Countryside Conservatism and Conservation - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 107

port and opposition to projects in the vicinity of Middleton and Trotters Shoals. 16 Given
their successful monopoly track record in the Catawba valley, Duke executives continued
to publicly oppose any federal project that impinged upon private manipulation of the water
and energy resources of the upper Savannah and Keowee Rivers. Numerous pro-Hartwell
supporters believed utility executives and their surrogates were among the “many people
using the Clemson issue” to stop the Hartwell dam project in the 1950s and 1960s. 17
Duke executives had discussed building a coal-fired steam plant to generate electricity
on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River for many years, and Middleton Shoals
was the most promising site. Duke's plans included a $289 million Appalachian-coal-fired
thermoelectric steam plant capable of generating 700,000 kilowatts by 1965, with plans
to expand to 2 million kilowatts. 18 However, the energy company did not have the power
to develop the river on its own. Because Middleton Shoals required a diversion dam that
would stretch partway across the navigable Savannah River and redirect river water into
the steam plant's boilers and once-through cooling system, Duke Power needed congres-
sional approval to proceed. The company had failed, despite support from South Carolina's
delegation, to obtain this right in 1962 because Georgia's senator Richard B. Russell Jr. (D)
blocked authorization in the Senate. Russell argued that Duke's Middleton Shoals project
conflicted with multiple theoretical federal dam and reservoir projects the Corps had re-
commended for that stretch of the Savannah River in the 1944 Flood Control Act. Given
this resistance, Duke lobbied hard to win the favor of South Carolina's congressman Wil-
liam Jennings Bryan Dorn (D) and Senators J. Strom Thurmond (D) and Olin D. Johnston
(D).
Many South Carolinians generally favored the Duke facility at Middleton Shoals and
were opposed to new federal water and energy schemes. River basin residents rightfully
asked, Why build another dam and reservoir with the Corps' preexisting Clarks Hill and
Hartwell facilities already in place? The often-repeated reasons to support a private project
included increased tax revenue, in this case $2 million per annum for Anderson County,
South Carolina. 19 The company also claimed the fully completed coal plant would gener-
ate more than $15 million annually in local, state, and federal taxes. But what no elected
official wanted to admit, and what Duke president William B. McGuire (1910-2012; Duke
employee 1933-71) divulged in a private meeting, was that Middleton Shoals would oper-
ate “tax free for the first three years.” Furthermore, McGuire acknowledged that “it would
be a long time before they would actually put the ultimate capacity of this plant into oper-
ation,” and thus tax payments would remain low until Duke operated the plant at full ca-
pacity. 20 Most South Carolinians—influenced by the media campaigns of Duke Power and
other industrial advocates—supported private industry's agenda. Some Georgians, along
with their cross-river neighbors, also supported Duke's Middleton Shoals project because
they assumed that free-market principles and free enterprise would enlarge the local tax