1
50
1
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/43822d622d8bca0769c3c1f27d72ed79.pdf
837d5c49f4a22a3e203e9ecab578f57b
PDF Text
Text
•
OUTLINE
Lorne R. Campbell
Interview
I.
Beginning the New River Dam
A.
B.
C.
Sales pitch
Public relations
Enlargement of plans
1.
2.
3.
4.
D.
Opposition in Ashe, Alleghany and Grayson counties
1.
2.
3.
II.
People favored small project at first
Interior Department proposal
Curtis Bell favored project
Approval by Sec. Udall
Reasons for opposition
Environmental Protection Act
Real opposition in January '71
How Campbell became involved
A.
B.
C.
Crouse carried fight to Ervin and others
Campbell/Crouse conference
Upper New River Valley Association
1.
2.
D.
E.
F.
Formation
Downfall
Crouse's request for reorganization of UNRVA
Reorganization of UNRVA
Grayson County's opposition to project
III.
Reasons for fighting project
IV.
NEPA (National Environmental
A.
Objections filed by Campbell
EIS polished up
Environmental Impact Statement
1.
2.
V.
Act)
Environmental Impact Statement filed
1.
2.
B.
Pro~ection
Contents of EIS
Certain aspects of EIS
National Attention
A.
B.
C.
Chapter of Issac Walton League formed
.American Rivers Association
Audubon Society
�VI.
VII.
Aspects of the dam
Officials, Participants, and their input, contributions, opinions,
etc.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.'
F.
G.
VIII.
Politics
A.
B.
VIX.
C.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
Power Co. made dam seem pleasing
State support
Problems with dam in NC.
XVI.
XVII.
Franklin Realty Company
Discovery of procedure for financing houses
Appalachian Power Company land buying
Noted observations of New River Festival
Support groups
A.
B.
XVIII.
N.C. filed suit
Utilities following same path as R.R.
Investigation of Board of Directors of Power Co.
A.
B.
XV.
Power Co. unable to float bonds if allowed to proceed
Would be using 3 kilowatts to create 2 kilowatts of power
(for peak periods)
No geological studies made of effects.
Plans for nuclear reactors
A.
B.
XIV.
Appalachian Power Co. produces 33% of own coal mined by union
miners
United Mine Workers and APCo. favor strip mining
Reasons for delay
A.
B.
X.
Donald Cook, President, American Electric Power Co.
Coroso, Engineer of Power Co.
Udal
Wallace Carrol, Chief of NY Times Washington Bureau
Ned Kenworthy, did environmental writing for NY Times
Bill Moyer
Madden, Congressman from Indiana
Youth support
University support
Feelings of the people tewards the land
�Tape #312
This is Janice Young working for the Appalachian Oral History Project. I'm
interviewing Lorne R. Campbell at his home in Jefferson on August 2, 1975.
Q:
Okay Mr. Campbell, could you perhaps explain the purpose and just a little
background about the New River Project and some of the controversies behind
it?
A:
I'm an attorney and not versed in the technical reasons why they want the dam,
excepting that it seemed at the time, when it was first proposed to the people
in this area, that it was presented in such a way as to make it appear that the
people who would be effected would be very, very selfish if they didn't share
the possibilities of this river to produce hydroelectric power with the rest
of the nation.
They had a man who was in charge of the public relations who
was one of the most skillful advocates of it that's ever been.
In fact, he
was so good that they took him out of here and put him in charge of the New
York office.
But when the sales pitch was completed, the supervisors of
Grayson County and the officials of Grayson County and most of the people who
were in the area all were in favor of a small project compared to this manstrosity.
And there was very little . united opposition to it.
Then after the
power company thought they were going to get their license in a short time,
the Interior Department, through one of their engineers, whose name escapes me
for the moment, he proposed then that it would be a wonderful idea if they
enlarged it, about triple its size and use the excess water as a system to be
called upon from Charleston to flush out the lower Kanawha River and in and
around Charleston, West Virginia.
Which is so polluted there, that nothing can
live in the waters of the Kanawha River there in above Charleston.
At that time,
Curtis Bell was field solicitor and attorney for the Interior Department.
As a
personal observation I considered him to be the most brilliant and fearsome lawyer
that was involved in this Blue Ridge Project.
Interior at that time was supporting
�2
the, and was in favor of the Blue Ridge Project.
The then Secretary Udall,
without very careful study, he approved it and said it would be a wonderful
thing.
Curtis Bell stated that he had fifteen more years of service to the
Interior Department and he was going to devote all of that time to cleaning
up the Kanawha River.
This seemed the most logical and best way to do it.
I believe at that point that the attention of the general public, especially
in Ashe, Alleghany, and Grayson County, started to crystallize in opposition
to the project for the simple reason that we were being called upon to do
something, which the power company and which the big industries in Charleston,
West Virginia, wouldn't help themselves.
It wasn't long then, several months
of argument and one thing and another and about that time, Senator Muckie
was proposing a bill which eventually came out as the National Environmental
Protection Agency Act.
In that act the Clause provided that no water should
be used to dilute pollution.
And that was the very purpose that they had
proposed were defeated in that.
to the Blue Ridge Project.
So that is when the real opposition started
And at that time, that was in January 1971, up until
that time, there had been fragmented opposition, but no unification.
You want
some of the history, the background like this, this what you want?
q:
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
A:
Floyd
Krause, an attorney and a very capable attorney in Sparta, North
Carolina, was in declining health and he had carried the fight to Senator Sam
Ervin and to all the other state and federal officials in the state of North
Carolina.
His health became very, very bad and he couldn't do it.
I had been
gone for about three or four years and returned and had some conferences with
Floyd.
The . Upper New River Valley Association had been formed to try to unify
the opposition to the dam and, oh, it had fallen apart with no leadership in it.
Then about two weeks before Floyd died, I met him just near the Sparta bridge,
which is on the road from Independence to Sparta, and he told me that he was going
�3
back to the hospital and that his chances were very slim .
He asked me to continue
to interest myself, to fight this dam, and suggested at that time that we organize
the Upper New River Valley Association.
I told him that all the attorneys that
I had talked to in this area were all pro-dam.
They'd all done title work for
the power company or were retained or in some manner connected with the utilities
and that none of them would take the time or make the effort to arouse the
people's interest.
I asked him then who I could trust, and he said he believed
that Jim Todd was, who is cashier of the bank, Grayson National Bank in
Independence, that he was someone I could trust.
So I got with Jim Todd and we
started to reorganize the Upper New River Valley Association.
have meetings in Ashe, Alleghany and Grayson County.
We started to
Sometimes we've had five
people, sometimes ten people, sometimes fifteen people.
We met in schoolhouses,
we met everywhere that we could get two or three more of the people to assemble.
And we finally, after about a year of it • . . in the meantime all manner of other
things were going one in the courts, you know.
the FPC and everything in the world.
We were filing opposition to
We were filing briefs, the legal part
was continuing, and I prevailed on the Commonwealth attorney to let me associate
with him for the sole purpose of preparing briefs and filing things opposing the
dam, am we finally got Grayson County t:o go on record saying that they opposed
the Blue Ritlge Project.
They are formally on record to that effect and are still
of that opinion as of today.
But they were kind of playing lip service to it,
they had no, they're not taking aty active role in it.
when I got the authority to act for the
Gr~son
It was the understanding
County Board of Supervisors,
which is the governing body of a county, that I would have to do it on a volunteer
basis, I wouldn't get paid.
I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars of my own
money and hundreds and thousands of hours, I guess.
like the damn power company and I like this river.
Paul Johnson or Donald Cook (laughter).
Primarily because I don't
(Laughter)
And I don't like
It's just as simple as that, I mean
�4
it's not a vendetta or anything like that but it's just that I think their
principles are wrong if they've got any.
this country without any qualms.
I think they'll bilk and destroy
They are consummate liars, they're
deceitful, they have made promises to me, they've made promises for the
Commonwealth attorney, they've never kept or fulfilled a single one of them.
We asked them about rehabilitating the people, relocating them, "Oh, yes
we'll do that after the license is granted."
