Damming the TVA

PHOTOGRAPHER:

Issue:

09/2021

Today, as they were when the TVA sought to flood parts of the Mills River valley, the bottomlands are fertile grounds for agriculture.

Here Brittain dusts off the North Carolina Wildlife Federation’s 1972 Governor’s Award in Water Conservation, which he received for his work combatting the TVA’s master plan for WNC.

“I believed it was feasible to oppose these people within the system. I believed it could be beat." —Jere Brittain

The TVA’s plan was born of efforts to control WNC’s periodic severe floods. The Great Flood of 1916 devastated Asheville and dozens of other communities.

In 1964, further flooding swamped the region and gave the TVA major impetus to advance its plan.

Flooding in 1964.

In all, the sprawling project would create a total of 6,700 acres of lake area and 183 miles of shoreline. In Asheville, a concrete and earthen levee would run from just downstream of the mouth of the Swannanoa River to the city’s main street: Patton Avenue. Channel improvements would include more than 67 miles of deepening and widening. According to the proposal, three of the 14 dams would be rock-filled, one concrete, and the others rolled-earth filled. The highest, on the Ivy Fork in Madison and Buncombe counties, would be 214 feet; the widest, on the Mills River, would stretch 2,400 feet. The Swannanoa dam would consume 1,170 acres and impact 70 families and Warren Wilson College’s farmland while submerging portions of present-day Farm School Road.

The Mills River dam would spread over 1,050 acres along the north and south fork of the Mills River, displacing 60 families and flooding the sites of Mills River Baptist Church, a community center, and a historic cemetery, among other places.

Key Players in the Dam Dispute - The debate over the TVA's plan raged from rural mountain communities to the halls of power in Washington, DC.

Mills River Baptist Church, built in 1902 and still a hive of worship and community, would have been fully submerged if the Mills River dam had been constructed.

As the UFBDA found its message gaining traction in state newspapers, it spread the word itself through publicity operations including newspaper ads (far left) and mailers like the one shown here.

The North and South Mills River Community Center was the site of both anti-dam potlucks and a key showdown with a TVA official.

The campaign against the TVA plan picked up momentum in the fall of 1971, as the sticker above graced local bumpers. The UFBDA’s trademark yellow scarves were ubiquitous at the TVA’s public hearing at UNC Asheville (right) and an environmental rally at the Asheville airport a few weeks later (right) that featured former astronaut and future senator John Glenn.

Newspaper headlines in November 1972 announced the defeat of the TVA’s proposal. Six years earlier, local citizens had begun staging protests against the agency’s plans to appropriate their lands for the project (while offering fair-market compensation).

Among Brittain’s personal lessons from the clash with the TVA: that organized and dedicated local activists can move even the federal government.

RESOURCES:

Photograph (1916 flood) courtesy of NC Office of Archives and History; (Edney) courtesy of Baker-Barber Collection/Community Foundation of Henderson County/Henderson County Public Library; (laursen) courtesy of Warren Wilson College; (Brittain) courtesy of Ramsey Library Special Collections, UNCA; (Boswell) Courtesy of Transylvania County Public Library; UFBDA materials courtesy of Ramsey Library Special Collections, UNCA; photographs (rally & Meeting) courtesy of Western Regional Archives, NC Office of Archives and history; (bumper sticker) courtesy of Ramsey Library Special Collections, UNCA; photograph courtesy of Transylvania County Public Library

ISSUE DATE:

Fall 2021

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Damming the TVA

Damming the TVA

Damming the TVA