A River and Its Water: Reclaiming the Commons - Part 13
13th of a series
“A huge hydroelectric dam was halted by a tiny stupid fish, environmental extremism, and deviated homo-socialists.”
- Rush Limbaugh
In 480 BCE, Xerxes I, emperor of Persia, assembled a massive army and navy in an attempt to conquer all of Greece. He decided to take his land force of several hundred thousand men through the narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae, where the king of Sparta had gathered an army of 7,000 Greeks to block him. The Greeks held their ground for seven days, until a traitor showed the Persians a little-known path that enabled them to attack from the rear and overrun the outnumbered Greeks. Since then, Thermopylae has come to mean a courageous last stand against an overwhelming force.
And that brings us to the story of the Tellico Dam and one of history’s most famous fish. The Tennessee Valley Authority had begun planning for the Tellico Dam in 1936, but construction didn’t begin until 1967. It would be the sixth dam along the Little Tennessee River and the 49th and last dam to be built by the TVA.
Six years later, two events threw the dam plans into turmoil: (1) On August 12, 1973, University of Tennessee biologist David Etnier discovered the snail darter, in the river. (2) On December 28 of that year Congress passed the Endangered Species Act by a unanimous vote in the Senate and 355-4 (that is not a typo) in the House, and Richard Nixon signed it into law. Now there were two endangered species: the snail darter and the Tellico Dam.
Five years later, “Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill” landed in the U.S. Supreme Court. By a 6-3 vote, the justices ordered construction to stop, even though $100 million had already been spent and the dam was nearly finished. The reason, wrote Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Nixon appointee, is that the dam will cause “the eradication of an endangered species.” Courts and administrative bodies tried to weigh the competing values of environmental and economic considerations, and surprisingly, the dam lost on both fronts. "I hate to see the snail darter get the credit for stopping a project that was ill-conceived and uneconomic in the first place,” said Secretary of the Interior Frederick Dent.
But the politicians weren’t done. In 1979 Tennessee’s powerful Senator Howard Baker got a rider into the appropriations bill, ordering the TVA to finish the dam, and Jimmy Carter signed it into law. The project was completed that same year, 1979. It was the last dam the TVA ever built.
There were others who opposed the dam besides environmentalists. Unlike earlier TVA dams, the Tellico was built for economic development and tourism, rather than hydroelectric power and flood control. It required thousands of acres of farmland to be taken by eminent domain, many of which were subsequently sold to private developers long after the original residents had been relocated. By this time, also, people were awakening to the harm dams cause to river systems as well as to the displaced people.
Quotes by two eminent Americans best summarize the conflict between environmental protection and economic growth:
“In the midst of a national energy crisis,” said Howard Baker on the Senate floor, “the snail darter demands that we scuttle a project that would produce 200 million kilowatt hours of hydroelectric power and save an estimated 15 million gallons of oil.”
“The story of the snail darter and the TVA,” countered the legendary sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, “is the Thermopylae in the history of America’s conservation movement.”
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