By DAVID RUSSELL ROSS
DOVER, TN—- Emotions flared June 16, 2015 in Stewart County during a packed-house LBL meeting on a controversial federal plan for the clear-cut commercial logging and burning of thousands of acres in Land Between the Lakes. Looking back, this LBL Meeting burns with emotion.
“Anytime there’s a decision made that will affect all of the acreage of LBL there needs to be indigenous people involved in the process,” said LBL and Stewart County native Roger Dale Wallace.
The United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, which now controls LBL, hosted the public listening session at the Stewart County Visitor’s Center in Dover, Tenn.
So far, more than 8,600 acres in LBL have been logged and burned. Thousands and thousands of additional acres are slated for the same treatment under the federal government’s “LBL Landscape Restoration” proposal.
Federal officials say the effort will return vast portions of the historic, national recreation area to pre-European landscapes where native grasses and oak trees once flourished.
Many of the more than150 citizens at the meeting, which included former LBL landowners and descendants of LBL landowners, say the initiative is an ill-conceived experiment that’s already a blighted failure.
Tina R. Tilley, USDA Forest Service area supervisor of LBL, is hopeful the listening session in Stewart County and one held recently in Gilbertsville, Ky., will initiate meaningful dialogue between citizens and officials regarding LBL.
Citizens want more than talk.
Paula Willett, of Benton, Ky., said the USDA’s Forest Service has already signed contracts with some large regional logging operations and now the federal government won’t back off their plan for fear of lawsuits.
“If you don’t stop right now, you might just get sued by all of us!” she said at the Stewart County meeting.
Her comments were met with thunderous applause and vocal support.
“This is our land!” Willett said. “You had no right to sign those contracts! If you get sued, suck it up. We want the logging people out yesterday.”
Forest Service officials say the logging and controlled burning of massive tracts in LBL will enable creation of two oak-grassland demonstration areas. One will be in Tennessee and one in Kentucky.
These demonstration areas will allow native grasses and oaks to flourish as they did before Europeans came to LBL, thus making the national recreation area more natural, open and appealing, officials say.
“Controlled burns that burn 12-to-14 feet up into the trees are not controlled burns,” Stewart County resident Gary Wallace said.
Officials at the federal and state level say the landscape restoration plan is sound and will help bring areas of LBL back to its primitive state.
Some citizens say this project is just the latest in more than a half-century of mismanagement, skullduggery, double-talk and double-dealing the federal government has foisted upon the public regarding LBL.
“We were very forcefully removed from our homes and we were given promises of having top-priority on matters involving LBL. We were told LBL would always be taken care of,” Roger Dale Wallace said. “We were told lies then but we didn’t know they were lies. What are we to believe now?”
In 1964, the federal government’s Tennessee Valley Authority bought LBL from landowners and removed the approximately one thousand families in Tennessee and Kentucky that lived on, farmed and worked the land between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.
“We were robbed!” said LBL and Stewart County resident Tim Sills. “There ain’t but one solution to the whole problem. Give it back to the people you stole it from to start with!”
After TVA took control of the 170,000 acre peninsula straddling the two states in the mid-1960s, the “Land Between the Rivers” area as it was known then was renamed “Land Between the Lakes” by the federal government.
Stewart County’s Leamon Lyons said he’s lived in and around LBL all his life and spent his working career as a TVA employee at LBL.
He said the USDA Forest Service is not as accessible for public communication as was TVA and TVA wasn’t good.
“You can’t even get into the offices up there now (at Golden Pond, Ky.) unless you know somebody,” Lyons said.
He and others frequently put their TVA jobs on the line to make sure LBL roads were maintained, especially those to cemeteries, Lyons said.
Under USDA Forest Service jurisdiction, many roads, including roads to LBL cemeteries are closed or impassible.
Rather than concentrating on clearing and burning thousands of acres of LBL, some citizens believe the former home sites and farms would provide enough already clear areas for the Forest Service to create and maintain its oak-grassland demonstration areas.
This would be a reasonable compromise that would also help preserve the heritage and history of LBL, some say.
Dr. Ben Stone, former chairman and director of the Department of Field Biology at Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tenn., said he and his students documented all of the flora and fauna at LBL.
