Jere Brittain on the French Broad River

Partial Transcript: I’m Jere Brittain. A native of the Mills River Valley. And the property where I’m sitting has been in the Brittain family since the early 1800s. My grandchildren, three of them, live on the property currently with their parents. And they represent the eighth generation of Brittains and other families in this valley. So it’s of special significance to me that our family has this continuity and this sense of place about the property. The particular portion of the property on which we’re located belonged to my late brother, Jim Brittain, a historian that worked for Georgia Tech and, in retirement, wrote a lot of short articles about the history of the valley and the early families. Now, Jim, a couple of years ago, decided to donate seventeen acres, where we’re now located, to what was, then, the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy—now called Conserve Carolina. So the seventeen acres, in accordance with his wishes, will be used for teaching and research purposes on natural resource conservation and stewardship. One of the projects that’s on the near horizon is to monitor this amazing salamander that hangs out in this river called a Hellbender. The Hellbender is—sometimes they’re as long as my arm with a head as big as my hand. And, so, Lori Williams with the North Carolina Wildlife Commission is going to be doing some monitoring with Hellbender traps right along the river behind me.

Partial Transcript: Well, all I know for sure is my firsthand experience growing up here. Beginning eighty-two years ago, I was born in 1935 in a two-story house on River Loop Road, just a few hundred yards from where we’re sitting. And, at age six months, according to my mother, she and my father loaded my brother—who was four years older—and they own a two-horse wagon, with a few belongings—moved us across the river—forded the river in January. And moved into a little four room, frame house, which is just a few hundred yards away, and where my middle son and his family now reside. And, as I look back to my childhood years, I’m sort of amazed and impressed that my mother and dad were able to make a living out of this eighty or so acres. They were farmers—self-sufficient type farmers. It was truly a one-horse farm. And, so, they grew corn down in the bottom land—their seven or eight acres of bottom land—and on the hillsides was a rough pasture. Now it’s grown back to woodland pretty much. And, I expect, there were many years in those early days, in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when they didn’t have more than three or four hundred dollars cash income for the whole year. They bartered some with eggs and milk products, sold a calf or two for some cash. But they provided well for my siblings and me and taught us to appreciate school and education, in particular. That was their great gift to us. And, even though they probably could’ve used the resources by selling this property many times, they didn’t do it. And, so, they left it as their legacy for us. In fact, my brother expressed a wish that this property that he designated to Conserving Carolina would be named the Randall and Velma Brittain Preserve. And the Conserving Carolina people are designing a sign to let visitors know that in the fairly near future.

Partial Transcript: As I said in one of my songs, Mills River was as much a part of my life as eating and sleeping. I, in the summer months, swam and bathed in it, fished in it, cut firewood along the banks. I trapped furbearing animals as a mid-teenager—muskrats and minx. I sold the furs for a little bit of cash when I was going to high school. That and the work in the bottom lands and cornfields, hoeing and plowing corn with a horse and a cultivator, gathering corn by hand, one ear at a time. Our family’s only conveyance in those early days, was a horse drawn sled. We didn’t even have anything with wheels on this farm. So one might say we were practically stone-agers.

Partial Transcript: I think the river—people valued the river then, but not in the same way that they do now. It was kind of taken for granted, and was, in a way, more of an obstacle for getting to places like this property. We didn’t have a driveway in here in the early days, so we had to build a footbridge to go and come to catch a school bus. And, so, there was not very much acknowledged concern about what would now be called conservation and environmental issues. I think that people were fairly good stewards of the land and the water, but the rivers in general in those days, in the 40s and 50s, were taken for granted and, in the case of the French Broad for which Mills River’s a tributary—French Broad, when I was a youngster, was more or less a moving cesspool with industrial and municipal pollution. When you crossed the river on the way to Hendersonville, you could actually smell the pollution. And, so, a lot has happened as a result of environmental legislation. And, so, the river is viewed, I would say, in a more spiritual way now than it was then.

