2018 Conference

Individual Paper Presentation

Beginning in August 1970, 100 retired farmers, factory workers, and local residents in western North Carolina joined efforts as the Upper French Broad Defense Association (UFBDA) to oppose the implementation of 14 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dams on the tributaries of the French Broad River. This series of impoundments, if implemented, would have resulted in the displacement of 600 families and the flooding of more than 18,000 fertile agricultural acres. Perhaps fearing the potential of the UFBDA, in 1971 the TVA began funding an illegitimate, pro-TVA “grassroots” organization, known as the Upper French Broad Economic Development Commission (UFBEDC). In this paper I offer a rhetorical analysis of the UFBEDC’s internal and public documents, demonstrating that while this group was ironically not a legitimate environmental organization, their main rhetorical goal was to discredit the UFBDA. For example, the UFBEDC never referred to the UFBDA as their self-professed title of “dam fighters,” but instead labeled the group as mere “bird watchers” who were in stubborn opposition to the progress that the TVA project would bring to the region. This paper also documents, using archival sources and oral history interviews, how members of the UFBDA systematically sought to discredit the UFBEDC, making the UFBEDC’s financial ties to TVA and unethical practices clear to the region’s residents. While the UFBDA were immensely successful in their opposition to TVA – as the TVA deemed the entire project unnecessary based on the public hearing statements of key UFBDA members by November 1972 – this narrative also holds immense rhetorical and historical significance for modern environmental contests over the implementation of dams and dam removal.