Cheatham County Generation Site EIS Scoping Report
Appendix C Summary of Scoping Comments
Tennessee Valley Authority
Cheatham County Generation Site_#166 We don’t want a methane or a lithium battery plant here. In the event of a fire, our fire department would not be equipped to deal with such an issue. If there was ever a fire, the effects on human and wildlife would be horrendous. I haven't talked to a single person in this county that is in favor of this plant being located in Cheatham County. We all think it would be best if it was located somewhere else where they would have the equipment, manpower and wherewithal to handle any adverse problems that would arise with such a facility. negative Evelyn Stevenson
7/6/2023
This proposed site will pollute the water source for the town of Pleasant View, Tennessee & several surrounding communities dependent on the water from sycamore creek; if it is built. I speak not only for myself but for the rural and elder members of our community who are not technologically inclined and/or do not have not the means to chime in via the internet. These are people who have depended on this clean unmolested waterway their whole lives and are staunchly opposed to this proposed generation site. Sycamore Creek is one of the best fisheries in Tennessee because it is one of the few producing clean water and pouring clean water into the Cumberland River. Sycamore Creek is one of the few “life blood” sources for the River for this reason. If it is tainted, the Cumberland River will slowly become even more of a cess pool, and more communities and cities will suffer if it loses the clean water supply constantly pouring into it. The proposed site is only feet from Pleasant Views Water Treatment Facility as well. This proximity will directly affect the whole towns water. Both Sycamore Creek (the towns water supply) & The water treatment facility will be poisoned. By building this generation site, it will also increase cancer rates, sickness, and mortality. It will also destroy farmers livestock operations who dearly depend on sycamore creeks water for their animals. Nothing good comes from this proposal. The energy that would be created by this generation site is not worth the results of directly affecting tens of thousands of lives in these negative ways. Stop this madness or choose to be responsible for destroying our beautiful towns cities and countryside. If you poison the land and the people of these communities there will be no one to supply energy for. negative Jonathan Lawhorn
Cheatham County Generation Site_#165
7/6/2023
Citations 1. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports 2. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/
3. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/02/us-state-with-most-renewable-energyproduction/ 4. https://cleanenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/Solar-in-the-Southeast-Sixth-Annual-Report.pdf 5. https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/power-generation/powerplants/brownfield-transformation/rotating-grid-stabilizer.html? gclid=EAIaIQobChMI07H78K_K_wIV0X5MCh1dywd2EAAYASAAEgI20vD_BwE 6. https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/renewables-rescue-stability-as-the-grid-losesspin.html 7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114766 8. Lee, J. et.al., 2022. https://docs.wind-watch.org/US-footprints-Strata-2017.pdF
Cheatham County Generation Site_#164-006
7/6/2023
negative
Joseph
schiller
TVA misrepresents the land impacts of solar relative to gas turbine generation in the Cumberland CC turbine EIS by failing to include the land impacts of these upstream sources as though natural gas just materializes from the ether. The Koch Foundation funded Strata Policy Institute published a study comparing the land use of various energy sources and found that natural gas affected more than 11 acres of land per MW of natural gas generation. (8) These are inexcusable omissions from a public utility whose every policy action should be firmly grounded in science! TVA failed to provide a risk assessment of the price volatility of natural gas in its analysis of the natural gas turbine alternative and should certainly include such an analysis in this Cheatham project. TVA must include all the land impacts of the proposed actions and all the costs of the proposed actions. It has a history of slanting the analysis to favor its chosen outcome. TVA exaggerated the cost and installation time of the solar and storage alternative by insisting that all the required solar and storage capacity must be sited on newly purchased farmland rather than on its own extensive land and water holdings with existing grid infrastructure. It exaggerated the time by insisting that every megawatt of solar generation had to be installed prior to 2026 and ignored that some of it could be installed on its own properties by 2024. TVA also made the ridiculous claim that it could take 11 years to install all the required solar capacity. Even solar capacity installed on private land could be achieved at much lower cost than TVA’s claim in the Cumberland FDEIS if it had put out a request for proposals to obtain actual bids. Instead, TVA based its estimate on a retrospective analysis of its past solar costs even though solar costs have realized drastic reductions over this period. This approach is doubly flawed in that TVA only described these costs to install solar on private lands as a cost, while in fact, they are also a powerful economic development tool that will boost the rural economy and help keep valuable farmland in production! In summary, TVA must draft a DEIS that meets the letter and intent of the NEPA by formulating a more complete set of action alternatives spanning the range of reasonable possibilities that will cost effectively and reliably replace the electrical generation lost through retirement of the 2nd coal generation turbine at Cumberland Steam Plant. TVA must then objectively compare these alternatives and be willing to accept any that satisfies the stated goals and conditions.
Cheatham County Generation Site_#164-005
7/6/2023
negative
Joseph
schiller
Given TVA’s often expressed concern about the need for inertial resources to stabilize its grid, TVA should undertake a study to determine how much inertial capacity it lacks, if any, and publish the results in a publicly available venue for peer review. It can then formulate an action alternative that includes the needed inertial technology such as synchronous condensers without the need for gas turbine generation. (5) Contrary to TVA’s past claims, new gas turbine generation is not the only viable solution for providing inertial stabilization of an electricity grid. This technology can be retrofitted into retiring coal and gas turbine generating units thus capitalizing on existing infrastructure to reduce costs. One caveat, some energy experts have conducted studies that indicate the concern that high renewables penetration can destabilize a grid is unfounded. (6) In any case, for the immediate and foreseeable future, TVA has far too little inverted power (i.e., noninertial) on its grid to justify this level of concern. Assuming TVA publishes a valid DEIS incorporating a range of reasonable action alternatives as required by NEPA, it then must conduct a valid analysis of these alternatives. In past, TVA has not conducted valid analyses of the alternatives it has considered in the EIS process for the retirement of the first Cumberland coal turbine by failing to include all the costs and environmental impacts of the proposed gas turbine and gas pipeline and exaggerating the costs of the solar and storage action alternative. It must not repeat these flaws in the Cheatham gas plant analysis. TVA failed to include all the adverse environmental impacts of the gas turbine alternative upstream of the 32-mile natural gas pipeline that will deliver methane gas to the turbine. These include many traditional air pollutants, water pollution from fracking activities, and methane emissions from the upstream activities and gas drilling, collection, and transportation activities and infrastructure required to serve the proposed gas turbine at Cumberland. Most methane and health related emissions from natural gas use originate from upstream activities. (7) It also did not include the social cost of carbon resulting from any part of the alternative. TVA must include all the social, environmental, and economic costs in this Cheatham gas plant EIS! TVA must include the social cost of carbon in comparing a range of reasonable alternatives. Based on TVA’s gas consumption estimates for the combustion turbine alternative in the first Cumberland EIS, this gas turbine may consume up to 145,000 dekatherms of natural gas per day and impose a social cost of carbon of $1,609,500 per day, or $587,467,500 per year. And this calculation does not include any of the upstream emissions such as leaks from natural gas exploration, extraction, processing, and transport which are now estimated to be almost as large as the CO2 produced by burning the natural gas. So just this one gas turbine project will create over $1 billion social cost of carbon a year. negative Joseph schiller
Cheatham County Generation Site_#164-004
7/6/2023
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