Partial Transcript: Well, it would have been quite different in the case of the Native Americans, who were here as hunters and fishermen. So far as anyone has been able to tell, the Cherokees used this area primarily as hunting and fishing on a seasonal basis, but no residential situation here. And, so, of course, it was totally different in those days. And, when the white settlers arrived, their main challenge was to clear enough land—it was slashing and burning—to be able to grow some food to survive. And, so, in those early days, the goal was to clear land for pasture and for food production in the bottom lands and without too much concern for the impacts that the clearing would have on water quality.

Partial Transcript: Well, in the case of—the period of time in the late 1800s, early 1900s, when George Vanderbilt acquired these thousands of acres that are now, mainly, part of the Pisgah National Forest, there were some of the biggest environmental disasters ever. For example, Carl Schenck and Gifford Pinchot, foresters from Europe, came up with a scheme for logging in the head waters of the North Mills River involving building temporary dams that they call splash dams—one on Big Creek and one on Fletcher Creek. So the idea was to fill the creek below the dams with logs and open the flood gates of these temporary dams and create a great flood that would float the logs, hopefully, to Asheville to the saw mills. Well, they coordinated the release of this water to coincide with a fairly good flood that was already in the river, so the rush of the water, indeed, carried the logs downstream. They were scattered all over the farmer’s field. And, a lot of them, they were unable to catch at Asheville wound up going on to Tennessee. And, so, it was Carl Schenck, admitted in his very good book called, The Biltmore Story, that it was a disaster, and it would have scoured all of the vegetation from the riverbanks. And the otters and the brook trout. They had no place to hide. Since Noah built his famous ark, this is was the biggest tide.

Partial Transcript: Right. Subsequent to those events in the early 1900s, the Tennessee Valley Authority, in the late ‘30s as part of their mandate to regulate the flow of the Tennessee River, the first proposal they made for dams and reservoirs on the French Broad was to build a big dam at Bent Creek near the North Carolina Arboretum. They would have backed water all the way into Hendersonville and Brevard. It would have been what became the Lake Douglas of their system, and this was the first proposal. It was eventually shouted down by the landowners who were going to be adversely affected.

Partial Transcript: Well, that set in motion a succession of proposals to build the dams further and further upstream, one of which I’ll talk more about shortly. The idea was that if, well, if a big dam downstream wasn’t acceptable, maybe a lot of small dams upstream would be. And this resulted, in the 1960s, in the TVA’s second big proposal and the one in which I was involved and opposing, to build fourteen dams and reservoirs, one on every major tributary on the French Broad.

Partial Transcript: Well, the immediate impact, it doesn’t sound by today’s standards like a lot, but there would have been six hundred families displaced—sixty in upper Mills River, for example. And a lot of farm land in the upper valley such as Little River and Swannanoa covered with water. And there would have been other impacts. For example, it would have made it impossible for our families to maintain this continuity of additional generations being able to live and have children grow up and have this sense of place. So I thought at the time, and I still feel, that that would have been the most damaging impact of all—the human impacts of people who would be displaced.

Partial Transcript: At that time, I don’t know whether that’s the case today or not, but in the mid-1960s when we confronted this proposal that would have built dams in Mills River—on the Mills River among other places—TVA was, I would go so far as to say an arrogant organization. They hadn’t found it necessary in their culture up ‘til that point to consult with the people who were going to be impacted, such as those who were displaced by Fontana Dam. And, so, it wasn’t until the events pertaining to this fourteen dam and reservoir proposal on the French Broad tributaries that I think they were confronted with some serious questions about whether their powers of imminent domain were justifiable for the benefits that they were claiming.

Partial Transcript: The purposes that were listed—the so-called benefits—in their proposal were water supply, flood control, water quality, and recreation. So they made, what I felt, were fairly inflated claims about the benefits and understated the costs. Even at that, they came up with a benefit to cost ratio of only 1.4:1 which, most economists who looked at it at the time felt like it was a fairly shaky justification of the taking of this much property and the displacement of this many people. Their unspoken agenda, I think, was to augment the level of Lake Douglas. If you’ve been around Lake Douglas much, you know that it fluctuates a lot and is drawn down severely during dry weather. And, so, there’s a big bathtub ring around it. So they said in a rather curious language that they were going to use these upstream dams to augment the flow of the French Broad, which meant to draw down the upstream reservoirs to keep Lake Douglas from fluctuating so much. So that was—my opinion is that that was their primary agenda.

