[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 50 (Monday, April 19, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4097-S4099]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      By Mr. ALEXANDER:
  S. 2319. A bill to authorize and facilitate hydroelectric power 
licensing of the Tapoco Project; to the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I rise to speak about an issue that 
concerns the Senator from North Carolina and her constituents. I know 
of her love for the Great Smoky Mountains and her concern for the 
outdoors, and while most of what I am about to say affects eastern 
Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, anything that affects eastern 
Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains has something to do with 
western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. This is some good 
news for the outdoors men and women and all of the people who love the 
mountains, the valleys, and the rivers of east Tennessee and western 
North Carolina.
  The legislation I have introduced will save thousands of good-paying 
jobs at the Aluminum Company of America plants in Blount County, which 
is my hometown, and at the same time provide recreational opportunities 
on thousands of acres of ALCOA mountain land for canoeists, hikers, and 
fisher men and women. Of importance to all of us who enjoy the outdoors 
in east Tennessee and North Carolina, this agreement should help to 
create fuller lake reservoirs during the summer recreation season.

[[Page S4098]]

  This bill I have introduced today is necessary because since 1913, a 
little more than 90 years, the Aluminum Company of America has operated 
dams high on the Little Tennessee River adjacent to what is now the 
Great Smoky Mountain National Park near the border of Tennessee and 
North Carolina. These dams were built before either the Tennessee 
Valley Authority or the Great Smoky Mountain National Park were 
created. These four dams provide half of the electric power ALCOA uses 
to operate its plants in the valley below the mountains in Blount 
County, TN. ALCOA's license to operate these four dams expires next 
year. The company has applied to the Federal Electric Regulatory 
Commission for a 40-year license renewal.
  ALCOA's license renewal application has created a lot of interest in 
the Tennessee Valley, and for two reasons. The first reason involves 
the economic well-being of thousands of current and retired ALCOA 
workers in the communities in which they live. The second reason is the 
application has attracted broad attention from conservation 
organizations because of the opportunity to create recreational 
opportunity on land ALCOA owns in the Little Tennessee River watershed 
adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Some of this ALCOA 
land is actually within the legislation boundaries of the park.
  On this chart the darker area is the Great Smoky Mountains National 
Park. This is a unique park created in the mid-1930s and given by the 
people of North Carolina and Tennessee to the United States. It is the 
only national park in our system that was given to the Government and 
not bought by the Government. It has 500,000 acres, more or less, and 
it is visited each year by about 10 million Americans. It is by far the 
most visited national park in America. Yellowstone National Park, as an 
example, has about 3 million visitors a year.

  This is the Little Tennessee River. It was the center of the Cherokee 
civilization when the European pioneers came. This is the river on 
which Alcoa began to build dams nearly a century ago.
  Around these four dams on the river is the land we are talking about. 
This is approximately 10,000 acres that lie between the Great Smokey 
Mountain National Park and between the Cherokee National Forest and the 
Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness Area. This is Tennessee. This is 
North Carolina. The Tennessee/North Carolina border runs right across 
the top of those 6,000-foot mountains. One of the most beautiful areas 
in America with virgin timber is right here in the Joyce Kilmer-
Slickrock Creek Wilderness Area just across the line from Tennessee. So 
we are talking in my remarks and in this legislation about 10,000 acres 
that lie between the Great Smokies and the Cherokee National Forest.
  One may wonder, just listening to this, what does that have to do 
with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Under our rules, Alcoa 
now has to apply for a 40-year renewal to operate these four dams. The 
conservation organizations in the area and the neighboring communities 
began a discussion with Alcoa 7 years ago about what would happen when 
that application renewal came up. That 7 years of discussion between 
the Aluminum Company of America, the neighboring regions, and the 
various conservation organizations have come up with a settlement 
agreement on which people have worked long and hard. Basically it does 
this. Alcoa will basically swap or exchange this land here in exchange 
for community and conservation support for the license renewal.
  We are going to hold a hearing on this whole subject on April 27 in 
the Senate Energy Committee. I look forward to working with our 
chairman, Senator Domenici, and with the chairman of the National Park 
Subcommittee, Senator Thomas, on that day.
  We hear a lot about obstinate companies that are not interested in 
the environment. We hear a lot about conservation organizations that 
will not be reasonable. Here is a good story. Here is a textbook 
example of how a major American company can work with communities and 
conservation organizations to help Americans keep a high standard of 
living as well as to conserve the environment. Once approved, I expect 
it to become a model for many other companies, communities, and 
conservation groups.
  I see on the floor now the Senator from Georgia, who spent a fair 
amount of his younger life in Tennessee, probably in these same 
mountains. He, as I, and the Senator from North Carolina, have visited 
and hiked in and enjoyed these mountains as thousands do. Let me say 
first a word about the jobs involved and then a word about the 
recreational opportunities.
  On the jobs, looking back those 90 years, this is the story. In 1913 
a group of men from Pittsburgh came quietly to Maryville, TN, to meet 
with the mayor. The businessmen were looking for a location for an 
aluminum smelter. They came to Maryville because alumina is extracted 
from bauxite ore in an electrolysis process requiring huge amounts of 
electricity, and the opportunity for producing huge amounts of 
electricity existed better in the Tennessee Valley than in almost any 
other part of the United States.

