To North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, the Tennessee Valley Authority is a public nuisance whose coal plants literally are killing the resident`s of the Tar Heel state.
But TVA officials insist they are doing as much as any utility to reduce air pollution and have exceeded the cleanup efforts of North Carolina's own utilities.
The interstate drama over pollution in North Carolina from TVA's coal-fired power plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky takes center stage today in a federal courtroom in Asheville, N.C.
After two and a half years of legal squabbles over where and whether such a case should even be heard, U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg will hear opening arguments in a potentially precedent-setting case.
Mr. Cooper said he is simply wants TVA to meet the standards adopted by the North Carolina Legislature in 2002 in its Clean Smokestacks Act.
"TVA has done a lot of good things to provide electricity for the people of the Tennessee Valley, but it has fallen down in protecting the environment," Mr. Cooper said in an interview last week. "We want TVA to clean up the pollution that is making our people sick and choking the growth and quality of our forests and rivers."
He said the 2002 clean air requirements adopted in North Carolina mandate that he go after nearby polluters who fail to meet North Carolina standards. To do so, Mr. Cooper is using the same legal tool that property owners long have used to challenge the actions of their neighbors -- a public nuisance lawsuit.
"This lawsuit (filed in January 2006) was a last resort after we did everything we could to get TVA to agree to reduce its pollution voluntarily," he said.
TVA officials insist that their coal plants don't contribute as much to North Carolina's air pollution as what the Tar Heel state does to Tennessee.
"We think North Carolina is wrong because we're not polluting their state any more than they pollute their own state," TVA President Tom Kilgore said in an interview earlier this year. "All of TVA together (serving parts of seven states) puts out about the same amount of sulfur dioxide as North Carolina does by itself."
Pollution from North Carolina utilities harms Tennesseans, Mr. Kilgore asserted.
"Tennessee hasn't chosen to go after North Carolina because the wind does blow this way, too," Mr. Kilgore said. "I'm not trying to get Tennessee to do that. We're just going to defend ourselves."
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