That is the most ridiculous
statement that a person . . . you know about how much rehabilitation, how much
relocation, they won't pay a damn bit of attention and time you get through
here and get up clear through Donald Cook, they'll never hear about it anymore.
That was the answer we got everywhere we went, "after the dam, after we're
licensed now, you.'.ve got to trust us."
I don't trust any of them.
(Phone rings)
Well, after the NEPA went in, then the whole thing started to turn around then .
They found out that instead of filing an environmental statement, the company
filed one.
Of all things in God's earth that you could imagine that would be
stupid, Judge Levy, who then was the hearing administrator and is now administrative law judge, he permitted the power company to file the environmental impact
statement.
And we just beat the tables and shouted and carried on, but they
wouldn't pay a damn bit of attention to us.
had a hearing before the FPC.
Then finally it went to the FPC,
We filed our objections and everything else and
when the FPC met, they sent it all back to Levy, "no that isn't complying with
the law."
The environmental statement shall be made by the staff of the FPC,
not by the applicant, by the staff of the FPC.
period of change.
So then there went another
Then all the Green county case came up and all of these other
cases came up pinpoint spelling out what had to go in to the environmental
impact statement.
So the staff of the FPC then took the old statement,
environmental statement of the power company, and just transposed it, polished
it up, enlarged it and glamorized it a little.
But it's still that the thread
runs right through it of the power companies' environmental statement.
�5
Q:
What was this?
A:
I beg your pardon.
Q:
This, this statement, what was it?
A:
Which one?
Q:
The environmental impact . . .
A:
The environmental impact statement, have you not seen that?
Q:
I don't think so.
A:
I better bring you that but if you can't, it won't, unless you have the background
What did it contain?
of those statements, you really haven't got into what this whole thing is about.
Are you familiar with what is supposed to be in the environmental impact statement?
Q:
No.
A:
Well this is . . .
Q:
. . . could you explain, you know.
A:
Yeah, this is what it's all about.
Before a federal agency can come into a
community and take property whether it's for a dam or a highway or, I'm involved
now in fighting the National Recreational Area Project up in Jefferson National
Forest.
Before any government agency can take land, they have to have public
meetings and public hearings.
And at those public hearings the government
or the agency has to tell the people the purposes for which their land is going
to be taken, what is going to be here, what's going to be affected, what the flora
and the fauna is going to be damaged.
That's the whole jist of the thing.
What's going to happen to the environment.
Then that document, after it's filed by, as
it should have been, by the staff of the FPC, that document is finalized, signed
and filed.
Then it's circulated through all the other agencies in the Federal
government that could conceivably have any interest in it.
fight out here, that's a navigable river.
You see this river
By a wierd case it was =decided in
1925, I believe it is, they concluded that any stream of water flowing into a
stream of water that was navigable, it of itself was navigable.
So this river
�6
out here is as navigable a stream of water as a canal down on Norfolk.
So
this environmental impact statement had to be circulated which, well, it went
through the Navy, you can't imagine how many damn agencies.
required by law to file a comment.
anything you could imagine.
Each agency is
Well they're just as void of prejudice as
"We see no reason to object to this project."
It's sent back, that's all that, then, oh, it's astonishing.
damnedest thing you've ever read in your life.
That's the
There '.s a young girl named
Ayers, her name also was Ayers from down in Wilkesboro, she was a student
studying environmental law down in Georgia and she wrote me a letter and I sent
her this stuff and she wrote, what do you call . . . thesis, her paper . . .
Q:
Thesis?
A:
Her thesis on this project.
That is one of the finest pieces of writing that's
come out of this whole thing .
objections in the record.
I have it, and I had it incorporated into our
Well, going back now to what happened in Washington.
Then after it was kicked back from the FPC for further review, it also provided
in there that we should have the opportunity to cross examine all the persons
who made statements that were incorporated in the environmental impact statement.
For instance, if some engineer said that no
particula~
damage is going to be
done, that the area here was nonproductive and no farming, the ridges are too steep,
and there's no productivity in the land, then we had a right to cross-examining
that person.
So he traipsed on back up to Washington again and they were all
there and Levy, as soon as we'd ask a question, he would say, "that's all in the
record, you can find it, it's in there."
And that's the way he would, and he'd
just stifle us and wouldn't let us cross-examine the witnesses.
a motion to disqualify him.
So then I filed
The motion is, oddly enough, filed before the person
whom you are seeking to disqualify.
You have to file it before Judge Levy.
Then he reads it and he says well I'm not going to disqualify myself.
Then, oh
_this is just the beginning, then you make the motion then of an appeal so that
�7
appeal then goes to the FPC.
disqualified.
The FPC then rules on whether or not he should be
Well that's just like asking the president of the bank whether
or not his cashier's honest.
Well, the FPC says, "Why, he's a wonderful man."
He made a statement that Levy is familiar with his territory, had been here
several times.
When an administrator of law does a hearing, something like this
river, they are cases that say that he cannot come here independently and observe
this area, unless he notifies council who are opposing the project.
the proponents.
And also
In other words, he's got to have both, the pros and the cons
have to be with him when, he can't come make an independent observation of the
Which is a dam good law.
thing ~
Well -(laughter) it got so some of the things that then
I argued that he was prejudice and dogmatic, arrogant, abrasive, abusive council
and all these other things put in the record and I'm a very gentle and mild
person in court and I didn't like to do these things but I did, had to get them
in the record.
Well, then a funny thing happened, after I did all this then,
of course, the newspapers jumped on it.
(laughter).
Oh, they had an awful time with it
The first time I met Judge Levy in New York, I mean in Washington,
I walked out in the court room and he's coming up and I said, "Good morning
Judge," and stuck out my hand and he said, "I don't know whether I should shake
your hand or not after the way you've been talking about me."
I thought we were professionals."
I said, "Judge,
He stopped a moment and looked and to his
credit he sort of grinned and stuck his hand out and said, "I guess you're right,"
(Laughter)
The whole theory of this, of the way the FPC conducts these hearings
that, you've got to see this environmental impact statement.
They have taken out
of some encyclopedia, I'd say twenty-five to thirty-five pages of descriptive
words about all the plants and the wildlife and everything in the world that grows
and is native around here, with the Latin names and just copied it into the report,
just boiler""P. lated it..
(There are) some things in there that I think are, as I
recall, not native at all.
They're indigenous to, I forgot where in the hell, up
�8
in the Artie nearly.
was no
study made.
But anyway, that is the type of thing they did.
~hat
There
is the very point that this man who was talking about
-
the way they ignored the archealogical studies and background and history of
this river that this was a stream that was used by the Indians and by the
early traders.
It's the only North and South flowing stream and you can go
from here to Pittsburg for that .DRtter and this was their route and very interesting enough, the crossing up here above, around Chestnut Hill and they went
from here back out into Lebanon and Tazzel in that section.
One of the last
pitched battles between two major Indian tribes, the warriors crossed through
this river and went down near Austinwille and went back up towards Tazzel,
I can't think of the name of the little section over there, and that's where
they had their Cherokee and the Sioux, I believe it was.
But anyway it has
tremendous interest and we have tried now for all these years to get national
attention directed to this.
Finally at one time it occurred to me to, if we
could get a chapter of the Isaac Walton League formed here.
so we could get some national attention.
And (we) went ahead then and formed
the New River Chapter of the Isaac Walton League.
That started building up,
generating interest and we got international publication.
fine pieces, wonderful pictures.
Get something
We had some very
We got the attention that we're looking for,
then the American Rivers Association and the Audubon Society and all these other
organizations.
I've got, in my office I've got I guess four by six foot, five
foot, stacks of all the letters, you just can't believe that all the helpful
people are interested in this river.
And mostly it's because, now, they have
used the idea that this, the power that they will generate here is for peaking
purposes.
And by the time they could get this thing built, it would be as
obsolete as buggy whips.
Having that, the peaking power process.
The reason
they want it now, Appalachian power company, American Electric Power Company,
�9
they practically own this river.
From Boone down to the Golly bridge.
