The Southern Highland Reader

RALEIGH–Avram Friedman, Sylva resident and Executive Director of the clean air activist organization the Canary Coalition was one of six protestors arrested last weekend at the North Carolina governor’s mansion in Raleigh.

Here’s a brief piece from the Raleigh News and Observer.

Below is an essay from Friedman titled “Why I chose to be arrested”:

On Saturday, October 24 there were thousands of demonstrations around the world, in more than 130 nations, millions of people, gathering to focus attention on the climate catastrophe unfolding in our lifetimes. About two hundred years ago, prior to the industrial revolution, the earth’s atmosphere contained roughly 270 parts per million of carbon dioxide. The worldwide scientific community has reached virtual consensus that to avoid major disruption to life-support systems there needs to be a sustained level of less than 350 parts per million of C02. But, today, due largely to the burning of fossil fuels in industrial processes and transportation, the level of C02 has risen to 390. If we don’t act quickly to change our methods and our habits, we are risking the viability of life as we know it on this earth.

In North Carolina, we have a special mission because this state is the home of Duke Energy, one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases in the world. And while more than 100 new coal-burning power plants have been canceled over the past three years in the United States of America, due to climate, pollution and economic concerns, Duke Energy is going full-steam ahead with construction of its mammoth 800 megawatt Unit 6 at Cliffside, in Rutherford County, about 50 miles west of Charlotte.

We have to be working on a plan to phase out all 14 existing utility-owned coal-burning power plants in North Carolina in the next decade or less, along with all coal plants everywhere. But, to begin construction on a new coal plant at this late hour is a form of extreme psychological denial.

Flying in the face of logic and reason, almost like a spiteful and willful child, Jim Rogers and Duke Energy continue construction at Cliffside. Construction at Cliffside continues even though energy consumption in North Carolina is declining and will continue to decline into the foreseeable future due to advancements in energy efficiency and due to conservation efforts.

Even though the latest report by the U.S. Geological Survey reveals that national retrievable coal reserves are diminishing rapidly and the cost of coal will inevitably soon rise beyond practical economical thresholds, construction at Cliffside continues.

Despite the fact that North Carolina has vast wind energy resources and the cost of building large-scale wind projects is lower per megawatt than building coal plants, with far fewer health, environmental and economic liabilities, construction at Cliffside continues.

Despite the fact that North Carolina has tremendous solar energy potential with the cost of solar technology diminishing on almost a daily basis, Duke Energy continues to feed precious financial resources into an outdated and horribly polluting technology at Cliffside.

Despite the fact that burning coal has saturated the environment with mercury, causing fetal brain damage, autism and learning disabilities in children; burning coal is causing acid rain, killing the biodiversity of our mountainous, forested and agricultural regions; burning coal is responsible for deadly high ozone levels causing asthma, emphysema, bronchitis, heart disease and early death for tens of thousands of people each year, Duke energy continues construction at Cliffside.

Despite diminishing fresh water supplies to feed a growing population in the region, Duke Energy continues to build a power plant that will use millions of gallons of water each day, and alter the temperature of water used for cooling, threatening habitat and life-support systems downstream of the plant.

Despite wind-blown coal-burning waste ash piles, failed slurry pond dams, massive and catastrophic toxic spills, despite the devastation of mountaintop removal coal mining, construction at Cliffside has relentlessly continued.

Despite federal law and court decisions regulating carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant, and despite the fact that Cliffside Unit 6 will produce 6 million tons of CO2 each year, for the next fifty years, as much as a million cars, yet construction at Cliffside continues.

Like an undisciplined and spoiled child, used to getting whatever it wants, despite the deepest recession since the Great Depression, when people are having to make choices between paying rent, buying food or buying medicine, Duke Energy stamps its feet and demands that the Utilities Commission raise electrical rates to pay for an utterly unnecessary and wasteful power plant at Cliffside so it can sell more energy to increase its profits by expanding its area of monopoly into new territories.

One would think that given the weight of all these reasons to stop Cliffside that our public servants in the state government would rise to the occasion to protect the citizenry from this destructive, childish behavior. That’s their job, isn’t it? After all, Beverley Perdue, during her campaign to be elected Governor of North Carolina spoke out against the construction of the Cliffside power plant.

