The Snail Darter and the Dam

The untold story of a notorious environmental case and the citizen crusade that carried a little fish through Washington politics and the Supreme Court Even today, thirty years after the legal battles to save the endangered snail darter, the little fish that blocked completion of a TVA dam is still invoked as an icon of leftist extremism and governmental foolishness. In this eye-opening book, the lawyer who with his students fought and won the Supreme Court caseknown officially as Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hilltells the hidden story behind one of the nations most significant environmental law battles. The realities of the darters case, Plater asserts, have been consistently mischaracterized in politics and the media. This book offers a detailed account of the six-year crusade against a pork-barrel project that made no economic sense and was flawed from the start. In reality TVAs project was designed for recreation and real estate development. And at the heart of the little group fighting the project in the courts and Congress were family farmers trying to save their homes and farms, most of which were to be resold in a corporate land development scheme. Platers gripping tale of citizens navigating the tangled corridors of national power stimulates important questions about our nations governance, and at last sets the snail darters record straight.