35 replies to this topic

[Foy]

Those with interests in interplay between the Endangered Species Act and regionally/nationally important infrastructure projects would do well to study the Tellico Dam/snail darter case from the late 1970s. The dam, sited in East Tennessee, had been substantially completed when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the snail darter, saying Congress had clearly not allowed for any project exceptions to application of the ESA.  Congress then said:  OK, hold my beer and watch this--and passed a bill specifically exempting the snail darter from protection under the ESA. President Jimmy Carter signed it into law. Populations of snail darters had by then been widely transplanted within the East TN, Western NC, Northern GA and AL region, and their numbers were good enough to be de-listed from the endangered species list altogether by 1984, some 5 years after the Tellico Dam floodgates were closed.

 

The Tellico Dam project was a TVA boondoggle of the first order right out of the box, and the snail darter issue exposed many weaknesses in the project's cost/benefit studies.  Add to that the fact that biologists started finding snail darter populations here, there, and damn near everywhere during the litigation, and you had a Class A Crap Show in the courts, in Congress, and in the Executive Branch.

 

All in all, I think major projects develop a critical mass at some point and are very difficult to stop once they do.  Ardent conservationists would be wise to choose their battles carefully to avoid expenditure of critically important political capital for causes having a substantial possibility of turning out like the snail darter fiasco. What are the prospects of finding substantial occurrences of the buckwheat weed outside of that one valley, and/or the prospects of Congress rolling over it in aggressive pursuit of green energy policy?  Dang if I know, but I wouldn't want to spend but so much in an effort to stop the mine's development based on this one issue.

 

Foy

[AWG_Pics]

Yeah, you are probably right Foy. The politics behind 'green' energy are only gaining momentum - so this project will likely end up going forward. Similarly, hydro, wind, solar, small nuclear and before too long, tidal energy production, have been or will be so solidly identified with the 'green is good' label that any inherent downsides will be swept out of sight. Or maybe given some lip-service. 

 

We humans are clever, but shortsighted. And we sure do crave convenient portable accessible energy.

Edited by AWG_Pics, 05 June 2021 - 04:19 PM.

[PaulT]

Having grown up in western NC, saying TVA & boondoggle is IMHO redundant.  

 

They used eminent domain to take long held private properties, justifying  it to by provide electricity to the locals, then had to be forced to provide the power to the locals after the fact.  The driving force to generating power was actually for the aluminum industry.

 

Paul 

[Foy]

As is so often the case (a clear majority of the time?), Federal Gummint programs morph over time to a point at which the original goals are secondary or forgotten altogether.  Such has certainly been the case with the TVA.  When the first TVA dam, named Norris Dam, was planned and built in the mid-1930s, its primary purposes were flood control and power generation, in part to provide for rural electrification. The TVA simultaneously proposed and planned, and built a network of dams along principal tributaries of the Tennessee River stretching all the way into the western flank of the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains.

 

By the late 1930s, the need for vast amounts of electric power to smelt aluminum ore to provide raw metal for the aircraft industry became apparent, and more dams were thrown up east and south of Knoxville for that purpose. Then came the Manhattan Project by the early 1940s, and the electric power supply from the dams was needed for the Oak Ridge Project, where uranium ore concentrates were processed into fissionable weapons-grade fuel.

 

Along the way, flood control and rural electrification took a back seat for a long time. Some argue they were thrown off of the bus altogether. Today's TVA is a permanent bureaucratic behemoth of the first order and bears little resemblance to its noble and humble origins.

 

"I'm from the Federal Gummint and I'm here to help you" are much feared words in many parts of the country to this day.  One day we're concerned about tiny minnow species and weed species, and soon after we have tens of thousands of permanently employed GS-10s with defined benefit pensions and lifetime medical benefits toiling away to provide the "help", all while a Congress willing to override itself for "essential infrastructure" looks on.  The outlook of skeptics can be understood even if not agreed with.

 

Foy

Edited by Foy, 06 June 2021 - 11:30 AM.

[AWG_Pics]

Public lands are a unique and precious asset in the US. The states and private industry have a spotty to terrible record of land management. I have known lots of federal land and natural resource management people. A few bad ones, but mostly fine, hard working fair minded folks. Some are truly gifted and we are very lucky to have such people looking out for our lands.

 

Sure there are examples of lousy government projects and actions. But there are far more examples of short-sighted greed motivated destruction of natural resources and irreparable spoiling of our public lands by private industry. 