Partial Transcript: I think Lake Douglas is—I haven’t reviewed this recently, but Lake Douglas is primarily used to augment the flow of the Tennessee River to keep the flow stable down at Muscle Shoals and at their downstream operations. So it was kind of a domino thing. Lake Douglas was used to maintain the flow—and I believe they generate some hydropower over there as well—I’m not certain—augment the flow of the Tennessee River, and so it was a kind of reverse domino thing. They wanted to maintain the level of Lake Douglas so that it could be more of a legitimate and recreational and residential lake.

Partial Transcript: We had some engineers who did some research on whether or not the TVA’s claims were supportable that their projects had great economic impact, positive impacts, on the places where they’ve built dams before, such as Fontana. And it turned out that the economic growth in the five county area, which was the upper French Broad, had greatly exceeded the growth and development where the TVA had built dams and reservoirs in the western counties. And, so, the evidence—what really spoke against their claims that the fourteen dams in the upper French Broad would result in great economic development and retention of population, it’s pretty obvious from today’s perspective that, maybe, we would like for population growth to taper off a little in this area instead of continuing to grow at the rapid rate that it’s been growing.

Partial Transcript: Well, it was quite simple. It was kind of using these upstream reservoirs to flush the pollution. As the saying was the time, the solution to the pollution is dilution. And, so, that was clearly what they planned to do. And this, as I mentioned earlier, was before the environmental laws began to tighten the screws on the industries that were doing the polluting as well as some of the municipalities. So the need to dilute pollution kind of went away as pollution began to be reduced at the source, which is where it should be reduced.

Partial Transcript: My wife Joann and I and our, then, four children moved back here from Blacksburg, Virginia to this valley in 1967 and, almost immediately, were confronted with the news about the TVA proposal. Interestingly enough, the first of the fourteen dams, they had selected Mills River which was right on our doorstep. So the house where we were living, an ancestral house, would have been taken by the reservoir, as well as that of sixty or seventy other neighbors. And, so, we were kind of in the right place at the wrong time, or however you might want to state it. And, as we began to contemplate whether or not anything could be done, the initial reaction in our community was that, well, if the government, mainly the TVA wants to do it, they’re going to do it and there’s not much point in opposing them and—because they had never been really defeated prior to then. And, so, we began to talk about amounting some kind of opposition. And, so, the communities, such as Mills River and Little River, Hoopers Creek, began to have community meetings—not coordinated by anyone, but just within their own communities. There was a little organization at the time called Citizens and Taxpayers League which was very conservative, politically, probably, and advocated against government projects that were going to have adverse effects on people. So over a period of a couple years, we started having some informal kind of meetings—kitchen table meetings—of some of the leaders in these various individual communities that, eventually, led to the creation of an organization called the Upper French Broad Defense Association. And, so, with that organization, we began to feel somewhat empowered that we might actually have a chance of defeating this because the more we were able to get local publicity, there was an amazing outpouring of volunteers from various communities—especially in Transylvania County, which was then, as it is now, a big retirement center. And, so, we had dozens of very talented retirees who had no ax to grind at all who took an interest in this just as a—from a standpoint of community service. They wanted to help. And I would say, without these retirees, many were from distant places away from here—the northern states—we would have never have made it. Their great gift to the campaign against the TVA was that they had the experience and the confidence to believe that they were not intimidated by this elephant in our tent. And, so, their volunteer efforts and their willingness to join us—we began to think, well, maybe this is possible.

