Free Republic

the lesson from Helene is the opposite from that being promoted. In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most part, accomplished their goal. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them. The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren't constructed due to local opposition. Rather than the devastation of Hurricane Helene on Asheville illustrating the effect of climate change,...

Trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), a long-chain fatty acid found in meat and dairy products from grazing animals such as cows and sheep, improves the ability of CD8+ T cells to infiltrate tumors and kill cancer cells, according to a study. The study also shows that patients with higher levels of TVA circulating in the blood responded better to immunotherapy, suggesting that it could have potential as a nutritional supplement to complement clinical treatments for cancer. For the new study, Hao Fan, Ph.D. and Siyuan Xia, Ph.D., started with a database of around 700 known metabolites. They screened the compounds in this...

Talk about making friends and influencing people. Duke Energy, one of the main power providers for the Carolinas, really stepped in it over the Christmas weekend. For the first time in the energy company’s history, they were forced to institute rolling blackouts and beg their customers to conserve power…in the middle of a ferocious winter storm on Christmas Eve. For the first time in the company’s history, Duke Energy enacted rolling blackouts on Christmas Eve amid freezing temperatures. The move left half a million customers without power. And on Tuesday, the company issued an apology, attributing several compounding factors as...

Thanks to the TVA (“Tennessee Valley Authority,” electricity had been abundant and inexpensive for Tennessee and six surrounding states for most of the past century. Coal, hydro, nuclear, and natural gas were the fuels that electrified Appalachia. But anti-carbon leftists have infiltrated the organization, and its future is now geared toward renewables and “sustainability.” In other words, scarcity is the future of electricity in the TVA service area. The extreme cold snap this past weekend was not common, but neither was it unprecedented. But what was unprecedented is that the TVA is no longer able to reliably provide electricity in...

The largest public power company in the U.S. is launching a program to develop and fund new small modular nuclear reactors as part of its strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The board for the Tennessee Valley Authority on Thursday authorized the program to assess moving forward with new nuclear technology, with up to $200 million to be spent for the first phase. The TVA wants the technology to be available to help power the grid in the 2030s if it proves cost-effective and necessary, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves. The board met at Western Kentucky University in...

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) abandoned its plan to replace U.S. technology workers with H-1B visa workers after President Donald Trump criticized the power company and fired two of its board members. “We were wrong in not fully understanding the impact on our employees, especially during the pandemic,” said Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Jeff Lyash in a statement Thursday. According to a news release, Lyash, along with TVA’s interim board Chairman John Ryder, met with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. Lyash further expounded on the TVA’s decision, saying it “supports” President Trump’s...

Union workers in upstate New York are pleading with President Trump to help prevent layoffs by requiring the Tennessee Valley Authority to build six massive new electricity generators in the US instead of moving some overseas. The TVA is a federally owned electricity supplier in Tennessee and neighboring states. On Monday, Trump fired two TVA board chairmen and demanded the TVA president’s ouster for laying off Americans while outsourcing tech jobs to a company in India. Workers at the historic General Electric campus in Schenectady — where Thomas Edison once worked — hope Trump will now help them. The factory...

President Trump on Monday called for the ouster of the highest-paid federal worker, Tennessee Valley Authority President Jeff Lyash, citing his plans to outsource jobs to India. Trump told reporters at the White House he’s firing TVA board chairman James Thompson and board member Richard Howorth for laying off dozens of IT workers while hiring foreign replacements. Trump said Lyash will soon lose his job too. “We’re getting rid of [Lyash] in one form or another. Either the board’s gonna do it, or we’re gonna do it, but he’s gone,” he said. “We will get somebody for a much lower...

WASHINGTON — (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he had fired the chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority, criticizing the federal-owned corporation for hiring foreign workers. Trump told reporters at the White House that he was formally removing chair Skip Thompson and another member of the board, and he threatened to remove other board members if they continued to hire foreign labor.

President Donald Trump distanced himself late Thursday night from Jeff Lyash, his appointee running the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), who is now using H-1B outsourcing to discard American professionals even as Trump tries to revive his poll numbers. Another one of many Fake T.V. Ads, this one about the Tennessee Valley Authority, which for years has paid its top executive a ridiculous FORTUNE. Not run by the U.S., but I have long been fighting that crazy “salary” & its polices. Strange ad paid for (?) by “U.S. Tech Workers”.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2020 The TVA is a...

AS DONALD TRUMP vows to save the economy amid the global pandemic, while the number of Americans filing for unemployment has skyrocketed to 30 million, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, the nation’s largest government-owned power provider, has announced plans to outsource 20 percent of its highly-skilled technology workforce to Capgemini, CGI, and Accenture — companies based in France, Canada, and Ireland respectively. At least 120 workers have already learned they will be losing their jobs later this summer, and the TVA has informed the engineers’ union that another 100 jobs are likely on the chopping block. Affected workers were...

