Sierra Club protests TVA pollution discharges into McKellar Lake, urges agency to move 'beyond coal'

photo Sierra Club members and volunteers including Will Freiman (right) paddle canoes and kayaks past the TVA's Allen power plant on McKellar Lake as part of an action to draw attention to water pollution issues associated with coal-fired power plants. The demonstrators unfurled banners reading, "Let's Move TVA Beyond Coal" in an effort to highlight the lack of federal regulation necessary to keep McKellar Lake, a body formally designated as impaired by mercury, free of dangerous pollutants. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal)

Sierra Club activists took to the water Friday to call attention to what they said were dangerous pollution discharges from TVA's Allen Fossil Plant in Southwest Memphis.

More than a half dozen of the environmentalists paddled canoes and kayaks across McKellar Lake to the Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired plant. They later unfurled a banner calling on TVA to move "beyond coal" in generating electricity.

Scott Banbury, conservation chair for the Tennessee Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the event was intended to support stronger effluent limits on coal-fired plants, which often discharge toxic metals such as arsenic and lead. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been developing new standards for the discharges.

Read more at The Commercial Appeal.

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