What is the pass where the bridge fell down, that's the one I'm trying to,
Point Pleasant, yeah, point down to Point Pleasant.
it.
They have twenty-one dams on the river.
as their personal property.
this is theirs.
They practically own
And they just consider this river
They've exploited it for all these years and
It's not economically feasible.
It's not as feasible.
It's
not as a practical engineering thing, even their own people will tell you that.
They had a engineer in Charleston, West Virginia, off the record, told me in
Charleston, said this is by--this is the
~ost
stupid plan we have ever had
presented to us but it has come down from Donald Cook and we gonna implement
the damn thing.
Q:
Now, who is Donald Cook; . .
A:
He's the general president, he's President of American Electrical Power Company.
Outsider: Tell 'em about Donald.
A:
He's a very powerful man, he's a very brilliant man.
President Johnson.
And when back during the real
He was a great friend of
perio~
of need in Appalachia
area, for relief and government help, they also came up with the idea if they
could clean up the Kanawha River, they could provide 3600 additional jobs by
having the name of the company, could expand its
oper~tions
down there and bring
it back up to its hundred percent pollution again if they could get this
additional water down there.
So was the idea of putting their thousand more
jobs available in the Charleston area.
That germinated on their minds and
Johnson had brought Cook down to Washington to ask him to become Secretary, or
President rather, of United States Chamber of Commerce.
And Cook told him that
hell, that he had a better future with, this is all in the records, with the
American Electric Power Company.
And then he went back and when they started a
plan to clean up the Kanawha River, Johnson called Cook again to Washington and
said we've decided that your company is the one that should be given this job of
�10
building a dam and flushing out the Kanawha River.
That was the inception of the thing.
This is back in 1962.
Coroso, C-0-R-0-S-0, Coroso I think
that was the name of the engineer, a very young man and brilliant, he's magnetic and very interesting and entertaining too.
He is the one that came
up with this plan to flood this vast area and flush out the Kanawha River.
It's his baby.
Then after tqat, after all that planning, Udall then retracted
his statement, former Secretary of Interior, Udall, retracted his statement.
He said after reflecting on it, he decided that it was the stupidest thing
that he had ever done as Secretary of the Interior, was to okay the Blue Ridge
Project.
Of course that got national attention.
Then that helped us some.
Then by luck and by chance, Wallace Carroll> who had been editor, had been
chief of the New York Times Washington Bureau, came down and took over the
editor and publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal, and he knew Ned Kenworthy,
who was at that time doing the environmental writing for the New York Times.
And he asked Ned to come down.
Well, Ned came down and stayed with us for a
week, as did the chief of the Washington Bureau, he and his wife stayed here
and Ned stayed here.
We ran them up and down the river, I did but every nook
and cranny of it and they really got sold on it.
beautiful spot they have ever seen.
in the area trained.
They think it's the most
And you'd think that we had the wildlife
I'll swear, the first thing the woman saw was a pilerated
woodpecker, is that what they call those things?
Outsider:
A:
Pileated?
Yeah (laughter) was the first thing she saw, she's been looking for one for ten
years, you know.
went on like that.
That's the first thing she saw. (Laughter)
Everything just
And she was absolutely fasinated by everything.
Well then
Ned knew, Ned had been around and did some politicing with Johnson and Ned met
Bill Moyer.
He told Bill Moyer about it.
we set up this thing to do the documentary.
So Bill, he got in touch with me and
That's the history of how these
�11
different little things fitted together.
Well we got Wallace Carroll, we
got Ned Kenworthy, we got Bill Moyer, and we got Senator Helms and we got,
of course, Sam Ervin's, (who's) been with us for a long time. And . . .
Outsider: Mizell.
A:
Mizell was very, very active with it . • . but when Mizell started out, that's a
rather odd thing.
I couldn't get any response from anybody in North Carolina.
They have done a one-hundred.
END OF SIDE ONE
A:
• • . at the time.
there does.
He had about as much influence ±n Washington as my puppy
He didn't have any, they wouldn't pay any attention to him.
When
he called up, he said that's none of your damn business, that's something
connected with the, this is the truth now, actually what they told him.
Interior Department told him none of your damn business, said we're running
this, this is not in your baliwick.
Outsider:
A:
This is our business.
You mentioned Bill Moyer, is he the sometimes a guest editorialist for Newsweek?
He's out in Aspen, Colorado, this summer attending a school out there and I got
a letter from him this past month.
But those people are the one's who, when
they finally saw the project as it really is, each one then started reaching out
in his sphere of influence.
That's what finally got the national attention.
I've got editorials from the St. Louis dispatch, the Chicago papers, Philadelphia
papers, and just last week, my daughter in Penn State said that the school paper
up there had a big long thing, had a quotation of mine in the thing, and she
had just got back from Bermuda and said she felt like she was going to be a
celebrity.
All young kids . . . (laughter).
But that's what can be done.
And what
is being done and what has been done, but when you get up to the threshold of the
bureaucracy in Washington, it's all the frustrating you can't imagine how sickening
�12
it is to find out how everything that you've ever believed in and trusted
throughout your life in the form of our government, what can happen to it when
those rascals get a hold of it.
The most horrible thing in the world you
could imagine is, what's the name of that congressman from Indiana?
Outsider:
Oh, that rascal.
Q:
Madden.
A:
Madden, yeah.
Outsider:
A:
1
Madden, Madden.
He wouldn't report out his bill on the dunes.
That's got absolutely nothing to
do with this, of course, but it was in the committee that Roberts, not Roberts.
Is it Roberts?
Was the co-chairman of it.
were just starting.
But they hadn't finished it, they
And of course it's a slow process, but we've gone all
through that, Taylor's comittee.
Outsider:
A:
Roy Taylor.
Roy Taylor was sub-chairman of it.
was just finally filtering through.
But we had gone all through that.
His bill
And he said he wasn't going to do a damn
thing about the Blue Ridge Project until Roy Taylor turned loose his Punes bill.
Outsider:
Janice, are you on tape?
Lorne doesn't have a nephew that's attorney to the
Federal Power Commission.
A:
Outsider:
A:
I don't know.
Madden, I think he does.
Probably does.
But that's just one of the nauseating things you're into and
the power that these men have is just unbelievable.
The congressmen and the
senators, they are so totally dependent upon their staff.
Now a member of A's
staff, to get something done, has to be scratching the back of Mr. Senator B's
staff.
So it's a, which is proper, it's a complete composite of compromise
and I'll rub your back, you rub my back and then we'll get through and some how
�13
or other bungle it, and that's . . • But it's no more responsive to the wishes
of the people.
For instance, over in Grayson County, Virginia, we're part of
the fifth congressional district, ninth congressional district of Virginia.
The congressman from over there I went to see.
his father.
I've known him for years, knew
I knew his political background, know all about him, belongs to
the same party as I do, e.verything.
I went to see him.
I'm gonna keep my hands off this thing."
He said, "I was there at the inception
and I'm not going to be there at the crucial moment.
participate in the thing."
I'm not g@ing to actively
I.t went on a while, .a year or two, bang, all of a
sudden, Bill Walker favors the Blue Ridge Project.
Walker in Washington.
He said, "Now LQrne,
So I went up to see Bill
Went back in his private offi.ce. and he said, "Lorne,
I just migp t as well tell you this, but anything that Appalachian Power Company
wants in my district, I'm gonna support."
Outsider:
Now . . .
W.hat was his reason?
Q:
What, yeah, why is this.
A:
Because he.
Outsider:
A:
The back scratching.
For the £irst time, no, he for the first time was having unified opposition.
New, about politics making strange bedfellows, lhited Nine Workers has been at
logger heads with the Duke Power Compaf¥ and American Electric Power Company,
Appal..achian Power Company for years and years and years.
But the Appal.achian
Power Company produces thirty-three percent of its own coal that it uses.
That coal is mined by union miners.
strip mining.
The United Mine Workers are in favor of
So they made you deal.
we'll contribute to your campaign.
Walker, if you'll favor strip mining,
So that was the unholy alliance.
