To the Editor:

How ironic that over the past couple of weeks, more than one headline has proclaimed Duke’s power over the people of Jackson County. Duke’s insistence on removing the Dillsboro dam is now coupled with its recent announcement of a rate hike. Maybe the papers should run one big headline to cover all of the Duke news, “Duke: all take and no give.”

The Dillsboro dam is part of Jackson County’s cultural landscape. Now with a plan to develop a riverside park, it is even more important to save the dam. How perfect it would be to have a small beach below the dam where children could swim and paddlers could put in canoes and kayaks.

I am a paddler myself and truly don’t understand the support proposed by those supposedly representing this group. If the river were truly navigable and one wanted to actually use it for transport, well then I could see the point. But most everyone who paddles for recreation puts in at one spot on the river and takes out farther downstream. Being able to put in at the dam and paddle to Barker’s Creek is a popular run (paddlers now put in under the 441 bridge).

The same could be said for the upper Tuck. To a paddler, the dam presents a challenge the same way a stretch of shallow water means that you’d have to get out and pull your canoe. This is common all along the river, so the dam is no more or no less an obstacle than any other stretch of shallow bottom.

I wholeheartedly disagree with Sam Fowlkes and Mark Singleton who wrote lengthy letters criticizing county commissioners for their use of eminent domain to claim the dam.

On the contrary, I am proud that we have elected commissioners who have county citizens’ welfare in mind. Yes, we should listen to Duke’s side of this story, but the decision whether the dam should stay or go should not be Duke’s to make. Too many of the news “reports” read like a Duke corporate press releases. Most quote Fred Alexander extensively. Alexander is Duke’s district manager for government and business relations (read public relations). This is a man whose full-time job is to convince you and I that what Duke wants is what we want.

A recent article quoted Alexander as saying, “It’s very puzzling to Duke why the county wants to condemn and pay us for our property at Dillsboro?” Come on, have you been listening at all?

I say THANKS to Commissioners Cowan, Shelton, Jones, and McMahan. And to Sam Fowlkes, who was “appalled” at Commissioner Cowan’s remark that he would give his all to support the right of Jackson County citizens to determine their own future and not relinquish that right to Duke. Let’s be glad that Fowlkes was not around during the American Revolution, I am sure he would have tried to shame Patrick Henry as well.

Anna Fariello

Cullowhee