Federal Reports

The Tennessee Valley Authority continues to live under the cloud of the Kingston ash spill of December 2008. The Office of the Inspector General is reminded of this shadow every day through our continuing review of TVA's efforts to return the Kingston area to its former state. We see TVA making steady progress on the physical cleanup; but more importantly, we see signs of an improvement in the TVA culture that contributed to this unfortunate environmental event.In this semiannual report, we ask the question, Culture: Asset or Liability? The Kingston incident demonstrated that a culture at a TVA fossil fuel plant which treats coal ash management like "taking out the garbage" can be a severe liability. Unfortunately, culture has been treated as a "soft" issue by both TVA and the Office of the Inspector General. While TVA has routinely taken a reading of culture through their "Cultural Health Index" reviews each year, there has been minimal effort until now to correct cultural problems. As one scribe noted in the aftermath of Kingston, "It takes a crisis." It is now clear that culture is not a "soft" issue that only affects employee retention or employee "satisfaction" ratings. Culture, in a very real way, has shown up on TVA's balance sheet. It can literally make or break a company.