Tellico Dam - WikiHQ

Tellico Dam is a concrete gravity and earthen embankment dam on the Little Tennessee River that was built by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Loudon County, Tennessee. Planning for a dam structure on the Little Tennessee was reported as early as 1936 but was deferred for development until 1942. Completed in 1979, the dam created the Tellico Reservoir and is the last dam to be built by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Unlike the agency's previous dams built for hydroelectric power and flood control, the Tellico Dam was primarily constructed as an economic development and tourism initiative through the planned city concept of Timberlake, Tennessee. The development project aimed to support a population of 42,000 in a rural region in poor economic conditions.

Referred to as a pork barrel, the Tellico Dam is the subject of several controversies regarding the need of its construction and the impacts the structure had on the surrounding environment. Inundation of the Little Tennessee required the acquisition of thousands of acres, predominantly multi-generational farmland and historic sites such as the Fort Loudoun settlement and several Cherokee tribal villages including Tanasi, the origin of Tennessee's name. Most of the acreage around the final lakeshore, originally seized through eminent domain, was sold to private developers to create retirement-oriented golf resort communities such as Tellico Village and Rarity Bay.

The Tellico Dam project was also controversial because of the risk it was believed to pose to the endangered snail darter fish species. Environmentalist groups took the TVA to court as a means to halt the project and protect the snail darter. The court action delayed the final completion of the dam for over two years. In the 1978 case Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill heard by the Supreme Court of the United States, the court ruled in favor of the environmental groups and declared that the completion of Tellico Dam was illegal. However, the dam was completed and filling of the reservoir commenced in November 1979, after the project was exempted from the Endangered Species Act with the passing of the 1980 public works appropriations bill by the United States Congress and signed by President Jimmy Carter.

Background

thumb|left|Conceptual model of the planned City of Timberlake, part of the justification for Tellico Dam

Preliminary planning and Timberlake initiative

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility company created by U.S. Code Title 16, Chapter 12A, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933. Despite its shares being owned by the federal government, TVA operates like a private corporation, and receives no taxpayer funding. The TVA was formally established in 1933 as part of programs under the New Deal.

The agency was initially tasked with modernizing the Tennessee Valley region, using experts in economic development, engineering, planning, and agriculture. Nonetheless, the TVA focused primarily on electricity generation, flood control, and combatting human and economic problems.

In 1936, TVA began studies for hydroelectric dam sites as part of its Unified Development of the Tennessee River (UDTR) plan. Early TVA plans suggested the construction of a dam along the Little Tennessee River at its mouth at the Tennessee River adjacent to Bussell Island. This later became known as the Fort Loudoun Extension, an expansion of the adjacent Fort Loudoun Dam. However, the project was canceled on October 20, 1942, due to a lack of federal funding resulting from financial constraints imposed by US involvement in World War II. This project, which encompassed acreage in Loudon, Blount, and Monroe counties, became known as the City of Timberlake Plan, named for journalist Henry Timberlake, who explored the Cherokee villages that once occupied the area. Timberlake, the TVA's ambitious attempt at creating a city from scratch, had a projected population of 42,000. The project was promoted as a demonstration of economic development for the rural poor, transforming the Little Tennessee Valley into a thriving urban center. The Timberlake project was initially supported with congressional aid and investment from the American aerospace manufacturing company, the Boeing Corporation. In 1974, the Tennessee state legislature unsuccessfully proposed a bill seeking to incorporate the Timberlake area into a city. Boeing determined that the project was not economically feasible and withdrew in 1975; the plans never fully materialized. When the TVA began to approach property owners in the Lower Tennessee Valley for the development of Tellico Dam, several communities that TVA sought to "modernize" through this project were at the time in touch with most of the modern Appalachian society that TVA had contributed to since the 1930s. Members of the river shed communities least impacted by modernization reacted most positively to TVA's plans, compared with the more modern communities. Historians of the project have suggested that most TVA personnel did not understand the complexity of the communities that they were intruding into with the Tellico project, leading to more heated opposition.

thumb|left|The Little Tennessee River in [[Swain County, North Carolina, in 2010. Prior to the Tellico Dam, the river resembled this portion in the Little Tennessee Valley.]]

