TVA prepares to shut down Widows Creek coal plantMay 7 - McClatchy-Tribune Content Agency, LLC - Dave Flessner Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is preparing to shut down the last operating unit at its oldest coal plant in Alabama. TVA directors today will consider a proposal to shutter the Widows Creek Fossil Plant near Stevenson, Ala., which TVA began building in 1950. TVA has previously idled all but one of the eight units at Widows Creek. The only remaining operating generator, Unit 7, is scheduled to be closed in the next year as part of TVA's efforts to meet stricter environmental rules, Widows Creek was among the units TVA agreed to close or scale back to meet clean air standards under a 2011 consent agreement. TVA President Bill Johnson said today that new rules on coal ash are pushing TVA to shut down Unit 7 once the existing ash pond for the plant reaches its storage capacity by the spring of 2016. The shut down of Widows Creek follows earlier decisions by TVA to also close its older coal units at its John Sevier, Allen, Paradise, Colbert and Johnsonville fossil plants. "Our retirement of coal plants, including Widows Creek 7, has and will have a hard impact on employees who work at these plants," Johnson said during a TVA board meeting today in Huntsville, Ala. "We labor over these decisions and they have been tough to make." But the closing of the aging coal plants has helped TVA reduce most of its smog emissions from sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions into the air and trimmed carbon dioxide emissions linked with climate change and now coming under proposed EPA carbon controls. The closing of the last unit at Widows Creek also is part of TVA's plan to convert all of its remaining coal plants to dry ash storage. Monty Adams, a former Franklin County mayor and manager of the Sherwood Mining Co., which supplies limestone to Widows Creek from its plant in Sherwood Mining Co., said Widows Creek closing will hurt both plant and supplier employees. "It is not just TVA employees that are at risk," he told the TVA board during a public hearing today. "It includes thousands of others -- small businesses and others that are all there to support Widows Creek's mission. I ask that you consider keeping Widows Creek open at least long enough -- at least five years or longer -- to allow our communities and region to adjust. Please push the closure back." http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=36091751 |