“Tonight, I’m here as a former resident of LBL,” Stone said. “I want to comment on the heritage of LBL. All of the home sites that constitute LBL are fading away.”
Stone said few people remain who can accurately identify the LBL home sites and say with certainty what families lived where.
Stone called on federal officials to digitally document and preserve the former LBL home sites, farms and businesses.
“There is no reason why all the home sites of LBL that were bought out by TVA cannot be put into a data base so future generations can know the heritage of Land Between the Lakes. The technology is here and is available to the forest service,” Stone said. “Every home site that constitutes LBL should be accessible by computer. Given another 30-or-40 years or less, there won’t be anyone left to document where these family farms and homes are.”
Some citizens say they’d also like to see LBL’s closed areas like Rushing Creek Campground be reopened.
Stewart County citizen Raymond Cumby said those managing LBL now think they’ll be able to do as they please with the federal holding “once all the old people die out.”
“If TVA had gotten its way there’d be high rise hotels down there now,” Cumby said.
In the mid-1990s, TVA pitched five concepts to the public and Congress for “limited commercial development” of portions of LBL. The most aggressive of those concepts included hotels, condominiums, businesses and a theme park to be built within LBL.
The public shouted down the concepts with a flurry of public meetings and alternative ideas.
The public’s response to TVA’s five LBL concepts was Concept Zero.
Concept Zero was for TVA not to commercially develop LBL and to manage it as originally promised.
In 1996, TVA threatened to move the Bison Range from the Model area of the Stewart County portion of LBL to what is now the Elk and Bison Prairie in Kentucky.
TVA officials said they could no longer pay to maintain the fence around the Tennessee bison herd.
The Bison Range at Model, Tenn., was one of the first attractions established when TVA acquired LBL.
Since 1996 was Tennessee’s bicentennial year, Stewart and Montgomery County residents created the “Bison-TENNial” campaign. They designed and sold t-shirts that read: “Keep part of the bison herd where it belongs – In Tennessee, near The Homeplace 1850 in the Land Between the Lakes!!”
The LBL bison herd can still be seen for free by driving to the former location of Model, Tenn., that also features the historic Great Western Iron Furnace.
During that mid-1990, the Elk and Bison prairie was established in the Kentucky portion of LBL. Citizens pay to tour this area.
Some citizens say they first started hearing about federal officials wanting to create a large prairie or savannah with expansive native grasslands in LBL when the Elk and Bison prairie was being established in the mid-1990s.
Some say the current LBL Restoration Proposal is just another way of getting the expansive grassland prairie that wasn’t established in the mid-1990s.
In the late-1970s and early 1980s, TVA received enormous federal budgets to operate and develop LBL. Many citizens say those enormous budgets were squandered or worse.
LBL was supposed to become a vibrant regional engine that would stimulate and promote economic growth and development outside of LBL. It was not supposed to go into competition with public businesses outside LBL.
Some say LBL has never been allowed to fulfill its original mission. Others say that’s happened.
Steve White, a wildlife biologist at Murray State University, said LBL provides a great deal of support to the local economy. He said the federal officials who manage LBL have tough jobs.
Many say when it comes to LBL, the government says one thing and does another.
During a board meeting held in Clarksville, Tenn., in 1996, the TVA Chairman at the time, Craven Crowell, was asked by a reporter if TVA planned to relinquish control of LBL.
Crowell vehemently replied “No! That will never happen!”
In 1997 Crowell and the TVA Board opted not to seek Congressional funding for LBL or any of TVA’s non-power programs.
In 1998, Congress approved the LBL Protection Act, which transferred administrative responsibility from TVA to the USDA’s Forest Service.
Citizens say they want to see the promises kept that were made when the federal government took LBL and forced away the landowners.
That could be a daunting task since no state, federal or local elected officials attended the listening session in Stewart County.
“It’s sad that not one elected official at any level was here tonight,” said Stewart County resident and business owner Terry Barrett. ““If any one of them had shown up, at least you’d know they cared.”
Do we know more about operations of Land Between the Lakes than we did in 2015, or do we know even less? — What do you think?