The Global View

TVA Worked for Decades to Heal the Copper Basin from Impacts of Mining and Erosion

While folks in the Valley are proud of TVA and what it has done for our corner of the South, we don’t generally think of it as making a difference on a global scale. But some of TVA’s achievements have literally changed the way our planet looks from space. Beginning in the 1930s and continuing to the present day, TVA has been slowly erasing an old planetary scar that could once be seen from orbit.

Many people may not have heard of the Copper Basin. It’s hard to imagine that in moist, fertile southeastern Tennessee there was an area of more than 50 square miles – larger than many cities – that was described in Discover magazine as “the only bona fide desert east of the Mississippi.” It has been compared to the Dakota Badlands, the Gobi Desert and even the moon.

But the Copper Basin wasn’t a natural desert. During the time of Jackson and Crockett, it was a dense green forest drained by the Ocoee River, near where the states of Georgia and North Carolina meet Tennessee.

Then, in 1843, copper was discovered. By the 1850s, this patch of Polk County supported one of the largest copper mines in America. It wasn’t the mining itself that changed the land so drastically, but what was done to the copper ore afterward.

Through a process known as heap roasting, impurities – mostly sulfur – were burned away before the ore was shipped out. The area was too remote for fuel delivery by train, so workers cut down the trees. Over the next few decades, they felled every tree in sight. Then they dug up the stumps and burned them, too.

An Eternal Fog

Worse, sulfuric smoke hung over the basin like an eternal fog. Mules wore bells to avoid running into one another. Though acid rain wasn’t a known term in the 19th century, Polk County experienced it. Almost all the rain that fell was acidic, and soon the soil was too damaged to grow anything.

At one time, about 32,000 acres of land lay utterly bare – or close to it. Fifty inches of rain per year not only infused the ground with acid but began to wash it away altogether. The basin lost as much as five feet of topsoil. Birds and other wildlife disappeared. Long stretches of the Ocoee River, filled with acidic sediment, died.

By the time TVA officials got their first look at the Copper Basin in the 1930s, the destruction had been ongoing for 90 years and looked irreversible. TVA established a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the area, and millions of seedlings were planted – but most didn’t survive. The soil was still too acidic, where there was soil at all. Not even kudzu – the Japanese vine that overran other parts of the South – could grow in the Copper Basin.

After 30 years of replanting, Apollo astronauts in the 1960s could still use the scar in the Appalachians as a navigational aid. The three man-made marks on the planet said to be visible from space were the Great Wall of China, the pyramids of Egypt and the Copper Basin in Tennessee.

Continuing Erosion

TVA might have been excused for letting it be. But erosion in the Copper Basin continued to silt the Ocoee River. About half the land remained bare, and each of those acres was still losing nearly 200 tons of earth per year – enough to fill eight tractor-trailers. The silting posed a significant problem for TVA, which had three dams and reservoirs on the river.

By the 1980s, TVA reported that upstream erosion had caused a 25% decrease in the flood-storage capacity of the reservoir at Ocoee Dam No. 1. In 1984, TVA redoubled its efforts, working with private industry and other government agencies. The coalition launched a more vigorous reclamation effort using every tool available. The Cooperative Copper Basin Land Reclamation Project was underway.

Foresters identified both coniferous and hardwood trees that might survive in high-acid environments. Seeds and fertilizer were broadcast from helicopters, while workers on the ground planted seedlings. In selected areas, lime was added by the ton to reduce soil acidity.

TVA and its partners – including BIT Manufacturing and Bowater Pulp and Paper (now Resolute Forest Products) – bore the cost of the effort. Expenditures exceeded $500 per acre, but they paid off. The annual erosion rate dropped from nearly 200 tons per acre to just eight.

Songbirds Return

Today, most of the once-denuded land now provides watershed protection benefits. Aquatic life is rebounding in previously lifeless stretches of the Ocoee River. And after more than a century of absence, songbirds and other wildlife have returned.

The Copper Basin project has drawn global attention for improving the planet’s complexion. In 1996, the Ocoee hosted the whitewater competition of the Atlanta Olympic Games.

In 1998, the International Erosion Control Association honored the public-private partnership’s work with its Environmental Achievement Grand Award, accepted by TVA reclamation expert and field project leader Jack Muncy.

The restoration effort is now complete. But about 100 acres near the historic Burra Burra Mine have been left bare – as a reminder of what the Earth looks like when we fail to take care of it.