Pedestrian access to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Fontana Dam begins with a metal turnstile, then a long stretch of sidewalk. Suffocating humidity marked my July 27 entry. The tour required long pants as a safety measure, and I was sweating by the time we entered the building.
But the interior, featuring three massive generators churning water to create electricity, took my attention from this predicament. The hydropower generated here is enough to keep the phones charged and lights shining for 210,000 households. In other words, the 480-foot Fontana Dam, the tallest in the eastern United States, is far from archaic more than 81 years post-construction.
It appears apt that the tour, constituting of a handful of reporters and a select few non-press invitees, was held in commemoration of America 250. The dam is inextricably linked to this region’s history, which reemerges even as TVA looks to turn the page.
A public power company born from 1930s New Deal policy, TVA built Unified Development of the Tennessee River System dams across eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. Locations were targeted based on several positive factors: rural communities with extra power needs, a predisposition to flooding, significant deficits, few public services and within a reasonable transmission distance from electricital stations. Because the land that would become Fontana Lake possessed many of these qualities and, given the urgency of the wartime effort, TVA flooded it in service of hydropower. The new lake inundated several small towns, reducing Swain County’s population by 25% and displacing 1,311 families. In a region as small and family-oriented as Western North Carolina, any mention of the dam, even now, can feel personal to those whose ancestors were affected. Because 48% of all U.S. lakes are manmade, wherever a dam sits upon a reservoir, it’s not unreasonable to assume the existence of other concrete. The remnants of ghost towns lurk just below the surface of not only Fontana Lake but also many of North Carolina’s most beautiful waterbodies, among them Lake Lure, Lake Glenville, Falls Lake, Jordan Lake, Roanoke Rapids Lake and Lake Norman.
Indeed, I grew up swimming in Falls and Jordan lakes, and yet only when researching this story did I learn that each has a darker history. In addition to human-centric impacts, dams, by altering river flow, trapping sediment and changing water quality, can pose a significant risk to wildlife and the surrounding environment.
From 1994-2022, ecological health scores of Fontana Reservoir — consistently at the upper end of the “fair” range from 58 to 73 — appear slightly above average compared to all TVA waterbodies . Impoundments in the lower basin of the Little Tennessee River have fragmented native biodiversity but haven’t significantly harmed each isolated habitat. Hydropower might be less harmful to the environment than the likes of fossil fuels, but impoundment is not a carbon neutral activity. Reservoirs produce methane and more greenhouse gases than natural lakes. Combined with myriad other side effects and the poor shape of much of the country’s century-old infrastructure, it’s no wonder dam removals, though pricey and time-consuming, are gaining traction across the United States.
The fight is often led by Indigenous communities, for which damming — human control over water, positioned as a “taming,” “civilizing” project — threatened cultural land and sovereignty. For an example close to home, one can look to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who’ve spearheaded Ela Dam Coalition’s fight for removal; a free-flowing Oconaluftee River would improve species’ habitat and facilitate a stronger relationship to ancestral homelands.
Of course, it was clear throughout the tour that from an economic, natural disaster-related or simply practical standpoint, Fontana Dam is not a contender for removal. Many original components of the dam, like the control scheme behind the generators, have continued to endure.
“We’ve added all to it, made it more computerized, but it still works exactly the same way as it did in 1945,” said Plant Manager Eric Hamby.
The main building’s aesthetics were given a similar level of consideration. Tree rings were stenciled onto its walls, superficially turning concrete into wood.
Perhaps the best example of what has changed over time was a set of steel tools labelled “display only.” Once used to work on the generators, the equipment was long ago replaced by a button. As for what had instigated the transition, Hamby credited the 1971 establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Accordingly, TVA spokesman Scott Fiedler unhooked and passed along a wrench bigger than my forearm. Our final destination was a small, chilly tunnel within the dam itself, a stark contrast to the blinding sunlight and muggy air just beyond the door. Hamby joked that, had he any say in the matter, this space would be his new office. This climate, he explained, was the product of a necessary engineering feat during construction.
