Court rules TVA must install pollution controls The Tennessee
Valley Authority must install pollution controls at four coal-
fired power plants that spit emissions into North Carolina. A
U.S. judge ordered the action in January, siding with the state
of North Carolina in its lawsuit against the nation’s largest
public utility. The lawsuit filed in January 2006 by North
Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper argued the TVA was not
doing enough to control emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
oxides, and mercury that drift east into North Carolina’s
mountains. Cooper’s lawsuit asked the court to order the TVA to
lower emissions from 11 coal-fired plants in three states to
levels that would meet North Carolina’s Clean Smokestacks Act by
2013. Doing so, the state argued, could reduce premature deaths
by 1,400 annually across the region. The U.S. District Court
Judge ordered the four plants closest to North Carolina, three
in Tennessee and one in Alabama, to install scrubbers and other
controls, as well meet specific