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CUMBERLAND CITY, Tennessee — This week, the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Appalachian Voices and the Sierra Club, over the utility’s failure to take federally required steps to protect Middle Tennessee communities from the harmful air pollution impacts of running its Cumberland coal plant alongside its newly built Cumberland Gas Plant.
The lawsuit comes after TVA previously promised to retire the coal plant by the end of 2028, as a tradeoff for permitting its new gas plant as a so-called “minor” modification of the retiring coal plant. But in February 2026, TVA went back on that deal, instead deciding to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to attempt to renovate the coal plant and continue operating it alongside the new gas plant. Despite acknowledging this would cause a significant increase in emissions requiring a “major” source permit, TVA began operating the new gas plant without that required permit.
TVA’s bait-and-switch is a blatant attempt to evade some of the Clean Air Act’s most important protections: the required major permit would force TVA to comply with more protective pollution limits and fully evaluate the impact that operating both plants will have on air quality.
“TVA’s reckless decision to continue running its decrepit coal plant next to its massive, newly built gas plant means dirtier air and increased health risks for families who live and work in Middle Tennessee,” SELC Staff Attorney Delaney King said. “We warned TVA that its decision to begin operating the new gas plant without the required preconstruction analysis broke the law, but it plowed ahead with its illegal plans anyway. So now, we’re taking the federal utility to court.”
Combined, the Cumberland coal and gas plants can pump out a staggering 4,700 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, 8,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 1,500 tons of fine particulate matter each year. These pollutants are tied to increases in asthma, respiratory diseases, heart problems, and certain cancers—exacerbating the health risks for nearby communities who have already been burdened by decades of air pollution from TVA’s Cumberland coal plant.
“I live near the Cumberland plant, and my family and neighbors are the ones breathing this air,” said Angie Mummaw, Middle Tennessee Coordinator for Appalachian Voices. “We were told the gas plant and pipeline were necessary sacrifices because TVA was shutting down the coal plant—now they want to burn methane gas and coal at the same site and pile even more pollution onto a community that has already carried this burden for decades. That feels like a betrayal.”
Community groups about these violations and the harmful impact they could have on Middle Tennessee communities in June, as required under the Clean Air Act. But instead of stopping its unlawful actions, TVA did the opposite: it continued running its dirty Cumberland Gas Plant in a way that bypasses critical pollution controls.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation acknowledged that TVA’s continued construction of its gas plant without the proper permit was unlawful. However, instead of holding the federal utility accountable for its illegal actions, TDEC gave TVA a sweetheart deal to try and make the issue go away. fails to fix TVA’s unlawful actions and leaves communities in Middle Tennessee at increased health risks from the utility’s illegal air pollution.
“TVA is asking working families to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to keep an outdated coal plant running alongside a brand-new gas plant, while ignoring the laws designed to protect our communities from dangerous pollution,” said Bonnie Swinford, Campaign Organizing Strategist for Sierra Club. “TVA promised to retire this unreliable and expensive coal plant, and instead, it is breaking that promise, raising customers’ costs, and trying to sidestep the Clean Air Act. People across Middle Tennessee deserve clean air, affordable energy, and a TVA that is accountable to the public—not a utility that makes backroom decisions and expects working families to pay the price.”
The lawsuit comes after TVA broke its promise to retire the Cumberland coal plant, which is one of the utility’s oldest, dirtiest, least reliable, and most expensive power plants. When TVA , it wrote that the continued operation of its coal fleet is “contributing to environmental, economic, and reliability risks” and that the Cumberland plant is a “significant contributing factor to these risks.” TVA estimates it will cost more than $730 million to keep the Cumberland coal plant operating, and families in the Tennessee Valley will be forced to foot those costs through their monthly power bills.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
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