Partial Transcript: Well, some that come to mind, in addition to Mills River, Little River and Transylvania County, a community a great deal like Mills River, they had a very active group of citizens involved. And, early on, it was obvious Transylvania County was going to be one of the keys to the outcome of the battle. I think five of the reservoirs were proposed for Transylvania County. And Transylvania, along with every other—the Transylvania County Commission, the Brevard City Counsel, Hendersonville and Henderson County, Asheville and Buncombe County, Marshall and Madison County, an organization called the Upper French Broad Economic Development Commission, which was kind of the council of governments—and still exists with a different name today. And they had become the UFBEDC, they were more or less surrogates of the Tennessee Valley Authority. And, so, they had acquired endorsements from all the county governments, as well as the state and federal elected officials with one lone exception—and that was Charles Taylor of Transylvania who was then a young state representative in Raleigh. Charles felt early on that he opposed it on political grounds, not necessarily environmental grounds. But we were willing to accept whatever opposition he would—whatever he called his opposition, it was good for us.

Partial Transcript: Some of the communities that were very active as we began to organize the opposition were, certainly, Henderson, and Henderson County, and Mills River, and Clear Creek, Crab Creek, and Hoopers Creek. All of these communities had individuals who were organizing opposition groups. And Transylvania, certainly. The Little River community was the most active. It was the largest of the dams up there. The East Fork of the French Broad and North Fork up in Rosman, although it was more controversial up there because Rosman, itself, was vulnerable to flooding, so it was probably the balance of opposition and the proponents was fairly even in the vicinity of the North Fork around Rosman. And, in Buncombe County, I think the primary opposition came from the people that’s in the Swannanoa watershed. In particular, Warren Wilson College. They had some people who were on the UFBDA’s Board of Directors, including for example, Ernst Larson, who still survives. He was the farm manager at that time. And Billy Ed Wheeler got involved. He was a Warren Wilson alumnus, a famous folk song writer. And, so I think, Swannanoa was the most active community and Buncombe County. Going back for a moment to Charles Taylor, he was actually elected to the state legislature in Transylvania—from Transylvania—based on his opposition to the TVA proposal. And, so, Charles was without an ally except for the people who voted for him for a year or two. And then, as the opposition gained momentum, Charles began to acquire some political allies. And I just can’t overstate the importance of Charles, early on especially, in at least helping us realize that we at least had one friend in Raleigh.

Partial Transcript: Eventually, some of the adverse effects of the proposed dams and reservoirs and the seventy or so miles of stream channelization began to attract the attention of some state and national conservation groups, such as the CR Club, the Wilderness Society, the, what was then, the North Carolina Conservation Counsel. And, I think, one of the things that did attract the attention—the Audubon Society—one of the things that attracted the attention of these nationally-known environmental groups was the channelization idea. They had had adverse experiences with this notion of straightening out the river’s meander and to try to expedite runoff, and it usually wound up with a bigger disaster than it would have been had the river been allowed to meander. So one-by-one these—through contacts that we initiated—these national environmental groups came forward, which was a tremendous boost to us.

Partial Transcript: A few of the people whose names just leap to mind when I think about Transylvania County, in particular, who were really part of the foundation of our opposition—one in particular who was connected to Charles Taylor, was Martha Boswell. Martha was kind of the grandam of our organization. She was a school teacher, retired from in the Transylvania County system. And she was a political activist back in the day when women were attempting to acquire the right to vote in this country. That’s what—she had that kind of heritage. And she maintained this activity and was, indeed—I believe Charles Taylor would agree—one of Charles’s mentors in politics in Transylvania County. I think Martha was probably a registered Democrat and rather liberal in her views, but she didn’t hesitate to cross party lines at a time when the Republican party was not strong in North Carolina. Evidently, she saw an opportunity for Charles to succeed as a Republican politician. And, so, throughout his career, I believe Martha mentored Charles to a great extent. And she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Defense Association throughout its life.
Another really noteworthy person who was involved in Transylvania County—there’s a man named Hap Simpson. Hap was a retired Vice President for marketing with the International Harvester company and was the marketing director for this four-wheel drive vehicle called the Scout. And he retired to Transylvania County out of Chicago. And Hap was just an outstanding public speaker and was part of our public speaking group that went around and try to re-educate everyone from city councils to county governments to garden clubs, to show them a point of view that they hadn’t heard before. Another example is Elmer Johnson, who had been an executive with Gibson Greeting Card company. And Elmer was highly enthusiastic. Just a bubbling personality and very positive. And when Elmer would meet with people from the Tennessee Valley Authority or with elected officials, Elmer was straight ahead. He was not the first to blink. Arthur Dehon and his wife, Betty Kay, who developed the Sherwood Forest development and a small golf course up near Tonesty Falls, was on our board and very supportive financially as well as politically. T.R. McCall, who still has a vegetable farm in Little River, and his family were very, very active. T.R. was also on our board. Golda Hudgens was our treasurer. So Transylvania really brought a lot of talent and dedication to the table. In Henderson County, a man named Alex Duress, who, I believe, at the beginning, he was still working for Olen, but then eventually retired while the battle was still engaged. And Alex was just a champion letter to the editor writer and newspaper clipper and was secretary to the organization. Sent out mailing by the hundreds, if not thousands. I might point out as a reminder that this was before the days of the internet and personal computers, so it took a lot more elbow grease then to rally the troops than it would today with the advent of the instant social media that helps campaigns like this.

