Sierra Club Wins One... Big-Time

Straight from the Sierra Club:

Blockbuster Agreement Takes 18 Dirty TVA Coal-Fired Power Plant Units Offline

Southeastern U.S. Takes Huge Step to Slash Air Pollution Thanks to Pressure from Environmental Groups, State and Federal Officials

CHATTANOOGA, TENN. – The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board of directors approved a landmark agreement today with three citizen groups, four states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), marking one of the largest pollution reduction agreements in the nation’s history. This agreement requires TVA to phase out 18 units at dirty, coal-fired power plants and install modern pollution controls on three dozen additional units, thanks to more than 11 years of pressure from environmental groups, Southeastern states and the EPA. The blockbuster agreement – which includes the affected states of Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee – represents the largest ever reduction in air pollution in the Southeastern United States. This agreement permanently retires an unprecedented 2,700 megawatts of dirty coal-fired electricity and will drastically reduce TVA’s emissions of dangerous sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon pollution. Clean Air Task Force estimates that coal-fired power plants in the region cause more than 1,800 premature deaths and more than 2,400 heart attacks each year in the four-state region, and are a major source of area air pollution woes.

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Power plants have a way of lasting forever, because no one wants to bear the cost of replacing them when they are truly worn out, not to mention too dirty for words. This victory is huge. Please support the Sierra Club if you are able!

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(An aside, completely off-topic: if you are designing a document which, in some incarnation, may appear on the web, DO NOT USE UNDERLINED TEXT for any purpose whatsoever, except for the native underlining of links. The 'U' tag and the "text-decoration: underline;" style property introduce completely needless confusion when the document eventually goes up on the web. Just resist the temptation.)