Countryside Conservatism and Conservation - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 106

As a New South institution, Duke Power Company maintained a vested interest in the Sa-
vannah River valley's watershed and market territory. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina,
the company had been responsible for coordinating the Catawba River valley's water and
energy since 1904 and also owned thousands of acres and a handful of waterpower sites in
the Savannah River basin. Between the 1920s and 1960s, company real estate agents had
amassed more than 100,000 acres along the Keowee River in South Carolina and thousands
of acres downstream along the Savannah. 11 The utility had been providing the South Caro-
lina upstate with electricity since the early 1900s, linking Greenville's and Spartanburg's
economies with Charlotte's. Duke's Sun Belt industrial and residential customer base con-
tinued to grow in South Carolina, but the company had no major electrical generation fa-
cilities in the valley or this portion of the company's service area now known for its BMW,
Michelin, and other transnational corporate citizens. 12 Not unlike Georgia Power Company
executives who challenged public power at Clarks Hill immediately after World War II
(and lost), Duke Power executives had Sun Belt plans for their property and challenged
public power directly at Trotters Shoals after 1960. Duke Power Company ultimately suc-
ceeded in capitalizing on its Keowee and Savannah River properties but not without a fight
and compromise.
Duke Power Company, like other private utilities, considered the public power models
exemplified by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Corps' two new Savannah
River valley projects as competitive threats to corporate monopoly. Since 1904, Duke's ex-
ecutives had successfully engineered the Catawba River's multiple dams to generate elec-
tricity, provide limited flood control relief, and supply water to municipalities and indus-
tries for free. Engineers also operated company reservoirs to eliminate malarial conditions,
a forestry division managed more than 200,000 acres of working forest, and the public
had access to ten company lakes by 1960. 13 As Duke's public relations executives liked
to boast, the company built this elaborate hydraulic waterscape “without government sub-
sidy,” and the public enjoyed many of its benefits “free of charge.” 14 Today, Duke main-
tains eleven major dams and reservoirs along the 200-mile Catawba River (a major trib-
utary in the Santee River basin). No federal agency maintains any facility on this river. 15
Duke Power Company was compelled, however, in the 1960s to compromise with Con-
gress and the Corps at a place called Middleton Shoals, a long series of shallow rocks below
the Hartwell dam, to get what it wanted upstream of Hartwell in the Keowee and Jocassee
River valleys.
Middleton Shoals became a flash point between private and public power advocates in
the 1960s. Duke Power Company owned thousands of acres at Middleton Shoals, located
eight miles downstream from the Hartwell dam and twenty miles upstream from Trotters
Shoals in Anderson County (S.C.) and Elbert County (Ga.). As construction continued at
the Hartwell dam, rumors of additional Savannah River valley dams generated both sup-