Interview with Ben Jaco, October 31, 2017

MUMMERT: --Uh--the following is an oral history interview conducted as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority Retirees Association Oral History Pilot Project. The person being interviewed is Ben Jaco.[1] Mr. Jaco is a retiree of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). He worked at--uh--the Tennessee Valley Authority for 33 years between 1955 and 1988. He is being interviewed by Philip Mummert as part of the Pilot Oral History Project. The interview location is the Knox County Public Library, Fountain City Branch, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Tuesday, October 31st, 2017. The interview is now beginning. Well, good morning Mr. Jaco.

JACO: Good morning, Phil.

MUMMERT: --Uh--thanks for doing this. I'm going to begin by asking you--uh--what--uh-- were the circumstances that led to your being 00:01:00hired at TVA.

JACO: Well, I came to work for TVA at a time, in--in the fisheries field, when fisheries for fresh water in the United States, other than trout, was just beginning. There had been almost no people who had ever worked on reservoirs because reservoirs were always brand new. The Corps of Engineers had built some and TVA was in the process of finishing some. And it was a new time and so there was nothing really to go by. We had no--and I came to TVA as one of the very early people working in aquatic ecology. My--my field was fisheries at that time. And I came to work for an outfit that was--that had fish and wildlife people. And we had a total of eight people throughout the Valley. And I replaced a guy that was--was moving up because the boss retired.

MUMMERT: And that in--in--uh--1955--uh-- most of the TVA--uh--lakes 00:02:00and reservoirs had been--uh--impounded. So, they were--some of them were brand new, I suppose and others were--had been around for maybe decade or so?

JACO: It had--it had gradually grown and--and my particular operation had two major offices. One in Norris, Tennessee, that took care of all the reservoirs from Chattanooga east and one in Decatur, Alabama, that took care of what happened in TVA reservoirs from Chattanooga west. And it was--was an interesting time. We--at the time I came to work, I touched base with my boss once a week. He called me on Monday morning to find out what I did last week and what I was going to do this week.

MUMMERT: Now, did you--uh--want to work at TVA? Did you seek them out or did they come to find you?

JACO: No, at the time, I wanted to work for TVA because I had worked for Mississippi and had done graduate work on two Corps of Engineers 00:03:00reservoirs in--in Mississippi and was working for the Mississippi Game and Fish Commission at the time. And TVA was in the process of expanding and all the states surround were in the process of expanding. The Congress had just recently passed two bills of legislation. One which allowed taxes on wildlife supplies, guns, ammunitions, and so forth, known as the Pittman-Robinson Bill. And the fisheries had a similar bill called the Dingell-Johnson Bill that put taxes on fishing tackle, and this was providing a great deal of money for the states. And all the states were expanding their fish and game operation, and as well--all the Valley states were at that time were hiring. And so, everything was new.

MUMMERT: Did--uh--TVA get any of those revenues?

JACO: No, it--it was all--all went to the state. TVA had a group of people that were basically hired to take care of the responsibility of TVA reservoirs, and we--then and now--didn't have any trouble saying fish, and game, 00:04:00and the resources belonged to the state. And our job was to stand between TVA and the state to be sure there was good communication going both ways.

MUMMERT: What--uh--was or is the responsibility of TVA when it comes to fisheries?

JACO: Good question. TVA has whatever responsibility that they want to place on themselves as to what their requirements are. But it also requires that we deal directly with the states, who own the resources, and with the Federal government, who--who dictate migratory stuff like waterfowl. But TVA changes so much happened in the streams.We changed all the flow of the streams, we changed the dissolved oxygen, in the stream, and this job stands to be sure TVA protects the states and that we are protected within TVA. It's what we do.

MUMMERT: And that change you referred to was because of the dams being built?

JACO: Because of the dams being built. And--not only the dams being built, but the annual flow of the reservoirs w--were changed entirely because the dams could fluctuate it. Otherwise, it would have been spring floods and fall drawdowns.

MUMMERT: So, what--uh--what kind of issues were there when you just began at TVA? --Uh--what--uh--were the challenges in--in these new reservoirs when it came to the fisheries?

