Somebody Is Gonna Pay!

Governor Phil Bredesen issued another executive order related to the TVA toxic ash disaster:

The Order…requires TVA’s cooperation with the state in supporting independent assessments and inspections at Kingston and other TVA coal-waste sites around the state as well as the development of a corrective action plan detailing the steps TVA will take to clean up the Kingston site and ensure safe operations in the future.

Okay, sounds good. Plus:

This Order requires TVA to reimburse the Department of Environment and Conservation for expenses incurred overseeing cleanup and further investigative activities.

Okay, that sounds good, but isn’t that just shifting the burden to TVA customers? Which is pretty much everyone with electricity in nine states. Still, I guess it’s the right decision, even if it’s a sucky one.

Hopefully, the federal government will step in and cover TVA’s costs on this (since TVA is owned 100% by the federal government) rather than passing the costs on to consumers. After all, it wasn’t the consumers that caused this problem but the people in charge of TVA (again, the federal government). Maybe the Bush Administration shouldn’t have blocked all efforts to regulate and fix this problem for the past eight years. It's not like they weren't warned.