But, something happened between then and now. About three-quarters of a million dollars in campaign contributions made its way into the electoral process from the utility industry. In 2008, Beverly Purdue’s campaign alone received about $26,000 from The Duke Energy Political Action Committee and donations directly from Duke Energy executive officers. Since then, Governor Perdue has dropped her opposition to Cliffside. Business-as-usual politics, I suppose.

But, these are not business-as-usual times and we can’t allow a set of disproportionate campaign contributions destroy our children’s future. So, on October 24, 2009, about 150 demonstrators delivered a message to the Perdue Administration that she has a greater obligation than fulfilling the every wish and dream of Duke Energy. She has a responsibility to the people of North Carolina to protect public health and the environment by beginning to phase out all coal plants in this state, starting with Cliffside. She has an obligation to stand up to Duke Energy and say “This madness stops now!” She has an obligation to come out of hiding and meet with members of the environmental community to discuss steps to effectively address climate change and energy issues. She has an obligation to exercise vision and work with others to plan a future that is sustainable, replete with high-paying green technology jobs, clean air and water, renewable energy deployment, wind farms, solar roofs, economic incentives for investment in efficiency. She has an obligation to dramatically reduce North Carolina’s carbon footprint. She has an obligation to stop Cliffside. She has an obligation to represent the public interest.

The demonstration in Raleigh, on October 24, was coordinated by Greenpeace and NC WARN with support from the Canary Coalition, Clean Air Carolina, Clean Water for NC, NC Green Party, NC Fair Share, NC Progressive Democrats and Southern Energy Network.

Six people, Dick Paddock of Chapel Hill; Jean Larson of Asheville, Keval Kaur Khalsa of Durham; John Allen, a UNC-Chapel Hill student from Winston-Salem, Jim Warren of Efland and myself, Avram Friedman, of Sylva, with the support of 150 demonstrators across the street, chose to deliver this message through non-violent civil disobedience, by crossing a police line in front of the Governor’s mansion, on Blount Street, in Raleigh. For some of us it was the second arrest this year. I want to thank the Capital Police for their professional behavior in peacefully and respectfully arresting us. I guess many of them have children too.

Series: cliffside, Duke rate hikes

REGIONAL–Almost every morning in summer, songbirds delight us with a sunrise chorus.

On this day, as I walk in a Great Smoky Mountains spruce-fir forest with Cherokee Middle School science-campers, the avian concert includes the bouncy tunes of a winter wren and endless trills from a slate-colored junco, strangely resembling a cell phone jingle.

Up at around 6,000 feet in elevation, birds that live in an Appalachian high mountain fir forest find food in pines and berry bushes, grab insects on the wing (of which there are plenty here now), and search the leaf litter for moist and meaty invertebrates such as snails.

Contributor Blair Ogburn is Senior Naturalist at Balsam Mountain Preserve. She, her husband Jon and son Sam live in Addie Community

Ground snails feed on leafy vegetation and microscopic soil particles. Amazingly, they are able to gather and store calcium from the soil and soft rock. In spruce-fir habitat, snails make up an important part of a bird’s diet.

Thrushes, from the bird family Turdidae, which includes robins and bluebirds, eat lots of snails while on their nesting grounds. The feeding cycle from soil to snail allows for the production of strong shells (through the collection of calcium carbonate). Birds eat the snails and ingest calcium they can use for their own egg production.

Environmental changes, like an increase in pollution, may potentially alter the makeup of minerals in soil and/or air chemistry. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, acid deposition is a form of pollution (and a by-product of the coal-fired power plants in NC and TN) that affects high elevation forests and has been shown to alter soil, air, and water chemistry which might affect the food chain.

What if land snail populations were to decline because of acid deposition? This could happen if calcium became unavailable or scarce in the soil. Could thrushes (at the top of the soil/snail/bird food chain) be negatively affected since they gather calcium from eating snails?

These are the kinds of questions being asked by scientists in the Smoky Mountains and around the globe in an effort to monitor and manage natural areas, based on biological data and changing interrelationships.

Today at Clingman’s Dome, just below 6,000 feet in elevation on the North Carolina side of the park, the science campers and I join park rangers to collect data from the spruce-fir habitat. Our goal is to capture snails and birds that live up here, so that they can be identified to species, then recorded and released. Sleepy students come alive as they leave for their “snail shell scavenger hunt”.

Our work will help biologists catalog which snails live here, and which, if any, are being affected by pollution and monitored soil chemistry. Perhaps the process will help to answer important biological questions.

