Environmentalists fight to keep pollutants out of Tennessee's Clinch River

A water quality fight is raging in Tennessee involving environmental activists, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Here are the details from The Associated Press:

Environmental activists are trying to stop the Tennessee Valley Authority from starting a daily 1 million gallon discharge of water that contains mercury, selenium and other pollutants into the [Clinch River.]

Representatives of Earthjustice and other groups told reporters Thursday they are challenging a Clean Water Act permit issued by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. They said technology is available to avoid the potentially toxic discharges.

The discharges into the Clinch River stem from new smokestack scrubbers that reduce air emissions at the plant where TVA is still engaged in a $1 billion ash cleanup from a December spill.

The activists asked the Tennessee Water Quality Control Board in a filing Thursday to reverse TDEC's Oct. 16 approval of the discharge permit.

TVA said in a statement released by spokeswoman Barbara Martocci that although "metals are present in the discharged water, state and federal agencies have determined that there is no reasonable potential for these materials to cause an exceedance of any water quality criteria."

Lisa Widawsky, an attorney for Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that the state agency ignored its responsibility to enforce the Clean Water Act when it approved "new discharges of toxic heavy metals, to the tune of 1 million gallons a day, into the same river devastated by the Kingston coal ash spill."