  The Great Smoky Mountains rise to more than 6,600 feet above the 
valley in which Maryville is situated, and the rainfall in those 
mountains is more than 80 inches a year, one of the highest in America. 
So that combination, heavy rainfall and fast-running water, created a 
formula for making cheap hydroelectric power, so Alcoa built four dams 
along the Little Tennessee River: Calderwood, Cheoah, Chilhowee, and 
Fontana. Half of the electricity for the Alcoa operations in east 
Tennessee comes from those four dams. The rest of Alcoa's power is 
purchased from the Tennessee Valley Authority.
  Here is what happened to the far-sighted mayor who visited with those 
Alcoa executives in 1913 and approved the location of that aluminum 
smelter in the Tennessee Valley. He was literally tarred and feathered 
and run out of town because the mountain people did not want to be 
disturbed by what they were afraid was about to come and disturb their 
lifestyle. What came was the largest aluminum smelter in the world, 
which, when combined with a fabricating plant and a rolling mill, 
employed as many as 14,000 during World War II. The Alcoa plants made 
the metal that helped win the war.
  Meanwhile, the Alcoa jobs, those 14,000 jobs since 1913 until today, 
transformed one of the poorer parts of America. When Alcoa came to 
Appalachia, family incomes of these families of east Tennessee were 
about one-third of the national average. I know about this. Our family 
has been in that part of Tennessee for seven generations. But the 
Aluminum Company of America began to pay steelworker wages to these 
14,000 families and those wages were national wages. So suddenly men 
and women from all over east Tennessee, and I imagine some from North 
Carolina, were driving dozens of miles to get one of those Alcoa jobs 
that brought with it good income, good health care, and a retirement 
income.
  Some of those who went to work there included many African Americans 
who had been brought to Tennessee from Alabama to help build the 
plants. The changes that those Alcoa jobs brought to Blount County and 
to the surrounding counties is proof positive of what three generations 
of good jobs can do: good housing, low crime, strong families, some of 
the best public schools anywhere in America, almost nobody rich but 
almost everybody with a good job.
  Today, there are 2,000 Alcoa jobs in east Tennessee. That means $140 
million in salaries and benefits. It means $\1/2\ million a year in 
Alcoa Foundation education scholarships to children of those employees. 
It means $230 million each year in purchased goods and services; $7 
million in State and local taxes--a total of $377 million a year just 
to Tennessee.
  I must confess a personal interest in this story. I grew up hearing 
about Charles Martin Hall and the discovery of Aluminum. My father went 
to work for Alcoa in 1941, the year after I was born. The job the plant 
manager, Mr. Granville Swaney, offered to him as a safety engineer paid 
twice what my father was being paid as principal at West Side 
Elementary School, and one of those Alcoa Foundation scholarships went 
to me in 1958, making it possible for me to attend Vanderbilt 
University, something I never could have afforded to do otherwise.

[[Page S4099]]

