The concept of public lands is based on the premise that, if private interests had their way, there would soon be no natural areas unmarred by humans. In seeking to protect natural areas, our governing officials have devised a complex web of bureaucracy that extends to countless agencies and persons, most of whom are unknown and not accountable to the actual public. Land Between the Lakes (LBL), which was actually Land Between the Rivers until its re-christening in 1964, offers an example of what can happen to the land and people caught in this web.
Land Between the Rivers was a peninsula of multi-generational farms and rural communities between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers in western Kentucky and Tennessee. After the iron industry burned itself out at the turn of the century, the land was mostly used for farming, hunting and fishing. It was paradise, with the rivers providing natural insulation and symbolic separation from the outside. Visitors from outside were often amazed to find that some of us had no electricity, indoor plumbing or telephone. We had privacy, beautiful land, woods and water and communities where everyone helped each other. We survived and rebuilt after floods - natural ones and others made by the Corps of Engineers and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) when they dammed the rivers.
We even established our own 70,000-acre Kentucky Woodlands National Wildlife Refuge in 1900 when Shelley Nickell decided to protect the last flock of wild turkey in the area. The federal designation came in 1938.
It was probably that wildlife refuge that spelled the beginning of the end for the people of Land Between the Rivers. In 1964 President Kennedy found it on a map, flew over it in a helicopter, sent in the National Park Service to study it and entrusted it to TVA after a Park Service plan to allow the people to stay was rejected.
When Kennedy realized that most of the viable wilderness lands in the West were already under government protection, he sought to build a legacy of public lands in the East including those that could be restored and kept in pristine condition. Little-known wetlands and lakeshores received extra acreage, grandiose new names and status to match. Countless acres were absorbed by the government into this new national recreation plan. Many places were given national park and national monument statuses. There was a frenzy of involvement as state and local leaders sought to explore the new possibilities of tourism in areas that had been sleeping peacefully for centuries.
TVA believed there were no outstanding features in LBL, either natural or humanmade. They proposed that all commercial activity and permanent dwellings be excluded from the park. The waters would serve as a natural boundary. In other words, we, the people of Land Between the Rivers, were history.
The money TVA offered us was ludicrously low for our land and buildings. It justified this as necessary to "discourage land speculators." Those who refused the initial offers, under the threat of condemnation, received even less. The degradation of being forced from our places was intensified by our portrayal in the press as backwards, ignorant and lawless people. But the major reason all Americans should be upset about Land Between the Lakes is because what happened there is emblematic of what is presently happening to much of public land: It is being converted to suit the needs of interests that are not the interests of the people who love nature and love the land.
TVA's plan stated that no one could develop the land, profit from it in a monetary sense or do anything there to damage nature. That reality has been distorted in the new language of wise use and sustainable resources to mean that no one but TVA can develop the land. The mom-and-pop groceries of the 1960s have been replaced by sterile, electrified ones financed by taxpayers. In effect, the public pays top prices for trinkets and souvenirs their taxes have already paid for, from a store that they unwittingly paid to build, in front of a campground (that is little different from a mall parking lot) that they paid to pave, so that they could pay to park there on land that they unknowingly helped steal (ostensibly to prevent commercialization).
TVA has recently set an alarming precedent in Tennessee by issuing long-term leases to private interests and selling lands acquired by eminent domain as condominium sites. In a recent news report, TVA justified the hiring of a Texas development firm to design condos and marinas as necessary to "maximize the value of the property." (As a hybrid public/private corporation, TVA can operate in whichever capacity is most convenient at the time.) Managing valuable public resources, with little or no control over their use, is perhaps more temptation than any agency can stand - especially TVA, which is $28 billion in debt, thanks to its nuclear power production. [See EF! Journal, July-August 1994.]
Recent alliances with huge timber interests have also produced irreparable results. Commercial logging has not only been renewed - but increased dramatically. The cutting follows a patchwork pattern designed to prevent inclusion of more of the 170,000-acre forest into a nature preserve. And TVA used to brag that LBL was the largest unfragmented hardwood forest between the Rockies and the Alleghenies! It now openly boasts that its goal is to become "competitive in the outdoor recreation industry" and that "preservation is detrimental to outdoor recreation."
Shadowy alliances with development interests started with TVA's "five concepts" proposals for development of the LBL. These "concepts" were the result of the required public comment period on such developments. The concepts included more groceries, equipment rentals, a restaurant, rental cabins, lake front condos and two golf courses. The centerpiece was to be a heritage theme park that would portray the unique history and culture of the people that inhabited the land from the 1700s until it was taken by TVA. (A very large percentage of the population traced its ancestry to Revolutionary War soldiers who received the land as payment for service.) This park would be encircled by the "Tennessee Splash," a replica of the Tennessee River, in which visitors could float in rented inner tubes. The public's response was so negative that TVA announced it would withdrawing the concepts before the comment period had expired. The agency promised it had no plans for any developments. Within a year, the restaurant, a Western store and numerous rental cabins had been constructed, and the logging had escalated.
The pattern has been consistent since the first commercialization efforts in 1988: Deny there is a plan, build quietly, then promise that there are no plans for further developments, build quietly, then promise again.
Protests by the public have been ignored by TVA. Conventional appeals to elected officials produced a congressional hearing last June, but nothing resulted. Hope hinges on a promise was made that the land would remain forever free of commercial development. This promise made both to the former residents, as explanation for their expulsion, and to all Americans, as explanation for purchasing the land. If the government can be held to its promise to the people it will be a major victory against the acceleration of wise use management. As corporate interests continue to use declining federal subsidies as an excuse to gain access to valuable public resources, the LBL issue will be a critical juncture in public land management.
TVA Chairman Craven Crowell has taken the unprecedented move of requesting that Congress not fund LBL, or its other non-power programs (mainly dams and navigation). Congress recently approved funding of LBL for 1998, but stated flatly that this would be the last year TVA's operation of LBL would receive funding. Because TVA "acquired" the LBL by its own authority and no enabling legislation was ever written to establish the legal status of the LBL, the only constraints on TVA's use of LBL has been the strings attached to the yearly appropriations of federal money. TVA will now be "forced" to operate LBL from funds generated within the LBL and can use the profits as it sees fit. This is a dangerous precedent for all public lands.
Kentucky Congressman Ed Whitfield has taken a major step in the right direction by issuing a request for a moratorium on further construction in the LBL until this issue is settled, but Congress has no statutory authority to enforce such a request. Whitfield says he would like to see LBL transferred to another agency: either the National Park Service, the US Forest Service or the Army Corps of Engineers. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and Whitfield plan to work together to write legislation to determine the future of the LBL. This legislation must be in place in time for the appropriations process, which begins in March 1988, so that Congress will know which agency to fund. That legislation will determine the constraints on whatever agency manages the LBL.
The Concept Zero Task Force has been formed to educate the public on this issue and is a coalition of former residents, business and sporting groups, environmentalists and educators. For more information, contact the Concept Zero Task Force at POB 56, Eddyville, KY 42038.