This Week with Bill Moyers; 111; Farewell, Mouth of Wilson

BILL MOYERS: Good evening, I'm Bill Moyers, and this is a community named Mouth of Wilson, Virginia. There are a lot of date lines in this week's news, foreign and domestic, but we think this one is pretty important. Because if the federal government has its way, Mouth of Wilson will cease to exist, drowned under 150 feet of water. This means that Sam Center's house, down the road, which was built by his family six generations ago, will become a curiosity for fish. Wilson Creek, from which the community got its name about 1740, will totally disappear, and the 300 people of Mouth of Wilson will have to find other places to live. There are just a few of the 4 to 5,000 people who will lose their homes if the government has its way.

That's your story tonight on This Week.

This is primarily a story about the power of big government and the impotence of ordinary people. Like most stories of its kind, it began with good intentions to solve a problem. What it amounts to is that the federal government, to clean industrial pollution out of another river 200 miles from here, is going to destroy Mouth of Wilson, Bridal Creek, Cox Chapel and other communities along a pure swift river that's born in the mountains of North Carolina and comes to maturity here in the hills of southern Virginia.

It's called the New River, but the only thing new about it is the threat to its existence. The waters of the New River have been flowing along these banks, through these canyons and past these fields, longer than man has lived here. Nobody seems to know where it got its name, but the New River is almost as fresh and pure now as it was hundreds of years ago. It flows north, north into West Virginia's Kanawha River. The Kanawha is far from pure, badly polluted by chemical plants around Charleston, and that pollution is at the root of the threat to the New River.

The story actually goes back nine years, to the time when the Appalachian Power Company proposed building two hydroelectric dams on the New River in Grayson County, Virginia. The plans call for 20,000 acres along the river to be flooded, but that wasn't enough for the US Interior Department. The Interior forced the original project to be doubled in size, on the grounds that damming up more water on the New River would allow periodic flushing of the polluted Kanawha. Opponents refer to this tactic as pollution dilution, and say that the government should cut off pollution at the source, the chemical plants. Interior replies that can't be done, the larger dams must be built.

The man who made that decision, former Interior Secretary Stuart Udall, now says he made a mistake that he was badly advised.

STUART UDALL: Pollution dilution, when we look at it as a strategy, is really stupid, because it means that we don't force industries or cities to clean up their pollution. We're going to end up in this country with the kind of pollution control, sophisticated equipment. We're going to have to end up more and more reusing our water, rather than pouring all kinds of junk and pollution into a river. And so pollution dilution is a strategy that just doesn't work. It may be in a few locations on very big rivers that you can get away with it, you know, very little damage is done. But this country is now committed, I think, very clearly, to the strategy of cleaning up pollution at the source and not looking towards big dams to provide dillutio.

MOYERS: The Interior Department plan to make the new river dams twice as big means that almost 10 times as many people will be affected. 500 would have lost their homes under the original proposal. The latest number is nearly 5,000. The fate of these people in a 44 miles of the New River is in the hands of the Federal Power Commission, the ultimate authority in this case, since the dams involve electric power. The Commission is currently considering appeals against the Interior Department plan by the three counties and three states involved. A decision is expected soon, anxiously awaited by those who live, work, and play along the river.

Lester Halsey is one of them, and he's worried about what will happen if the Interior Department gets its way.

LESTER HALSEY: Well, I think you've destroyed something that you'll never gain back. There's not many rivers left like this, which are in their state of unpollution It's clear and fast, it's just river areas. We're going to bond right now, but generally the river is fast, over shoals and white water, and that's all it takes. There's not very many rivers left in the United States like that, and before long there's not going to be any left like that. You're going to down them all up.

MOYERS: Sometimes when you think about all this disappearing, does it make you sick?

HALSEY: It really makes me sick. It gets me right here, really. You're going to lose something if you've done this water up here that will never gain back. It's a permanent thing. There's no backing up there. If you're going to be in a backing up, now's the time to back out.

