I live on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, just about 30 miles as the crow flies from the TVA Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage facility. The following is what I wrote about what happend to our community back in 1998.
Here is a story that you may find hard to believe. It is the result of unintended consequences of the "Private Power Producer Act" (PPRPA?) that supposedly allows us RE types to sell back to the grid. My Wife and I hadn't even moved into our home on the Cumberland Plateau in Eastern Tennessee when we heard some disconcerting news. We were building a remote home and planning a solar/ hydro system to run it. I am fairly knowledgeable and was in the process of installing the components consisting of 6 75 watt panels, a Trace 4024 and C40, a Trimetric meter and six recycled 8 volt railroad engine batteries at 1100 ah. We have from our home site, a magnificent western viewscape, across the plateau into the sunset. The news was that someone was planning a monster set of high voltage transmission lines right across our view. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the grid in these parts and they are all powerful, pun intended. They have booted people of their land for years to build power plants of various kinds, including nuclear. They have run up a debt of over 25 billion dollars (that's BILLION) to finance these white elephants that they can't even finish. That is a whole `nother story. They also string power lines whereever they want. But, TVA was not the ones that were going to put up these wires. We were disturbed enough to want some answers, so when we heard about a meeting of a group of concerned citizens, we attended. What we learned that night and during other meetings made political activists out of a bunch of laid back country folk. To start from the beginning, there was a small company in Pennsylvania owned by a man named Armstrong. This company had diverse interests in such things as cable TV and other operations unrelated to power production. Mr. Armstrong had a fascination with the concept of pumped storage hydroelectric plants. In a nutshell, you pump water uphill at night when power is cheap and then run it back down during peak daytime to sell at a net gain in price. Sounds good in theory. Armstrong wanted to leave his mark. He wanted a monument. A man named Richard Hunt entered the picture and Armstrong Energy Resources was created and funded with $5 million. Hunt identified a site in the Sequatchie Valley of Tennessee as the best spot to build the proposed site. The Sequatchie is a magnificent rift in the Cumberland Plateau. It is 140 miles long, four miles wide and 1500 feet deep. It has some of what you need for a pumped storage facility. You need elevation, water, and access to the grid. Many years ago TVA did studies around their domain and identified numerous sites for possible development. They eventually built the Raccoon Mountain facility at Chattanooga. Then they got financially strapped due to their nuclear fiasco. Richard Hunt knew about the studies, and he picked the one he wanted. One day Hunt arrived in our area and started courting the local county governments of Sequatchie and Bledsoe. He sold them on the idea of a $4 billion (that's BILLION again) project that would bring jobs and development to these rural counties. They signed on big time! They endorsed the project without even the slightest doubt about what a project like this would do to the quality of life out here. There were actually two facilities planned. One on either side of the valley. Four reservoirs, two on top of the plateau and two in the valley would be built. Water from the Sequatchie River would be diverted via four-foot pipes to fill and replenish the reservoirs. Transmission lines would be built to provide pump up power and carry the regenerated energy in peak periods. Our group, which was then calling itself SOS for Save Our Sequatchie, was not happy. We gathered all of the information we could. We ran the numbers. We called and wrote every politician and bureaucrat from Al Gore on down. We went to TVA board meetings. We convinced our selves that the whole project was a scam on the part of Armstrong and would, could never work. But in the meantime we would have our lives and environment damaged beyond repair. And we could get very little help from our "public servants" TVA doesn't need to ask any one's permission, they just take. TVA is a "publicly owned", that is government owned operation. They have the power of imminent domain. But Armstrong Energy Resources was a private for profit company. We said that over and over. No one should have the right to take what is rightfully yours if you don't want to give it up. Except the government. We may not like it but the government can and does, all the time. But where do these guys from Pennsylvania get off coming down here and telling people to get off their land? The sites selected by Hunt were all privately held property. Some parcels were family farms that had been held since the first white people came into the valley (and ironically stole it from the Indians). Aside from all the disruption and damage from these projects, the most stunning and painful revelation was that indeed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was prepared to evict owners in the way of Armstrong under the PPRPA law. Armstrong would be granted the right of imminent domain. And TVA would buy the product. We will never know (fingers crossed) what ultimately happened. We knew that the money did not add up. The projects would not be profitable. But one day, after a year of uncertainty, there was a quiet announcement that the project was suspended. Hunt's office closed and he left town. They said that they might restart if the results of the impending deregulation look favorable. Personally I think that a combination of the efforts of SOS and the $5 million was gone was what ended the struggle. For now. But the valley is still there and the law is still there. In fact just down the valley on the Alabama line the FERC has recently granted a private company, US Gypsum, the right to build a 24 inch gas pipeline across private land to fuel their wall board plant in Bridgeport Alabama. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Does your company feature in the microhydro business directory at http://microhydropower.net/directory ? If not, please register free of charge and be exposed to the microhydro community world wide! NOTE: The advertisements in this email are added by Yahoogroups who provides us with free email group services. The microhydro-group does not endorse products or support the advertisements in any way. 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