Partial Transcript: Well, one example of the grassroots aspect of this is a friend and a neighbor who’s still alive and well just a mile and a half upstream from where we’re located, was Bob Presley. Bob was very involved in the early phases of the opposition. He and some others went over to meet, then congressman, Roy Taylor who was one of the proponents at the time. They assembled at the airport with placards to protest when Roy Taylor would be going or coming from Washington. His endorsement of the TVA scheme. So Bob was one of those. He and Clara Beb who was then principal of Crab Creek Elementary School, were among those—Sitton Allison who lived on Boylston, in the Boylston reservoir area—they were key people in the citizens and taxpayers phase. And, so, I can’t say enough about the importance of these groups who did some of the early spade work that led to the formation of the upper French Broad Defense Association. I served, I suppose, partly because I was located in the Mills River the first of the proposed dams that was to be built—served as chair of the organization throughout its 90 percent of its existence with an awful lot of support from family and friends. And one of the organizations that is not as well known today as he was then was the Community Development Centers, such as one—there was one at lower and upper Mills River, one at Little River, one at Hoopers Creek. These were little civic organizations with a gathering place where people could discuss community issues. And as we were working up to the larger organization, I was able to speak as a chair of the north and south Mills River Community Development Center, which gave me a platform—an organizational platform—that, rather than just being out there as a lone individual. And, so, when I think about these centers, I think about the people such as Margaret Engle who was my wife’s mother who was instrumental in building that center. And to some degree, the people who were eventually successful in opposing the TVA project here, I think, we’re fortunate that they had done some ground work by building these civic organizations that could express—could be the voice of the community. And churches, in addition, got involved politically because several of the dams would have eliminated these small, rural churches that were part of the social fabric and, often, the social centers in the communities in those days, such as Mills River Baptist Church and the church at Little River with a pastor named Jess Bailey who did not hesitate to call the church to action in opposition to this project.

Partial Transcript: Well, we made several efforts, some more successful than others, to engage the TVA in some dialogue by inviting them to send a representative to these community centers, for example. And I remember one meeting in particular we had at our center where Jack Barron, who was one of the project managers for the TVA, came over along with L.D. Hyde, who was then the Executive Director of the Economic Development Commission. And, so, we confronted them with a lot of questions in front of an audience of about a hundred people in our community center, and they didn’t have very adequate answers. So there was this kind of back and forth at the community level. And, in the meantime, there was the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, which placed a burden on government organizations planning projects like this to file environmental impact statements. And, so, this—at some point during this process, the TVA finally did get around to publishing a thin, little environmental impact statement that was very poor. I think it hurt them. We were able to use it against them, frankly, because it was so obviously inadequate in terms of the human impacts in particular. So that eventually pointed us toward, what eventually was a big public hearing in Asheville where we really had a confrontation with them in a fair setting.

