With the discovery of a tiny fish in a soon-to-be-flooded stretch of the Little Tennessee River, construction on a dam that had already cost taxpayers $100 million came crashing to a halt. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the snail darter was instantly transformed into both an icon for species preservation and a despised symbol of the environmental movement's alleged excesses. The intense legal battle that ensued over its fate was contested all the way to the Supreme Court.
The 1978 decision in TVA v. Hill, the Court's first decision interpreting the Endangered Species Act, remains one of the most instructive cases in American environmental law. Affirming an injunction that prohibited the Tennessee Valley Authority from completing the Tellico Dam because it would eliminate the snail darter's only known habitat, the Supreme Court resolved an intragovernmental dispute between the TVA and the Interior Department as well as the claims of the local opponents of the dam.
Kenneth Murchison reveals that the snail darter case was just one part of a long struggle over whether the TVA should build the Tellico Dam. He traces disputes over the TVA's mission back to the 1930s and intertwines this with the emergence of federal environmental law in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act, both of which provided a statutory basis for litigating against the dam builders. He continues with an exhaustive analysis of the arguments, deliberations, and decision of the Supreme Court, based largely on original sources, before concluding with a summary of the subsequent congressional actions and administrative proceedings that ultimately allowed the dam's completion. By plumbing the Court's deliberations, the politics behind the law, and the way that law spurred political responses, Murchison clarifies how the story of darter and dam came to exemplify the tensions and conflict between legislative and judicial action.
Even though its players were left with only partial victories, TVA v. Hill helped to define the modern role of the TVA and remains an important chapter in the development of federal environmental law. Murchison helps us better understand this landmark decision, which drew the battle lines for current debates over the environment and the policies that protect or regulate its use.
This book offers a detailed account of the six-year crusade against a pork-barrel project that made no economic sense and was flawed from the start. In reality TVA’s project was designed for recreation and real estate development.
Main description: The first listed species to make headlines after the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 was the snail darter, a three-inch fish that stood in the way of a massive dam on the Little Tennessee River.
It is typical of Oligocephalus in having a small conical head, broad frenum, separate to slightly joined gill membranes, 2 anal spines, and in breeding males a blue marginal and a red submarginal band in the spiny dorsal fin.
This 2011 Wallace Stegner Lecture focuses on the story of the endangered snail darter, known as the "Most Extreme Environmental Case Ever."
... "Insider Trading as an Agency Problem," in Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business, 81 (John W. Pratt & Richard J. Zeckhauser eds., 1985); and Henry G. Manne, Insider Trading and the Stock Market (1966). 5.
In 1978 the Supreme Court ruled that the Endangered Species Act barred the Tennessee Valley Authority from completing its almost-built, $120 million Tellico project because the project would destroy the...
In the Sans Bois Mountains of Oklahoma, a lustrous orange and mahogany beetle drags a tiny carcass across a patch of ground shaken by bulldozers clearing the way for a...
'Sustainability' offers a comprehensive treatment of the relationship between business and sustainability.
You'll also find a healthy dose of inspiration as the stories behind the photos are revealed as only Moose can tell them.
In this volume a distinguished committee focuses on the science underlying the ESA and offers recommendations for making the act more effective.