SYLVA–So here it is:

We’re imprinted with this image, those of us who have spent much time around here.

This is Jackson Paper Manufacturing Co., as seen from the intersection of NC 107 and Asheville Highway in Sylva. It’s right up there among the area’s top visual landmarks, along with the view of the courthouse from Main Street and any long panorama of the Great Balsams. To people who have spent decades here, it’s almost invisible, like the last few curves before we reach our own homes.

One of my first memories of this view is clear, though I don’t remember the car I was in, sitting at the intersection. It might’ve been in the Corvair, or the Karman-Ghia. It would’ve been 1970 or ‘71. Regardless, Mead Corporation still operated the plant, employing hundreds of locals but working itself into the cross-hairs of the newly-created Environmental Protection Agency.

Last month, Jackson Paper Manufacturing Co., North Carolina’s largest recycling plant, announced an expansion that will add over 60 full-time jobs. The company makes corrugating medium for cardboard — the zig-zag paper that goes between the two outer layers of liner board to give it rigidity — from 100% recycled cardboard. Jackson Paper says it purchases over 100,000 tons of recycled cardboard each year from recycling centers across the region.

It employs 116 full time employees with an annual payroll of about $6 million.

In its first phase of expansion, Jackson Paper will begin making “complete” cardboard by purchasing liner board material and using its own corrugating medium to make the final product. It will move into and equip the empty Chasam plant on Scotts Creek road for this purpose.

In the long term, Jackson Paper plans to build an additional 139,000-square-foot facility to manufacture its own liner board.

The expansion comes after a year-and-a-half of behind-the-scenes finagling with state and local officials. Sylva Mayor Brenda Oliver played a significant role, and the Jackson County Board of Commissioners went on to lend Jackson Paper a half-million dollars.

And all of this came after an initial plan to locate the expansion at an empty Fruit of the Loom plant in Clayton, GA, fell through when another buyer — a speculator — undercut Jackson Paper’s bid in the last half-hour of bidding. That mill remains empty, and has become the center of controversy that has arisen from Rabun Co., GA’s plans to build a wastewater treatment plant on part of the site and discharge treated wastewater into the headwaters of the Little Tennessee River. (More)

Jackson Paper’s expansion hasn’t been without environmental controversy, either.

When Sylva enacted zoning, almost thirty years ago, the maximum industrial structure height was inadvertently set lower than the existing mill’s height. This was discovered during planning for Jackson Paper’s expansion, and the town of Sylva’s board of commissioners subsequently voted to raise the height limit.

Clean air activist Avram Friedman, Executive Director of the Canary Coalition, took exception, arguing that the zoning height difference was the only leverage the town had to ensure that the plant wouldn’t switch from its current wood chip fuel source to coal or rubber pellets — sources that its current air quality permit would allow, and that might seriously impact the town.

Friedman further contended that the town gave improper public notice of its intention to change the zoning regulations, and asked the town board to rescind its decision.

Friedman’s request died for lack of support, but board member Sarah Graham (disclosure: she’s my wife) moved that Jackson Paper be invited to answer community questions in open forum. That motion passed 3-2. Friedman was dismissive of the idea, calling it “meaningless”, but Jackson Paper hasn’t been eager to act on it either, perhaps validating the Canary Coalition’s concern.

The plant, as it now exists, more or less, began when George H. Mead opened Sylva Paperboard Co. in 1928. A tannery had been there since 1901, and the tannery, which used wood chips to fire its boiler, had more wood chips than it could use. Up north, Mead had discovered a way to make cardboard from wood chips, so he was invited to buy into the tannery operation.

The tannery faded away by mid-century, but by then Mead was the county’s largest manufacturer. This was time when many small mountain towns were centered around major manufacturers, and Mead’s impact was huge. It bought over $1 million in local timber a year, employed over 300 workers, and had a payroll of $1.3 million. Mead owned 40,000 acres of timberland.

But there was a downside. Here’s what Dr. John Bell wrote in the “History of Jackson County”:

… Mead experienced financial trouble because of environmental problems. The manufacturing process produced a by-product of “black liquor” that was discharged into Scotts Creek … In 1937 Mead noted the harmful effects of this liquor on water quality and aquatic life and started treating it. Mead also built a pilot plant in 1950 to remove the solid waste from the liquor, but the discharge still had a dark color and bad odor.

In 1957, Swain County, which is downstream, began making noise that Mead needed to clean up its act, and eventually the state told Mead it had until 1962 to do just that.