Partial Transcript: I think they were under a legal requirement to have it as a result of the Environmental Policy Act of ’69. And, by the late ‘60s or about 1970, we were—the opposition was beginning to get enough publicity to cause some of the politicians to backtrack a little bit. The most interesting example was, then Governor Robert Scott, who purportedly had endorsed the TVA’s plan. And, in a very curious way, we were able to get an audience in Asheville with Governor Scott. And, I might say, that was partly a result of the fact that Ernst Laursen at Warren Wilson had been his college roommate and was still in touch with him. And, so, we were able to meet with the governor in a motel in Asheville and sort of confronted him with, we understand you’ve endorsed this proposal, and here are some of the reasons that we think it’s a problem. And he heard us out, and he said, well, some of those—the engineers—who work for me in the Environmental Department, may have endorsed it, but I didn’t endorse it. And shortly thereafter, he went public with this. And, so, that was the first big crack in the shell for the TVA when the governor of North Carolina—shall we say—withdrew what was supposed to have been an endorsement. And I think that was the first in a major domino to fall on the political side.

Partial Transcript: When the TVA finally consented to a public hearing, there was a question of where it would be held. Those of us who were opponents felt it should’ve probably been held in Henderson County to make it easily accessible to the people in Transylvania and Henderson and Buncombe. And they chose instead to hold it at the campus of the UNC at Asheville. And I think it was with some forethought that it might reduce the attendance for some of the people in the outlying communities. And when it was necessary for people to file an intent to testify or to give a statement, beforehand, it turned out that the agenda was set up to have the people—the proponents of the project—speak on the opening half day of the hearing with no opponent listed to speak until that afternoon, which meant that the proponents, they presume, would get the media attention. Well when we heard about that, we began to scramble to figure out a way to identify ourselves to show the preponderance of people at the hearing were opponents. And someone, and I think it was Betty Kay Dehon in Transylvania, came up—she had contacts in the textile and fabric industry—came up with the idea of bright yellow neck scarves with UFBDA inscribed in bold print for people who were opposed to wear during the hearing. And when the hearing opened, it looked like a sea of yellow scarves. I would say the people in attendance were probably—there was about more than 80/20 who were identified by these scarves as opponents.

I think there were—the hearing extended over a three-day period because of the great numbers of people who wanted to give statements. And I’m uncertain about the exact number, but I believe that there were two-hundred and fifty or so who were there at one time or another. And there were people giving statements who had never before or never since had given a public speech. It really brought out the best in the civic participation in these communities. Many of the written statements were—

Partial Transcript: A lot of the written statements submitted were handwritten, not even typed. In fact, I have two volumes. The total of the two volumes runs to about a thousand pages—something like that thick. And at some of the most poignant stories of people ranging from children to elderly adults that really, I thought, was an outstanding record of ordinary people speaking up for what they believed was correct—that the so-called benefit the cost of this project. And the general outcome of that hearing was that the publicity certainly verified that the opposition was wide-spread and grassroots. And, so, it really set the stage for the culmination of the whole battle, which would be in 1972—at the elections of 1972. We really realized after that hearing that we had a chance to win if it could be followed up with the right political outcomes.

Partial Transcript: One poignant recollection that I have is about a neighbor who had a small farm just around the corner from where we lived on north Mills River. He came on the second day of the hearing. He woke us up knocking at our door about daylight—it was in August—and handed me a statement that he had written, but he didn’t feel comfortable going to the hearing. It just wasn’t his personality. And, so, I read it. I read his statement at the hearing. His name was John Mullanacks. As to other farmers, the farmers downstream from the dam were by and large in favor of the proposal. And one of the people who had a large farm that would have presumably benefited from flood control upstream was my Vo-Ag teacher from high school named John Hollowman—a dear friend and a mentor of mine. So their—the proposal cast John Hollowman and me on opposite sides of this issue, and I’ve regretted it. I felt like it was one of my personal costs in being heavily involved in opposing this—was sort of a suspension of my friendship with one of my heroes and high school teachers. So there were a lot of—you might say, there were analogous situations to things that happened during the Civil War in this community, where family members were sometimes divided in their allegiances. That’s always a heavy cost of these kind of episodes.

