The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway (popularly known as the Tenn-Tom) is a artificial waterway built in the 20th century from the Tennessee River to the junction of the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system near Demopolis, Alabama, United States. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway links commercial navigation from the nation's midsection to the Gulf of Mexico. The major features of the waterway are of navigation channels, a cut between the watersheds of the Tombigbee and Tennessee rivers, and ten locks and dams."Tenn-Tom Waterway Key Components". 2009. Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority. Available at <http://www.tenntom.org/about/ttwkeycomponents.htm >. The locks are with a depth of , the same dimension as those on the Mississippi above Lock and Dam 26 at Alton, Illinois. Under construction for 12 years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway was completed in December 1984 at a total cost of nearly $2 billion.
The Tenn-Tom encompasses 17 public ports and terminals, of land, and another managed by state conservation agencies for wildlife habitat preservation and recreational use.
Early history First proposed by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the idea for a commercial waterway link between the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers did not receive serious attention until the advent of river steamboat traffic in the early nineteenth century. It stimulated trade throughout the river cities, and the ability to get products to the Gulf Coast for overseas shipping. As steamboat efficiency gains caused water transport costs to decline, in 1875 engineers surveyed a potential canal route for the first time.Van West, Carroll. Tennessee History. University of Tennessee Press, 1998. They issued a negative report, emphasizing that prohibitive cost estimates kept the project from economic feasibility.
Enthusiasm for the project languished until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office during the Great Depression and quickly conceived of investment in major infrastructure projects to put many of the unemployed to work. The development of the Tennessee River by the TVA, especially the construction of the Pickwick Lock and Dam in 1938, helped decrease the Tenn-Tom's potential economic costs and increase its potential benefits. Pickwick Lake's design included an embayment on its south shore at Yellow Creek, which would permit the design and construction of an entrance to a future southward waterway (leading to the Tombigbee River), should it be decided that such a waterway would be built in the future.
Later, construction (under World War II emergency authorization) of Kentucky Dam at Gilbertsville, Kentucky, near the mouth of the Tennessee River's confluence with the Ohio River, would complete the "northern" half of the future waterway. As early as 1941 the proposal was combined with those for other waterways, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, with the aim of building broader political support.St. Petersburg Times, April 13, 1941, pg 10 Congress authorized the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Project in the River and Harbor Act of 1946.
The northern, Divide Cut, portion of the proposed waterway was investigated in 1965 as a candidate for the use of nuclear explosives as part of Project Plowshare.The Florence (Alabama) Times, September 21, 1960, pg 3 Three routes were considered, including the Yellow Creek route that was eventually chosen for the conventional excavation. The Bear Creek route was considered best for nuclear explosives, as it was rocky and more likely to be stable following blasts. The nuclear excavation proposal for Bear Creek envisioned 81 nuclear devices ranging from 10 to 50 kilotons, with a total explosive yield of 1.9 megatons. A cost analysis indicated that nuclear explosives would increase costs from 31 to 73 percent over conventional excavation on the Yellow Creek route. Two safety analyses recommended that the project not be pursued. The studies projected severe damage to nearby communities from air blast, seismic motion, groundwater contamination, and fallout. No further study was undertaken, and conventional excavation was pursued.
As part of his "Southern Strategy" for election, Republican President Richard Nixon committed to the project. He included $1 million in the Corps of Engineers' 1971 budget to start construction of the Tenn-Tom.Ward, Rufus. Tombigbee River. History Press, 2010. Funding shortages and legal challenges delayed construction until December 1972, but Nixon's efforts initiated official Tenn-Tom waterway construction. Senators John C. Stennis, James O. Eastland, John J. Sparkman, and Howard Baker also played significant roles in securing approval for the project. Making the case that the waterway would spur economic development through significant foreign demand for Appalachian coal, they described the Tenn-Tom as the "Ruhr Valley of the South."
Construction The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began work on the project in 1972. During the construction process, land excavation reached about in depth and required the excavation of nearly 310 million cubic yards of soil (the equivalent of more than 100 million dump truck loads). The project was completed on December 12, 1984, nearly two years ahead of schedule, and it opened for traffic in January, 1985.Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority.
Political challenges The $2 billion in required funding for the Tenn-Tom waterway was repeatedly attacked by elected representatives and political organizations. Opponents asserted that the estimated economic benefits of the waterway by the Corps of Engineers were unsupportable based on projected traffic volume and that the Corps had inserted deceptive calculations into the cost-benefit analysis. By 1977, the Tenn-Tom was one of many such Corps of Engineers projects that had been initiated in the belief that they would directly or indirectly return to the Treasury their cost(s) of construction.