MOYERS: You can't change your mind after the fight.

HALSEY: That's right.

MOYERS: There have been five generations of Halsey's in this valley.

Lester's mother, Winnie Halsey, has already sold her home to the power company. But for her, the Interior Department proposal would mean the loss of much more.

WINNIE HALSEY: Well, it would mean that my family plot will be covered, where my husband and his son are buried, and where I expect to be buried, and where all my children expect to be buried.

MOYERS: You think the lake would be built in your lifetime?

WINNIE HALSEY: No. I don't think it will, but I grieve for my posterity that it will affect. We have a special love for this county, and this river. I've lived for these 79 years on New River, and I love it. And I love the land that I had to give up.

SPEAKER AT PULPIT: May we begin our service today by joining together and singing For the Beauty of the Earth. When you stand, please, as we sing.

The ties to the land in this valley are old and compelling.

MOYERS: Steve Phelps, the postmaster, has 1300 rural customers. Many of them born in the very houses where they receive their mail. His daughter-in-law and son, Jack, live on a farm that's been in the Phelps family since the Civil War. The tradition in this country is respectful, respectful of family, of the land, of authority. People here are not militants.

STEVE PHELPS: Perhaps our church cannot, or should not, speak on the moral rightness or wrongness of the projected dam. However, we fulfill our ministry to each other and to this community by helping one another to change with integrity, those things which must be changed, and to accept with courage, those things which are inevitable.

MOYERS: Religion in this part of the country is always encouraged people to respect authority and to go along with the government. Do you think people are too willing to accept the inevitable?

FRED PHELPS: Well, possibly so. But we were taught that way and brought up that way to respect authority. We'll just try to make the best of it if it comes, but it does hurt our feelings. If they'll give us fair decisions, we'll try to go along with it. But we're proud, stubborn, breed of not near people.

MOYERS: Fred Phelps owns a farm that he helped his father clear with a mule, along with land that was cleared by Fred's grandfather.

FRED PHELPS: Well, when my grandfather came here, there was in about 1863, there was five acres cleared down here. The balance was in virgin timber, and it's been cleared, and it's been improved, and the buildings Hereford steers on this and my surrounding property. And it's yielded about 50,000 pounds of beef on the hoof for a year, added that. And that's been our livelihood.

MOYERS: Do you get the feeling like the land is a part of your family after all those years?

FRED PHELPS: It is a part of our family, and it's close to us. It's been good to us, and we've tried to take care of it, and it's a part of our being.

JIM TODD: We think it's wonderful, can't we? People in this agree with us. That's all right. We won't fuss with it. We still think they're wrong.

MOYERS: Somebody said that some of this land is so fertile that when you plant a seed of corn, you have to jump back just to get out of the way of the stalk.

SPEAKER: That's right.

MOYERS: Is it that productive?

SPEAKER: Oh, yes. I would hate to have to prove that, sir, but we're prejudiced.

MOYERS: Jim Todd is a banker who lives in mouth of Wilson. Cam Fields as a businessman there, and Gwen Gamble has a farm just over the North Carolina line.

GAMBLE: Why should we pay the penalty for what industry has down west Virginia? Or industry anywhere for that matter? Why should we be penalized?

MOYERS: I get the impression that nobody's really mad, nobody's really marching to Washington or raising the flag...

MR. GAMBLE: There isn't much point to be getting outrageous about it, but you can oppose it.

MOYERS: What about the argument, Mr. Gamble, that you can't stop the use of water for industrial purposes? You just can't put a break on progress.

GAMBLE: Well, I don't know what progress is. If progress is taking people homes, and taking their farms, and taking their land, and taking their tax paying money, I don't know whether that's progress or not.

MOYERS: You and your family worked hard to clear your land, keep your land productive?

