Nation: Dreaming of the Golden Gulf

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Long sought Southern waterway threatened by lawsuit

Ever since the early 19th century, citizens of Alabama and Tennessee have periodically urged the Federal Government to build a waterway linking the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers. Such a canal would provide a direct outlet to the Gulf of Mexico for all the barge traffic in the Ohio River Basin and southern Appalachia. After years of studies and debates, Congress finally authorized the Tenn-Tom project in 1946, and after 2½ decades more of planning and preparation, construction began in 1972. Today the project is still only one-quarter complete, leaving a deep gash in the countryside that looks as if it had been capriciously made by the knife of some vengeful god.

One of the biggest and costliest ($1.6 billion) enterprises ever undertaken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now being challenged by a lawsuit. The Environmental Defense Fund and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which stands to lose business to the waterway, charge that the corps extended the width of the channel from 170 ft. to 300 ft. without proper authorization. The corps told a congressional committee in 1951 that it had no intention of widening the waterway and acknowledged that such a change would require congressional approval. Yet the engineers later proceeded to widen the waterway without clearly stated authorization. As the trial got under way last week, Federal Judge William C. Keady noted with a smile: "It appears the corps has changed its mind."

The corps argues that the bigger channel was not a matter of capricious empire building but was made necessary by changing conditions. Its studies indicated that an increase in the amount of traffic as well as in the size of barge tows (the number lashed together) would make the smaller waterway obsolete before it was built. The corps also claims that Congress had tacitly approved the change by repeatedly voting annual appropriations for the project. Explicit authorization, says the corps, came from Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor, who wrote a memo in 1967 approving the larger waterway.

In rebuttal, the plaintiffs maintain that Resor okayed only the planning, but not the construction, of the larger channel. They cite letters he sent at the time to members of Congress declaring that the project was "only marginally justified." Added Resor: "The Tennessee-Tombigbee project continues to lack that margin of economic safety which typically marks federal investments in water resource development." But Al Fitt, who served as special assistant to Resor for civil functions (including Corps of Engineers' projects), submitted an affidavit to the court stating that his boss's memo was intended to approve the actual widening.

While challenging the tactics of the corps, the environmentalists oppose the Tenn-Tom on more basic grounds. They believe that the largely unpolluted Tombigbee will be turned into a series of small stagnant pools. Some 45,000 acres, rich with wildlife, fossils and Indian relics, will be inundated. Randall Grace, former executive director of the Tombigbee River Conservation Council, asserts that the project will "transform northeastern Mississippi into a huge garbage dump. The promoters say that it will turn the region into the Ruhr Valley of the South, without realizing how polluted the Ruhr is."