"The Tennessee Valley Authority has long argued it shouldn't be required to limit the toxic metals that its coal-fired power plant dumps into the Cumberland River.

The Cumberland Fossil Plant's unusually large wastewater discharges, the federally owned utility maintained, merits a Clean Water Act exemption.

Without one, TVA said, the plant would be stuck — unfairly — with hefty compliance costs.

That argument failed to sway the Obama-led EPA, but it scored with Trump administration regulators who wrote an exemption for "high flows" into regulations proposed this month for water used to clean coal plants' air filters."

Ariel Wittenberg and Benjamin Storrow report for Greenwire November 22, 2019. [2]