The realities of the darter’s case, author Zygmunt Plater asserts, have been consistently mischaracterized in politics and the media. His book, The Snail Darter and the Dam, offers a detailed account of the six-year crusade against a pork-barrel project that made no economic sense and was flawed from the start. In reality TVA’s project was designed for recreation and real estate development. And at the heart of the little group fighting the project in the courts and Congress were family farmers trying to save their homes and farms, most of which were to be resold in a corporate land development scheme. Plater’s gripping tale of citizens navigating the tangled corridors of national power stimulates important questions about our nation’s governance, and at last sets the snail darter’s record straight.
Plater is professor of law and director of the Land & Environmental Law Program at Boston College Law School. He chaired the State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission’s Legal Research Task Force, is lead author of an environmental law casebook, and has participated in numerous citizen environmental initiatives. He will appear at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge, on Tuesday, November 5, beginning at 7 pm. Telephone 617-491-2220 for more information.
