This is why I do what I do / the Endangered Species Act

This poem was read out loud to us in an Environmental Law class at UC Davis. It is written by Oliver A. Houck, called

The Fish and the Dam

This is the story about the fish and the dam
and the was hey started down in Tennessee
Such an unlikely pair.
On this side a fish so useless its defenders couldn´t find
one good reason to keep it around.
and on the other a dam so doubtful its boosters
never did talk about it.
Well, when mad Joch Brown marched on Harpers Ferry
we all ended up at Gettysburg
There are larger rhythms.
This one was coming, I think.

The fish has been with us since the Pleistocene,
since long before we were with us.
running its little shuttle in the Tennessee River.
It spawns in the shoals,
the eggs float a few miles downstream,
the small fry wriggle back up to spawn again and die.
They are a tiny secret;
like microbes, nobody knows they are there.
Twenty-five times we have dammed the River
we have broken up all of their shuttles but one,
we are coming now with number twenty-six
when...
What´s this in the water?
A three-inch fish that eats black snails?
A Snail Darter.

Tellico Dam squats undone across the Little Tennessee,
a jewel of running water in sweet farm country with
topsoils five feet black and deep.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is going to dam the River
and flood the farms for another jolt of electric power
in a region already crackling with electric power.
This is what TVA knows how to do.
So when TVA learns about the Snail Darter,
it does what it knows:
it speeds up construction of Tellico Dam.

The Environmental Biggies are in agony.
The for first time in the history of the country,
in the histroy of the world,
they have a law that protects endangered species.
The law is untested, here comes Tellico, and the terrain
could not be worse.
No national Eagle, no heartbreaking Swan.
A three-inch fish,
an gly fish with a Plain Jane name
(why couldn´t they have called it the "Roosevelt Darter"?)
a fish nobody ever heard about and a dam forty,
no, fifty percent complete and building fast.
It is such an easy test to lose, and a loss will sink them all:
the Whooper, the Grizzly and the great Gray Whale.
And if the case should win -
just if -
there is always that lean and hungry Congress
so ready to undo any law
that stands in the way of funneling public money back home
Wildlife, Sierra, Audobon are wringing their hands.
Whatever happens, keep it in Tennessee.

The Cherokee Indian
rose to power on the River in a tow called Tonasse.
Proud people, our
comrades in arms in 1776,
we took their name and made it Tennessee
and sent them packing on the Trail of Tears
to a land like the moon, Oklahoma.
The townsite remained, like a poster from
last year´s circus.
But no law protects Indian lands
from the waters behind the dams;
few laws have teeth like the Endangered Species Act.
Tellico will flood the Cherokee birthplace.
Bury my heart at Tonasse.

Zygmunt B. Plater should have been a preacher,
like John Brown.
Instead he is teaching law in Tennessee
when the Snail Darter is discovered.
The Darter is endangered.
The law is strict and fundamental:
Thou shalt not kill an endangered species.
That is all there is to it, and while the mighty armies
of the environmental stall and debate in camp,
Zygmunt Plater marches to Knoxville courthouse
and starts the endangered species war.

The President of the United States favors the Darter
He has floated down rivers like the Little Tennesse,
dipped his face in te water to cool;
he has fished in them, farmed alongside them and fought dams
all over Georgia.
like Zygmunt Plater, he could be a preacher.
there is right and there is wrong.
The Darter is right.
His environmental advisors agree: Drop the Dam, they tell hi.
But the President is not the only man from Georgia in the web.
His Budget Maestro, Mr. Lande, has just left under a cloud
and his Attorney General, Mr. Bell, is skirting asmaller ones
ont of his own making.
Integrity is at stake, Mr. Bell tells the President.
We must defend the case as lawyers.
Let the Court decide.
No political influences, no more Watergates.
He is sincere and he prevailes

The Attorney General of the United States will take
personal command of the case.
His presence elevates the contest, but he carries a handicap.
he will present a split brief to the Supreme Court.
It will contain both the argument in favor of the Dam
and the argument for the Darter, written bu the President´s
Environmental Men, attached as an appendix but
as visible as a second head.
It is an unusual brief, and it will confuse the court.

Meanwhile Senator Howard Baker is on the hot seat.
Why do these things always seem to happen in Tennesse?
Only last January it was Overon Park in Memphis.
His highway people wanter so much to pave Overton Park;
wouldn´t Senator Baker change the law for them?
Three months later, Tellico Dam.
Now Senator Baker cares about the environment.
he sponsored the Clean Water Act and delivered it sound.
But TVA is big business back home
and Senatore Baker´s party cares about big business.
Yet People care about endangered species too.
You simply don´t charge out and kill them,
not if you´re running for President.
Senator Baker quietly draws up a bill and prayss
the Supreme Court will make this one go away.