United
Mine Workers, Appalachian Power Company, and then the construction of unions.
Well there's not a United Mine Worker to my knowledge lives in this whole damn
basin.
If he is, he's got, poor fellows got black lung.
But that is the
�14
representation that you have in Congress.
When the bill was finally smothered
in Congress and caine up for a vote, we had to pull it out of committee, which
took a two-third vote which is killing committee.
So we had to get two-thirds
vote of the full Congress to get it out of the committee.
impossible and we knew it.
And we got the majority.
Of course that was
But what we wanted to do was at least get a majority.
We got the majority of the Senate through Jim Ervin,
and .we got the majority in the Congress in the ·House of Representatives.
So a
majority of Congress has, is opposing the Blue Ridge Project.
Outsider:
A:
Lorne, tell about the North Carolina Legislature, unanimous.
Again.st it.
Yeah, the entire Legislature, both the Senate and the House in North Carolina
and all public officials with republicans and democrats alike are all opposed
to this project.
Of course, they all look at it one way and say that North
Carolina's being very, very selfish about it.
It's a bad program.
But that's not necessarily true.
It's a bad thing from top to beginning.
absolute rape of a river.
It's just an
When you look at it, the background of the history
of this river, the very little we kn<M of the river and how much wonderful study
could be done at this river and its relationship, not only to the development
of this country . . . but this very, the most interesting article, when the
glacier moved back, the effect of the Tease River that was originally drained
this whole basin, the whole bit, flowed into the Mississippi.
And then as it
carved its way through West Virginia, and the the New River came unwound, that's
the reason it winds around here, flows North and goes up
~~~~~~~~
Q:
Well the re's so much opposition to it then, why, how many years has this been
going on?
A:
Been, oh, about twelve.
Q:
And it's still not s~ttled so . • .
A:
It's a long way from being settled, yeah.
�/
15
Q:
What are the major, you've talked about some of the reasons with the politics.
Is that the major reason?
A:
You mean for the delay or for.
Q:
Yeah, for not being settled if there's so much opposition to it.
A:
Well, first of all, look (at) the inept ways the power company undertook to
come in here and just bull right through.
and just sweep all opposition aside.
Just through like a big bullddzer
You see, they're in a hell of a predi-
cament here because they're already spent around thirteen million dollars buying
land around here.
They own a tremendo.us amount of land.
That's money out of
their pockets on which they're paying ten percent interest, which is a million
three hundred· thousand dollars a year, you quickly figure out on interest alone
that they have had tied up here for all these years on the bad advice they got
from their council and from their engineers and everybody else.
so damn sure that they's have the Federal Power Comn.ission.
comprised the Federal E ower Connnission?
That's who are on the FPC.
They were just
You know who
For~r heads of utility companies.
·And now, as a little ploy, they're taking out
the man who was the head of the p.ark system under the Department of Agriculture,
which is with the Interior Department.
Outsider:
A:
Second
Outsider:
Now they' .re putting him in the FPC.
Outdoor Recreations.
And it's t.mbelievable what goes on.
Well that sounds like that they're taking this guy out of the parks system, that
it would be for the Appalachian Power Companies advantage.
A:
Well that's what they're doing.
That's why it's being done.
Outsider:
He was in charge of the outdoor recreation.
Second
Outsider:
Right.
A:
Outsider:
He's. . .
Part of the Interior and he's been appointed as the
~~~~~~~~~~~-
�16
A:
Second
Outsider:
And he's in favor of the dam.
Well then if this thing were to go through, the Appalachian Power Company
would own the whole lake, wouldn't they, and that would give them the
revenues off the land they sell and. . .
A:
Outsider:
A:
Oh ;. yeah.
--------things
like that.
It's the American Electric Power Company by no stretch of the imagination is to
be considered
---------institution.
They're out to make money.
That's as cold-blooded as a snake.
And how they do it is no . . • if you have any doubts
about that, you should go in the coal fields of West Virginia where they get the
coal and where they get the raw power out of the earth.
Back during the
depression, the power companies always had money in credit.
brought the land and the coal out then from the people.
And they have
They own West Virginia.
American Electric Power Company, Duke Power Company, and North and Western
Railroad. · They're all tied in.
I don't know how to better express it than it's
almost facism control, eorporate control of the state.
years and years.
It's been that way for
It's completely dominated by the big utility companies, the
Du Porc.s, American Electric Power Company, North and Western Railroad, C and O,
L am N, all thesa tremendous, powerful. . .
Outsider:
A:
Ane.rican Electric and
Po~r
Company is the biggest utility in the United States.
T.here's m way in the world you can just. . . the pleasure you get out of
figi_ting them is the same· pl.easure. you get out of runn:in.g and butting your head
aga:in.st the wal.1.
But you do get the inner satisfaction of makhg i t just
as .difficult for them to accomplish.
And now I honestly believe that dann thing
is not feasible, economically or any other damn way.
T.hey couldn't possibly, in
my opinion, if they were told to start building this dam tomorrow, they couldn't
float the bonds to build the damn thing.
H.alf a billion dollars to, when they will
�17
use three kilowatts to create two kilowatts of power because they'·ll have it at
a peaking period.
peaking power.
Now in all probability, there is going to Be a change in this
They'·re going to have to do it. In other words, they are going
to have to adjust itself.
England, you know, after the World War II, went
through a period of austerity where there was a lot of self denial, not only
by the poor people, who, the poor people win your war and the poor people pay
the taxes, so the middle class and the upper middle class and the rich people
can survive.
But anyway, the austerity got so severe that even the nobility
and the upper bureaucracy in England had to draw in their belts.
I honestly
believe that within the next five years, something of that nature is going to
have to happen in America.
They're going to have to bide not having this
peaking power 'cause they've gonna have to level it off in to a constant flow
so they won't have the surplus power.
For instance, if you take an airplane,
fly it now, up and down the east coast, you see these damn dust-to-dawn lights
all over the eastern seaboard running.
off.
Nobody goes out there and cuts them
Everyone you see out there is paying the power company three dollars and
seventy-five cents a month to run that thing out there.
Now that is taken float,
dust-to-dawn is their low power demand comes around, I think it's seven thirty
in the morning and one in the afternoon and five in the evening.
the peak power
Those are
That's where this dam is here available much as
a battery, storage battery.
When these tremendous demands are made, whether
it's made here or up in Ohio or out in Illinois or in New York or wherever
it might be that is fed by the American Electric Power Company of any of it's
allied grid connections.
They have a breakdown up in Duquesne, they get the
power from down here and this is here constant.
motors to heat up.
They don't have to wait for the
They don't have to wait for the reactors to start.
don'·t have to work for, wait for, a damn thing.
It's right here.
They
It's instant.
�18
It's ready.
'Cause hydroelectric, that's why they want that thing.
they level off this
pe~iod
But if
of peaking and the way the government is going to
do it, Ford'•s fooling around with this gasoline bit now, put the gas so
high that people won't use it, that's crazier than hell.
That won't work.
But they can make industry change its peaking power demands by taxing.
And that's what-they'll do .it.
now.
That's what's really stalling the energy crisis
They're programming it now, and that's directly connected with Blue
Ridge Project here.
And as soon as that abates, soon as that, they will
come up with one or two different solutions.
Either you're going to have (to)
use the new system of some · nuclear fission system that . . . what do they call
that, they say it's a breeding reactor, I can't think of the name of it.
Out~i4er:
A:
Breeding reactor.
The breeding reactor, so they're gonna use that for the peaking power instead
of this.
So, and there in the record it shows that this, in twenty years,
will be obsolete.
Outsider:
A:
That's what it is.
Do you know that not a damn word in this.
They're already obsolete.
Do you know that in twenty years from now that, and there's nothing in the
Environmental Impact Statement about this, they have got no record of the situation
that's going to take place.
There's nothing in this record to show the effect
of the fogs that are bound to come by reason of this lake.
close, every
morn~ng
Living as we do so
here at, you almost have to feel your way out of this
holler because of the heavy fog.
