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Long story short (the long version is no longer available on TVA's web site),
Columbia Dam was started in 1973. Construction was halted at the 45% complete
stage, after some 80 million dollars had been expended, because of some
endangered fresh water mussels upstream. Finally, in 1999, it was partially
destroyed, and the construction site "stabilized". We are not going to get into
any of the controversy because (1) our position should be obvious, and (2)
whats the point, the decisions have been made. We are just sad that we missed
an excellent opportunity to take some pictures of a dam under construction, to
illustrate what is involved in such an undertaking. It sat there for 25 years:
we were two years too late. We will still stop by and photograph the site if we
are ever in the area, but there is no point now in making an exclusive
"Columbia Dam Quest".
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It seems TVA has a knack for getting stuck in these
kinds of situations... maybe as a big, quasi-government operation, they
make an easy target, or get railroaded into stuff they really don't want
to do by local politicians. In some of the reading we did about this
project, we got the distinct feeling that TVA's own studies indicated
that the economic return of the 2 dam project
(Normandy Dam was
completed in 1976) was a wash, but started construction anyway because of
political pressure. 80+ million bucks later, the opposition finally shut
down the project. In following up on what we remembered of Tellico, we
found that construction on the dam was started in 1967...it wasn't
closed until 1979. Pat went to an open house at the then under
construction Watts Bar Nuclear Plant (yes, we are pro nuke, no, we are
not going to debate it here!) in 1978 or 79, if memory serves (it
usually doesn't, but it was somewhere in that time frame). One unit of
the two unit plant began power production in 1996! The other unit is
officially listed as "deferred". Bellefonte, another two unit plant near
Scottsboro, Alabama, sits idle, all but complete. At least there are
studies now underway to investigate conversion of Bellefonte to some
type of fossil fuel, probably natural gas, and recoup part of that investment. We would rather
see them complete it as a nuke, but fossil will probably have a better
chance of winning the required approvals, and we had better start
getting some new generating capacity in the works before we end up like
California. (a classic "your tax dollars at work" political
screwup, and a beautiful example of "NIMBY" (not in my back
yard) run amuk).
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