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

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) employees from the highest ranking officers to the bottom-level employees will not receive annual incentive awards for the fiscal year in anticipation of increased expenses and plummeting revenues, according to a memo issued by the TVA and reported by Chattanooga, Tennessee’s WRCB-TV.

The bleak outlook is in part the result of the utility’s coal ash pond failure in December that dumped 1.1 billion pounds of toxic waste on to 300 acres of east Tennessee. TVA is facing numerous lawsuits from property owners as well as mounting cleanup costs that could reach as high as $825 million.

TVA said insurance should cover some of the costs but it also will consider disposing assets, using debt and raising power rates. The slashing of its annual incentive awards will also help cover costs.

As a result, President and Executive Officer Tom Kilgore said not only will he and upper management not receive the annual incentive awards for the fiscal year, compensation adjustments and lump sums also would not be paid for the year. However, annual incentive pay tied to performance of individual units would remain in place.

“I know that in these tough economic times, this news will be disappointing to our employees, but it is a realization of the challenges we face. I am grateful to everyone for their understanding,” Kilgore said in the memo.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 8:00 am 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.