Partial Transcript: Right. So the election of 1972, when there was a big republican sweep all the way from the national to the state and local level really turned the tide, which was ironic in a way. Today, generally speaking, the democrat party is more associated with environmental causes than is the republican, so the fact that the republican candidates did get elected and they were on record as in opposition of this program on grounds that it was an unjustified use of eminent domain by the government. So when the results of that election were in, TVA more or less the next day announced they were withdrawing the plan based on a lack of local support, is the way they put it. And, so, there never was any legal—any decisive or permanent legal action. There’s nothing really to hinder them, so far as I know, from coming back and having another go at it, which I would like to see personally some legislation introduced that would—because of their poor track record in the upper French Broad—I’d like to see the upper French Broad removed from their charter. I felt like what we accomplished, in positive terms, was leaving these water resources, leaving the rivers running for our future generations to decide how would be the best way to use as well as protect these rivers. And, so, the communities are now—are going to shortly be faced with the question of—not just of water quality, but of water supply and to have a sustainable water supply is probably going to take some water storage some place. And, so, the time has come now for the upper French Broad communities to begin to examine how they’re going to deal with the need for more water as the region continues to develop. And if there’s any kind of coherent plan around for that on the part of regional government entities, I haven’t seen it. I do know that Brevard and Hendersonville and Asheville are all looking at the French Broad itself as a water supply, not just the head water sources. And that would have been unthinkable fifty years ago because of the poor water quality of the French Broad. People would have refused to drink it, even processed. But, so, these options that are still available to the communities of the upper French Broad represent what I would consider the legacy of the upper French Broad Defense Association. It wasn’t, I feel like, our legacy should be thought of in those terms rather than necessarily negative terms. Floods will continue to be an issue. Most flood damage to property is a result of bad actions in the flood plain. A good example is the much talked about river district of Asheville, which continues to grow and develop and with more industry and tourism, the art district, and so on. Well, they’re inviting disaster, as has been reported fairly recently in documentaries. We will be reminded one of these days of the 1916 flood again that essentially wiped out everything in that corridor. So I think that, for reasons that I can’t quite comprehend, the local government entities are reluctant to make hard decisions preventing people from building in the flood plain.

Partial Transcript: Well, what is now—I think most people agree—is a rather beautiful community in the upper Mills River Valley would’ve become a rather ugly little lake as it fluctuated up and down. And beyond that, an agency in Knoxville would have the control of the valve as to how much of the water and the empowerment the cities of Hendersonville or Asheville would be able to use instead of having it in control of local governments. I’m pretty sure the lower part of the valley below the dams would’ve continued to develop more or less as it is currently. I doubt if it would’ve been much more rapidly because, with the fluctuating levels of the Mills River empowerment, it wouldn’t have been attractive to augment the tourism business. And, so, I don’t know that the Mills River Valley, down in the lower part of Mills River where it joins the French Broad, it would probably still be agricultural in the flood plain and housing and commercial and industrial development at the next tier of elevation.

Partial Transcript: I think the biggest lesson, to me, is that ordinary citizens can gain access to government at all levels from the local all the way to Washington and get a hearing within—the due process works if people are engaged. And if they aren’t engaged, it doesn’t work. And, so, I think the takeaway is that other people who are confronted with challenges like that should never assume that they can’t make a difference and questioning it and maybe even change the outcome.

Partial Transcript: When the—after the TVA announced that it was withdrawing, not that we had necessarily defeated them—we thought we had, but they withdrew was their words. After a few months, the upper French Broad Defense Association began to look around. We had this fairly dynamic organization with fifteen-hundred or so dues-paying members looking for, well, what do we do now? So we tried out various ideas about, say, involving the organization in other environmental issues. It turned out that by and large the members—we’d attracted, in this particular battle, they were ready to fold up the tent and go home, not be bothered anymore. And, so, I think the coalition that cut across political lines and age lines and community lines, it was kind of a—it worked because of a special set of circumstances that appealed to various elements for different reasons. So, in a way, it was the convergence of environmental concerns with property rights concerns created a kind of perfect storm, which was very enabling. And it may have been, if this had taken place at some other time, I’m not sure the outcome would have been the same. So the—as the old saying goes about politics making strange bedfellows, this one certainly did. And, so, I think it does illustrate, also, the value of being able to communicate across these lines or being willing to communicate, which is a lesson that one would like to see applied this day and time when there seems to be a lot of impasse about social and political issues. So somebody who’s radically on a different side from oneself may have something to offer if the two would take time to listen to each other.

