Tellico Dam

Tellico Dam is a dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Loudon County, Tennessee, on the Little Tennessee River as part of the Tellico Project. Planning for a dam structure on the Little Tennessee was reported as early as 1936 but was dismissed until 1942 for official development. Unlike the agency's previous dams built for hydroelectric power and flood control, Tellico Dam would be constructed to support tourism and economic development through the planned city concept of Timberlake, which aimed to support a population of 42,000 in a rural region that was documented being in poor economic conditions. Completed in 1979, it created the Tellico Reservoir and is the last dam to be built by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

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, predominately multi-generational farmland and historic sites including the Fort Loudoun settlement, and several Cherokee tribal villages including the village of Tanasi, the basis of the name for the state of Tennessee. Most of this acreage, seized through eminent domain, would be given to private developers to create retirement-oriented resort communities such as Tellico Village and Rarity Bay.

On environmental terms, the Tellico project jeopardized the snail darter fish species, which was endangered during the project's construction. Seeking to save the snail darter species, environmentalist groups took the TVA to court as a means to halt the project. The decision was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1978 case '' Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill'', with the court siding in favor of the environmental groups and stating the completion of Tellico Dam as illegal. Nonetheless, the Tellico project would be completed with the passing of a 1980 public works approbations bill by the United States Congress and President Jimmy Carter.

Background

Preliminary planning and Timberlake initiative

In 1936, three years following the establishment of the TVA with the passing of the New Deal which sought to bring economic development to the Tennessee Valley, the TVA began studies for ideal hydroelectric dam sites. Early TVA plans suggested the construction of a dam along the Little Tennessee River. This would later be known as the known as the Fort Loudoun Extension, an expansion of the adjacent Fort Loudoun Dam. However, the project would be canceled with the lack of federal funding given wartime issues on October 20, 1942.

In 1959, TVA chairman Red Wagner approved for project development to restart on the Fort Loudoun Extension, now named the Tellico Project, having been justified on the claims of land and recreational development to improve the economic conditions of the Little Tennessee watershed. This project, which consisted 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 inhabited the proposed site. Timberlake, the TVA's ambitious attempt at creating a city from scratch, aimed at providing a high-quality and self-sufficient city supporting an estimated population of 42,000. The project would be viewed as a nationwide demonstration of land use initiatives and economic development for the poor rural area of the Little Tennessee Valley to transform it into a thriving economic urban center. The Timberlake project found success with the announcement of major investment from the Boeing Corporation along with Congressional aid. In 1974, the Tennessee state legislature would unsuccessfully propose a bill seeking incorporate the Timberlake area into a city. The plans for the City of Timberlake never fully materialized and were discontinued in 1975 following pullout from Boeing, who cited the project as uneconomically feasible.

Property acquisition and eminent domain

Following the similar methods of past TVA hydroelectric projects, the Tellico Dam project required the acquisition of nearly for its development. The conventional full pool of the dam's reservoir would occupy over with an extra in flood control reserves. For the remaining area, TVA dedicated for residential, recreational, and industrial development as part of the proposed Timberlake planned city project. Leftover land served as buffer zones between development and the reservoir. 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" with the project were at the time in touch with most of the modern Appalachian society TVA had contributed to since the 1930s. Members of the river shed communities least impacted by modernization reacted most positively with TVA's plans, compared to the more modern communities. Later documentation by historians of the project 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.

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. In the 1991 book, ''Tellico Dam and the Snail Darter'', TVA officials suspected little reason 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 to the Tellico project emerged as the result of 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. 400 residents attended with over 90% reporting strong opposition. Attendees grew hostile, perceiving the Tellico Project as a means of intrusion. One month after the contentious meeting at Greenback High School, anti-Tellico individuals formed the larger opposition group, Association for the Preservation of the Little Tennessee River, showing that project opposition was not one that "would easily buckle and roll over before the mighty presence of the Tennessee Valley Authority" as stated in the 1986 historical publication ''TVA and the Tellico Dam, 1936-1979 A Bureaucratic Crisis in Post-Industrial America''. TVA officials had never documented an exact number of how many families were to be affected, even after the property acquisition process had started in 1963. Many property owners looking to see what measures TVA would take to seize their land reported that TVA personnel provided "taking lines" as to how far the TVA would acquire from private properties. Many viewed these actions as TVA overreaching beyond their authority, provoking more public opposition to the project. Unlike with TVA's early hydroelectric projects, the documentation of residents relocated was based on poorly executed efforts, as initial estimates suggested the removal of 600 families, whereas the actual number was closer to 350 families. No documentation has been made down to the individuals all of the 350 families removed. Most of the families mandated to move complied, but three unwilling property owners were evicted by U.S. Marshals and watched their houses being demolished as they were evicted. In regards to the Tellico Project's impact on the area's farming industry. 330 farms along the Little Tennessee River were lost following its inundation. In total, $25.5 million was spent by the TVA for land acquisition.

Construction

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. By the time of the forced closure of construction, work on the Tellico Project was nearly 90% complete, aside from final land clearing, recreational facility preparation, and a highway system that was nearly finished.