Early on the morning of the argument the
Attorney General leaves his office,
leaves the room with the nine-foot standard holding
the American flag,
a polished hardwood standard topped by
the American Bald Eagle, poised in shining brass,
wings spread to attack, beak in full scream.

The Attorney General rises to make his point.
This is the moment.
he holds up a bottle containing a yellowish liquid and
a small fish, a dead Snail Darter.
This is what this case is all about, he says.
This little thing in the bottle.
The rest of his argument is not remembered.

Zygmunt B Plater is a lean mad with dark eyes.
He delivers his argument in a passionate whisper.
He will speak the same way in a taxi or on the telephone,
but the Court does not know this.
Mr. Justice Powell can take it no longer.
He is a southener too, an outdoorsman and a practical man -
within a month he will write a stirring defense for
the fish, beasts and fowl in the forests -
but he has seen the fish in the bottle.
He leans down from te bench to question.
What earthly good is the Snail Darter?
Can you use it for bait? Can you eat it for supper?

The Chief Justice of the United States
carries his responsibilities heavily.
He must uphold the law, but he´d like to also uphold those
conservative principles for which he was appointed.
His dilemma, too, is painful.
The Snail Darter is clearly de minimis, and a symbol
of the very misty-eyed liberalism he has spent
a distinguished career opposing.
It is just as clearly protected by law.
The Chief Justice will uphold the law,
but his opinion will convey both messages.
The law wins, but it is surely an ass.
Your baby, Congress. Change it.

It is the turn of the Senate to panic.
They have created a monster - a very popular law
that could get in the way of all those highway projects
and dams and canals and military bases
that are the very gears and grease of
getting reelecter in America.
A Congresman from Tennessee proposes amendments to
strike endangered species from the protected list,
all eighty or so, one by one.
A Senator from Idaho proposes to legislate between species, those that are important, and those that are not.
Senator iBaker is the voice of reason.
here is the way out - if someone has to decide these things,
let it not be someone who will then have to stand for election:
We´ll set up a committee of bureaucrats.
A statesmanlike compromise, says the Washington Post.
An Extermination Committee, say others.
The Senate approves, 94-3.

The Adminstration makes a late gambit.
S. David Freeman is the new Chairman of TVA,
an articulate scientist,
an independent thinker,
President Carter´s man.
He comes to testify on Capitol Hill.
Tellico Dam need not wipe out the Darter, he says.
Or that prime farmland.
I will find a better alternative to Tellico, he says.
This is unwelcome news, indeed.
Congress doesn´t care about Tellico, ot its alternatives;
Congress is thinking about all the other dams and highways...
Mr. Freeman falls on deaf ears.
For now the battle has passed him by.

The scene shifts to the House of Representatives,
the big jungle,
where small squads and solo aces, snipers and kamikazes
skirmish and no one knows who is winning.
Proposals to amend the Act rise like rockets
to explode and disappear,
exemptions for Tellico, exemptions for fish.
There is no House proposal and time is runing out.
House members are running out, running for reelection,
running for the telephone, running on pills,
voting at midnight, voting on taxes, bombers and houseing,
voting on instinct, swaps and nods from aides in the aisles,
from lobbyists in the wings, leaders on the floor...
What bill is this?
What day is this?
In the midst of it all the Endangered Species Act
quietly expires.
Its authorization has simply run out.
There is no endangered species law.
My God, let´s pass something!

The madcap session is over.
The 95th Congress has adjourned and left behind
its cut-´n-paste legacy for endangered species:
Everybody´s Idea for Taming the Wild Act:
hearings, hurdles and a Committee of Seven, with the life-or-death call on
darters, wolves and other obstacles.
And at the bottom of the package, neatly wrapped,
a special deal for Tellico to:
Unless the Committee rules for the Darter in sixty days
the bug gates close, Darter be damned.

And so the buck passes for the last time
to the Magnificent Seven, men of stone and dollars...
the Secretary of the Army, the President´s Economic Advisor...
men not known to bleed easily over small creatures hanging
on the fringe of life.
They sit for their decision on a high public stage,
three large flags behind them,
looking at the balance sheet.
Now for the first time ever Tellico Dam stands stripped
of its promotional hoo-haw, its costs exposed
like old lovers and bad checks,
damning,
cumulative,
unmistakable.
Who will speak for this (turkey), asks
the Army Secretary, hopefully (his agency builds dams too).
But no one does.
It is the Economic Advisor who delivers the coup:
I move no exemption for Tellico, he says,
it´s a lousy investment.
The vote is quick. The room is large,
but from the back you can catch
a glint from the top of the flagpoles,
the three eagles in lacquered brass.
Over the rush of the crowd, if you close your eyes,
you can hear them faintly screaming.

Stories like this should have an end,
but that same evening
Senator Baker of Tennessee loses his head.
He reacts by condemning the Committee of Seven
(has he forgotten whose idea it was?)
and announcing a new bill to exempt the Tellico Dam. ...
Stories like this should have an end,
but they rarely do.