GAMBLE: Yes. Since 1779, it had to be a lot of work done, and that land has been good to our family, and our family has also maybe contributed something. There have been some 10 or 11 doctors come out of that family. They've been four or five attorneys, or probably more. They've been members of the legislation, members of the Senate, supreme court judges, think that kind of thing. So we don't feel like we've let out country down on that part.

MOYERS: You feel maybe the country has a debt to you?

GAMBLE: No. We're debt to the country, if it's in debt, is there, but as I say, the land has been good to us, and we've probably put something back, we've probably do something for society.

MOYERS: What do you think the dam would mean to the prosperity of this area?

SPEAKER Well, it would set it back, maybe 30, 40 years.

MOYERS: Why is that?

SPEAKER: Because you take your people out. Anytime you take good people out, and the people who have, for the last 100 years, 120 years, that have held onto the farms that they have owned, they paid taxes on it, and they have worked it, and they have made it pay.

SPEAKER: You know, Grey about the years ago, and "Grey's Elegy," that a bold peasantry, a country's pride was destroyed, can never be supplied, and I don't want to see this from this truck. The river is the lifeblood of this valley, the ripple of its passage, a sound of reassurance, of sustenance.

MOYERS: If you sit beside the waters, and listen, you'll hear other sounds too. Cherokee Indians fishing and hunting here, pioneer families crying with relief as they come down from roaring gap over there to plant their roots deep in the soil of the new world. Men and boys shuffling off to fight the King's red coats, coming home again, some of them to fight among themselves in blue and gray.

Walking through these woods, you'll come upon gravestones, with dates that go back two centuries. Stand silent for a minute, and listen. I swear you can hear the felling of trees and the hammering of homes going up, of children swimming and fishing, of funeral dirges, and wedding bells, and cattle lowing on the west side, the sounds of a nation being born and building.

One farm has been in the family of Pressy Reeves since a grant by the King of England 203 years ago. Its owners fought against the King in the Revolutionary War, some died, but the land they saved with blood is about to be lost to water.

PRESSY REEVES: Well, it's always been in the Reeves family ever since it was first settled, and it never has been in one house, never has lived here.

MOYERS: Did you raise your children here?

REEVES: All have been raised here. Their father was raised here, and their grandparents was raised here, and their great-grandparents was raised here, and their great-grandparents was raised here, and their great-great-great-grandfather. They won't know what it's like today if it's changed in your generation. Like it won't be able to, when we tell them about it, it's comprehended. I don't think.

MOYERS: Does it trouble you that, in order to serve a lot of people, a few people, relatively few in this case, four to five thousand, have to be moved off their homes, have to be to give up their farms, change their way of life?

WILLIAM A MCCLUNG: APPALACHIAN POWER CO: Well, certainly this is a troublesome thing to many people, but by the same token, if this country is to progress, one of the great ways it's going to, one of the great needs is going to be additional electric power, electric power for pollution control and environmental control, and so on. And in every phase of progress, someone is inconvenienced.

The figure is roughly a thousand families. Many of them have been here all their lives. We know it's an inconvenience to them. We believe that the benefits to this area, to the Grayson, AsH and Allegheny counties, that will come to this area from the construction of this project will be great.

MOYERS: Do you think it will ever be necessary to say enough progress in order to save rivers like the New River?

WILLIAM A MCCLUNG: Well, if you're asking for my candid opinion, I hope we never reach that point, that enough of progress, this country and my judgment has been based on progress. This is a way we've got where we are. Now, if it means to, if you want to specifically talk about the destruction of rivers, this project is not going to destroy this river, it's going to change its complexion.

MOYERS: It does destroy the river in Grayson County, that part of the river I was canoeing on this morning.

WILLIAM A MCCLUNG: No, it will not destroy it, it will change its character.

MOYERS: How do you mean?

