Given the disastrous nuclear catastrophe at Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex this year, it's conceivable that TVA officials could be intimidated by some things nuclear. But we hardly expected the giant public utility to be afraid of a few "zombie" protesters. Alas, we were wrong.
As it turns out, the Tennessee Valley Authority appears to be seriously, and laughably, frightened by the prospect that a few ratepayers will turn up at its board meeting today, dressed in their zombie costumes to protest the agency's planned resurrection of its long-dead nuclear plant at Bellefonte.
Its remedy for this silly fear -- a ban on such costumed attendees at TVA's Knoxville headquarters today for a vote on the reopening of the plant site -- is not just strange; it is wrong.
TVA is, after all, a federal agency, owned by the federal government and governed by appointees to the board selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Its announced costumed ban mocks its federally enshrined lineage.
It would violate the First Amendment principle of free assembly to petition a redress of grievances by government, and it would needlessly mock and restrict freedom of speech. Those are bedrock constitutional standards which TVA, a federal standard bearer since its creation by FDR in 1933, should honor.
TVA, in fact, owes its continued existence to Congress, and, more specifically, to the enduring support of this region's congressional caucus. The caucus' members have for decades fought against repeal of the TVA act as promoted by zealous, jealous lawmakers outside the TVA region whose private utilities have chafed at TVA's example of public benefit and lower costs.
TVA also finances its operations through borrowing -- its debt is now about $24 billion -- that is inherently backed by the federal government. It enjoys this privilege strictly because of its federal charter. The agency's dams, river reservoirs and other facilities, moreover, were created on land appropriated from private farmers under federal authority for the public good.
We mention all this lest TVA's managers, in their unseemly arrogance, forget the agency's birthright, and the ideals of public service that it yet owes its captive rate payers. If some ratepayers want to wear a symbolic protest of nuclear power and expansion to the board meeting, they should have that right. Attendees can always be ejected if they actually create a disturbance. But their free speech and assembly should be protected. It goes with TVA's territory.