Volume 27, Number 1 · February 7, 1980
How to Kill a Valley
By Peter Matthiessen
A last-minute amendment insinuated into an Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act last June authorized the Tennessee Valley Authority to complete the Tellico Dam near Knoxville 'notwithstanding the Endangered Species Act or any other law.' This high-handed and very dangerous precedent is thought to be the first such rider ever to put an unfinished federal construction project beyond all legal restraint. On September 25, President Carter failed to veto HR4388 as he had been urged to do by members of his own cabinet. One of the oldest and most evil-smelling public works project in the country thus achieved through procedural tricks and political blackmail what it had never been able to win in a fair hearing. On November 29, when the flood gates were lowered, a small perch called the snail darter, whose last natural habitat was the last free-flowing stretch of the Little Tennessee River, became the first living creature ever consigned willfully into oblivion.
Feature, 6439 words
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