Because workers started building the dam in January 1942, with a strict and ambitious deadline of January 1945, concrete was rapidly cured, generating structure-compromising heat. To lower the temperature, they embedded pipes carrying cool Fontana Lake water — which surrounded us — into the drying mixture. (Construction finished up ahead of schedule, in November 1944.)
Gumdrop lights lined the ceiling, bathing the group in an amber glow. We watched water pool in corners; the invisible lake roared.
“It’s humid, and don’t stick your hands into the holes. There might be critters out here,” Hamby warned. I witnessed only one, albeit long laid to rest: a calcified winged insect. Before leaving, I inquired about the dam’s impact: Who benefits, and which regions are served? Hamby explained that since TVA is a government-owned entity — meaning it does not have shareholders nor operate primarily to maximize profit — electricity is not sold directly to retail customers. While the three generators can power 210,000 homes, that figure is based not on empirical data but rather electricity production metrics and average household electricity usage.
In reality, TVA sells its power either at wholesale to shareholder-owned utilities such as Duke Energy or, less often, directly to large industrial customers.
“Most of the time, our power goes out to your local cooperative, and then that’s where you get your power,” he said.
Even company executives have no way of knowing which individual homes receive the power. Hamby told me Fontana Dam has few direct customers, Fontana Village among them.
That total doesn’t include high-impact industries that, for instance, might be powered by Duke Energy with TVA-produced electricity. Fontana Dam was, in fact, originally built to directly serve the Aluminum Company of America, a war industry producer, and Oak Ridge, a Tennessee weapons-making facility located about 20 miles west of Knoxville. The most populous of three primary Manhattan Project locations, Oak Ridge required the displacement of 3,000 rural eastern Tennesseans.
It housed massive uranium enrichment facilities that would supply the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The site also piloted X-10, the first ever plutonium production reactor, paving the way for industrial-scale plutonium production — and the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
Oak Ridge is still in operation; Y-12 National Security Complex, located onsite, is building a new Uranium Processing Facility dubbed “one of the largest construction projects in Tennessee history” — with, in 2024, a projected $10.3 billion price tag. A $5 billion uranium enrichment site, also at Oak Ridge, has a forecasted completion date of April 30, 2027. It will undergo an expedited review process thanks to Trump Executive Order 14300.
On Aug. 4, Oak Ridge was named an American Energy Hub, a title that earned praise from Department of Energy Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. That day, the complex announced 70 acres of land acquisition, positioning it as a major part of what the DOE is touting a “nuclear renaissance.”
Even when not used in weapons-making, nuclear power nonetheless poses essential problems. It releases carbon through construction and demolition; requires uranium mining, a dangerous and environmentally destructive practice that also releases carbon, and generates high-level radioactive waste, which poses dangers to humans as it decays, an essentially forever-long process.
TVA signed a memorandum of understanding with the Biden administration’s DOE to supply the complex with 100% carbon pollution free electricity by 2030. The possibility that Fontana Dam powers Oak Ridge remains.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has directed TVA to reverse course and instead of pursuing renewable energy, pour its resources into fossil fuels and nuclear. Gas and coal plants slated for closure have been renewed. Several nuclear projects near Oak Ridge are in progress, bolstered by a December 2025 DOE grant of $400 million.
If the nation’s largest public energy provider continues moving in this direction, a body of research points to accelerated climate change, worsening all kinds of natural disasters — droughts included.
I keep circling back to Hamby’s quip about what happens when calcium minerals are deposited by water.
“We haven’t measured [the dam] in a while,” he said. “It could be 481 feet, but it’s growing.” I interpreted his words to mean just as time keeps moving, cycling through seasons regardless of human intervention, so too does the natural world.
During drawdowns, a receding Fontana Reservoir sometimes yields to the highest rooftops of a ghost town called Judson. But in many lakes, we’re starting to learn that all it takes to make the past visible is drought.