WILLIAM A MCCLUNG: Well, instead of being able to canoe in this one stretch of it, you'll have behind the upper reservoir, a lake of some 20,000 acres, it changes the river into a lake, it'll change it into a lake, but the river will still be flowing because the water will come from the upper dam, through the lower dam. The river is still here, but just dammed up in a little different way. You won't be able to recognize it, will you? Well, it'll be changed a great deal. there is no question about that.

MOYERS: If the New River would be changed, its tributaries would be obliterated. Under the Interior Department Plan, 200 miles of streams and creeks, said to have some of the best bass and trout fishing in the East, would disappear. Dr. B. J. Friend, who gets out of his dental smock and into fishing togs as often as he can, thinks it's an outrage.

DR. B.J. FRIEND: You can look all around, then you see the tremendous waterfalls and the water is so clean, if necessary, I think I could drink this water, I don't think it would hurt a thing.

I think it's a good place to raise your kids, I do, I really think it's good, it's good to get them out, let them fish, let them hunt, let them find out what nature is all about. But if it's ruined, there won't be any, my children, where else can you find a stream like this?

MOYERS: Are you optimistic about stopping to the dam?

DR. B.J. FRIEND: Well, we would like for the people who are making these decisions to come and just be with us here and see what is happening, what type of stream that they're ruining, what type of terrain they're ruining.

MOYERS: They haven't been here.

DR. B.J. FRIEND: To my knowledge, we haven't seen anybody here who is an authoritative position to really decide what's going on.

MOYERS: Dr. Friend, got his wish this week, on Monday, the five members of the Federal Power Commissioner, the men who will make the final administrative decision in the case of the New River, made a one day visit by car and helicopter to the proposed dam sites.

With us in the studio this evening is an official of the Interior Department who is quite familiar with the department's position in the New River case. He is John Newberger, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Power Resources.

I want to thank you Mr. Neuberger for being with us to talk about this issue, you've got a clear conflict of values here. The utility company wants more power, the Interior Department would like to use this river and this land and these dams to flush out the river in West Virginia, yet these people feel that once this land is gone, something important will be gone. What do you think as a water management expert compensates those people for the loss of their land?

NEUBERGER: Mr. Moryars, before I tell you what I think, I'd like to clarify a point that you referred to here and referred to in the introduction to this interview, but this is an Interior

Department proposal. In fact, it is a private power company, an investor owned company, application to the Federal Power Commission for a license to build a hydro project, technically it's referred to as a pump back storage project, so that it shouldn't be cast in the light of an interior proposal.

MOYERS: But the original utility company proposal was modified at the request of the Interior Department.

NEUBERGER: The Interior's role in this proceeding has been that of protecting the public interest for comprehensive development of this site should a license be granted. Now the Federal Power Commission has that authority to grant a license to the Appalachia Power Company, providing it meets the comparability test for comprehensive development. In our testimony, our expert witness throughout this proceeding have put on the record what our experts feel are the comprehensive development features of a project on the New River at this site.

MOYERS: The Interior Department would like to build the larger project?

NEUBERGER: Our testimony shows the features that would make this site comprehensive.

MOYERS: But it would like to build the two dams.

NEUBERGER: We're not a proponent of the project because it's a private request for a project. We have testified on the record that to make a comprehensive development on the new river at this site, it should include features for recreation, for fish and wildlife protection, for enhancement and environmental protection around the reservoir. The record shows that a features a flood control and water quality storage should be included in the project to be comprehensive. This record is before the Federal Power Commission. They have the responsibility to decide whether our technical expertise on the record fully determines the comprehensibility of the site, so the decision is there.

MOYERS: But the Interior Department proposal, your idea for comprehensive development, would double

the size of the original reservoirs, is that correct?

NEUBERGER: Yes, the original application of the Power Company was for a project of some 900,000 megawatts, the modified project that they came back with as an application, double the capacity of the hydro features of the project. The Secretary of the Interior, at the time, Udall, who made that decision acting on the recommendation. He said later, his staff has changed his mind. He says that for the purpose of cleaning up the Kanawa river, you don't need to store that much water. You've got to clean up the pollution at its source. As one of the genuinely committed water experts in the country, why can't we clean up the water in the Kanawa at its source so that these reservoirs do not have to be used for that purpose?