In total, $63 million was endowed for the construction of the concrete dam and spillway, the main earth dam, coffer dams, roadway and railroad facilities, reservoir clearing, utility relocations, access roads, a canal with access to the Tennessee River, public use facilities, and general yard improvements. Most of this funding was used for the dam, over 65 miles of state, county, and local access roads, and three large-scale bridge replacement projects. The TVA would also invest another $3.6 million for two major road projects scheduled for initial work starting after the completion and opening of the Tellico Dam structure. Officials with the Tennessee Department of Transportation expressed doubt about the completion of the Tellico Parkway (State Route 444), one of these major road projects. The TVA received nearly $665,000 in revenue by the near completion of the project. Timber cleared for the project provided $99,000 and farmland and housing seized by the agency was leased with a revenue close to $566,000. Labor costs for the project totaled $24.7 million, with most coming from the construction of the main Tellico Dam structure. Engineering, planning, and administrative services on the project provided an expense of $14.7 million.

Environmental impacts, controversies, and legal action

Before construction began on Tellico Dam, the Tennessee Fish and Game Commission addressed concerns to TVA personnel that the construction of Tellico Dam would bring the demise of trout fishing on the Little Tennessee.

TVA attempted to control and defuse local controversy regarding the Tellico Project with the formation of local group known as the Little Tennessee River Valley Development Association (LTRVDA) in 1963. The LTRVDA would fail less than a year later unable to control local opposition. Citing the loss of prime farmland, the Tennessee Farm Bureau Association passed resolutions protesting the completion of Tellico Dam in December 1964. One year later delegates from the Cherokee Nation filed a petition protesting the desecration of their ancestral lands that were proposed to be flooded for the Tellico Dam. This petition would be sent to the office of Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas, who forwarded the petition to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1971, University of Tennessee (UT) economics professor Keith Phillips criticized TVA's plans for Tellico Dam in a reappraisal of the project. Phillips would find the cost and benefits evaluation conducted by the TVA faulty, and suggested that the agency's officials on the project were technically incompetent.

Following continued press of TVA's excessive and "abusive" power regarding the agency's property acquisition methods for the Tellico Project, Republican Governor Winfield Dunn wrote in a 1971 letter of dissent to TVA chair Wagner to stop construction of Tellico Dam, stating that the TVA should recognize "that the Little Tennessee as it now exists is a waterway too valuable for the State of Tennessee to sacrifice." TVA rejected Dunn's request in a letter of response one year later.

Finding an opportunity, Little Tennessee Valley farmers and environmentalists formed a joint activist group known as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in 1972. The EDF brought suit against TVA under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), claiming that no environmental impact statement (EIS) had been made, violating the NEPA. In court, TVA personnel presented an EIS completed prior to the lawsuit by the EDF. The case would be dismissed, allowing construction to continue without disruption.

On August 12, 1973, a group of students led by UT 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 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." Four months later, the Nixon administration would pass the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA), providing federal protection for endangered species from potential habitat destructions. By this point, the dam was well under construction and already over US$53 million had been spent on the construction work, requiring an injunction to stop the building from continuing and the flooding to happen. On November 10, 1975, the snail darter was placed on the Endangered Species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Seeking to protect the snail darter, UT law student Hiram "Hank" Hill, in collaboration with David Etnier, filed the case '' Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill'', 437 U.S. 153 in federal court, citing that the TVA was in violation of the ESA. District Court Judge Robert Taylor would decline an injunction against closure of construction of Tellico Dam on May 25, 1976.

On January 31, 1977, construction on Tellico Dam was ordered to stop following a permanent higher injunction from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit regarding ''Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill''. The TVA petitioned to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the snail darter as an endangered species on February 28. The FWS would deny this request in December. On behalf of the TVA, the United States Department of Justice filed an appeal to the decision by 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, an 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."

In the ensuing controversy over the snail darter, the Endangered Species Committee (also known as the "God Squad") was convened to issue a waiver of ESA protection of the snail darter. In a unanimous decision, the Committee refused to exempt the Tellico Dam project. Charles Schultze, the chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, later cited economic assessments concluding that, despite the Tellico Dam being 95% complete, "if one takes just the cost of finishing it against the benefits and does it properly, it doesn't pay, which says something about the original design."Zygmunt Plater,
Tiny Fish/Big Battle
." ''Tennessee Bar Journal'' 44, no. 4 (April 2008). Retrieved: April 21, 2008. Following publication of a story by ''The New York Times'' (NYT) regarding the death of nearly 100 snail darters during a October 1977 transplant mission, TVA Director of Information John Van would go on damage control in a following NYT editorial directing the blame to the lack of adequate netting from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

After a long battle, Congress exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act by passing an amendment in a seemingly unrelated bill. After the gates were closed on the dam, Tellico Lake (a reservoir) began to form in 1979. Remnant populations of the snail darter were later removed from the Little Tennessee River and transplanted in other streams. In total, 219 snail darters were removed from the Tellico basin. On September 25, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed the bill exempting the Tellico project from the ESA. Carter had publicly opposed the completion of the dam, but administration officials speculated that an attempt to veto the bill would result in retaliation against Carter's plans for revising treaties for the Panama Canal and the establishment of a federal department for educational affairs, two issues the Carter administration priortized for passing.

