Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

In June of 1978, the Supreme Court upheld the injunction against the dam on the basis of the Endangered Species Act, as written. Legally, the Court had little choice, even though, by then, the dam was more than 90 percent built. Chief Justice Warren Burger, who wrote the decision, was clearly offended by the whole situation, and all but invited Congress to amend the act. Congress required no such prompting. The legislative hopper began to spin with amendments to weaken or gut the act. Through the leadership of Senator John Culver of Iowa, however—and of Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, whose only real interest was completing the dam—a less drastic amendment was passed, by which an endangered species review committee would be created to resolve any case where a major project such as Tellico ran up against the act. It was to be a Cabinet-level committee, composed of the Secretaries of Interior, Agriculture, and the Army, in addition to the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and a representative from the affected state. According to the language of the amendment, the committee, which some began to call the God Squad, could grant exemptions to the act where no “reasonable and prudent” alternative exists, where the project is of national significance, or where the benefits of building it “clearly outweigh” any other course of action.