Pat Cupples holds our members' comments in front of TVA banner.
Photo by Bonnie Swinford
Last Thursday, I, along with many of our volunteer leaders, Sierra Club staff and partner groups, attended the TVA Board's public listening session in Memphis. We don't have insight into how speakers get selected, but from some of the speakers' own comments during the session, a pattern became clear: a majority of the 40 or so slots appeared to be filled by invited guests to share stories about how TVA has supported their nonprofit, their sports league, school and so on.
These listening sessions are the one chance ratepayers get to raise concerns directly with the board. Members drive in from all over Tennessee and even other states to be heard. So it was frustrating to watch a limited number of speaking slots go largely to people who'd been personally invited to say nice things about TVA. I requested time to comment within minutes of the portal opening the week before, along with staff from other partner organizations, and even so our registration numbers were in the 50s and 70s, well past the roughly 40 speaking slots actually available. Coalition members from Memphis Community Against Pollution, Protect Our Aquifer and others who showed up prepared got shut out the same way.
There's a place for good news, but filling a public comment period with pats on the back, crowds out the people who made the incredible effort to raise a real concern. This is exactly why Sierra Club is people-powered. I'm grateful for the thousands of members who keep our work going without us having to worry about upsetting a funder, which TVA is to many organizations across the Valley. Because we operate as a grassroots organization, we can speak the truth without worrying about our programs getting cut for it.
Beyond Coal Campaign staffers/Sierra Club Members Bonnie Swinford, and Amy Kelly traveled seven hours from East Tennessee to be there, and like me, Amy never got the chance to speak. We even printed off 4,000 comments to deliver in physical form, hoping to make a real show for the board. Instead we delivered our comments by video from Beale Street and shared them with the world. If you follow our Facebook or Instagram page, you probably saw those go out Thursday afternoon.
There's something to be said for raising our voices through social media. The most crucial audience for our message might not be the board at all, but our fellow ratepayers who have no idea how much money TVA is wasting keeping coal plants online, when solar and battery are cleaner, cheaper and ready to roll out today! No pipelines needed, no waiting for experimental technology a decade down the road. Consider this a call to action: record your own public comment and share it with the world. Sierra Club has the expertise and the access to information to back that up, and we should be using every tool available to get it out there, respectfully.