JACO: Phil, when I began, we didn't really know what the challenges were. It was so new that a great deal of our original work was to go out and find out what the challenges were--find out what kind of population of fish and wildlife and vegetation, all the conditions under which they lived. None of those things were well known and some of them were not known at all. And so, we spent a great deal of our time out finding out what was happening in the reservoirs and 00:06:00what was there to happen too.

MUMMERT: Do you have any interesting stories about what you found or maybe--uh--?

JACO: I--I--I have a lot of interesting stories about what we found. But, basically, we didn't find anything that was--was unusual except that we really didn't know it was there to begin with. For instance, we--we had collections of fish and wildlife that had been made back in the 1930s by people from University of--uh--Missouri excuse me I mean University of Michigan and places like that. We had specimens shelves in glass bottles. But we really didn't know what all was in the reservoirs and what proportionate. You know, if you wanted to talk about a particular fish, how many of those fish were in a reservoir and where were they? We didn't know any of those things.

MUMMERT: And I guess--uh--you didn't have much informations to figure 00:07:00out--uh--what impacts the dams had on the river then.

JACO: And--and nobody at that time--I shouldn't say nobody but, at that time, people didn't really care. They didn't know that they should care. We had plenty of fish and wildlife and nobody worried much about it. And--and one of the--the state game and fish commissions up until that time, that dictated things, mostly dictated the laws towards harvesting or protecting something. They didn't have much information either.

MUMMERT: When you began--uh--you worked--uh--across the Tennessee Valley or did you spend most of your time in one particular area dealing with a--uh--say a few reservoirs?

JACO: My area of responsibility was from Chattanooga downstream, though I did get called to come into East Tennessee on a number of occasions. One thing I can remember that I spent a good deal of time in East Tennessee was 00:08:00they were building a new reservoir on the Little Tennessee River. And it was--actually, it was an Alcoa reservoir. And so we had to come in and everything was changing. We didn't really know at that time that when we built Fontana Reservoir, Fontana Reservoir was going to stratify, that is, the top water was going to continue to flow through, and the bottom water was going to be impounded and stay there for long periods of time and get very cold and there would very little dissolved oxygen. It was it--some sort of saying. So, when we came in to build this particular reservoir, we had to go all the way back into the tributary streams in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and try to find out what was left. And we finally decided the thing to do was just to eradicate the population of fish that were there and start over. And that's what we did, and I came up and helped with that. And that's Chilhowee Reservoir today.

MUMMERT: When--uh--when you went out to try to first discover what was there, what--uh--did people in the fisheries field do to--to try to get answers or try to get information?

JACO: Phil--. We primarily relied at that time on two things. One, nets of various sorts. Go out and see what we could net in the way of fisheries. And the other there is a plant called derris. And if the roots were powdered and--and dissolved in water, and then put back in the water in a diluted form, they kill fish. And so we'd go into certain areas, maybe a cove that had one acre in it. And we'd kill all the fish in it, pick them all up, and weigh them and measure them, classify them, and--and diversify them and see what we had. Those were the two major tools that we had.

MUMMERT: How did you--how do you spell the name of that plant?

JACO: D-e-r-r-i-s. Derris.

MUMMERT: Okay. The--uh-- so you--you began to become more educated 00:10:00though about what was--

JACO: Ev--everyday was an education. Everything was new.

MUMMERT: So, you recorded the information as you were going on.

JACO: Recording what kind of fish we had, what the distribution of those fish and sizes were. We measured each one of them as far as length and we weighed them all.

MUMMERT: In those days--uh--did the states have--uh--provide you with much help? Or were you--was TVA--?

JACO: Always. We never worked without state people. We--we considered the resource to belong to the state. And everything was coordinated before we went, while we were there, and on the records after we got through, they were all shared.

MUMMERT: What would the states' responsibility be though? --Uh--doing the same sort of--uh--research work or?

JACO: The same sort of research work, but the state is basically responsible for the preservation and management of these resources. Not TVA. TVA 00:11:00manages the streams, but the state manage the reservoir and we tried to work very closely with them.

MUMMERT: And the states--uh--did they always work well with TVA or was there a little bit of friction there because TVA was new and different?

