More on TVA v Hill

H-Environment recently posted Drew Swanson's review of Zygmunt Plater's The Snail Darter and the Dam: How Pork-Barrel Politics Endangered a Little Fish and Killed a River (Yale UP, 2013). (A discussion of the snail darter case was posted here a few months ago.) Swanson writes:

Plater’s narrative offers several insights into both the case and 1970s environmentalism. First, the book highlights the immense complexity of these legal and political battles, walking readers through the grinding work of contacting representatives, building support networks of activists, researching cases, and filing briefs; The Snail Darter and the Dam moves much of this hidden labor out of the shadows. Second, Plater’s experience demonstrates the shoestring nature of many environmental organizations at the time. Often operating out of attics or cramped rental offices and subsisting on savings and donations from a few dedicated backers, these groups still found ways to influence the political process, and environmental historians would do well to follow Plater’s lead and pay more attention to lobbyists. Finally, the author argues for the immense importance of the media in framing environmental issues and swaying public opinion. For TVA vs. Hill, Plater is convinced that the national media’s “avoidance of complex thinking” reflected “a low opinion, apparently shared by many within Washington, of the intellectual ability and interest of the American populace” (p. 176). Once newspapers and television news defined the case as a tiny fish versus an enormous dam project, the popular case was already all but doomed.

*****

Snail darter
(USFWS Photo)

Where the book is least effective is in supporting Plater’s argument that the snail darter was more than just a tool of opportunity for dam opponents. He asserts that he and other supporters of the darter were not “hypocrites as well as fools, environmental extremists manipulating the darter to misuse the law over a technicality,” and yet throughout the book Plater admits to questioning their motives and their implications (p. 43). The issue is both troubling and refreshing for Plater’s honesty. 

TVA v Hill symposium issue and conservative anti-environmentalism

I just came across a symposium issue run by the Tennessee Law Review last year on TVA v Hill (1978), the "snail darter case", in which the US Supreme Court upheld a strict interpretation of the Endangered Species Act to prohibit the operation of a dam that had been built at great cost. The table of contents for the issue is here, and the foreword to the volume is here. The issue includes an article by lead attorney Zygmunt Plater, whose book and digital archive we mentioned last year.

Fran Scheidt,
Aerial Photo of Farmland Along the Little Tennessee River (1978)

Just having reread the case earlier this week, in preparation for a discussion with a group of environmental historians at Tel Aviv U., I was struck by something I hadn't noticed before: An amicus brief (a brief filed by a "friend of the court", not a direct party to the proceedings) in support of the TVA's position was filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, an organization founded in 1973 by former Reagan staffers and self-described as working, among other things, to defend "the fundamental human right of private property" and "to promote sensible environmental policies that respect individual freedom and put people first".

Now, which side should a libertarian organization devoted to fighting big government, protecting "the fundamental human right of private property", and "promoting sensible environmental policies that respect individual freedom and put people first" have taken in the TVA v Hill fight?

Zyg Plater's new book on the snail darter case

Rachelle Adam has brought to my attention the release by Yale University Press of The Snail Darter and the Dam: How Pork-Barrel Politics Endangered a Little Fish and Killed a River by Zygmunt JB Plater, who represented opponents of the Tellico Dam in TVA v Hill. The case is famous for the US Supreme Court's uncompromising stance in prohibiting completion of a dam that would endanger a small and not particularly charismatic fish, the snail darter. However the drama, and the legal, environmental, political, and social issues raised, were considerably broader.