Transmission System Routine Periodic Vegetation Management Fiscal Year 2025 and 2026

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has requested comments on its draft Environmental Assessment (EA) on the management of vegetation within the TVA transmission system rights-of-way that has been previously and continuously maintained. Comments needed to be submitted by August 31, 2024. The management of vegetation within the rights-of-way on a recurring cycle is needed to ensure the transmission system can continue to provide reliable power and to prevent outages related to incompatible vegetation.

The draft EA tiers from the programmatic Transmission System Vegetation Management environmental impact statement released in 2019 which evaluated and analyzed TVA’s vegetation management program across its entire transmission system. A Record of Decision was issued in October 2019 indicating TVA’s preferred vegetation management program would be to manage the full extent of the ROW to a meadow-like end-state. This would entail removing incompatible vegetation and managing the ROW as a mix of herbaceous and low-growing shrub. Vegetation management would utilize mostly herbicides (90%). Other methods include mechanical (6% - i.e., brush hogs, equipment mounted saws) and manual (4% - i.e., chainsaw, handsaw). Maintenance of trees would be assessed using aerial inspection, ground inspections, and as-needed field inspections. Compatible trees and shrubs would be allowed in areas maintained actively by others. As per the Sherwood v. TVA court-ordered injunction, only trees identified as an immediate hazard would be cleared until the injunction has been lifted.

Public Involvement

Comments were submitted, online, by email to [email protected], or by mail to Anita E. Masters at the address below. Comments needed to be received or postmarked no later August 31st, 2024. Please note that any comments received, including names and addresses, will become part of the project administrative record and will be available for public inspection.