 

I hope we can mostly agree that access to a variety of unspoiled public lands is a good thing.

Edited by AWG_Pics, 06 June 2021 - 04:13 PM.

[ski3pin]

Here's an interesting article just posted on mining.com -

 

Scientists develop method to extract lithium from seawater

[Foy]

We can, without a doubt, agree on the intrinsic value of unspoiled lands.  The trick is, always has been, and probably always will be to what degree can natural resource development (extraction) take place without a particular area becoming "spoiled". 

 

I think there is a substantial difference between outlooks and experiences in dealing with Federal Gummint agents between Westerners and Easterners, especially denizens of the original colonies.  By and large, Westerners' historical experiences involve outright gifting of vast swaths of land via homestead deeds and patented mining claims, all handled by the benevolent Federal bureaucracies established to execute those missions with all deliberate speed. The historical experiences of many generations of Easterners has been one in which Federal Gummint agents seized or destroyed assets used in commercial production of liquor (remember the Whiskey Rebellion?) from the earliest days of the existence of the Federal Gummint which exists today, to forcible removal from ancestral lands (the Seminole Wars and the Cherokees' Trail of Tears), to more modern day seizure of vast swaths of land for National Parks  (Smokies and Shenandoah NPs) and TVA  reservoirs plus Corps of Engineers flood control and navigation projects.  Not to mention seizure of many hundreds of thousands of acres right here in NC, SC, and GA for much needed military training bases in the early 1940s.  In the latter cases,  "fair compensation" and relocation assistance was provided, but involuntary transfer is still a seizure of one's assets.  Thus the general skepticism with which some view high-minded Federal Gummint programs comes from a position of experience for many.

 

More directly on topic,  I expect the use of the ESA as a method of stopping the proposed lithium mine will result in discovery of a considerable range of occurrence of the buckwheat species outside of the mine area and will ultimately fail.  It just seems to work out that way very often.  I have no dog in the fight--I'm neither a hardcore mineral development at all costs guy nor an ardent conservationist who believes in no development at no time and at no place; just predicting based on experiences.

 

Foy

[AWG_Pics]

The differences between east and west may not be as stark as they first seem. The former residents of the town of Hanford Washington for example were aggrieved at being displaced. Nerve gas leaks from Dugway killed lots of sheep in Utah. All of us 'downwinders', of whom I am one, who drank milk from cows eating radionuclide contaminated grass in Montana, Idaho, Utah and Nevada are right to feel put upon. Which brings up the former residents of what was the Nevada Test Site, or most of the sprawling military bases such as Nellis AFB and associated bombing ranges, or the Yakima Firing Center (lots of DU scattered all over). And then there are the people, tribal and non tribal, that lived where the Federal Columbia River Basin Hydropower system inundated and displaced vast stretches, nearly all as a matter of fact, of the unique and impossible to replace bottom lands of the Columbia and Snake rivers. In the Puget Sound, test firing of wire guided torpedos left thousands of miles of copper wire all over the upper sound (copper damages the olfactory tissues that salmon rely on for homing back to spawning grounds). 

 

I could go on and on with hundreds of specific examples of how the US Government, often the military, caused essentially permanent damage to ecosystems. And I will not even bring up BLM and USFS chaining and road building activities. But having said that, I remain convinced that far more would be lost if our public lands were not managed and protected by thousands of dedicated and hard working federal employees.

 

There is not an either-or, good or bad, right or wrong way of being in our society. But what we very often fail to do is think things through and step back if the possible damages are too great. The profit motive alone is usually sufficient justification. In my experience with thousands of cleanup and restoration efforts, they do not ever bring back what was lost. At best you come out the other end with something better than when the damage was most profound. But in each and every situation something is permanently lost.

 

I have no expectation that humans will change for the better any time soon. So lets go out and enjoy what we can, while living as lightly as possible on the back country landscape. 

[Foy]

Well said, Sir!  Get out and about and enjoy it while individual mobility and economics allow!

[PaulT]

I have very mixed feelings about public lands. Ideally, it is a good way to share a limited resource among enlightened users. However, one should always keep “The Tragedy of the Commons” foremost in ones’s mind.  

 

When first arriving in Oregon in the 70’s, many folks told me the acronym BLM* meant Bureau of Land Mismanagement”.  They have a tough job serving many masters, few with common goals. 

 

Paul

 

*no relationship to current usage