The Tellico Project was revealed to the public as early as 1960, with reactions similar to previous TVA projects. Public meetings commenced throughout the Little Tennessee Valley in the mid-1960s at civic spaces in Loudon, Blount, and Monroe counties to address concerns raised by citizens about the Tellico and Timberlake projects. At the time, TVA officials did not expect that the Tellico Project would be met with anything more than token opposition. In 1963, small clusters of Little Tennessee Valley landowners and businesspeople formed a community group known as the Fort Loudoun Association opposing the Tellico project. Extensive local opposition emerged at a public forum on September 22, 1964, at Greenback High School in the town of Greenback, located on the proposed eastern shore of the Tellico reservoir. Four hundred residents attended with over 90% reporting strong opposition. Attendees grew hostile, perceiving the Tellico project as an intrusion. One month after the contentious meeting at Greenback High School, anti-Tellico individuals formed a larger opposition group, the Association for the Preservation of the Little Tennessee River. This move showed that project opposition was not one that "would easily buckle and roll over before the mighty presence of the Tennessee Valley Authority". Many property owners concerned about seizure of land reported that TVA personnel provided "taking lines" about the extent of private land acquisition that was planned. Many viewed these actions as TVA overreaching their authority, provoking more public opposition to the project. The Tellico project also had a significant impact on farming, with 330 farms along the Little Tennessee River lost following inundation. In total, $25.5 million was spent by the TVA for land acquisition.

Construction on the Tellico Project began on March 7, 1967, with clearing work for the main dam structure. Work on the concrete structure of the dam was complete by October of the next year. Other portions of the dam constructed with earth fill were complete by August 1975, with the river flow from the original Little Tennessee soon forced via pump through the completed sluice gates of the main concrete dam. Around this time, work on coffer dams to assist with the main dam were complete.

Discovery of the snail darter

thumb|U.S. senator from Tennessee [[Howard Baker openly supported the completion of the Tellico Dam, and had referred to the snail darter as his "nemesis."]]

On August 12, 1973, a group of students led by UTK biology professor David Etnier conducted a study for possible endangered species via snorkeling in the Little Tennessee River during construction operations on Tellico Dam. Prior to the expedition, Etnier predicted up to ten endangered species occupied the proposed Tellico Reservoir basin. In the Coytee Springs shoal area of the Little Tennessee, Etnier identified several snail darters, to which in a later interview with the Knoxville News Sentinel suggested he "knew nobody had ever seen it before." The TVA then petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the snail darter as an endangered species on February 28. The FWS denied this request in December. On behalf of the TVA, the United States Department of Justice filed an appeal against the decision of the 6th Circuit regarding Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill on January 25, 1978, to the Supreme Court of the United States. In Hill, the Supreme Court affirmed, by a 6–3 vote, the injunction issued by the 6th Circuit Appeals Court to stop construction of the dam. Citing explicit wording of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to ensure that habitat for listed species is not disrupted, the Court said "it is clear that the TVA's proposed operation of the dam will have precisely the opposite effect, namely the eradication of an endangered species."

Aftermath of Supreme Court decision

thumb|Greenback resident Nellie McCall on her 90-acre farm; McCall was evicted by U.S. Marshals and watched as her home was demolished after refusing TVA offers. McCall had strongly opposed Tellico Dam following her husband's death, brought on from a Tellico-induced heart attack. Following publication of a story by [[The New York Times (NYT) regarding the death of nearly 100 snail darters during an October 1977 translocation operation, the TVA Director of Information John Van went on damage control in a subsequent NYT editorial, directing the blame towards the lack of adequate netting by the FWS.

Intervention by Carter, exemption from ESA

After a long battle, Congress exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act by adding a rider clause to an unrelated public works bill. On September 25, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed the bill exempting the Tellico project from the ESA. Carter had previously and publicly opposed the completion of the dam, but administration officials speculated that an attempt to veto the bill would result in legislative retaliation against Carter's plans for revising treaties for the Panama Canal Zone's ownership, and the establishment of a federal department for educational affairs, two issues the Carter administration prioritized for passing.

Flooding of Cherokee native land

thumb|1765 map of Overhill Cherokee tribal towns, the river shown is the Little Tennessee prior to its inundation for the Tellico Project.

