The Snail Darter and the Dam: How Pork-Barrel Politics Endangered a Little Fish and Killed a River - Hardcover

Plater, Zygmunt J. B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300173245 ISBN 13: 9780300173246

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2013

Synopsis

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 case—known officially as Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill—tells the hidden story behind one of the nation’s most significant environmental law battles.
The realities of the darter’s 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 TVA’s 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. Plater’s gripping tale of citizens navigating the tangled corridors of national power stimulates important questions about our nation’s governance, and at last sets the snail darter’s record straight.

About this title

Book Description:

In a narrative that dispels widespread misperceptions about the environmental battle against the TVA’s final dam project, a law professor and his students carry the notorious snail darter case through the corridors of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.

About the Author:

Zygmunt J. B. Plater is professor of law and director of the Land & Environmental Law Program at Boston College Law School. He lives in Newton Highlands, MA.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0300173245
• ISBN 13: 9780300173246
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 392