JACO: Not always. Anytime you have two groups of people working together, you have some friction. But, generally speaking, the friction was more personality conflicts than what we were going to do and how we did it. And at that time, most of the states had never had technical people. They had what they called game wardens, and--and they were a form of policemen. And so they were all just as new as we were. We all started out together.

MUMMERT: --Uh--we've been talking--uh--uh--about fisheries. What about--uh--uh--land wildlife? Did you--uh--have anything to do with that?

JACO: We--we did have to do with that, but most of the land, TVA-owned marginal lands around some of their reservoirs. We actually did own some other 00:12:00land that I won't get into because I'm not too familiar--phosphate lands in Florida, where we mined phosphate for fertilizer. We didn't deal with those lands, so I don't really know how they were handled. But the land--the margin around the reservoirs was--was--what we worried more about anything else was vectors, ticks and that sort of thing. The state also worried about what was going on. But, we did do certain things--uh--. We tried to re-establish some stuff. There's a big peninsula in Norris Reservoir that at that time was given to the State of Tennessee to be shared by their game and fish people and their forestry people. We did manage to re-stock deer on there. We did some things like that in the early days. And we worked directly with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on migratory waterfowl and they had several big refuges in the Tennessee Valley for migratory waterfowl. But, on the marginal lands, 00:13:00other than just small things, we didn't do much.

MUMMERT: Now--uh--could you give me a--uh--an--a--a thumbnail sketch of your whole TVA career? --Uh--just--uh--what different positions you had and was it always in Fish and Wildlife?

JACO: No, I came to work as an aquatic ecologist, a--a fisheries biologist, and ended up much later as an aquatic ecologist, as--as our knowledge of things grew. But I started off being responsible for the fisheries and wildlife in the western half of the Valley, from Chattanooga down. Later traded with a man who was responsible for the east half of the Valley. We traded so that we'd both know the whole Valley. And then I finally was brought to Senior Biologist, and then Assistant Branch Chief, then finally for a while a stay as 00:14:00Branch Chief, but--but just a temporary sort of thing. But we--we've--in our latter days, we had several reorganizations. We also inherited the people that were responsible for the all the vectors in TVA. The people that were responsible for the control. We--we did a lot of planning for things in the latter days, like the Land Between The Lakes and that sort thing. We really took part in a lot of that sort of thing. I'm not really sure what I can tell you about what we did, but all of our business expanded. The nuclear generation came along and we grew from an outfit that had 10 to 12 people in two years to an outfit that had 88 technical people. We just exploded over that.

MUMMERT: Now--uh--and why was that?

JACO: It--it--primarily, it had to do with the effect that nuclear plants were gonna to have on--on fisheries and on the other aquatic plants and 00:15:00insects, that are known as plankton, if you will. But it also had to do with protecting TVA from what people say these things might do. One of the things, probably not a good time to talk about it Phil--but it should be mentioned here somewhere. That we realized that when we built nuclear plants, we realized that when we built coal-fired steam plants to begin with, that when we pulled the water through the plant to--to cool the plants, we heated the water. And that heated water came out in the old plants at about 10 degrees above normal temperature. A 10-degree change can have a lot of effect on what goes on in the water. And so we--we worked with that sort of thing. And then we had to bring in people to monitor the effects of that to be sure because, at the same time with nuclear generation came along, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency ) came along. And the Environmental Protection Agency had certain things that we'd never had to deal with before. So, we had to deal with all those 00:16:00things to be sure we met what we were supposed to meet. And then water quality standards came along about at that same time, and we had to be sure--sure we met state water quality standards. So, a lot of things changed.

MUMMERT: Well, I'm going to take one of these changes one at a time. Let's take--uh--the--uh--period when coal plants were first introduced. --Uh--I guess TVA would take the in--the initiative to be--uh--concerned about what the impacts might be? Or was there some Federal or state impetus.

JACO: As near as I could tell, TVA was always interested in whatever effect anything new happened on that they did. When I came to work at TVA, they were still--I'll use the word "suffering"--under the Eisenhower Administration that had told them to quit building coal-fired steam plant. No more fossil plants. And so, the--what's now the Johnsonville Steam Plant sat there half 00:17:00completed. It had a great four story tall, corrugated tin wall on one end where the second unit was supposed to have gone in, we called that the Eisenhower wall. But we were--we had certain plans, but we were at that time just at a stopping place with coal-fired plants. Widows Creek was just beginning.

