Nashville News Blog

The Tennessee Valley Authority has its priorities in about the same order as a freshman college student with his daddy's credit card.

A TVA card program meant primarily for courting its power distributors with gifts and booze is burning through roughly $75 million a year, according to the Associated Press.

That's right, folks. While this country's largest public utility skimped on structurally sound methods of storing fly ash, allegedly in the name of keeping rates low, its employees were blowing money like its cool on ridiculous, unnecessary shit.

Meanwhile, we have possibly the most grievous natural disaster in this nation's history--likely to cost the company, and maybe rate-payers, millions of dollars--while TVA got all spendthrift on things like safety awards for its employees. Irony, anyone?

Yesterday TVA submitted its corrective action plan to the state, outlining its plan to un-f@&k the lives of the people in the spill-zone. This I'll be watching with great interest. In the case of farmers Terry and Sandy Gupton, how exactly does one go about decontaminating the spring that waters their cattle? No doubt heavy metals have leached into the subsurface water and the soil of their hay meadow.