NEUBERGER: Of course, the law requires that the comprehensive development of a river basin consider all the tools available and at source treatment is a requirement in the law that any local augmentation not be a substitute for at source treatment. So this is an interpretation of the Federal Power Commission will have to make on the testimony that's been put before it by the experts in an Environmental Protection Agency now in the, a year ago, these experts were in the Department of Interior in the Federal Water Quality Administration. Have you been to that part of the country?

MOYERS: Have you seen the new river?

NEUBERGER: Yes, I've been in Independence, Virginia, and I've gone down all the way to the Blue Stone Dam at the confluence and all the way down the confluence with the Garley River.

MOYERS: What goes through your mind when you see these 44 miles that will disappear and this land that will disappear?

Well, I have to take Mr. Moyers, the whole river basin in context like we're doing all over the country in river basin planning, and I look at what's on the New River right now. There are five existing hydro dams on the New River. The one at Blue Stone does not have hydroelectric turbines installed in it, however Congress authorized it to have those turbines put in it at some time, and I have to take the context of the whole river basin in mind and look at the needs of the whole basin,

MOYERS: But the needs are primarily, as I understand the testimony, and this was the original main point in the original proposal, to clean up that river in Kanata. Do you really think that we ought not first to try to get the corporations who are polluting at the source to clean it up before we take that beautiful land in those 44 miles for that purpose?

NEUBERGER: Well, that's a decision. The Federal Park Administration is going to have to make based on the records before them, but you've recommended that that be done.

You, the Interior Department. The Interior Department has, on the record, for the Federal Park Commission, the recommendation that comprehensive development at this site would include an element of water quality storage for low flow augmentation purposes. Mr. McClung, the power company said that he would like to see the day never come when we have to say enough of progress. Do you think we'll ever reach that in the use of water for clearing up pollution?

NEUBERGER: The use of water for clearing up pollution certainly is not a first alternative because a law clearly states that you get at-source treatment with maximum capability, and that it's strictly an element within a project for which you determine whether it's fully comprehensive and whether it should be included or not.

MOYERS: Well, I want to thank you for coming tonight to present the views of the Interior Department.

NEUBERGER: Glad to be here.

MOYERS: The arguments for the new river dams are complicated and technical. Reading through the reports and hearings of the last nine years, the official language strikes you as politely accepting, impersonal, to the layman even forbidding and intimidating terms like maximum optimal utilization, low flow augmentation, and so on. I guess you can avoid such terms when you're dealing in large and intricate schemes trying to solve the problems of modern society. But in Ash and Allegheny and Grayson counties, you hear a different language. Pressy Reeves, mourning the loss of the land her family has lived on for 200 years. Cam Fields worrying about the uprooting of a bold peasantry. Fred Phelps, speaking of the farm, his grandfather cleared of stumps and rocks as if the old man himself were looking over his shoulder to make sure his grandson's been a good steward. All of this will go if the power companies and the government have their way. The price of what officials call progress, the price of flushing out a river that some chemical companies want to keep on using for a sewer, the price of all this is the loss of another river, and the way of life that says much a part of the country as the sweeping plains of the Midwest are the stark brooding shores of Maine. The old churches, the homesteads, the rich bottomlands where men wrestle with boulders, planted crops and left their sons to carry on, all this, like the earth in Noah's day, would be wiped out this time for keeps. Something quite authentic and important for those people and for the country, something irreplaceable will be gone if we say goodbye to the New River and farewell to Mouth the Wilson.

I'm Bill Moyers, good night for this week. I'm Bill Moyers, good night for this week and I'm Bill Moyers, good night for this week and I'm Bill Moyers.