Imagine what it's going to be like being so
near to the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, that warm air coming over on to
the big reservoir of 44,000 acres.
Qc
There's no study made of that.
Were there no geological kind of studies made?
A: . No, not a damn thrng.
Outsiderc
~~~~~they
refused Janice. They refused to do these things.
�19
A:
And then it means that
we~re
gonna have our road systems from the west end of
this county going to Independence, are going to nave to go back µp in to the
mountains and skirt at an elevation of about 300.0. feet to get in to Independence.
Q:
Would the power company not have to pay to have these roads redone?
A:
No, well the relocation of the roads is a matter that, now if you think, if
you're naive enough to believe that the American Electric Power Company doesn't
control the road building in Richmond, I don't know what class you need to go
to. (Laughter)
They control it.
It's supposed to be that this is, in theory,
what happened.
The Appalachian Power Company's engineers sit down with the
highway engineers and the Board of Connnissioners in North Carolina and the
Board of Supervisors over here.
They map out and rearrange the roads.
Then a
certain percentage of the cost of building, relocating those roads, will be
payed by the power company.
This is in balance, of course, by the highway,
by the respective highway connnission.
Q:
Well, does the power company, that you know of, does it have any plans to
start any kind of nuclear reactor since there's such a large body of water there?
A:
The only thing we know about that is Paul Johnson made the statement in Kingsport,
Tennessee, to the effect that the Smith Mountain Lake down at Roanoke, a mistake
they made there was not building it big enough.
They couldn't put in a cooling
system for a nuclear plant, and that the long range concept of the Blue Ridge
Project was for a nuclear installation.
After that was made, there were a
dozen people made affidavits to the effect that that is what he said.
makes a statement that he didn't say it.
piece we did one night.
a surmner at
Outsider:
A:
Madis~n
He denied it.
Now he
I ask him that point blank on the radio
He denied it when I was at a seminar at
College, and then another one at Sweet Briar.
He denied it at Shatley Springs when I asked h:tm.
And each time in front of the student body I posed the question to him.
he'd say well I didn't say it 'cause I didn't make the statement.
Each time
I hated to do it
�20
but I told them that I thought Paul Johnson was a very fine gentleman but
I wouldn''t oel ±eve a damn word he said about the Blue Ridge Project.
meant it.
I
wouldn ~ t.
And I
I would believe a . . . That's kind of a rambling way
to tell you but the feeling now in this community ±s this, as I see it now.
The idea that this lake was going to be a tremendous bonanza for these people
is gone by the board.
in.
I mean, the reality of this thing is beginning to sink
For instance, now you take a peninsula of land coming out, you just
imagine this being the water and this peninsula of land coming out here that
is not within the need of the power company for its purposes.
The road at
this time goes away around out here, another road comes down through the
man's farm and the land's been taken.
Now the cost of building a road down to
him here is prohibited so the power company will buy that land.
the land cheaper than it can build a road down there.
to go up by him.
It can buy
So the road's going
There'll just be no access to the . . . Do you know where
the school is, Oakhill Academy?
Is that it?
to be sitting on a peninsula out here.
Well, the Oakhill Academy is going
It's going to be, now the highway goes
right in front of the door and if this thing were built, it would be out in the
peninsula, way the hell gone out here.
They'd have to build seven miles of road
to come back into the main road. And the power company went up there and told
them that we will install a new water system.
road built in there."
"We will see you have that
But the thing they didn't tell them was how in the devil
they were ever going to get a doctor in there, in ease of an emergency.
He'd
have to come forty-three miles and seven miles, nearly fifty miles to get in to
that now.
Where as he could come from the hospital in Jefferson, hospital from
Marion, the hospital at Sparta in thirty, forty minutes.
And those are the things
that you knew after the first b.lush, they are beginning to think about it and
realize that we
(~ere)
going to have some of the most isolated . . . This Cox's
Chapel over here, it's going to oe a little isolated community in North Carolina,
�21
but it's Virginia, but it's going to be in North Carolina.
maybe four or five
acres stuck over there.
tho~sand
It's going to be
No way in the world that
the children over th~re can come to school in Virginta.
They won't have any
way to get here unless they go way up to Lancer and came through
--~-----
or go the other way, they have to go down to Balewo0d and come aroup.d, that
way.
Outsider:
A:
They're going to be so isolated there won't be any way in the world.
They would gonna be cut off.
Yeah, so, I mean those are things that, those hard realities are now beginning
to be impressed on the people.
Q:
What were some of the things the power company was promising the people so that
it seemed pleasing.
A:
Were they promising jobs or . . .
Yeah, what they told them was that it would . be seven years building it and
that they paid the highest wages and all that you know, and there would be a
period of prosperity.
I think one of the funny things that happened, I asked
them, "What do you foresee after it's built and all the transient labor leaves.
What are we going to have?"
restaurants."
(Laughter)
Outsider:
A:
"Oh, he said, "you'll have filling stations,
He stopped there and said, ''Well, barber shops, I guess."
That's in the record.
Barber shops are gotng out of business.
That's just unbelievable.
But that's in the record.
Then the priceless line
in the environmental, what was once bucolic will now be busy.
line that's supposed to bring you to your feet.
But you must reach that to get
really an understanding of the concept of this project.
a copy of it because itt.s most interesting.
That's the final
I'll see that you get
It's a most concentrated form, the
whole concept of this project is concentrated in that thing.
'Cause, see in
it is our comments, our opposition to it, and we spell out and criticize and
take in apart.
all in there.
Then the comments of the other agencies and everything else are
Statements of the school board and the Board of Supervisors.
�22
North Carolina '·s oppos·ition to it.
Everything, all that is in it.
And then
Judge Levy paid just about as much attention to it as he would te those katydids
out there.
Q:
What aoout the different states that are involved, are they working together on
this?
A:
Not as closely as
they~~~~~~~-
For a long time Virginia was, or Grayson
County, was just almost standing alone because of • . • in this section, because
West Virginia saved our necks.
Way back from 1968, '69, when they made a big
drive and bought up all this land, the governor of West Virginia had received
a letter from the Federal Power Commission, and he decided not to circulate
it.
They play rough politics in West Virginia.
it in his desk drawer.
to be granted.
He took the letter and slid
This is on Thursday and on Monday the license was going
One of the secretaries found it and she was a member of the
Isaac Walton League.
They didn't expect them to get this letter but she
thought it was going to be made public so when she saw what had happened, she
snuck it out and gave it to the Isaac Walton League, got a chapter chairman
up there.
Levy got ahold of Ed Burlin who was head of the Conservation Council
and General Council for the Isaac Walton League of America and the West
Virginia Wildlife Association.
On Monday morning at nine o'clock a brief,
you see there's no opposition to this thing, on a Monday morning before ten
o'clock or was it nine o'clock, they filed the brief that held it up.
how close it was.
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
Lorne, did you ever find out that girl's name?
I wouldn't tell it if I knew it.
Well, I never did find out.
A:
But she did it though.
Q:
Now what was in the letter?
1 asked and !never did find it out.
That's
�23
A:
The letter from
Q:
Yeah.
A:
Well, app·i :oving the whole p-roj ect and giving him notice that on Monday the
tb~
governor?
project was going .to be
l ~censed
down opposition in West Virginia.
and thanking him for his help and keeping
''Cause Virginia was just laying back and
North Carolina was laying back and nobody was doing a damn thing.
Then when
that went in to it, I guess it probably . . • Irvin Berlin was the ablest of all
the young environmental lawyers.
At the time he was probably the smartest.
Then a funny thing about this thing, Berlin filed these briefs and they were
very, very capable briefs, very fine briefs, and that was opposing the pollution
dilution theory and that stayed and stalled the thing and during that period
when they had a back up and fight off, file the Environmental Impact Statement,
all those things just falling one behind the other.
But if we hadn't stopped it,
I mean if it hadn't been stopped by West Virginia at that time, we'd have been
under water here right now.
That saved it.
That one act.
PART THREE
A:
Q:
water damming up here and then it just flushed it out.
Well, is that one of the main reasons why they still want this project today or
is that.
