Bass Fishing Beats Billions From TVA Sale for Tennessee
By Ken Wells - May 8, 2013 11:17 AM ET
Scott Lee, an ardent fisherman from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has an opinion as to whether Barack Obama should sell the federally chartered Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to private investors: Don’t do it.
Lee ticks off reasons shared by many of the utility giant’s 9 million power users. Cheap power is one, and jobs is another. TVA employs 12,700 people across its seven-state region. The third is his favorite: The company knows how to nurture largemouth bass and please the fishermen who prize them.
Lee has come, on a pristine April morning, a golden haze on the water, redbud and dogwood trees abloom in greening hills, to a boat launch on Watts Bar Lake, 45 minutes west of TVA’s Knoxville headquarters. He’s one of about 20 anglers who have signed up for an outreach in public relations that helps to explain why an estimated two-thirds of Tennesseans oppose a TVA sale even if it helps reduce the national debt. The deal could raise an estimated $30 billion to $35 billion, estimates Travis Miller, a Chicago-based analyst at Morningstar Inc. (MORN)
John Justice, a TVA fisheries biologist, is leading a public leg of the TVA’s annual sports fish survey, commanding a fleet of three flat-bottomed boats each equipped with a stun device. Essentially, three mildly electrified metal cables dangle like giant whiskers off the bows. TVA observer boats, one holding Lee, are tagging along.
The stun boats poke about the rock- and stump-filled Watts Bar shoreline, sending out just enough current to knock fish silly and send them immobilized to the surface. They are netted and stowed in aerated live wells where, at the end of each run, they are weighed, measured and checked for disease before being plunked, with seemingly no ill effects, back into the lake.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/bass-fishing-beats-billions-from-tva-sale-for-tennessee.html
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