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
/ref> 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

environmental impact assessment Environmental Impact assessment (EIA) is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or actual projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. In this context, the term "environmental imp ...

to be done, although the project was already underway when NEPA was passed. An endangered species, the snail darter, was discovered and some people wanted construction of the dam to be halted. The

Endangered Species Act The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or "The Act"; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is the primary law in the United States for protecting imperiled species. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of ec ...

of 1973 provided for protection of species threatened with extinction under federal projects. The

snail darter controversy A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastrop ...

generated reactions on both sides, and litigation in the case reached the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

, under the

. It ruled that the project was not exempted although it had been started prior to passage of the act. Congress passed a law to specifically exempt the Tellico Dam project from application of the Endangered Species Act, in order to complete the project. The dam was completed, 33 miles of river fed the lake, and Tellico Reservoir was created. Creation of the reservoir meant that several communities in the valley had to be abandoned and residents relocated. In addition, the waters inundated several Native American sites, including the historically significant

Cherokee Nation The Cherokee Nation (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ ''Tsalagihi Ayeli'' or ᏣᎳᎩᏰᎵ ''Tsalagiyehli''), also known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It ...

town sites of Chota and

Tanasi Tanasi ( chr, ᏔᎾᏏ, translit=Tanasi) (also spelled Tanase, Tenasi, Tenassee, Tunissee, Tennessee, and other such variations) was a historic Overhill settlement site in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. ...

(the source of name of the state of Tennessee). The

Bat Creek inscription The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loudon County, Tennessee. This excavation was ...

was discovered adjacent to this lake.

References

External links

Tellico Reservoir
Tennessee Valley Authority website Little Tennessee River Reservoirs in Tennessee Tennessee Valley Authority Protected areas of Loudon County, Tennessee Protected areas of Monroe County, Tennessee Bodies of water of Loudon County, Tennessee Bodies of water of Monroe County, Tennessee 1979 establishments in Tennessee {{Tennessee-protected-area-stub