  So you can see why I believe, as well as I am sure almost all 
Tennesseans believe, it is critically important to renew this 
hydroelectric license for another 40 years and keep these good jobs in 
the Tennessee Valley. Without these four dams providing low-cost 
reliable power, these jobs would be gone overnight, probably to Alcoa 
plants in Quebec or Iceland where the hydroelectric power is plentiful 
and cheap.
  The second reason and the final reason this settlement agreement has 
attracted such widespread interest is because of the recreation 
opportunities it will provide.
  Tapoco is the name of the Alcoa subsidiary that owns the four dams I 
described along this Little Tennessee River. The acres contained within 
the Tapoco project are sandwiched between nearly 10,000 acres of 
nonproject lands owned by Alcoa. These nonproject lands are the 10,000 
acres in green here. This is in the area I mentioned of the Great 
Smokies, the Cherokee National Forest, the Nantahala National Forest, 
the Citico Creek, and Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness Areas.
  A critical requirement in obtaining this 40-year license renewal is 
this settlement agreement negotiated by and with a large group of 
interested relicensing stakeholders. These stakeholders include the 
National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the eastern 
band of Cherokees, State agencies representing Tennessee and North 
Carolina, numerous nongovernmental organizations, local government, 
homeowners associations, and individual citizens.
  They began to discuss all of this 7 years ago. It has taken all of 
that time to work this out.
  In order to make this effective, however, Congress must authorize the 
land exchanges in the settlement agreement. The terms and conditions 
under the settlement agreement will then become terms and conditions 
under Alcoa's hydroelectric license.
  In order for the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission to have legal 
authority to put the settlement agreement terms and conditions in the 
license, legislation from Congress is required prior to the Federal 
Energy Regulatory Commission making a relicensing decision in August of 
2004.
  Much of the settlement agreement is focused on the transfer of land 
interests between the Great Smoky Mountains, the U.S. Forest Service, 
and Alcoa.
  Let me see if I can describe it simply.
  The first part of the land swap is between the Great Smokies National 
Park and Alcoa. The Great Smokies will transfer 100 acres of flood 
areas of land in exchange for 186 acres of biologically sensitive 
acreage that Alcoa owns.
  All of us growing up always heard about people from Florida coming up 
and wanting to buy land and we would sell them land that was flooded, 
or they would sell us land that was flooded. But basically, flooded 
land--100 acres--is being swapped for 186 acres of land that is a 
biologically diverse area, and this will go into the Great Smoky 
Mountain National Park.
  In fact, it was already within the legislative boundaries. But I 
suppose the park ran out of money back in the 1930s and couldn't buy 
it.
  The second component is a big tract of land--6,000 acres between the 
Smokies and the Cherokee National Forest.
  After a complicated set of arrangements, what can happen is this:
  It involves the Nature Conservancy, but this legislation authorizes 
the Secretary of the Interior to purchase this land at a reasonable 
value from the Nature Conservancy after Alcoa gives it to the Nature 
Conservancy.
  The long and short of it will be that after 3 years, hopefully the 
Great Smokies will be 6,000 acres larger and immediately people who 
live in this region will be able to enjoy this 6,000 acres.
  There is one other part to this. There is a 4,000-acre tract over 
here. The Nature Conservancy will own this under the agreement, but it 
will also be open to outdoor recreation, to hunters, and to fishermen.
  All of this is part of Alcoa's relicensing agreement. The people who 
work here get the jobs. Everybody who lives here gets to enjoy a 
national park with 6,000 more acres and an area that includes 4,000 
more acres.
  That is the legislation I have introduced today. The legislation will 
allow the settlement agreement worked on for 7 years to be implemented 
and for Alcoa's relicensing process at the Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission to proceed.

  Alcoa, American Rivers, Blount County, city of Alcoa, city of 
Maryville, eastern band of Cherokee Indians, Great Smoky Mountains 
National Park--I say particularly the Nature Conservancy and the 
National Parks Conservation Association--thank you for your hard work.
  Also, North Carolina Department of Environment and Conservation, 
North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Tennessee Clean Water 
Network, and various other organizations I want to mention have also 
been a part of this effort.
  It gives me a great deal of personal pleasure to be able to come to 
the floor and compliment the hard work of others over the last 7 years.
  The hard work of the Aluminum Company of America, the creativeness 
and reasonableness of the conservation organizations and communities 
will result in 2,000 good jobs being saved and all of us being able to 
enjoy up to 10,000 more acres adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains 
National Park.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, I overheard my good friend from east 
Tennessee as he spoke about life in the Great Smoky Mountains and the 
bill that he is presenting today. Knowing his passion for east 
Tennessee--not just east Tennessee but the whole State of Tennessee and 
that whole region--gives all of us great reason to examine exactly what 
he is proposing because I know what he is doing is not just right for 
that part of the country but for the country as a whole from a 
preservation and protection standpoint.
  It is kind of interesting as I sat there and listened to him talk 
about the number of agencies and entities he has brought together in 
this one proposal and has everybody in the core. The Senator, 
obviously, has done an awful lot of work over the last year and a half 
that he served in the Senate to bring this coalition together in 
support of that project.
  I wish to take the opportunity as somebody who spent a large part of 
my life in the mountains of east Tennessee to commend the Senator. I 
appreciate all of his hard work, his dedication, and the proposal he 
came up with relative to the Alcoa project.
  I told him I feel better now about buying all of that aluminum foil 
over the years because I know it went to send him to Vanderbilt. What a 
great asset he is to Vanderbilt and to the University of Tennessee and 
now to the Senate.

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