The new head of the Tennessee Valley Authority on Thursday appointed top TVA executives to help tackle the utility’s ongoing coal ash cleanup problems and the threat of losing its biggest customer.
In his first board meeting in Franklin, Tennessee, TVA CEO Jeff Lyash also promised to review TVA policies to address concerns by lawmakers about the secret manner in which the federal agency conducts some of its business.
Lyash, the former CEO of Ontario Power Generation (OPG) hired to head TVA in March, praised TVA’s staff and operations and said the agency’s improving financial picture should keep power rates in the Tennessee Valley relatively stable and below most of the country for years to come.
But after meeting with stakeholders across TVA’s 7-state region, Lyash sought Thursday to address some of the biggest challenges he has seen in his first month on the job as head of America’s biggest government utility.
Lyash said TVA and other electric utilities still must address the legacy of their coal plants and their residues to cleanup the coal ash like what spilled out of a ruptured pond at TVA’s Kingston coal plant a decade ago. Lyash named TVA’s vice president of enterprise relations, Dr. Joe Hoagland, to head a new review of the way TVA is handling its coal ash cleanup and communicating with communities where coal plants have closed or left coal residues.