Partial Transcript: When my family and I returned here twenty years ago in retirement, there were beginning to—the community—was beginning to recognize some problems with the water quality in the upper Mills River area. And it turned out that that pertained mainly to runoff from agricultural operations adversely effecting aquatic life in the river. And, so, there came out of that a movement that resulted in an organization of something called the Mills River Partnership, which is now a non-profit, non-governmental organization that includes most of the stakeholders, such as farmers, the municipalities of Hendersonville and Asheville, environmental groups such as Trout Unlimited. And, so, this group meets once a month or once every six weeks or so to manage some grant funding from various sources, most notably the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund. So these funds are used to help farmers cost share and making changes in their farming operations, like created buffers to absorb runoff from these intensely cultivated vegetable fields. I chaired that organization for five years or so, and I think the—what I valued most in that experience was seeing the farmers originally sitting on opposite sides of the room from the environment, so-called green people, not trusting each other very much. I believe they did and have come to not be as suspicious of each other as they were and/or some of them have become friends. And, so, I think it’s another example of a collaborative effort to solve a significant environmental problem. It’s, by no means, it’s a long way from what I would consider an optimum solution. For example, the rules and regulations pertaining to farming and agriculture are fairly permissive. The general precedent and tradition has been that farmers can do no wrong. And, so, the rules that affected water runoff from farms in the days of cow pastures and small wood lots, no longer apply to fields that are covered in plastic and where the permeability of the field is reduced to practically zero during storm water events. So these kinds of fields are now commercial, industrial process and it’s not pastural agriculture, and yet there’s yet to evolve rules and regulations that hold farmers to the same standards that other industries are held. And I think that the challenge is for the organizations, like the Solar Conservation Service, to kind of catch up with the times and perhaps have members on their board of directors introduce you to farmers. They’ve traditionally been 100 percent populated by farmers. So it’s a little bit like the cat guarding the milk. These farmers, by the way, are good friends of mine and would probably not want to—would probably not agree with my assessment.

Partial Transcript: Well, I have frequent conversations with my local grandsons who are eight, ten, and sixteen, about environmental issues ranging from trash on the roadside to the health of the river for aquatic species. And, so, I think that—I think I stay involved because I would like for them to enjoy the same amenities from the river and its environment that I’ve enjoyed throughout my life.

Partial Transcript: Well, I think even given my personal philosophy of looking forward more so than backward, it’s prudent to pay attention to the lessons of the past. And, for example, if something is being talked about in a city hall or a county commission or town government that has potential to impact the quality of life in a community, people need to show up and pay attention to it and be informed by things that have happened in the past where, by not paying attention, we almost lost these valleys. And, so, I think that’s the value in looking at history. That’s understanding where your roots are, and it affects your current behavior and it affects the future.

Partial Transcript: Well, as I guess—maybe I summarized it in my song about this TVA episode, as a dam fighter.

Partial Transcript: Well, a little piece of land left for future generations is a huge thing that I would aspire to be part of. And I can’t say enough about the activities of the Conserving Carolina organization in this community. They’ve now acquired conservation easements on several thousands of acres of lands and headwaters in the Mills River. And it’s a huge gift to this community. And I think if I were to try to give advice to a future generation, it would be to appreciate these tremendous resources. The fact that we have this community that’s 70 percent protected, you might say, by national forest and the headwaters, it’s an amazing resource. And I think that it’s probably reasonable to assume that future generations will judge this one by what sort of a job we’ve done as stewards of it.