The highest-paid U.S. federal official earned $8.16 million last year, and he may be in line for a big pay cut as populist outrage shapes a new infrastructure package intended to put people back to work after the coronavirus outbreak. There’s a bipartisan drive to cut compensation for Jeff Lyash, president of the Tennessee Valley Authority, as the White House and House Democrats begin talks on up to $2 trillion in infrastructure spending to offset a spike in joblessness. The TVA is a federally owned electricity provider that controls dozens of dams built during the Great Depression as a jobs...

Senators Burr and Tillis Introduce Legislation to Stop Tennessee Valley Authority’s Proposed Houseboat Ban WASHINGTON — North Carolina Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis today introduced legislation to stop the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) proposed ban on houseboats, which would affect nearly 400 houseboat owners on Fontana Lake in North Carolina. “TVA’s proposed removal of houseboat owners from their homes would be devastating for many hardworking North Carolina families in Swain and Graham Counties,” said Senator Burr (R-NC). “This amendment would stop this ill-conceived TVA proposal dead in its tracks and ensure that houseboat owners are able to stay in...

Former TVA Vice President 58-year-old Masoud Bajestani plead guilty to conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and Iranian Transactions Regulations, and two counts of filing false income tax returns. Bajestani sentencing is set for January 15, in U.S. District Court in Knoxville. Bajestani faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for conspiracy to violate the IEEPA, and three years for each count of filing a false tax return. He also faces a maximum fine of $250,000 on each count. In February 2013, a federal grand jury charged Bajestani, with conspiracy, violations of the IEEPA...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Spring rains cascade over the lip of the Norris Dam in a torrent of white foam and spray. A hundred yards downriver from this concrete waterfall, people stop at the little park to record the scene on their smart phones or digital cameras. It is an image made for a postcard -- a remarkable marriage of nature and technology. And a centerpiece of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Created in 1933 by President Roosevelt, the TVA brought electricity to Appalachia, with the goal that wiring up Tennessee, parts of North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi would help bring prosperity...

The president's recently proposed budget for fiscal year 2014 included a strategic review of the federal government's role in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). TVA is a federally owned corporation that owns and operates 56 power plants in the Tennessee Valley Region, which stretches across parts of six states (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee). TVA's plants are primarily hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, and coal-fired facilities with a combined net summer capacity of more than 35 gigawatts (GW), about 3% of the total U.S. electricity capacity. According to the proposed 2014 budget, TVA's current capital investment plan...

It’s not enough that Washington Republicans seem bent on signing onto any immigration deal that supposedly helps them with their “image” problem, but why do so many of them want to bash one of Obama’s better ideas in his budget: privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)? Let’s see: Barry Goldwater was for this before it was cool, and Ronald Reagan broached the idea in 1981, and was beaten back. Now Obama has grabbed hold of it. Start selling federal assets, and pretty soon the deficit might start to come down. It is understandable that Tennessee senators Corker and Alexander would...

WATE: Authorities are investigating after a security guard was fired upon at the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant. It happened around 2 a.m. today on the TVA property near the Tennessee River about a quarter mile from the plant's protected area. Officials say the security officer was patrolling the area when he was shot at, he returned fire and was uninjured. The shooting lead the Watts Bar plant staff to declare an unusual event, which is the lowest of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's four emergency classifications. The FBI will also be sending a team. A suspect has not been found.

President Obama’s proposed 2014 budget includes an item free marketeers can rally behind: “reducing or eliminating” the federal government’s role in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation’s largest publicly owned utility. Naturally, both of Tennessee’s Republican senators oppose the proposal. Via Bloomberg News: “The odd thing is that a bunch of Rs are defending the most liberal, collectivist, state-managed thing ever undertaken in the United States,” said [Mike] McKenna, [a Republican energy lobbyist] whose clients include the Atlanta-based utility Southern Co. (NSC) that could benefit from a sale of the TVA, in an e-mail. “TVA was the brainchild of...

The Tennessee Valley Authority lost another $94 million during the second quarter of the fiscal year as the mild winter cut TVA revenues by nearly 12.5 percent below the year-ago period. TVA said today that revenues in the three months ended March 31 totaled $2.6 billion, down from the $2.97 billion in the same period a year ago. Combined with losses in TVA’s first fiscal quarter, the federal utility reported a net loss for the first half of fiscal 2013 of $267 million on sales of less than $5.2 billion. In the same period a year ago, TVA earned $205...