To the Editor:
When my Needmore neighbors and I began working in 2000 to protect 4,500 acres from development, we never imagined that 26 years later we would be fighting Duke Energy over our own private property.
Duke Energy acquired 4,500 acres along the Little Tennessee River when it bought a local independent utility in 1988. The land had originally been purchased at low prices from residents of Swain and Macon counties for a dam project on the Little Tennessee that was never built.