MUMMERT: Widows Creek is in Northern Alabama?

JACO: Yes, in Northern Alabama. Excuse me, Paradise Steam Plant is out in Western Ken--Tennessee. I mean excuse me--I--I. Excuse me, let me--let me get my--. The Johnsonville Steam Plant is in West Tennessee. That was the one that had the Eisenhower wall. And the guy who later became responsible for all of TVA's construction and the head of that was named George Kimmons. George was still out there fur--figuring out how he could get that plant built.

MUMMERT: Well, when the--uh--the coal plants were built, or maybe 00:18:00even--even before--uh--monitoring the impacts of--uh--operating coal plants on the river, was that something new to the nation? And was TVA a leader in that or would that have been something that everybody was doing?

JACO: TVA was one of the early pioneers in coal-fired steam plants. We had no idea what effect they were going to have. And of course, I fell off on the water, but I was also part of the Forestry Division that realized at that time that the effluence from the stacks. That is the stack gas from the burning coal was also having some effect on forests around. They didn't know what that was, but they thought we ought to find out. And so, we had a lot of that sort of thing going on. But, TVA was a real pioneer in this and continued to build st--uh--coal-fired steam plants at a later date. And--and had coal-fired steam plants all over the Valley, and we ultimately realized that 00:19:00what we call stack gas was having some effect. And we built a--a super tall e--effluent stack, if you will, in one of our plants. And at that time, Mr. A.J. Wagner was Chairman of the TVA Board and--and we called that the Wagner stack, so.

MUMMERT: And that was the higher they were, the more--?

JACO: The idea being that we could disperse it further. And--uh--in fact, it was dispersed very far. Some of the stack gas that came out of that stack went far outside the Tennessee Valley.

MUMMERT: So, long before--uh--there was--uh--Federal requirements for environmental impact statements, you were doing environmental impact work?

JACO: I was doing a lot of environmentally impact work.

MUMMERT: And you had to come up with the--probably the methods yourself and think about how to best get the information that was needed.

JACO: In my field, almost everything we did we were--we were the pioneers. In--in reservoir fisheries, TVA is probably the pioneers in most of it.

MUMMERT: Now, did that--did other utilities--uh--were they interested in the kind of work you were doing?

JACO: Yes, but not to the extent that we were. --Uh--I know the old Southern Corporation that I knew some of the people in very well--they had Mississippi Power & Light, Arkansas Power & Light, and Louisiana Power & Light. They--they--they did what they had to do, but they--they had pretty basic things they did in the early days. The only other one I can think of that--that got in it early and probably had a real--real interest in it was Duke Power Company. We--in the early days, we were able to--particularly when we first got out of the coal-fired and into nuclear plant, we did a lot of cooperation with Duke because they were doing some of the same things.

MUMMERT: --Uh--what period of time are we talking about, between when 00:21:00TVA first built a coal-fired plant and--and built pretty much--uh--its last one?

JACO: Phil, I'm not sure when TVA--.

MUMMERT: Was that after you started or before?

JACO: No, they--they--they were--they were just really starting the coal-fired steam plants when I came.

MUMMERT: So that was in the 1950s when they began.

JACO: 50s and--and--they--they built on up until the nuclear generation came in in the 1980s. And at that time, we were still completing Paradise Steam Plant, which was, the last, of as far as I know, the last one that we built.

MUMMERT: So, let's go to the nuclear generation. That's when you said your staff increased to how many, or the fish & wildlife people?

JACO: Wh--we--we, multiple, multiple times. I know we--we at one time had almost 100 people in our branch. And that's unheard of for us. 00:22:00Because most of those things, all of them had special things. We had another--the office that we had had, that I started out in, in Decatur, Alabama, we moved to Wilson Dam to be part of the whole TVA concept down there. And they were c--closely associated with--with another branch that had come along called Water Quality, that was associated with water--to water. And it--it was a new and different time in the 1980s. But, we still had an interest in coal-fired plants and then we finally just kind of dropped it and we got deeply involved with nuclear plants. And--and then nuclear plants became very controversial, even within TVA, and, as everybody knows now, we got in the process of building some and had to stop right in the middle of that. And environmental matters got to be very, very important and we had lots of environmental things to deal with. And we-- we had lots of things going on.