Mead got deadline extensions and invested over $2.5 million dollars in new discharge technology, but discovered that while that technology cleaned the water significantly, it simultaneously created very bad air pollution.

Environmentalist and iconoclast Edward Abbey wrote this about Sylva in 1969, after a short stint on the faculty at Western Carolina University:

Sylva must have once been a lovely town. Small, with a population of perhaps five thousand, nestled in the green hills below the Great Smokies, full of beautiful old houses, laved as they say by the sparkling waters of the Tuckasegee River (sic), with the life of a market center and the dignity of a county seat, Sylva must have been beautiful. Now it is something else, for the streets are grimy and noisy, jammed always with motor traffic, the river is a sewer, and the sky a pall of poisonous filth. The obvious villain in the picture is the local Mead’s Paper Mill, busily pumping its garbage into the air and the into the river, but general traffic and growth must bear the rest of the blame.

The EPA, founded during the Nixon administration, soon told Mead to clean the air. Mead decided to cut its losses, closed the Sylva operation in 1974 and moved to Alabama.

The facility remained idle until 1978, when Dixie Container Company purchased the mill and converted it to the production of 100% recycled medium. The plant has changed hands twice since that time, but remains North Carolina’s largest recycling facility, with a “closed loop” system that releases no water, and woodchip-fired boilers that release very little ash into the air.

STATEWIDE–State air regulators on Friday granted Duke Energy’s request to treat the new 800-megawatt Cliffside 6 power generating unit it is building west of Charlotte as a “minor source” of pollution.

The designation could allow Duke to sidestep the public process of analyzing and installing the most stringent controls to reduce hazardous pollutants such as mercury. That issue is still before the federal court, and the Division of Air Quality’s decision will allow Duke lawyers to argue that federal courts no longer have jurisdiction in the matter.

Environmentalists reacted angrily to the decision.

“Today’s permitting decision … puts the health of North Carolina citizens at risk and puts North Carolina out of step with the national trend away from coal,” said Elyse Jung, of the N.C. Sierra Club.

Avram Friedman, of Sylva, Director of the Canary Coalition, wrote this, in an open letter to Governor Perdue: “Plans for building new coal burning power plants are being abandoned throughout the rest of the country. There is no reason for you to allow Duke Energy to give North Carolina the stigma of being one of the last bastions of dirty coal.”

Duke Energy framed the decision as proof that it is becoming a more responsible corporate citizen, and that the decision was appropriate given the current economic climate.

Here’s an excerpt from a story in Saturday’s Raleigh News and Observer:

A coalition of environmental groups sued last year, challenging Duke’s construction of a major pollution source without an analysis of the maximum pollution controls needed. In December, U.S. District Judge Lacy Thornburg sided with the environmental groups and ruled that Duke was “simply refusing to comply with the controlling law.”

Read the N&O’s coverage from Wade Rawlins here.

Release from the Southern Environmental Law Center

Earlier release from Canary Coalition vowing non-violent protest

STATEWIDE–Federal judge Lacy Thornburg, of Webster, ruled in favor of North Carolina in its lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority yesterday, and ordered the TVA to install pollution control systems on its four plants closest to the North Carolina border.

From Clarke Morrison’s story in the Asheville Citizen-Times:

Judge Lacy Thornburg said in his order that pollution from TVA plants harms the health of North Carolina residents.

“I’m pleased that the court ordered the TVA to clean up air pollution coming from its plants closest to North Carolina,” said Attorney General Roy Cooper, who sued the giant utility in 2006. “This will help our air, our health and our travel and tourism economy.”

The lawsuit claimed pollution from the TVA’s plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky drifts into North Carolina and harms the health of people living here while degrading the environment.

The lawsuit seeks to force TVA to make reductions of emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and soot similar to those required of utilities in North Carolina by the Clean Smokestacks Act.

Overview

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper filed suit against the Tennessee Valley Authority in 2006, alleging that the federally-owned corporation hasn’t done enough to control pollution from 11 coal-fired power plants it operates in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.

Cooper alleges that the TVA is significantly to blame for Western North Carolina’s poor air quality.

The case was tried through mid-July in Asheville, before federal judge Lacy Thornburg, a Webster, NC, resident. There was no jury. Testimony ended Wednesday, July 30.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reported on Thursday, July 31st, that a decision by Thornburg was weeks, maybe months, away. Attorneys for both sides have until September 15 to file followup paperwork, and no decision will come before that time.

