SHERWOOD V. TVA: RESULTS OF SECOND APPEAL

It isn’t often that a United States District Court is reversed twice in the same case, but that is exactly what has happened. The Sixth Circuit again ruled in our favor, reversing the District Court. The issues were simple. After the first appeal, TVA claimed that it had suspended the 15-foot rule (clear-cutting its entire right-of-way) and reverted to its prior practices. These prior practices included leaving its historic buffer zones at the edges of the right-of-way. We knew that TVA was not telling the truth. We knew that it was continuing with the 15-foot rule, continuing to remove the historic buffer zones and continuing to cut down virtually all of the trees in the right-of-way. For example we knew that TVA was clear-cutting its entire right-of-way at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in Tennessee and Kentucky, eliminating the historic buffer zone from one end to the other. To prove the point, we hired a private plane, a pilot, and a video camera operator to fly the entire 31-mile right-of-way. The result was undeniable video evidence that TVA had clear-cut the right-of-way from one end to the other, including vast numbers of 50-100-year old trees, leaving a 31-mile path of destruction plainly visible from the air.