Dreaming of the Golden Gulf

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 2 1/2 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."

The Tenn-Tom was originally on Jimmy Carter's review list of water projects that he wanted to cut back or eliminate in 1977. But he failed to reckon with the clout of the region's politicians, who have long dreamed of the economic bonanza involved in building an outlet to the Gulf. Mississippi Senator John Stennis urged state legislatures to put up their own money for the project in order to impress Carter with their determination. Alabama responded with $30 million, Mississippi with $40 million. Stennis also engaged in considerable log rolling in Congress. "The other Senators would tell me how important their project was," he recalled, "and I would tell them about Tenn-Tom." He made sure that no pushy bureaucrats interfered with his project. A General Accounting Office analysis critical of the waterway was shelved after Stennis aides complained that they would rather see "reports which are strongly supportive of the project." Not surprisingly, Tenn-Tom was one of the first projects to be dropped from the review list. Says a White House aide laconically: "I give it a passing mark."

Now that the waterway is partially built, abandoning it would be a blow to the underdeveloped area. "Even though there have been lots of pros and cons to it, everyone is looking forward to its being completed," says a railroad worker who lives near the channel in Tishomingo County, Miss. Herbert A. Miller, mayor of Aberdeen, Miss., thinks that the project is "contributing to bringing the South out of the doldrums. It's the biggest break we've had." Supporters claim that Tenn-Tom could make their area the breadbasket of America as they ship farm products to world markets at much cheaper rates. Critics reply that all the jobs and prosperity forecast by the Corps of Engineers are grossly exaggerated, and that the two-centuries-old dream may be nothing but a dream.

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