A:
Well, you see now that was eliminated from this project by an amendment that
was introduced by Mizzel.
Now what I know and what anyone who
thin~s
about
it a little while knows, is just as damn soon as they got this dam here they would
repeal that amendment.
That's ABC, that's elementary.
because of the attention being focused on it.
is off of the books and they cannot do it.
It is as of the moment
The pollution dilution theory
But just as soon as they get the
thing here,then who in the hell is going to take any interest in what the water
is used for?
They '·11 simply pass a lot of.
�24
Q:
Well, i:s th_at the reason. why th.ey still want the dam, l mean i f it is going to
take three kil0watts of
A:
~ower
to produce. • .
That is one of the, you see when they do that, then when they get that, they
will get a sufisidy from the federal government.
cost of operating everything.
Which w±ll help towards the
We went so far, I never had given up hope,
I never thought it was going through but we met with the attorney general of
Virginia and West Virginia and North Carolina in Roanoke, Virginia.
And then
after that meeting, we met with the attorney who prepared the compact or the
pact, rather, between Nevada and California about Lake Tahoe Company which is
the jointed administration of both states.
And that attorney came down and we
met with him in Richmond and the Governor appointed me on the committee and the
Governor of North Carolina appointed Ed Adams.
But we still weren't getting
much attention, but we still weren't getting much from North Carolina at that
time because they, the people up in Ashe and Alleghany hadn't began to fight.
The governor didn't pay a bit of attention to it, and then when we got the
compact outlined and ready to fund and anything else in case that they did
come here.
Because you see, there is a tremendous responsibility here.
You'·ve
got three counties involved, and you've got two states involved, you got the
policing you have got the sanitary problems, you have got the zoning problems.
Who's going to be responsible if someone starts dynamiting fish in North
Carolina, vice-a-versa or something like that?
We have got to police it and
those things take months of preparation and we had started on the nucleus of the
thing and that's how certain the officials in North Carolina was, I mean in
Virginia, that this thing was going through.
Q:
What's holding it up now?
A:
Why? What is holding up the project at the moment?
Q:
Yeah.
�25
A:
Well, there is a sui:te filed and th.e suite filed by. the state of North Carolina
in the fom:rth d±str:i:ct, and a suite fi:led in the Wash±ngton district to enjoin
them because of tlles-e faila:i;es to comply with the NEPA is mainly the reason.
And then attacking it on various other technical defects in the procedures that
they have followed.
They-'·ve b.een so high handed and so sure of themselves,
that they just overreached themselves.
You can't imagine . .
Q:
Lorne, the Appalachian credit rating has dropped tremendously.
A:
Oh, yeah.
Q:
And so that is a big factor.
A:
There was an article in a Business Week, I have it down in my office, of a
biographical sketch of Cook.
And a young man, like yourself, would read that
and if it doesn't stir you to your core, there's something wrong with America
because he is antipathetical to every damn principle and concept of a
democracy.
He's a complete dictator.
Q:
This is Donald Cook?
A:
Yeah, he, it is just incredible how arrogant.
Q:
Is he about ready to retire, Lorne?
A:
I beg your pardon.·
Q:
Isn't he about ready to retire?
A:
He retires this month.
Q:
He and his board can't get along right now can they?
A:
No, they are having a hell of a racket.
No, next year.
I talked to Ned Kenworthy about him and
he said, of course he was very • . . He'd have to be, he is as intelligent as hell.
But he is just a old predatory power baron just like the railroad.
follow the same cycle.
the
ut±l±ti~s
are
ga~ng
They all
We went through it with the railroad before and now
th.e same route.
It won't be many years till the utilities
will l}e leani'tlg on th.e gove1mment, just as the railroads are leaning on the
government, tl'tat is the next cycle.
Then as the oil, as our oil
depeats ~
the oil
�26
companies will then D:e leaning on the government, and all of the little rapists
who have been in the o±l and all of the other exoti-c energy sources, they'·ll
collapse, but tfiey are going to be retired in these beautiful mansions they
have.
Did you ever read anything about the L & N railFoad?
directors, they have a
you.
The board of
. . let me tell you something here (that) might interest
I got interested in finding out what these electric homes that Appalachian
Power Company has been advertising to build.
They would loan the money and all
of this, so I decided that I would investigate it down here at Blacksburg, VIP :
They have an apattment complex down there, tremendous thiqg, tremendous investment.
They have one at Pulaski, tremendous investment.
in the hell the money came from.
And I wondered, where
So I found out that the attorney for
American Eleetric Power Company is the Vice President of this holding company,
called Franklin Realty Company, and the Franklin Company is wholly-owned
subsidiary of the American Electric Power Company.
borrow, how they get their money?
Power Company's School Fund.
Now, do you know where they
They borrow it from the American Electric
It is money that they have diverted and put. into
a fund for scholarships so it will be tax free.
And from that tax source, they
are borrowing money to build all electric apartments.
a shopping center out in Texas.
I noticed that they have
Their general council is vice president, the
same old shell game that the railroads used.
They would move two or three
hundred miles out in the West and stop, this was as far as we're going.
They get
a little coDll!lunity started and go on another two or three hundred miles, got as
far as Denver.
end though.
We can't cross the Rockies.
No way in the world.
This is the
We 1 11 have to use these portages and all of this business to go
across mountai'lls· and finally th.ey decided well, the government said, "We '·11 give
you fifty.
m~les·
of land on the other side of these railroads all the way from
Albuquerque S•
t'l'ai-ght on d"wn through, across the pass go±ng into Needles and
then to California."
Robber barons, predators, and this is right here with us today.
�27
Another leaneI? on th.e government.
They ''re broke an<! I
utilities· w:i:-11 go th_ same rol!-te
e
How on earth can they- pay- the interest,
ruil
convinced that the
their bc;,nds are now eleven point , nine per cent inte,r est th.e y are having to pay.
Now that doesn '·t mean that they· are having to pay.
switch on a light, you are pay·ing the thing.
It means everytime you
This thirteen million dollars
that was spent ouying up land here is a bad investment.
changed.
They got the law
It used to oe that only an investment directly connected with the
creation of energy could be used as a basis of competitional rates, so they
put a little sentence in there and it says now that any investment for the
present or future development of power may be included in the basic rate
standard.
So this thirteen million dollars that they have up here is already
in the rate system.
Q:
Did this money come from the school fund too?
A:
No.
This money come principally from the Franklin Realty Company.
The holding
own subsidiary.
Q:
We have heard or we have seen some of the houses that the power company has
bought and there is nothing left now but the outside shell.
A:
(Laughter)
Q:
What would be the purpose in this?
A:
Well, most of that is vandalism.
seen easily from the highway.
They do not improve anything unless it can be
And we have raised so much hell about them.
They ouy them, you see they buy a piece of property, well there '·s two right
up the road here.
They buy them and then the man who owns the adjoining land,
they let th±s go down and deteriorate and the weeds and the grass and the briars
and every·th±ng grew up en th.at piece land.
This reduces the value of his land.
Who would want to ouy a piece of land next to a bramble briar patch?
Q:
Well, have you D:een
conf~onted?
�28
A:
What l·s tbat?
Q:
Yeah.
A:
Oh yeaft, it has' been a,rguedl that'•s in the records as Levy would sar.
used that argument,
We have taken pictures.
We have got pictures on file
showing the houses that have been abandoned and preperty.
up this creek.
We have
There is one right
The>re''s an old, one of the most • . . belonged to a doctor, a
beautiful old seven room house, right up this creek, beautiful place.
barely standing up now, it is all grown over with weeds.
It's
The bridge going
across the creek is torn down and it's worthless and then the land around it,
where they tried to farm, of course, this reduces the value of it.
Q:
Well, what I was getting at was, have you been confronted by the power company
to sell your land?
A:
This doesn't belong to me.
Q:
Oh. okay.
A:
This property has been sold,
on it.
I lease this.
The
~~~~~---
easement rights have been sold
Thing about the easements, (they) are worthless now.
thing, another stupid thing they did.
