Dam Crazy for White Coal in the New South - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 26

water did not cooperate, corporate bottom lines were threatened, productivity on factory
floors faltered, and the fate of public-private development schemes was uncertain. Rupert
Vance had informed his regionalist-inspired readers that “while the greatest potential water
resources of the area” could “be found in the Tennessee River system, the highest actual
development ha[d] been reached on the Catawba River” by Duke's company. 22 But in con-
trast to the situation in North Carolina, according J. A. Switzer, “there were no hydroelec-
tric plants in operation in the State of Tennessee” in 1905. 23
In Tennessee, one river project demonstrates the environmental, institutional, and tech-
nological difficulties involved in manipulating water and generating energy on a grand
scale in the New South. The Hales Bar development underscored the dangers of public-
private schemes while accomplishing many engineering firsts by 1914. Hales Bar, built
between 1905 and 1913 by the Tennessee River Power Company, was the nation's “first
case” where engineers combined hydroelectric generation with navigation, according to
one industry periodical. 24 Chattanooga boosters and businessmen had conceived of plans
for a dam and navigation lock in the vicinity of their city after observing “the progress of
the development of water power in various parts of the country.” The boosters then lob-
bied Congress and received a ninety-nine-year lease from the federal government in 1904
to complete a Tennessee River energy and navigation project that also required inspection
and approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 25
The Corps, after all, was initially tasked by Congress with a civil works mission to im-
prove navigation on the nation's waterways. Army engineering units have served the U.S.
military since the American Revolution, but it was not until 1802 that Congress formally
established the Corps of Engineers. Between 1900 and the 1930s, the Corps' civil works
mission expanded to include flood control, but the Corps could participate in flood con-
trol projects only if the improvements enhanced navigation and benefited the national eco-
nomy. Corps engineers were not oblivious to the waterpower and navigational potential of
the Tennessee River valley, but the national leadership of the Corps was wary of multiple-
purpose projects like Hales Bar and had not yet joined the private sector as dam builders.
Until the 1930s, the Corps' primary civil works responsibility was to grease the wheels of
commerce by keeping the nation's navigable waterways such as the Tennessee River open
for boats and barges. 26
Despite the Hales Bar project's collaborative and engineering successes, this corporate
attempt at a massive dam and reservoir scheme faced many environmental challenges.
Industrialists succeeded in completing the multiple-purpose project, but as one Corps of
Engineers historian has explained, the dam and powerhouse encountered construction tests
that left the Corps responsible for navigational facilities in a structure it considered a po-
tential liability. 27 The region's porous Bangor limestone and sedimentary rock presented
engineers and workers with no shortage of problems as they attempted to set the dam's