MUMMERT: --Um--what were those environmental things or issues with the--with the nuclear?

JACO: All sorts of issues. All sorts of nuclear, but from our standpoint, our basic interest in what was happening to the temperature of the water and any dissolve gas changes that might be taking place because of the heated water. And whether or not TVA could adjust the total flow of the river to do things like cool the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant which was in Alabama. Did you--do--do you have a right to let--to change the whole river flow to be sure you have enough cool water there all the time? Those sort of things we had to deal with to try to figure out what to do.

MUMMERT: But those sorts of ideas were--were--uh--quite novel, unknown, and also--but also the--it was the TVA--uh--dam system that enabled you to even think about them as possibilities.

JACO: The dam system and, at that time, TVA had what we called an engineering lab that modeled almost everything we did. And the engineering lab had to do things like figure if you wanted to deliver a constant source of cool water to Browns Ferry while the--Nuclear Plant while the generators are running, how much and how long and at what time do you release it from Fontana Reservoir or Norris Reservoir in time to flow down the system through the other dams? All those things had to be figured out.

MUMMERT: For the person that's--uh--listening to this interview or reading it--uh--let's give them some distances here. Because, we're talking about Fontana, which is in North Carolina and Norris Dam which is north of--uh--Knoxville in East Tennessee. But--uh--Browns Ferry is way down in Northern Alabama. So--uh--what, 300 miles?

JACO: At least, and the rivers that--that Norris is on and the river 00:25:00that Fontana Dam on are two entirely separate watersheds that enter the Tennessee River at a different place. And so, all of that has to be scaled and modeled--and mathematically modeled. And I guess one of the great blessings that all of this happened about the same time that computers happened. Otherwise, we'd of never figured it out.

MUMMERT: But it was figured out and what was it implemented?

JACO: It is im--implemented today. If you have a long hot, dry spell, and you--you try as hard as you can not to run cooling towers because they're expensive. And if you can just take the river down and take the amount of water you need down the river and transfer it in the river channel, you're well ahead financially and well ahead--uh--environmentally.

MUMMERT: And I guess that would take--uh--months for--uh--some water 00:26:00from up in a tributary to make it all the whole way down.

JACO: Weeks anyway. And some of it--and--and some of it of course, pools on the side of the reservoir. It doesn't all come down. So, different things happen in each reservoir, and you have to model the reservoir to find out what happened.

MUMMERT: Now, about the--the same time that--if I'm correct, the same time that--uh--nuclear plants are being considered and--and built, the Federal government passed the water quality amendments, which s--was a whole new--uh--thing for you as well.

JACO: They did--and it dictated that each state should set their own water quality standards within certain limits. And so, we worked with the states to try to decide what do fisheries need to have to have in those water quality standards. And so, it--it re--enquired us, and me basically, to work with all the state game and fish commission to try to figure out what we'll do with that. And then TVA had a-- by that time had a whole division of people that 00:27:00dealt no--with nothing but water, and it came up through that particular division, which was Water Resources.

MUMMERT: Did you find that--uh--each of the states were a little bit different or d--was there some conformity in their what standards were?

JACO: Some conformity. But not--not much difference, each of them wanted to be within safe limits. And of them had certain industries in their states that they didn't want to do without and they didn't wanna not protect, and so it--it was more difficult in some states than others to arrive at a standard everybody could accept. And--and Fisheries people almost without exception were the hulks in the whole thing. They were the ones that--that's not strict enough. Let's do it a little different. And so, we found ourselves in some fairly controversial things, but we worked it all out.

MUMMERT: I wonder if you could--uh--talk for a little bit about the changes in the technology and the methods that you had available to you from 00:28:001955 on through your career to--8--1980s.

