The successful, 14-year battle to save the New River in North Carolina and southwestern Virginia in the 1960s and 1970s created a coalition that local residents, environmental groups, conservation organizations, anglers, businesses, state agencies and politicians have used to preserve natural resources elsewhere.
The Appalachian Power Company, which had bulldozed opponents to build regional power-generating dams planned in 1962 to erect two dams on the river that would flood 42,000 acres of rich bottomland, force families off their land and destroy America’s oldest, free-flowing stream.
Hundreds of landowners who stood to lose their property were the first to oppose the Blue Ridge Power Project, which APC planned to use to buy them out or take land by eminent domain.
APC’s intended power grab drew state and national attention — and a massive legal fight.
Gov. Jim Holshouser, Sen. Jesse Helms, and Rep. Steven Neal were major leaders of the fight. When President Richard Nixon’s administration passed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968 and the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, it gave New River proponents the backing needed to halt the dams. In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a bill adding the New River to the Wild and Scenic Rivers system, forever protecting it from development.
It was the first success by such a coalition to halt destruction of a natural and national treasure. Coalition tactics have been used since then as part of battle plans to save other public-trust wilderness areas and waters threatened by developers.
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