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 Chota, Tanasi, 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. The contemporary port of Morganton was also submerged. The British colonial Fort Loudon was excavated; dirt was deposited to raise the site , and the fort was reconstructed into a state park.Vicki Rozema, ''Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation'' (Winston-Salem: John F. Blair), 135.

Tellico Dam does not produce any electricity. But, the Tellico Dam complex directs almost all of the flow of the Little Tennessee River into a canal that enters the Tennessee River on the upstream side of Fort Loudoun Dam, adding 23 MW to the hydropower capacity at that dam.Jack Neely,
Tellico Dam Revisited
" Originally published in the ''Metro Pulse Online''. Accessed at the Internet Archive, October 2, 2015. (.doc format)

Completion and legacy

Despite legal action and mass opposition, the Tellico Project's construction ended on November 29, 1979. Still intent on development projects to improve the economic conditions of the Little Tennessee Valley, the TVA would begin sales on lakefront acreage that the agency seized through eminent domain. Many landowners whose property was seized by TVA were unable to qualify to bid on their former lands. Created by the Tennessee state legislature with state and TVA funding in April 1982, the Tellico Reservoir Development Agency (TRDA) was headed to promote economic development initiatives in the Tellico region. The TRDA would assist in the creation of several industrial parks for industrial and corporate investment to lessen the unemployment rate in the area. In September of the same year, the TVA suggested constructing toxic waste dumps on Tellico-acquired sites. One of these sites known as the Tellico Peninsula, was billed as the prime spot on the Tellico site for economic development. Despite attempts, the Tellico Peninsula site has remained undeveloped since its site work completion in the 1980s aside from a Christensen Shipyards facility which closed following the Great Recession. In 2017, plans for the site to be redeveloped into a mixed-use town center community were proposed.

The residential component of the failed Timberlake project would see a sign of rebirth with the purchase of more than along the western shore of the Tellico Reservoir by Cooper Communities Inc. (CCI), a private real estate firm based out of Bella Vista, Arkansas, in late 1984. This development would become a planned retirement community known as Tellico Village, which saw its first retired residents move in March 1987. CCI would promote Tellico Village and the Tellico Reservoir at golf and boat shows across the Midwestern United States. Since the development of Tellico Village, the Tellico area has drawn retirees from the Midwest and from Florida, initiating a retirement-oriented real estate boom.

By the late 1990s and into the 2000s, the TVA encountered push from private development groups to open eminent domain-utilized preserved acreage along the agency's several reservoirs for development, predominately golf course-based residential resorts. In 1995, a 960-acre community known as Rarity Bay with an equestrian center and golf course was constructed. Mike Ross, the developer behind Rarity Bay would go on to build several resort developments on TVA reservoirs before being charged in federal court with mail fraud and money laundering in 2012. The TVA board approved to allow the sale of preserved land on the eastern shore of Tellico Reservoir for a $750 million golf-course community known as Rarity Pointe in 2002. In 2012, Rarity Pointe was purchased by WindRiver Management LLC, which brought expansion of the site and the renaming of the community from Rarity Pointe to WindRiver.

The snail darter was removed from the Endangered Species list by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on August 6, 1983, and moved to threatened status due to the Hiwassee River, where the Little Tennessee snail darters were relocated to, had a history of acid spills from freight accidents. By 2021, the snail darter was removed as a threatened species, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reporting the snail darter population recovered from any risk of endangerment.

The completion of the Tellico Project marked the end of dam-building by the TVA, as it remains the last dam to be built by the TVA as of 2022. Until the events of the Tellico Project, the 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.Marc Reisner, ''Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water'', (1986), p. 165 By the 1950s, most of the best potential dam sites in the United States had been used, and it became increasingly difficult to justify new dams. 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 related areas such as in the case of Tellico. In the 1970s, the era of dam-building ended with the Tellico Dam case illustrating the United States' changing attitudes. From 1933 with the beginning of the pivotal Norris Project to the end of Tellico in 1979, the TVA had forcibly removed more than 125,000 residents of the Tennessee Valley. This removal of people remains a controversial talking point on the methods and merit behind the TVA's dam projects. In the 1980s, the TVA attempted the construction of a $83 million dam intent on tourism and economic development similar to Tellico on the Duck River near Columbia, Tennessee, but resulted in failure and the 1999 demolition of the unfinished dam following environmental and financial consequences raised during the project. In 2001, the 13,000-acre area for the project, known as the Columbia Project, was transferred for public use to the state of Tennessee.

See also

* Bussell Island
* National Register of Historic Places listings in Loudon County, Tennessee

References

External links

Tellico Reservoir
— TVA site

— Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

{{Authority control

Dams on the Little Tennessee River
Buildings and structures in Loudon County, Tennessee
Dams in Tennessee
Tennessee Valley Authority dams
Dams completed in 1979
Historic districts in Tennessee
National Register of Historic Places in Loudon County, Tennessee
Dams on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee
United States environmental case law
Controversies in the United States
Eminent domain
Cherokee towns
Appalachian studies
United States land use case law
Dam controversies