JACO: Phil, I really don't know where to start. Everything changed. One of the things that--I know when I first came to work for TVA--this is an aside, but interesting--we had a lot of different division people out in the field. And I represented Fisheries. In Guntersville, Alabama, which was about 60 miles from where I lived, the Water Resources people had folks that kept up with rainfall, river flow, and that sort of thing. We had a--a good boat, and--uh--two good boats, a motor, and the Water Resources people didn't have much of anything. So, we found ourselves working with them a great deal because we used their instruments and they used our boats. And we made concurrent things, which sounds kind of strange, but really it made pb--people within TVA work a 00:29:00whole lot more closely together than they would have otherwise. And so, we knew each other quite well. And everything changed. We--we most everything that we did by hand. For instance, we had thermometers that had big cables on them and when you were measuring water temperatures 50 feet down, you had enough cable that you could've cabled up a bridge with it. And all of those things changed instruments--a lot of instruments remote. --Uh--recording instruments at--at our nuclear plants, we--by that time, thermometers that recorded were available. And you could sink the thermometers at whatever depth you wanted and pick up once a week or once a month, take the tape out of them. All of those things changed, technology got so much better. And I hope it is still improving.

MUMMERT: I'm sure it is.

JACO: Does that answer anything you need to know about that or? Along--along with all--I mentioned that a little earlier, along with that came 00:30:00computers. First, TVA built a big mainframe computer at Chattanooga. And for people like me in my fisheries field, if we wanted to do any modeling or do anything on the computer, we had to do it at night because the computer was busy all day doing other things for TVA. And then, little by little, we got laptop computers, oh desktop computers at that time. But back then all the--all the language was scientific, we had no universal language. And so it was a different kind of thing. Then, and then personal computers came in and we all had a personal computer, changed everybody's life and everything you could do changed. And so, everything changed along the way. Everything changed, when I first came to work for TVA, we had a motor pool, and so we used cars and trucks in common. Finally, we got to the place where while we still had a motor pool, we issued a lot of special things---special vehicles. For instance, I had a lot 00:31:00of--several special trucks, and--and crew vans, and things that did not go back to the motor pool except to be serviced. We used them and so they were always available to us. And much more handy and much better suited to the job than what we had to begin with.

MUMMERT: I have one question back on the computers. When--the early days of computers, and you were talking about TVA having a big mainframe. How did you collect data at that point? And did you have to carry the data cards and things like that to the--the computer mainframe?

JACO: Phil, let me go back a little before that. Before that time, we used punch cards. I don't know if you could remember punch cards or not.

MUMMERT: I remember them in my--I remember them in my college registration days.

JACO: All of that was entered on punch cards. And we had a lady and she still lives around here in Knoxville, almost as old--we had a lady who was deaf, she could sit at a punch card machine all day long and it didn't bother 00:32:00her. And it was a real jewel. She punched all of our cards when we did that. Then we had--hired a fellow who was smarter than the rest of us on computers, and he did all of our computer modeling. He worked at night. And he came in and did all of our computer modeling, sent it--the information Chattanooga, and got it back. And if we were lucky, we would have it the next day.

MUMMERT: What--uh--types of questions would the computer modeling help you answer?

JACO: Mostly numerical questions. Anything that had to do with a great deal of--of mathematical computation that you didn't want to have to do on a desktop calculator. For instance, if you--if you build a nuclear plant and you take a certain amount of water through it each day to cool the--the--the nuclear reactors and it comes out, it's going en--en--what we call entrain. In the water as it goes through there, you're going to take in lots of small fish, 00:33:00millions and billions of small fish. What's the effect of it all on the total fish population? We--we were un--unable to really do that in the short period of time without a computer. And what is the effect?

MUMMERT: Interesting.

JACO: It--it--it's quite interesting and--and it happened so quickly. I think I told you when you came in, that--that my job--I had a most interesting job. And--and because of what I did and the kind of things I did, at one time or another I interfaced with almost every other division in TVA. In the early days, they hated to see us coming because what we wanted them to do. Usually the decisions were made by engineers and the engineers thought that whatever engineering thing they did--even though it might affect us a little bit, they didn't think it ought to affect us too much. And we thought they ought to re-engineer it, so they'd say: "Oops, here he comes again."

MUMMERT: What--uh--this may be a difficult question to--to answer. It's a broad question. But--uh--were some of the changes or improvements to the fisheries in the river system that you saw through your career, in--in whatever way you want to--to describe?

JACO: Phil--Let--let me go all the way back to before my career. The--the two people that came for TVA prior to World War II. They came into the old Biological Readjustment Division. Came because--.

