Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
this hydroelectric dam—one of the largest east of the Mississippi River—only as a peak-
power producer (with pump storage capability) during periods of high demand and does
not operate it continuously.
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The Savannah National Recreation Area that would have preserved a section of free-
flowing river in the Piedmont never materialized. When the Corps completed Trotters
Shoals dam, it buried one of the last stretches of Savannah River shoals. In the 1960s
and 1970s, however, Georgia countryside conservationists and environmentalists did win
concessions for free-flowing rivers. Advocates fought for the Georgia Scenic Rivers Act
of 1969 that named four rivers to a state scenic river system and recommended further
study of others, and the legislation was modeled after the National Wild and Scenic Rivers
al changes on the Jacks, Conasauga, Chattooga, and Ebenezer Rivers and was designed to
help expedite rivers named at the state level more quickly through the national wild and
scenic designation process. Another important Georgia river was missing from this list.
The Flint River shared similarities with the Savannah River, namely, the Corps had plans
to build more multiple-purpose dams, including one at Sprewell Bluff in the Piedmont. But
the Sprewell Bluff and other dams never grew from the Flint River's Pine Mountain bed-
rock. One Georgia governor's big dam backlash helped make that history.
As Georgia's governor from 1971 to 1975, James Earle Carter took on the Sun Belt's wa-
ter problems. As a candidate for governor, Jimmy Carter stood barefoot and ankle-deep in
South River raw sewage to draw attention to one of metro Atlanta's polluted rivers, identi-
fying problems he would fix as governor, and to woo environmentally conscious voters.
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While campaigning, he was also convinced to paddle the state's rivers. Based on his per-
sonal experiences paddling the Chattahoochee, Flint, and other Georgia rivers, Carter “im-
and in what was a seminal environmental activist moment in Georgia history, Governor
Carter stopped the Corps on the Flint. He primarily cited an economic—fiscally conser-
vative—argument to protect the Flint River from the Corps' decades-old plan to build a
multiple-purpose dam at Sprewell Bluff. Carter received thousands of letters and telephone
calls from like-minded Georgians, as well as those who were concerned about the pro-
ject's potential to cause “environmental damages.” The decision was not easy for Carter.
He had previously served as the chairman of the Middle Flint River Planning and Develop-
ment Council that, in his words, “was instrumental in securing passage of” congressional
Sprewell Bluff dam project on the Flint River because “the construction of unwarranted
