Tellico Reservoir, also known as Tellico Lake, is a
reservoir
A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation.
Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...
in Tennessee, created by the
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...
(TVA) in 1979 upon the completion of
Tellico Dam
Tellico Dam is a dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Loudon County, Tennessee, on the Little Tennessee River as part of the Tellico Project. Planning for a dam structure on the Little Tennessee was reported as early as 1936 but ...
. The dam impounds the
Little Tennessee River
The Little Tennessee River is a tributary of the Tennessee River that flows through the Blue Ridge Mountains from Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, into North Carolina, and then into Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. It drains portio ...
and the lower
Tellico River
The Tellico River is a river in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. It rises in the westernmost mountains of North Carolina, and then flows through Monroe County, Tennessee, before joining the Little Tennessee ...
. While TVA is careful to refer to its artificial lakes as reservoirs (such as "Tellico Reservoir"), common usage tends to refer to the reservoir as "Tellico Lake". The lake is approximately 16,000 acres in surface area and provides 357 miles of shoreline.
Tellico Village – Lake Tellico
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Tellico Reservoir was to be created as the last major dam and reservoir project of the TVA. Planning had begun for the project in the 1960s, when the agency began acquiring properties that had to be vacated prior to flooding of a large area subject to inundation. The National Environmental Policy Act
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a United States environmental law that promotes the enhancement of the environment and established the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The law was enacted on January 1, 1970.Un ...
of 1969 (NEPA) provided for agencies to assess the environmental effects of their projects prior to undertaking them.
Opponents of the dam project, who were concerned about its effects on the habitat of the valley, filed suit for an