They bought easement on this property
and it goes about . half way up that light pole.
That means that when they flood
it they give us six months notice and you get out if you can.
actually belongs (to) the owner.
That's one
This house
He can move it if he wants to.
But the sea,
the land and sea still belongs to the owner, so because they didn't dream when
they got the
-------easement
the modified project.
here that they were ever going to go into
They just went pale, male, hell what ever.
of this land acquisitioned, scaring people to death.
bought the land and that
they ~ re
Told them that they had
going to condemn it if they didn't sell it to
them, and that ''s all th,e y would get,
about pirates.
Getting all
Oh 1 Lord you have never heard, talking
�2.9
on~e
Q:
What right will the. power company have
A:
Well now they' h:aYe to turn around and buy the sea of this. p'I'operty 1 all th.ey have
is easement.
Now then 1 that money they have spent for easement is wasted, just
down the drain, every n±ckel.
Outsider:
it gets, :i::f :H does. get, its license?
They have got to
re~egotiate
now.
Lorne, Janice sa±d I could ask some questions if I wanted to.
Would you like
to comment on the Fest:i::val on the New?
A:
Outsider:
A:
I have heard coIIDI1ents from all the country about that.
Every ·bit of it favorable.
You won't there.
One of the most interesting things !heard down at the circuit court here in
Grayson County, someone made a remark down there and the judge said, "Well
what was it like, the rest of these music festivals?"
And this friend of mine
said, "No," he said, "I didn't see any sign of drinking, I didn't see any vulgarity, everything was conducted as a family picnic, ' 1 that's the way he put it. ·
Out3ider:
You were there, weren't you?
Q:
Yeah, yeah.
A:
I didn't hear a curse word all day.
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
I was there.
I was surprised too!
I really was.
And that was a lot of people to get together in a rural area.
What do you think was there?
Six thousand?
I was guessing around five, or four or six.
Five or six thousand?
Yeah.
The highway patrol told me that they didn ••t have a bumper hit, they didn't have
one incident.
do anything,
The local
r said,
sh~riff
11 Well
I
have on incident of any·thing.
A;
Were there . . .
•'In
up there said you didn't need us.
glad you were th.e re. l'
Not one t
We didn't
l'hey- said they· didn't
That • a good reco,rd.
·s
By the way, di'd you know what Ken Heckly has been doing this summe-r?
�Outsider:
A:
Huh?
He ts· a congressman from West 'Y;Crgi:ni:a and he ;ts pa·r t of thi.s constituency on
the New River up tl'tePe.
He was a teacher in New York and he decided that he
would go somewhere and Tun for Congress, and he heaTd so much about the conditions in the Appalachia area and West Virginia that he decided that he'd just
come there and would relocate and run for Congress.
So he came from New York,
came down (to) a little town, I have forgotten the name and where it is now,
up on the Kanawha River and stayed a couple of years and ran for Congress.
And he just went from house to house, canvassed all through the district
and to his ama?.ement and ame£.ement of all of the politicians up there, he was
elected.
My wife is just infatuated.
I think she is really, I think she is
really, she really thinks he is a marvel, and he is.
He's unbelievable.
This summer he decided that he didn't know enough about how this present
economy was affecting people so he scheduled his, the month of August he worked
a week as a waiter, and worked as a week as a field hand, worked a week in the
coal mine, and worked a week at something else, and he was on television this
morning.
Ott: sider:
A:
Did you happen to see him?
No, I didn't see him.
· He said that was the way he was going to get acToss to the people.
When he came
down to, he was there at the festival, but he came down to Raleigh and he made
one of the best talks down there that was made.
But he is a very, very fine
person.
Outsider:
A:
Ot.tsider:
Q:
He did.
"Keep your cottonpicking hands off of our river. 1'
('Laughte~
I'll never forget that,
Well, what other kind of support do you have besides, like, d? you know any
,
conservationalists or anything like that.
do you notice any youth groups, kind a.
Well you have mentioned some, like
�31
Yeah, that is one
t~~ng t~~t
interest that the
A:
y~ung
has been very hearting especially to me, is the
people fyave taken in
just kind a, you know., they h_ ve
a
~een
th~
p:r:oject.
The older people
used to having their noses rubbed in
the dirt so long they j us-t k;ind' a gave up.
But this new awakening of the
younger people and the interest they have taken in conserving what we have
got here is never more clearly evident than it has been in the last few years
on this project.
I never dreamed that we would ever get any support from, well
take Furman University.
Dr.
He came up with nearly 35, he and his group, a
I'm so bad about names it's pitiful.
Q:
Peter Crogg.
A:
Dr. Peter Cragg, ·F urman University, he up with 35,0.QO names on a petition
opposing this project, all solicited by the students at the University.
They are the ones that went out and got them and talked to people.
Now in
VPI, Blacksburg, they have organized a service club down there and they have
28,000 signatures to a petition now at VIP.
We have had scattered, not
crystallized support from Appalachian University.
How about State University
and Wake Forest, three or four years ago a young man down there, head of the
environmental study group, I went down and talked to them.
wonderful help
fo~
us and he happened to be a
particula~ly
They did some
close friend of
Congressman Martin from Charlotte, North Carolina, and he worked during the
summer as an interim aide in Washington.
He and I became quite close, the
young man and myself, and through him we really made a disciple out of
Cn~gressman
Martin and then down at the University of North Carolina, we
have several down there,
several groups and o:r:ganizations· there, and a Koury
down the'I"e f,s, th-e General Council for the North Carolina Association.
He has got a group down
2..4 hours·,
t~re
and I imagine we could get
That '•s· how· fas.t they can work.
25,a:oa letters in
�32
Outsider:
Janice, T want to ask one 'more question.
one night and
th~ ~e
he asked me if
r
w-as
ae-o~t
could get,
sixteen people up there on a little petition and
th~y
were for the Blue 'Ridge Project, he as.ked me
if I could get some people agains.t it.
A:
Outsider:
Lorne called roe from Washington, p.c.,
I just had, was it .36 hours?
Yeah.
Thirty-six hours l thinlt.
sign that petition.
I get over 3000 members, I mean to join.
I mean to
If I had a had another week T would have had ten thousand.
And that went in to the Raleigh, it went into Hamilton Horton Winston.
Sixteen
against about three thousand wasn't it?
A:
Outsider:
Yeah.
And he called me, I didn't know where he called from, but he give me a call.
The only thing I know, he and Ed Adams was in Washington, D.C.
to call Ed Adams' wife, I calJ.ed Nancy and she didn't know.
I think.
She said I don't know.
It's a hotel.
operator and I said, give me the Mayflower, I want Ed Adams.
all I know, just Ed Adams.
f ingers).
Outsider:
A:
She was with them
I called Ed Adams' wife, she said they are in the Mayflower.
I said, well where is that?
A:
Well, I tried
I called the
I said that is
Boy, she put me through just like that (snaps
Connect, it came right back didn't it?
You know the a.
Sixteen, and we had 3,000 in about 36 hours.
It's the amount of energy that you want to put into it that -is what your results
will be.
There are some people I can go to today or tomorrow who will almost
take up arms in defense of this river.
a little lti:t carri:ed away-.
river.
You know, it is hard.
Sometimes you get
You get emotional and you get sentimental ab0ut a
Well, i• one of the a-;rgument;s I was making ±n Waslli ngtcm :E told them
n
that i:n my opini on th'at unless you arouse the emotions of t he people, it was
only through emoti onal ism and arousi ng the emotions of the people that we were
�33
able to create eneugh
to fight a war.
str~ngth
and rationalize about whether
OF
If we let everybody stay
ho~e
not they went to hell er Korea, Vietnam, or
some damn place to get killed they would stay at hpme.
But if you get their
emotions sufficiently aroused, make them think that ±n
going to be, come over here and get us.
so~e
strange way they are
It doesn't 1llake any difference what
kind of deception you use, as long as you get their emotiQns aroused.
Get the
flag and the apple pie and the mother loving and everything into them and they
will go and that is the same holds true here . .. You just sit back and be a little
bit cynical and smart about it.
