Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

Tellico was a dam the Tennessee Valley Authority had conceived as early as the 1930s and hadn’t gotten around to proposing seriously until the 1960s—which was mute testimony to the kind of project it was. The dam itself would produce no power—it would merely raise and divert the Little Tennessee River about a mile from its confluence with the main Tennessee so some extra water could be run through the turbines of nearby Fort Loudon Dam. The result would be twenty-three megawatts of new power, about 2 percent of the capacity of one of the nuclear and coal plants the TVA was simultaneously building. There were no flood-control benefits; there were hardly recreational benefits (the region had more reservoirs than it knew how to fill with boats); there were no fish and wildlife benefits. On the other hand, the Little Tennessee was about the last fast-flowing coldwater stream in the state. It was dammed only once upriver, while most tributaries of the Tennessee were dammed several times. It had a large and healthy population of trout. It was a splendid canoeing stream. It flowed through a beautiful valley, one of those happy places that contain both farms and bears. The Cherokee Indian Nation had had its pick of all the rivers of central Appalachia, and it chose the valley of the Little Tennessee as its home. There were hundreds of archaeological sites, some probably yet to be discovered. With its pretty white clapboard houses and its well-tended little farms, the valley was a ...