The Snail Darter and the Dam

How Pork-Barrel Politics Endangered a Little Fish and Killed a River

Zygmunt Jan Broel Plater

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780300195262
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Law

The untold story of a notorious environmental case and the citizen crusade that carried a little fish through Washington politics and the Supreme Court.

Even today, thirty years after the legal battles to save the endangered snail darter, the little fish that blocked completion of a TVA dam is still invoked as an icon of leftist extremism and governmental foolishness. In this eye-opening book, the lawyer who with his students fought and won the Supreme Court case - known officially as Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill - tells the hidden story behind one of the nation's most significant environmental law battles.

The realities of the darter's case, Plater asserts, have been consistently mischaracterized in politics and the media. 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. And at the heart of the little group fighting the project in the courts and Congress were family farmers trying to save their homes and farms, most of which were to be resold in a corporate land development scheme. Plater's gripping tale of citizens navigating the tangled corridors of national power stimulates important questions about our nation's governance, and at last sets the snail darter's record straight.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION. God Is Speaking, by Committee
• CHAPTER 1. Of Time, a River, and the Tennessee Valley Authority
• CHAPTER 2. At the Old Fort
• CHAPTER 3. Pushing the Snail Darter onto the Endangered Species List
• CHAPTER 4. Trial and Tribulation in TVA’s Home Court
• CHAPTER 5. An Appeal for Justice as Bulldozers Roll
• CHAPTER 6. The Snail Darter Goes to Washington
• CHAPTER 7. Endangered, on the Banks of the Potomac
• CHAPTER 8. The Snail Darter Gets Its Congressional Hearings
• CHAPTER 9. The Highest Court?
• CHAPTER 10. Another Trial and Vindication, in the God Tribunal
• CHAPTER 11. 140 Days of a Slow- Ticking Clock, Ending in 42 Seconds
• CHAPTER 12. A Phone Call from Air Force One
• EPILOGUE. A Few Years Later, on the CBS Evening News
• Notes
• Index