On June 11, the Tennessee Valley Authority filed for a protective order in seven multimillion-dollar lawsuits filed earlier this year in connection with the Dec. 22, 2008 Kingston Steam Plant coal ash spill. The protective order, which the plaintiffs have agreed to, will keep all sensitive information related to the lawsuits--trade secrets, proprietary information and the like--confidential and unavailable for public view. None of the lawsuits--filed in U.S. District Court in Knoxville between January and February by dozens of Kingston area property owners--has gone to trial yet.
According to TVA's confidentiality policy, available here, the utility has four levels of information classification ranging from "Green: Public Information" to "Red: TVA Sensitive." The policy notes that TVA does not have the authority to designate corporate information "National Security"-level sensitive. In possibly related news, on June 12, the day after the order was filed, the EPA announced that it could not reveal the locations of 44 "high hazard" coal-ash storage sites around the country due to national security concerns from the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers.
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