Western North Carolina’s Canary Coalition has been involved in the political fight for improved air quality for nearly a decade. Avram Friedman, Executive Director of the organization, has this to say about the current trial: “[The outcome will be] very significant, with broad implications about the responsibility of the utility industry toward air quality in downwind states. But, if we get a favorable opinion … it will almost certainly be appealed by the TVA, probably delaying meaningful action for years. Nonetheless, it will put the utility industry on notice that their days of irresponsibility without accountability are numbered.”

Coverage from Clarke Morrison at the Asheville Citizen-Times:

First Week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Second Week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Third Week: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday

Coverage from the Tennessean’s Anne Paine.

Raleigh News and Observer gives an overview of North Carolina’s clean air fight in this editorial
New York Times Editorial on Clean Air Interstate decision here.
Asheville Citizen-Times editorial here.

Our previous thoughts here.

After seeing witnesses brought by the TVA and witnesses brought by the state of North Carolina give testimony that was in many cases diametrically opposed, we stumbled upon this article, called “The Price of Advocacy” in a New York Times series called “American Exception”. The series discusses ways in which the American justice system is different from other those of other countries.

Day-by-day

ASHEVILLE/REGIONAL-North Carolina’s suit against the Tennessee Valley Authority, seeking to force the nation’s largest utility to clamp down on pollution from its plants, got underway in U.S. District Court in Asheville Monday, July 14, and is likely to end sometime during the last week of the month.

Here’s a roundup of testimony so far:

Smog over the Plott Balsams

MONDAY: In opening arguments, the state began to craft its assertion that the TVA should modernize its 11 coal-fired plants to the west and south of North Carolina at least to the standards set forth in North Carolina’s 2002 Clean Smokestacks legislation. Witnesses provided testimony that the North Carolina mountains are significantly and negatively impacted by pollution from TVA plants, and that the TVA has a track record of acting only under legal pressure.

The TVA, meanwhile, argued that it has made significant strides in reducing emissions, and asserted that it alone couldn’t be held responsible for North Carolina pollution.

In addition, TVA attorney Frank Lancaster said: “North Carolina is not suffering significant harm to its air quality, there will be a lot of evidence the air quality in North Carolina is good.”

TUESDAY: Jim Staudt, an expert in air pollution control technology and president of Andover Technology Partners (a major consultant on pollution control technology) testified Tuesday that the Tennessee Valley Authority could move faster to cut emissions from its coal-fired power plants.

“Their emissions are at an unreasonable rate,” he said.

Staudt also noted that Friday’s action by a Federal Appeals Court to strike down the 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule will have a “chilling effect” on pollution control progress.

WEDNESDAY: More testimony from emissions experts underscored a fundamental irony of the air quality issue in the mountains: under federal regulations, communities with high ozone levels face restrictions of transportation funds and possible restrictions on development if air quality isn’t improved. Frequently though, outside sources of pollution contribute significantly to local problems. Furthermore, last Friday’s action by a Federal Appeals Court to strike down the 2005 Clean Interstate Air Rule eliminates a partial solution to this riddle, and makes North Carolina’s case all the more compelling.

Additional testimony from the same consultant made clear the relatively drastic improvements in visibility that could be expected if the TVA were to meet the standards that North Carolina plants have been forced to meet through the 2002 NC Clean Smokestacks legislation.

THURSDAY: Three witnesses took the stand for the state on Thursday, two speaking to the health effects of polluted air, and one to the impact on visibility.

FRIDAY: Jonathan Levy of the Harvard School for Public Policy testified Friday morning that if the lawsuit is successful, each year in North Carolina there would be:

• 99 fewer premature deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
• 19,000 fewer asthma attacks.
• 60 fewer hospital admissions.
• 55 fewer emergency room visits related to asthma.
• 2,300 fewer lost school days.

Levy called the estimates “reasonable and reliable” and said they were based the “best available science.”

From the Asheville Citizen-Times:

“Under cross-examination by one of TVA’s attorneys, Levy acknowledged the calculations don’t take into account the installation of scrubbers that are planned or under way at three power plants in eastern Tennessee.

MONDAY: Three tourism representatives, Todd Morse, of Chimney Rock Park, and Bill Cecil, Jr., President and CEO of Biltmore Co., along with an outdoor outfitter and trail guide testified for the state that smog is bad for business.

