Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) may turn to its residential customer base to help pay for the escalating costs to clean up the widespread damage caused when one of its coal ash ponds failed last December, pouring more than a billion gallons of toxic ash and sludge onto 300 acres of rural east Tennessee, according to the Jackson Sun.

The massive spill is considered one of the worst environmental disasters, destroying homes and damaging property. The toll on wildlife, plant life and, ultimately, human life, is yet to be determined. Cleanup efforts are expected to cost TVA between $525 million and $825 million depending on how many times the waste will have to be moved and how fast crews can dredge the Emory River.

How the utility will pay for cleaning up the mess is yet to be determined. TVA officials say insurance should cover some of the mounting costs, but other options may also need to be considered, such as disposing of assets, using debt and raising power rates. The latter option likely will come with some criticism.

Last fall the utility’s board approved a 20 percent electric rate hike – the highest in almost 20 years – due to escalating fuel costs. As a small tradeoff, TVA lowered its fuel charge by 6 percent in January and said it will cut another 7 percent effective April 1, resulting in a savings of about $4 to $9 in TVA residential customers’ power bills.

TVA provides electricity to about 8.8 million million customers in Tennessee and parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, according to the report.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 1:54 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.