Immediately after his election in 1976, Democratic President Jimmy Carter announced a plan to slash Tenn-Tom federal funding, as part of broader reductions in federal spending. Carter, and the economic advisors recruited to his administration, objected to the "waste" of taxpayer dollars on "pork-barrel projects". But, after more than 6,500 waterway supporters attended a public hearing held in Columbus, Mississippi, as part of Carter's review of the proposed waterway, the President withdrew his opposition.
Environmental opposition As one of the first major projects subject to the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), there was significant environmental opposition to the Tenn-Tom before and during its construction. Environmental protest started in the local region, led by the Committee for Leaving the Environment of America Natural (CLEAN). Environmental concerns included the geological effects of significant excavation, destruction of river and wetland ecosystems, unknown ecological effects of mixing the two rivers' watersheds, and the politically charged esthetic effect of eliminating the region's last major free-flowing river. While the Corps started from the position that the Tenn-Tom would be an environmental enhancement to the region, environmental activists believed that the required NEPA review would stop the project. By 1970, the Corps had adopted a pastoral strategy of minor, symbolic concessions, including changes in rhetoric used to promote the project and to design, including replacing part of the planned canal with a chain of lakes and changing the design of Columbus Dam to protect Plymouth Bluff's fossil bed.
A draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was completed January 15, 1971. After the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) accepted the EIS, national environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and Friends of the Earth joined the opposition. Following the strategy that had been used successfully to stop construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, CLEAN and EDF filed a federal lawsuit in July, 1971, resulting in a one-year injunction. After the case was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, the court ruled in favor of the Corps, and construction began in 1972. In 1976, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad joined the environmental groups suing to halt construction of the waterway.Ferris, William. Encyclopedia of Southern History. University of North Carolina, 1989. Railroad companies, which served as a major transport alternative to river traffic and stood to potentially lose the most value from construction of the waterway, brought additional resources to the litigation alleging that the project violated NEPA. Federal courts ruled in favor of the project in 1983.
Cultural preservation Construction of the waterway also faced political challenges related to preservation of cultural resources. At 2,000 square miles, the Tenn-Tom was one of the country's largest cultural resource management programs. When the project began, federal policy for cultural resources management included the Reservoir Salvage Act, the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), and the National Park Service Interagency Archeological Salvage Program. Archeologists generally approached the project as an opportunity with benefits for their academic departments. The initial approach to cultural preservation focused on ad hoc surveys of individual sites, working quickly to keep pace with construction. In response to researcher interests and this existing policy framework, the early preservation work focused on prehistoric sites.
After 1974, the project was also subject to the Archeological and Historic Preservation Act (AHPA). After new leadership was appointed for the Interagency Archeological Salvage Program, a more holistic approach was adopted to identify key research questions and strategically gather data to answer them. While this strategy was intended to take greater account of historic, above-ground structures affected by waterway construction, it was not entirely successful in shifting away from the predominance of below-ground archeological salvage. In total, 14 structures were recommended for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
Local economic development In the decades leading up to construction of the Tenn-Tom, over 50 million people, mostly Black, migrated out of the 165 primarily poor, rural counties affected by the project due to lack of employment opportunities. Because extensive employment growth was projected in the area, about 15% of it attributable to the Tenn-Tom development, a Minority People's Council on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (MPC) was formed, in coalition with construction craft unions. To help direct distribution of economic benefits to the local resident low-income and Black population, the MPC worked to secure an affirmative action plan for minority employment in the Waterway's construction, employment training programs, community education about the Waterway's economic impact, and partnerships with educational institutions.
Economic effects When completed, the Tenn-Tom waterway provided a route from the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys to the Gulf of Mexico that was 547 mile shorter than the Mississippi route, estimated to reduce transportation costs by 40%.
However, the Tenn-Tom waterway's total cost was $1.992 billion, including non-federal costs. Some political and economic commentators derided the project as "pork-barrel politics at its worst". As late as 1982, with construction two-thirds completed, critics argued that the best course of action would be to stop construction, questioning the Corps' economic analyses. For the first few years after its completion, such criticism appeared valid. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway had opened in the midst of an economic recession in the barge business, which resulted in initially disappointingly low use of the waterway.