Swain County should finally have a budget by early August, nearly six weeks after the start of the new fiscal year.

Commissioners passed an interim budget to keep the county running over the summer, one of only two counties in the state that didn’t pass a full budget by the July 1 deadline.

That, said County Manager Kevin King, was because he was waiting on the state to adjust what the county is due under a new formula for Medicaid reimbursement. The formula was tweaked recently, and the state and county had to work through exactly how much Swain should get.

After the adjustments, which should be in by mid-August, King expects the county to get a few hundred thousand extra dollars.

Because the deficit would be too great to make up out of the county’s savings, King said he was forced either to wait and hope for the Medicaid money or propose county layoffs or a tax hike.

He chose to wait.

With the numbers now in, commissioners this week got their first look at the proposed 2011-12 budget, which will take effect in September.  

If commissioners approve the budget on August 8, the county will have $14.9 million to work with, up $2.5 million from last year’s budget.

The increase is going to two building projects on the county’s to-do list this year: new classrooms at West Elementary School and the construction of the Swain County Business Education and Training Center on Buckner Branch.

The property tax rate will stay the same, despite the additional spending. The school project is being paid for out of a capital reserve fund where savings had been set aside for school construction.

The training center, a joint effort by Southwestern Community College, the Fontana Regional Library, Swain County Schools and the county, is being underwritten by a $1.1 million grant from Duke Energy.

The elementary school upgrade is coming from a capital reserve fund set aside for school improvements suggested by a committee last year.

Otherwise, the budget is nearly identical to last year’s numbers, but the county will have to take a $158,000 dip into its fund balance to come out with a balanced budget.

That, said King, is because the county has suddenly lost around $300,000 in revenue it has counted on for years from the Tennessee Valley Authority.

As a government entity, TVA doesn’t pay property taxes, but does make “payments in lieu of taxes” for Fontana Dam and its generators. A new formula for the payments has drastically reduced what Swain historically got and diverted the money to Graham County instead.

That’s affected their fund balance too. The county was chastised in 2009 by the Local Government Commission for letting the fund balance, essentially the county’s savings account, dip too low. State law mandates that the account be at a minimum of 8 percent of the county’s annual budget, equivalent to one month’s expenses.

“Last year it was at about 13 percent,” said King. “But we’ve had decreases in our TVA [revenue], so it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 percent.”

He said he’s not yet certain of the exact numbers, since he is expecting some payments to the county’s accounts soon that will change the account’s balance.

The bottom line, though, is that revenues are down. And unless expenditures start dropping with them, the county must keep returning to the prospect of raiding its savings.

Currently, Swain is taking Graham County to court over the lost TVA monies. King said they hope to have their money back within a year. But Graham has filed a suit of its own, so the legal entanglements might not be so easy to sort out.

The proposed budget will be available at the Swain County Administration Building until Aug. 8, when commissioners will host a budget hearing and then vote on the document.

A recent court victory by the state of North Carolina will require the Tennessee Valley Authority to reduce emissions at four coal-fired power plants close to the state line and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Once these modifications are complete, it should substantially help clean the air we breathe every day. But we hope this decision is a tipping point in the long-term effort to force utilities, manufacturers and others to make use of the latest technologies as this country makes the move toward cleaner, smarter, and less use of polluting fossil fuels.

The TVA has long been a poster child for companies that embrace a philosophy whereby the environment always plays second fiddle to economics. Although some of its plants were modernized over the years, the utility giant also regularly relied on technicalities in the 1970 Clean Air Act to keep from meeting the law’s stated principles. Those interpretations of the law allowed TVA to modernize its plants without installing the newest pollution-control technologies.

That meant Western North Carolina and east Tennessee residents never benefited from the Clean Air Act as we should have. The dirty air from the giant coal-fired utility plants became the major contributor to dirty air that obscured mountain views, damaged trees, streams and wildlife, and led to asthma and other pulmonary-related illnesses in many residents, especially children and the elderly.

The court ruling could become very symbolic in the effort to convince other utilities and private companies to do a better job of cleaning their emissions and reducing them. North Carolina’s court case was preceded by the passage of its own Clean Smokestacks Act in 2002. North Carolina’s two utility giants — Progress Energy and Duke Energy — forged a compromise with legislators. The utilities would clean up their emissions while being allowed to slightly raise power bills to pay for the work. In other words, citizens paid to clean up their air.

The TVA ruling comes just as the Bush Administration is leaving office. That administration’s wars in the Middle East and its economic policies grabbed most of the headlines over the last eight years, but it also did little to lead with new ideas about energy and pollution. In fact, it continually sided with corporate lobbyists who argued to maintain the loopholes in the Clean Air Act.

The Obama administration is promising a different strategy. Our dependence on imported oil is seen as a foreign policy liability and our energy policy is viewed as outdated. By moving toward greener technology, smarter energy use and less reliance on coal and oil, jobs will be created and we will become the world leader in the emerging new energy industries.

