nature
and wrote down this quote: “We must revive our reverence for the natural world.” I recommend anything Armstrong writes.
I’m a big fan of intersectionality and read psychology, literature, science, politics, and art. I recently wrote a piece called “Becoming Thoreau” and so have dipped into Walden’s first chapter titled “Economy.” Thoreau has helped me to see again the value of the natural world in that relationship of “reverence” Armstrong asks her readers to revive. While reading Thoreau in this politically fraught time when one questions whether being an American is something worth continuing, I turn to Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” that long glorious poem of American self-affirmation, delight, and sensuality. Never underestimate the power of poetry.
A friend sent me something from Maria Popova’s amazing The Marginalian, which led to checking out a podcast by Emergence Magazine; one interview with the forest scientist Suzanne Simard, author of new book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, inspired me to enjoy anew my two acres of trees in this coastal northern woods.
Here are a few other regular threads I weave into my daily brain:
Sierra Club’s Daily Ray of Hope, Insider, and The Green Life
Kathleen Sullivan’s blog “Code Red and Me: Rethinking Everything”
The Atlantic’s Weekly Planet
Extinction Rebellion (XR)’s Global Support newsletter
The Hidden Life of Trees: How They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben
The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
Anything by Bernd Heinrich; currently reading The Snoring Bird.
Getting out and listening to lectures or talks on nature is always a delight. Taking a local class will connect you to people like yourself and lead to in person activism, always a heady dose of inspiration. I’ve taken up birdwatching mostly by watching my bird feeder; I took a birding class back in 2015 at Nashville’s Warner Parks Nature Center. I plan to take another class soon. Nature centers and conservation organizations are great places to connect with others who share curiosity about the world.
Iknow you asked about what I’m reading but I find hiking, walking, and any protesting about anything that gets your heart pumping and the world changing is helpful to both of you. Since isolation is ranked in the US as deleterious as smoking, Shawn Colvin’s song, “Get Out of This House” comes to mind. Just get out there! And take a friend with you.
Hope these are helpful/interesting to you, dear Fan. I’d love to hear from any of my readers about what they are reading, doing, activist-izing in these hot times.
Thanks for the question and no matter what your links are, stay connected. The planet needs you NOW!
All the best, Eartha
Submit your questions and comments to the Sierra E-News Editor [Enews.sierratn@gmail.com].Dear Eartha is penned by Rita Bullinger.
Species Spotlight
This month's featured species is: Crocus(Crocus)
Yellow crocuses and green blades rise out of a bed of dried brown leaves. Photo credit: Todd Waterman.
Crocuses are early harbingers of spring, alongside daffodils. Flowers emerge while it is still cool. They can grow 6 inches tall and prefer full sun with well-drained soil.
Crocus is in the Iris (Iridaceae) family, and there are over 80 species of crocus. Blooms are cup-shaped and can be lavender, mauve, white, or yellow. Blooms close at night when it's dark.
While usually referred to as bulbs, crocuses are actually corms. While similar, the technical difference between corms and bulbs is that corms are rooting structures formed from modified stem tissue, whereas bulbs are comprised of modified leaf tissue.
Some varieties of crocus bloom in the fall, such as the saffron crocus (crocussativus), which supplies the valuable spice saffron via each bloom's three stigmas. Due to how labor-intensive it is to grow, saffron has been called the most expensive spice in the world. One pound of saffron represents 75,000 blossoms.
Contact Us
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