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TVA to Clean up Permanent Housing on Campsites
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| KRISTIN M. HALL | Associated Press Writer
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The Tennessee Valley Authority will start cleaning up public campsites where people have set up permanent housing and other structures.
During a board meeting Thursday in Jackson, TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore showed pictures of campgrounds and other areas where people had built decks onto parked mobile homes and installed large propane tanks or docks.
Kilgore said cleaning up these sites would not be popular, but he said the utility does "not want permanent lots on the riverside for the price of a campsite."
TVA operates about 100 public recreation areas throughout the Tennessee Valley, including campgrounds, day-use areas and boat launching ramps.
Barbara Martocci, a TVA spokeswoman, said cleaning up campsites is part of a larger initiative to clear up violations on TVA land. That would include building with permits, landowners building on neighboring TVA property or campgrounds where lease holders have allowed people to build porches or walkways.
"TVA is going back and reviewing a lot of areas and determined there are violations and encroachments that need to be fixed," she said.
Some of the violations have gone on for a long time and people could be upset by the recent initiative, Martocci said.
"There is a possibility that people who have been there a while will not understand why this is happening," she said.
The board also approved an expansion of a program that pays businesses to reduce their power use during times when demand is high. The program was initially approved last year and resulted in the reduction of peak power demand by 160 megawatts. The expansion would provide additional incentives with the goal of reducing the peak power demand by up to 560 megawatts by 2012 — the equivalent capacity of three new gas-fired combustion turbine units.
Boston-based energy supplier EnerNOC Inc. runs the program. Martocci said the program's cost is consistent with what TVA would pay to build combustion turbine units to handle peak power demands.
Knoxville-based TVA serves nearly 9 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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