North Carolina acted on its own to clean up its act, and TVA had to be ordered to do the right thing. In both cases, the right decision was made. Perhaps this victory for residents of Western North Carolina is symbolic of a new era where the flashpoint between the economy and energy doesn’t always mean sacrificing the environment. That would be a welcome change.

It was the ultimate David and Goliath battle. North Carolina officials, fed up with coal-fired power plants pumping pollution into their state, took on the nation’s largest public power company — the Tennessee Valley Authority — and won.

The landmark ruling, handed down Jan. 13 in federal court in Asheville, forces TVA to spend more than $1 billion upgrading emissions controls on four of the company’s coal-fired power plants that are located within 100 miles of the North Carolina border.

The lawsuit called on TVA to clean up nine plants, but the ruling will only apply to the four closest to the state’s border. Such a lawsuit has been in the state’s game plan for years. But first, the state had to clean up its own utilities, achieved with the NC Clean Smokestacks Act in 2002. The act was intended to give North Carolina the “moral high ground” to demand TVA do the same. The act directed the attorney general to use all resources, including litigation, to demand emissions reductions from polluting plants in other states.

Attorney General Roy Cooper referred to the state’s lawsuit as “a last resort” after requests to get TVA to clean up failed.

The outcome of the lawsuit marks a crucial victory for Western North Carolina in particular, a region that has long born the brunt of TVA’s damaging effects. Air pollution here has damaged lungs, clouded vistas, poisoned fish and pumped soil and water with toxic chemicals.

“TVA is responsible for decreasing the health of this entire region,” said Will Harlan, an ultra-athlete and executive editor of Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine who testified at the trial. “They’ve had many opportunities to modernize their equipment and install pollution control devices at low costs, and every time they’ve chosen to skirt the law, find loopholes, and put profit over public health. It’s finally catching up to them — the public is not standing for it anymore.”

A varied legacy

TVA wasn’t always seen as the bad guy. When the authority was established in 1933, it was hailed for bringing electricity to rural Appalachia, and along with it jobs and prosperity. Although many locals resented TVA for manipulating their natural resources, it can be easy to turn a blind eye to something potentially harmful if it’s supporting one’s livelihood, says Avram Friedman, a Sylva resident and the director of the Canary Coalition, a clean air advocacy group based in Western North Carolina. Just look at some of today’s examples.

“They’re aware of it, but still see the dollar signs,” said Friedman. “You go down to Forest City and a lot of people are employed by Duke Energy, and it’s a tremendous boon to the economy, so they’re blinded by the health effects. People in Canton are in denial about the impact of Blue Ridge Paper.”

But the same technology that was hailed for improving life in rural Appalachia has also made the region’s residents sick. Alarmingly, North Carolina ranks fourth in the nation in terms of the number of deaths (1,800 each year) linked to power plant particulates, according to information on the North Carolina Division of Air Quality’s Web site.

Asthma is the most common illness linked to power plant pollution. One in three children in Western North Carolina have experienced an asthma attack, according to statistics quoted by Friedman.

But it was the terrifying experience of a healthy adult — Harlan — that experts at the trial relied on as they attempted to prove the direct link between TVA’s air pollution and health problems.

Harlan was an unlikely victim. He has no history of the disease, and as an ultra-distance runner he possesses healthier lungs than most of the population. But on a 72-mile run through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Harlan’s breathing became labored and he felt a heavy tightness in his chest.

“My breathing got really bad to the point where I could barely walk,” Harlan recounts. “It was really scary.”

Alone and stumbling over rocks in the dark, Harlan couldn’t make it to the shelter where his wife was waiting with food and water five miles away. He waited out the attack, then finished his run the next morning. Immediately, Harlan set out to find what had caused his bizarre experience.

The several specialists Harlan visited concurred that he had suffered a pollution-induced respiratory attack. Unbeknownst to Harlan, there had been an ozone warning in effect for the Park the day of his run.

The attorney general’s office heard about Harlan’s experience and asked him to be a witness in the trial against TVA.

“Up until this point it had been a lot of numbers. This helped put a face on the effects of air pollution,” Harlan said.

The strategy proved damning to TVA’s case. The attorneys didn’t challenge Harlan’s testimony, instead opting to get him off the stand as quickly as possible.

“Evidence and statistics are easily debated, but they don’t’ want to see that human side, because that can be really eye opening,” Harlan said. “They’d rather keep it in the realm of facts and statistics.”

TVA’s expert epidemiologist tried to cast doubt on the link between air pollution and illness. He “expressed skepticism about whether exposure to (particulate matter) results in adverse cardiopulmonary effects,” according to the final ruling handed down by Federal Court Judge Lacy Thornburg.

The judge didn’t buy it.

“The court believes that TVA’s experts’ suspicion of this conclusion is unwarranted, indeed, their skepticism runs counter to the vast majority of scientific studies,” the ruling states.

Despite Thornburg’s ruling, Harlan says TVA officials were still reluctant to take responsibility for harming the health of citizens in WNC.

“There was no remorse,” he said.

Environmental carnage

The silent witnesses to the devastating effects of TVA’s air pollution — streams, forests, and animals — played an equally integral role in the trial.

