TVA seeks feedback on its vegetation management environmental assessment

On Friday, the Tennessee Valley Authority asked for feedback on its vegetation management environmental assessment of right-of-ways for 2025 and 2026.

The TVA said its preferred alternative uses an Integrated Vegetation Management approach that is aimed at promoting a meadow-like environment along its right-of-ways and uses vegetation that doesn’t interfere with safe and reliable transmission system operations. The IVM approach uses a mix of herbicides applied selectively to incompatible vegetation, mechanical clearing and manual clearing.

Using this alternative vegetation management system allows low-growing compatible vegetation to establish and propagate, reducing the presence of woody species, officials said.

Officials said right-of-way maintenance is critical because the region is growing three time faster than the national average. The population of the region is expected to grow by 22 percent by 2050, according to the University of Tennessee’s Baker School. In response, TVA is investing $2.8 billion to strengthen its power grid.

The TVA power service area has a wide array of vegetation that can interfere with electric power flow, officials said, as well as pose safety issues for TVA employees and the public, or interfere with TVA’s ability to maintain its transmission system. To ensure electric service is not disrupted by outages on its transmission line, the TVA has to keep vegetation away from electric power facilities, official said.

The draft Environmental Assessment is available on the TVA website . Feedback is due by Aug. 31, officials said.

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