The Tennessee Valley Authority had a proposed flood control project in the 1960s, involving building dams in the French Broad River Basin in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, which was obstructed by “naturalist-environmentalists.” Had it been built, the program would have protected Ashville, and prevented other deaths from late September’s Hurricane Helene, not to mention other destruction over the past half-century. Between 66-90% of the people killed in seven Southeastern states during Hurricane Helene during Sept. 26-27, would still be alive, had the proper flood control-water management infrastructure been constructed.
During the storm that started as Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on Sept. 26 in northern Florida, 251 people were killed, most by flooding; 123 of them were in North Carolina, and of those, 72 people were killed western North Carolina, which constituted 29% of the acknowledged deaths in all states.
Asheville, in Buncombe County, North Carolina, became a national indicator of the problem. Located at 2200-feet elevation in the Appalachians, it is basically in a bowl, with nowhere for flood waters to escape. It has none of the basic infrastructure needed to manage the runoff, including levees, restraining walls, dams, and diversion channels.
An article in WNC Magazine, “Damming the TVA,” in fall 2021, documents how the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) had developed an entire plan to prevent flooding in the French Broad River Basin Watershed, encompassing 5,124 sq. miles, and which passes right through Asheville. It rises in southwestern North Carolina, near the border with South Carolina, then flows northward into the Tennessee Basin, joining the Ohio River in Kentucky.
After the French Broad River flooded in 1916, 1949, 1961, and 1964, the TVA developed a scientific plan for the entire French Broad River watershed in North Carolina, including Buncombe, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania Counties. In 1965, the TVA unveiled the plan, calling for 14 containments. It would have constructed 14 dams that would immerse 19,200 acres under water, but create 6,700 acres of lake area and 183 miles of shoreline. The TVA said the plan was “part of an overall program for economic advancement in the region,” WNC Magazine quoted the agency, and TVA promised to “provide significant flood control benefits, as well as benefits from water supply, water quality control, recreation, shoreline development, fishing, and area redevelopment.” It would use the same technology, including levees, reservoirs, dams, etc., that the TVA used magnificently to turn the flood-ravaged, disease-ridden, backward Tennessee Valley into a model development region under President Franklin Roosevelt.
That did not happen. Leading environmentalist groups, including the eco-fascist Sierra Club and Audobon Society, joined by some anti-TVA, anti-government Republicans, mobilized against the project. They used the anti-development National Environmental Protection Act, from 1970, which required so-called “environmental impact studies” before any dam could be built to block the project. That, despite the fact that the U.S. Congress had already appropriated more than a billion dollars to construct the project.
One of the anti-dam ringleaders, Dr. Jere Brittain, with a doctorate in plant history, portrayed himself as a simple country boy, who loved the land, wildlife and his family home, which was slated for removal. A total of 60 homes would have been purchased to make way for the project, paid for at fair market value. Many of the homeowners in the flood plain wanted to sell their homes, but the environmentalists denied them the opportunity, with Dr. Brittain raising the rallying cry to “keep the rivers running free,” the prime reason for the unnecessary deaths of 66-90% of the people who died in western North Carolina.