“North Carolina alleges that airborne particles from TVA’s electricity generating plants enter North Carolina in unreasonable amounts threatening ... the beauty and purity of a vast natural ecosystem,” Thornburg stated in his ruling.

Even plants in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park suffer the harmful effects of ozone pollution. Research at Purchase Knob in the Haywood County section of the park has linked high-elevation ozone to leaves withering and yellowing, and the plants producing fewer seeds for reproduction.

Impacts on the ecosystem are all to familiar to scientists like Bill Jackson, an air resource specialist with the U.S. Forest Service based in Asheville. According to Jackson, some of the most harmful effects are observed in the region’s streams and rivers. Sulfur dioxide released by coal burning power plants creeps into watersheds and erodes important elements like calcium and magnesium that help keep acidity levels low.

“We have taken quite a few water samples in WNC, and we have documented watersheds that do not have a buffering capacity,” said Jackson. “The acid neutralizing capacity should be a large, positive number. We have streams that when we take measurements, they’re negative.”

If a stream is too acidic, it’s no longer a conducive environment for the many organisms that live there. The smallest organisms, like algae, are the first victims. If the algae dies, insects that rely on it as a food source are threatened.

“And of course we have fish feeding on the insects, and this chain occurs,” says Jackson.

Fish are common victims of pollutants from coal-burning plants. Fish hatcheries in Cherokee have reportedly attributed die-offs in the trout population to sulfur dioxide emissions.

In September, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued a warning that mercury linked to coal-burning plants had contaminated the fish, particularly walleye, in Fontana Lake. It was devastating news to locals like Leonard Winchester, whose daily fishing routine and diet were disrupted by the warning.

Winchester, who ate the fish several times a week, was so concerned he sent off blood samples to be checked for mercury contamination. Luckily, he was OK, but has significantly scaled back how much walleye he eats.

“Before I ate a huge plate of walleye, nothing else. There were all these fixings my wife insisted on making but I ate the walleye. The rest I left sitting there,” Winchester said. “Now it might be a little more rationale. I eat two or three pieces of walleye and some of that other stuff.”

He also throws back large walleye, instead keeping the smaller ones with less mercury accumulation in their flesh. Winchester believes the mercury was coming from TVA plants, carried over the mountains in rain clouds. He hopes mercury levels will go down now that TVA has to clean up.

But according to Jackson, the environmental impacts of TVA’s air pollution may, in some cases, be irreversible.

“Some watersheds will improve. Others will not,” he said.

Seeing through the haze

Though it may take a while to see noticeable improvements from TVA’s emissions controls, one change will take effect quickly, says Jackson — namely, improved visibility in the mountains.

Over the years, a growing cloud of haze caused by particulates from coal-burning power plants has slowly enveloped the Smokies, making it difficult to see a long distance. Since 1948, visibility has dipped from an average of 73 miles to 25 miles, according to the National Park Service.

The impact of decreased visibility on the economy of the mountain region was a critical part of North Carolina’s suit against TVA. The state argued that the haze caused by TVA’s air pollution was costing the state billions of dollars in tourism revenue.

But the views will clear quickly once TVA installs the emission controls mandated in the lawsuit, Jackson said.

“Improvements in visibility start occurring within days that the pollution control devices are operating,” he said. “If we could shut off all the coal fired power plants, in two or three days visibility everywhere would be absolutely fantastic.”

Even though TVA is only putting controls on four power plants, “you will see a difference,” Jackson said. “You’ll have more days that are clearer and that you can see further.”

A day in court

In the beginning, Harlan and many others harbored doubts that North Carolina could really win its case against TVA.

“I knew that the TVA had been getting away with things for years,” Harlan said. “There were not a lot of previous cases that had succeeded in stopping TVA from doing whatever it wanted. I knew the cards were stacked against us, and I didn’t know if that could be overcome.”

Harlan thinks the case will encourage other states to assert their rights to clean air.

“Now, any state can sue any other state for pollution crossing the border,” he said. “That will lead to federal intervention and force the EPA to take more serious action.”

Friedman says the lawsuit’s impact all depends on how TVA responds to it.

“If they take care of it now, they set a great precedent, but if they spend resources appealing the process, it could go on for years and years,” he said.

But real improvement to air quality will only occur when coal-burning plants are replaced by cleaner technology, said Friedman.

“I think ultimately, what’s really going to have an impact is when we take measures to reduce energy consumption and begin to replace power plants,” he said.

But will consumers demand a move toward alternative technologies? Harlan thinks so, as people become more aware of the detrimental effects of burning coal.

“I think there’s been a very heightened awareness of how coal-fired electricity generation is harming the health of people,” he said.

Power companies are aware of this shift in public perception, Harlan said.

“I think they are realizing that the tide is turning against them, and they’re kind of desperately trying to change their image by promoting clean coal as a way of greenwashing their image,” he said. “I think people are seeing through the latest clean coal gimmick, and it will require (the power companies) to make meaningful changes.”

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

One of the driest periods in the last 118 years is prompting TVA to draw down waters on Fontana Lake to wintertime levels, a move costing boat dock owners thousands of dollars of business.