Hell, it is just a river.
I don't want to, I live somewhere else.
about it?
Why should I spend my time?
What the hell?
We could move out,
Why should I worry
Why spend my money and effort?
is soU£thing here, something bigger than all of us.
But there
Not that I am endowed with
any special gifts or anything, but if you just sit down and talk to people
they will see it very quickly.
There is a lady down here, Mrs. Cox, lives
down below Bridle Creek; her husband, the Superintendent of Education in
Grayson County for forty some years, and she has a love of her property.
Her husband's dead --and the land, not in a acquisitive way, not in that
grasping sense.
She has a sincere love of that land.
to share it with you.
She is perfectly willing
You can go down and pitch camp on the side of her and
she wouldn't care how long you stay there but she wants to be there because
she loves that land.
And she has a great big old dog and in Bill Moyer's film
she is there and she tells her story.
Just like last Thursday I was in federal
court in Abbington and these three brothers, they all have been fighting and
opposing the government get.ting their land up there.
Well, these government
attorneys iive in 'Rome and they have no sense of ownership, no sense of pride,
no sense of possissiveness in belonging to the
ea~th.
They don't understand
that, and these men are almost violent over the government coming up there.
What the hell do they need my land for?
My fatheT and mother are buried right
�34
Th~ gove~nment
up there.
a~~
,,nen c0me up here and they
going to bury me up
thei;e but they.',11 be some government men on the othe·r side.
they talk.
That is the way.. th.ey- feel.
One of them had b-een shot over in the
European tlteatei; of the war and the other one had
fight.ing for tl\ei'I" home.
of it and
mayb~
That is the way
~een
sh0t in the Philippines
N'ow t .hey are going to came and make a damn park out
no one will ever . go there.
That is a mute question but what I
am talking about is the love of the land that whether it is on top of that
mountain or whether it is down here on this New River Valley.
But the strange
thing or what ever was that the government had no appreciation atall.
They had
a little cut and dry formula, how they would put a price on his - land.
And
then the argument that they are using to.
Wi 1d talking about
. . the most famous line of Oscar
, I th :Ink it was end he t old him, he said he
knew the price of everything but the value of nothing.
And that is my feeling
toward the American Power Company, they can put a price on anything, but they
den 't know the value of it.
I told the judge that their land to them, that
soil was like black blood flowing through them.
very
An.d you will find that in a
.people are ashamed to say things like that for some reason.
They didl' t used to be, but of .late they think that it is old fashioned, they
think that it is sentimentality, and they are afraid, they are afraid to say
that they love the land.
But you go down and talk to old Ellie Reeves who
has got three hundred acres of land, that land was given to her great-greatgreat grandfather by a grant.
'!bat land has be.e .n sold, she has never sold an
:in ch of it off within the family.
There has never been a mortgage on it.
There has never been a dept against it.
They have lived on it, farmed,
prospere.d, and their sons are scattered all over.
Air Force, Commander at
Rig~
Randal~
One son was a colonel in the
Air Base, came from
r~ght
down. this river here.
off a piece of land right on up the river here and there had been about
�3i
I figured out one time th.at there were seven doe tors and I lye fo.rgotten how
many · school teaehers and everything else in one generation, right up from here.
Now when
peo~le
start talking about that they th.i nk, oh, they·'·re sentimental,
that is all, that :f:s,
not modern thinking.
1
t~e
B
·ut
That is
old people will tell you, and now the funny thing
is, it has come full circle now,
a generation gap in there.
that has gone by the board.
Now the young people are the ones.
There is
But then the young people picked up the telephone
over there and they called all of the high school students in this part, and
W1 at was it?
OU: sider:
A:
Sixty~ight
per cent.
Oh, gosh yeah.
Sixty-eight percent were opposed to the dam.
And then children out of
families that were just violently in favor of it, they opposed it.
So they
have an appreciation and they realize that something has been taken away from
them, or is going to be taken away from them, and that there hasn't been any
exchange of ideas in the home because people are, they are too reserved to
talk about it.
They'll talk maybe about all kinds of other things that they
used to do years ago but they don't talk about the very elementary things.
It's that love of that little piece of land they live on.
have.
Freedom that they
And I guess something has been taken away out of their lives.
They see that and they are not going to let it happen.
The entrepreneurs and
the fast buck people, the contractors, the land speculators, the heavy
equipment users, they all think they are going to get rich, they have heard of
money being made
lost down there.
down~~~~~~~-
We are
tal~ing
There has been a hell of a lot of money
about an area heTe where the only recreational
time would b,e pirob-ably- fotJr months out of the .year.
And I'd say that all during
the month of Augus.t and Septemb;er you won't be a'ble to see from one side of
the lake to the other cnyway, because of fog.
�36
Outsider:
Janice, can I ask one more question?
A:
No!
Q:
(Laugh)_
A:
Yeah, go afiead.
Outsider:
I want to ask you one more thing Lorne, and I think I know what your answer
will be.
When this thing first started, people thought very little about it
because they didn't know much about it.
opposition?
What really started?
What really started this great, shrewd
I don't believe you call it opposition,
what really started this dedication, we don't want this thing
because~--~--
END OF TAPE
A:
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
This is what your ancestors- - - -No, there is a turn around .
Oh,
th~re
certainly was.
I think.
At first everyone was "Okay, good, something new," and then it juse flipped didn't
it?
A:
Then I think they saw it demonstrated two or three instances of people who have
sold out, took the little bit of money that they got and it was gone and they
had nothing.
A man and his wife lived down the river, oh about thirty miles
from here, and they are both on Social Security. ·They have a little garden,
they have a cow and they have a couple of pigs, hogs.
talked to them, this Spring in fact.
And I stopped by and
And they own about, I think eleven acres
of land, or just something like that.
But they are on the side of the r a ad
where the mail comes by, and after I got to talking to them I asked, "Did
the Appalachi,an Power Company try to buy it out?"
"Yeah"
"Six thousand dollars-"
"Tha t sounds like a pretty good price. ''
(Jus·t to see what he would say.)
�37
"What could we do w::bth six thousand dollars?
much les·s. buy.- any, land to l :hye on.
We couldn't [tuy a trailor,
We haye li-ved here all of our lives.
Our children we:i:e rai'Sed and b,orn here.
We want to liye here until we die."
Now those are the people, and I can tell you instances the people b.egin to
see them.
Wl'lere people have sold out for twenty and thirty thousand dollars
and went into town and built fifty, twenty-five thousand dollar homes.
Took fifteen thousand dollars of the money and a ten thousand dollar mortgage,
lost their jobs, couldn't make the payments and lost them.
self-sustaining on their little farm they had.
Where they were
Those things, a couple of
general, more knowledgeable understanding of what the hell was going to happen.
I don't know whether any of this will be any good to you or not but I was
giving you a background anyway.
But there is so much of it, I will see that you
get those tapes and I will see, but I want you to have a copy of the
Environmental Impact Statement.
Outsider:
A:
What is this
You should have it.
no~?
Environmental Impact Statement, it was filed by the FPC.
END OF INTERVIEW
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Young, Janice
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Campbell, Lorne R.
Interview Date
8/2/1975
Location
The location of the interview.
Jefferson, NC
Number of pages
39 pages
Date digitized
9/17/2014
File size
24.8MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
e30aa253b6fe10d9736212957b1b6b15
Scanned by
Tony Grady
Equipment
Epson Expression 10000 XL
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
111_tape312_LorneRCampbell_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Lorne R. Campbell [August 2, 1975]
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Young, Janice
Campbell, Lorne R.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Campbell, Lorne R.--Interviews
Blue Ridge Project
Water resources development--New River Valley (N.C.-W. Va.)
Environmentalism
Appalachian Power Company
Description
An account of the resource
Lorne Campbell discusses the battle to preserve the New River in Grayson County, Virginia, in the 1970s, by opposing the building of a dam.
Blue Ridge Project
Grayson County Va.
Jefferson
Lorne Campbell
Lorne R. Campbell
National Environmental Protection Agency Act
New River
New River Project