New Landowner Task Force Meets

TVA Asks Members for Continuous Improvement Input

As TVA invests in new transmission and generation capacity to expand the region's power system, it is advancing a new task force to strengthen engagement with private landowners who can provide valuable insights on siting new lines and assets.

To help ensure positive relationships with property owners and reduce the potential for critical project delays, TVA hosted an initial summit for its new Landowner Task Force on March 3-4 in Lebanon, Tennessee.

“As the region grows and electric demand rises, TVA must build out billions of dollars of new infrastructure,” said David Bowling, TVA Senior Vice President of Safety, Environment and Enterprise Support. “This means we will be working closely with more landowners, especially in rural areas, for new power line easements and as we choose sites for new power plants.”

The nine Landowner Task Force members who attended the meeting in Lebanon represented farmers, rural organizations and local power companies from across the TVA service territory. They were hosted by members of the internal TVA landowner working group.

At the Landowner Task Force summit, discussion focused on how TVA can help communities and the region balance the demands of growth with the needs of rural landowners, and how TVA interacts with private landowners as new assets are being planned and developed. TVA employees presented information to the task force about the need to expand the regional transmission system and build new generation. They also walked through TVA’s siting process for new transmission lines and explained how the vast majority of landowner interactions are positive and productive.

Landowner Task Force members shared their own experiences working with TVA as farmers and property owners, and they recommended potential best practices TVA could adopt into its existing processes and procedures.

“I’m a farmer by trade and my relationship with TVA really started in 2013, when we had a flood on our farm and we started a dialogue and visited the TVA listening sessions,” Hardin County, Tennessee, farmer Alex Forbach said. “We’ve worked a lot with TVA operations to figure out better ways of managing the river, and that has led to a really good relationship that we’ve built over the years.

“I’m on the Landowner Task Force because it’s important to me that TVA is perceived in a good light in the community and that there are proper procedures and practices in place to make it fair — to meet the demand for all the utilities with the growth that we are seeing in Tennessee, but still respecting property owners’ rights,” Forbach continued.

In the weeks ahead, TVA will collect more input from the Landowner Task Force during virtual meetings, leading up to another in-person summit this summer. During that time, Landowner Task Force members will gather additional feedback from their neighbors and within their hometown communities, including perceptions of TVA landowner interactions and best practices from other utilities that secure property easements.

In parallel, the internal TVA team is identifying processes, best practices and lessons learned from nearly a dozen TVA business units that engage in landowner outreach as part of their activities.

“The Landowner Task Force is important to me as a local power company because as we and TVA expand and need more infrastructure to meet the energy needs of my community or the region as a whole, we’re going to need to build that infrastructure on folks’ property,” said task force member Terry Wimberley, President and CEO of the Paris Board of Public Utilities. “We are going to have to find solutions on how we can do that ... and not allow property issues to become a barrier to meeting the needs of the Valley.”

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