Clean Air for the future

In response to a lawsuit brought on by the State of North Carolina the T.V.A must "significantly reduce" its air pollution from four coal-fired power plants by December 2013. In order to do so smokestack scrubbers are being installed to eliminate most of the sulfur emissions. However this system takes into practice creating a landfill area rather than polluting the air. The T.V.A. has been approved to use an area of 50 acres and 200 feet tall but the project is wanting to limit the land use down to a fraction of this size to further reduce its footprint. Also being used is a dry storage system for the coal ash in response to last year's coal-ash spill. Two plants are already online with new scrubbers and a third one needing some adjustments and the fourth one is still to be determined if it can make deadline.

Investing over $6 Billion since the late 1970's T.V.A. has been working to reduce air pollution from sulfur dioxide and particulates and smog forming nitrogen oxide. The emphasis has been toward the air and has been leaving landfills to fill. the trade off is fair according to Mr. Nash who commented, "but it is still better to clean the air," because "we all breathe the air." I believe this logic is somewhat flawed because landfills as already noted in the article coal ash can spill. These resulting spills can devastate the local area and leak into underground water supplies leaving it contaminated. It is important to clean the emissions produced by the plants but the long run effects lead to a need for cleaner fuels and energy sources.