TUESDAY: Bruce Buckheit, former director of air enforcement for the Environmental Protection Agency, said that an investigation by that agency found that TVA plants emitted more than 1 million tons of “illegal emissions” over 20 years.

“We were stunned,” Buckheit said. “This is one of the most significant violations I’ve ever seen.”

Under cross-examination, Buckheit acknowledged that no court has ever found the TVA guilty of violating New Source Review rules of the clean air act, although he pointed out that the matter is still tied up in court.

WEDNESDAY: The Tennessee Valley Authority opened its defense on the trial’s second Wednesday, and John Myers, TVA’s senior manager of environmental policy and regulatory outlook took the stand.

Myers stressed one of the TVA’s fundamental arguments, emphasizing that TVA’s coal-fired plants produced about 30 percent more electricity last year than plants in North Carolina, while emitting about the same amount of sulfur dioxide.

But, reported the Asheville Citizen-Times:

“Under cross-examination, Myers acknowledged that Duke Energy and Progress Energy are poised to significantly reduce emissions as required by the Clean Smokestacks Act approved by state lawmakers in 2002.”

Myers touted the TVA as one of the early innovators in pollution control, but also acknowledged that many of the company’s implementations of such technology have been driven by state and federal controls.

THURSDAY: Thomas Tesche, an expert in computer air dispersion modeling, was called by the TVA, and argued with highly technical testimony that very little of the haze that impacts the Smokies originates in Tennessee. He took exception with the “air modeling” of scientists called by the state of North Carolina earlier in the week.

FRIDAY: Suresh Moolgavkar, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington, told U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg: “I’m of the opinion that there isn’t sufficient evidence to support a causal relationship,(between pollution from TVA plants and health issues in North Carolina).” In sometimes sharply-worded testimony, Moolgavkar contradicted last Friday’s testimony for the state from Jonathan Levy of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Moolgavkar said Levy’s statistics “fly in the face of common sense,” and went on to say, “these numbers cannot be taken seriously. The assumptions underlying them are meaningless.”

Clarke Morrison at the Asheville Citizen-Times described N.C. Senior Deputy Attorney General James Gulick’s cross-examination of Moolgavkar this way:

Moolgavkar acknowledged his studies and papers were funded by groups like the American Iron and Steel Institute and the American Petroleum Institute.

Gulick said such organizations have a financial stake in conclusions reached about the association of air pollution and ill health effects.

A second witness, Elizabeth Anderson, who worked in risk assessment for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before becoming a private consultant, questioned Levy’s statistics, and said that TVA pollutants reaching North Carolina are on their way to being “exceedingly small.” Gulick countered that Anderson’s statistics were based on statistics that were dependent on the existence of the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which was struck down recently by a federal appeals court.

TUESDAY: (Court was not in session Monday) Quincy Styke, deputy director of the Tennessee Division of Air Pollution Control took the stand in defense of the Tennessee Valley Authority, saying that the TVA does a good job of helping clean  the air. When asked why Tennessee hasn’t enacted legislation similar to North Carolina’s 2002 Clean Smokestacks bill, Styke said: “Tennessee has not enacted similar legislation because it’s not necessary. We don’t need a statute. Tennessee’s been about the business of controlling its emissions.”

When cross-examined by attorneys for the state of North Carolina, writes Clarke Morrison in the Asheville Citizen-Times, Styke “acknowledged that Nashville and other metropolitan areas in Tennessee don’t meet federal standards for the air pollutant ozone, which experts say can cause respiratory illness and other health problems.”

WEDNESDAY: Attorneys made their closing arguments before lunch today.

The gist of the arguments, as quoted by the Asheville Citizen-Times Clark Morrison:

North Carolina Senior Deputy Attorney General James Gulick:

“It is especially important there be a mandate, a schedule and a firm deadline. Mandates work, your honor.

“TVA’s emissions have created a nuisance that is going on today. Those emissions are causing harm to public health throughout the region. The nuisance is happening now and North Carolina is entitled to relief.”

TVA attorney Frank Lancaster:

“TVA’s approach is steady reductions over time. That’s TVA’s history and that’s TVA’s future.”

“Your honor, there has been a complete failure of proof of any ongoing nuisance. TVA has been making steady reductions for years and there is no evidence it will change its course. We ask that this case be dismissed, your honor.”