In 1979, three Cherokee individuals and two Cherokee bands/organizations filed suit against the TVA to restrain the flooding of sacred homeland in Sequoyah v. Tennessee Valley Authority, to no avail. Archeological surveys and salvage excavations were conducted in some areas because this area was known to have contained numerous 18th-century Overhill Cherokee towns. But the sites of Tanasi, Chota, Toqua, Tomotley, Citico, Mialoquo and Tuskegee were all flooded by the reservoir behind the dam. Some of these had been occupied by ancestors of the Cherokee for up to 1,000 years, based on the earthwork platform mounds built at their centers by people of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture. In their succeeding long occupancy, the Cherokee had built councilhouses on top of the mounds. In addition, other prehistoric sites, dating to as early as the Archaic period, were flooded.

Other impacts

The town of Morganton and its port was submerged by the Tellico reservoir. The British colonial Fort Loudoun was relocated from its original site by excavation of soil required to raise the site by , and the fort was reconstructed into a state park. The creation of Tellico Lake also resulted in the prehistoric Icehouse Bottom site being submerged.

Translocation of snail darters

Remnant populations of the snail darter were later removed from the Little Tennessee River and translocated into other streams. Most of these were transferred to the Hiwassee River in Polk County in southeast Tennessee, and were established by 1982. The Holston, French Broad, Nolichucky rivers of central East Tennessee have also been established as habitats for the snail darter.

Completion and recent history

Tellico Reservoir began filling on November 29, 1979, after the gates were closed on the dam. Many impacted landowners were unable to qualify to bid on their former properties. Respective analysis of TVA's acquisition methods with the Tellico Project have been cited as abuse of property rights.

In April 1982, the Tellico Reservoir Development Agency (TRDA) was established by the Tennessee state legislature with state and TVA funding, to promote economic development initiatives in the Tellico region. In 2017, proposals were announced for the site to be redeveloped into a mixed-use community. The development became a planned retirement community known as Tellico Village that officially opened in March 1986.

By the late 1990s and into the 2000s, the TVA was pressured by private development groups to release additional acreage that had been seized via eminent domain along the shoreline of several reservoirs. The intention was for predominantly golf course-based residential resorts. In 1995, a 960-acre community known as Rarity Bay was constructed, including an equestrian center and 18-hole golf course. Mike Ross, the developer behind Rarity Bay built several additional resort developments on TVA's shoreline property, before being charged in federal court with mail fraud and money laundering in 2012.

In 2002, the TVA board of directors approved the sale of preserved land on the eastern shore of Tellico Reservoir for a $750 million golf-course community known as Rarity Pointe. In 2012, Rarity Pointe was purchased by WindRiver Management LLC, leading to expansion of the site and the renaming of the community from Rarity Pointe to WindRiver.

Snail darter post-Tellico

The snail darter was removed from the Endangered Species list by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on August 6, 1983. The fish was still classified as a threatened species because the Hiwassee River, where the snail darters from the Little Tennessee had been translocated, had a previous history of acid spills from freight train accidents.

Aftermath of the Tellico project

thumb|left|The relocated Morganton Cemetery; the cove in the background is the former site of [[Morganton, Tennessee|Morganton]]

As of 2022, the Tellico Dam remains the last dam to be built by the TVA. Until the events of the Tellico Project, the moral and economic value of building a dam was rarely questioned; dams were widely considered to represent progress and technological prowess. Throughout the 20th-century, the United States had built thousands of dams, often to generate hydroelectric power and provide flood control. By the 1950s, most of the adequate dam sites in the United States had been used, and it became increasingly difficult to justify new dam projects. Government agencies such as TVA, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Army Corps of Engineers continued to construct new dams, often at the behest of congressional representatives of impacted areas such as in the case of Tellico Dam. However, by the 1970s, the era of dam-building effectively ended in the U.S. with the Tellico Dam case illustrating changing attitudes. The removal of people remains a controversial talking point on the methods and morality of TVA's dam projects. In 2001, the 13,000-acre area set aside for the project was transferred for public use to the state of Tennessee.

References

External links

Tellico Reservoir — Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency