The following is a transcript of the presentation to TVA’s Regional Resource Stewardship Council that AW Regional Coordinator Dale Robinson gave earlier this week. We would like to thank Dale for stepping up on short notice to make this presentation. Timothy Narron also spoke on behalf of paddlers. The RRSC is one of the key venues for public input to the TVA and we are proud to have a relationship with this group that goes back well over a year. They have come to the Ocoee to meet with AW and other stakeholders and will hopefully continue to address our interests.
American Whitewater’s Statement
To
TVA’s Regional Resource Stewardship Council
October 24, 2002
I am offering remarks on behalf of American Whitewater. Some of you have had the opportunity to meet Kevin Colburn, AW’s Eastern Associate for Access and Conservation. Kevin is unable to be here today and as a Regional Coordinator I have been asked to present a statement on behalf of AW.
I wish to add that the Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, TCWP joins in its support of AW’s position. TCWP is dedicated to protecting natural lands and waters through public ownership, legislation, and cooperation with the private sector.
American Whitewater is a national organization dedicated to conserving and restoring America’s whitewater rivers and enhancing opportunities to enjoy them safely. Access is of particular importance to our mission because people must be able to access the country’s rivers in order to enjoy them. AW has identified access on the Ocoee River as the #1 item of interest and action.
To help bring these issues to the public, American Whitewater organized the Ocoee Symposium in May, 2001. The Symposium received significant media coverage and attendees were far more united and informed than when they arrived. The overriding take home message emerging from the Symposium was the common interest to restore whitewater flows to the Upper Ocoee
among a diverse set of stakeholders.
Locally, the Chota Canoe Club in Knoxville, the East Tennessee Whietwater Club in Oak Ridge, Tennessee Valley Canoe Club in Chattanooga and the Eastman Hiking and Canoe Club are organizational affiliates.
The Upper Ocoee has been the site of the 1996 Olympics, World Cup Slalom, and the American Whitewater Ocoee Rodeo freestyle events including the 2002 Teva Whitewater National Championships held October 11-13.
Here is the information that you should know.
1. Next year there will be only 2 days of water in the upper Ocoee and after that there will be no more water in the river. TVA will be taking all of the publics water for generation and leaving the river dry, in direct opposition of the publics wishes. The river belongs to the public, and we will not be manipulated into paying for what we already own.
2. The RRSC and TVA itself told AW last year that the ROS, reservoir operations study, was our public process to correct TVA’s mismanagement of the Upper Ocoee River. We fully participated in the ROS scoping process, garnering overwhelming support for recreation and the Ocoee in particular. 34% of commenters in the ROS thought that recreation should be TVA’s top priority while only 1% thought that that was actually the case. Roughly 50% of the people that attended public meetings thought that the TVA would not listen to what their comments were. These people were right, as evidenced by the final scoping document for the ROS, in which the TVA unilaterally excluded the Ocoee from analysis. AW is also an active member of the Public Review Group which oversees the ROS. Even in this role we were not able to have the public’s concerns addressed. We have no public process, the ROS has failed us, failed southeastern Tennessee, and failed to meet its objectives.
3. The basis for the debate around the Ocoee goes back to a 1997 EIS done by the USFS and the TVA which showed that the river is worth 30 times more when used for recreation than when it is bypassed for power generation. The USFS, AW, and the TVA itself all greed that 74 days of recreational releases annually in the Ocoee was the best use of the resource. Then in one line, the TVA undercut the entire process. They stated simply that they would have to be fully reimbursed for any forgone power generation, a decision that never underwent public scrutiny. Our public process was pulled from beneath us.
4. We now ask that you recommend that the board of TVA live up to is obligations as stated in the 1997 EIS, and to its obligations to a fair public process. Specifically this will mean that the TVA should provide the promised 74 annual days per year, free of charge, and that the ocoee should be addressed in the ROS as the public requested.
Dale Robinson
AW Regional Coordinator
Knoxville, TN