Environmental Advocates Push TVA

Environmental groups are pushing the Tennessee Valley Authority to work towards providing more renewable energy. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel,

A group of environmental advocates used a public meeting Monday to urge TVA to meet energy demand by looking to conservation and renewable energy instead of new power plants.

Several of the people in attendance at the meeting

stressed the need for TVA to grow its renewable energy production. The federal utility gets most of its power from coal-fired plants, which emit the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.

This is a topic that should be important to east Tennessee fisherman, particularly the ones that enjoy fishing the freestone streams of the mountains. The biggest obstacle to all the trout streams is the continuing problem of acid rain. Of course, we all know that coal-fired plants are not helping the acid rain problem so we applaud the efforts to get TVA to work more on renewable energy production. Some of our favorite brook trout streams are very acidic, keeping the fish stunted. Hopefully TVA will listen to the concerned citizens and work towards more environmentally friendly solutions to the problem of providing enough electricity to the growing population in the Tennessee Valley region.