MUMMERT: Biological Readjustment?

JACO: Yes, that's what they were called at--prior to World War II. And they were brought in--of them was Dr. Abraham Wiebe, who was one of the smartest people I ever knew. And he had--had made his way from Canada through a Ph.D. 00:35:00at Iowa State. And his--his field was really water densities and this sort of stuff, but he got involved in the biological things. And--and going back to what you were asking, what was happening is that we were--really we being the people that preceded me--thought that if you impounded a reservoir on a river, the fish were all gonna die because they were river fish. There was no history to look at. Nobody knew what happened when you impounded a river. There were a few being built at the same time by the Corps of Engineers, but everybody thought they were going to just disappear. And then the--the next generation of people that came along suddenly realized that not only didn't they disappear, but certain fish--particular there were some fish that people that you know, are fishing out there largemouth bass, and blue gill, and white crappy, and that sort--just exploded. They--they multiplied many times. And, all of a sudden, we 00:36:00started worrying about, we've got an awful lot of fish out there to harvest and we harvest a great many fish than we do--so the big thing started towards liberalization. We can take the limits off a lot of fish and the seasons off of a lot of fish. And so, everything changed from one of preserving something that's going to disappear to sharing something that's going to multiply. And those--those days went on until really the 1970s. Excuse me, is that--that what you're looking for?

MUMMERT: Yes. And--uh--in the 19--uh--70s, were there--uh--I guess it--it got more complicated or?

JACO: It elec--well everything changed. And first and foremost as I say, fishing equipment changed and the number of people fishing changed. And when--when I came to work for TVA '55, I had a 10-horse outboard engine and 00:37:0014-foot boat, and we thought that was great equipment. By the 1970s, engines had gotten up close to 100 horsepower, which they're three times that now. But big boats and big engines, people could cover great amounts of water in a reservoir instead of just stopping somewhere and fishing. And everything changed, and people started concentrating on so-called game fish that they could catch artificially with artificial lures, particularly the large mouth and small mouth bass. And I'll--I'll-one other thing I'll touch on here. By that time, we had established striped bass, which is really a saltwater fish in the TVA reservoir. And so, people started fishing and everything changed in that direction. People started having bass fishing contests and fishing for the biggest bass and the most bass in one day. And they multiplied also, so we started having concerns about some of the fish. But understand that--that what we had the 00:38:00concern about, all we could do was collect data and advise with the states that had the right to regulate those things. And they did and--and it worked out well for us.

MUMMERT: And, of course--uh--uh--TVA--uh--and the states were happy to see the fishermen come. Big money.

JACO: Big money. Big money all the way down the line. --Uh--all this as, I--I think I said something a while ago about the Dingell-Johnson Act that allowed those things to be taxed. And that money got to be larger and larger. State Game and Fish people got not only more numbers, but much better educated. The people that came out were better educated and we--we were able to do a lot of things that we couldn't do before. Can I, we were talking about, can I injected something I shouldn't have. I--in the 1970s, when, it became apparent in the 1950s, there was a saltwater bass, a striped bass that's native up 00:39:00and down the Atlantic Ocean and spawned in fresh water. It ran up tributary rivers to spawn. It became apparent over in the--in a Santee Cooper Rivers in--in South Carolina that this fish was not going back to the river--going back to the ocean. It was staying in those reservoirs and continued to live there and spawn. And so we realized--the Fisheries people realized that fish could be used as a freshwater fish. And so we set about trying to establish--. It's a big fish and can go up above 50 pounds. So, we tried to establish it in TVA reservoirs as a trophy fish. And that required that, strangely enough, South Carolina said you just can't come over and catch them and carry them away from here. If you want to come over here and catch them on sports fishing equipment and buy a license to catch them, you can do what you want to do with them. So, we accumulated a couple crews of state people, mostly Tennessee people and Kentucky people, and went over and caught a bunch of them and brought them back and 00:40:00released them first in Cherokee Reservoir and later in--in Kentucky Reservoir and established striped bass. That's--that goes along with what we were talking about, people spending more money on more equipment for something else to catch.

MUMMERT: And the--uh--one thing--uh--while you were talking that came to mind in the 1970s, I guess. There's one--uh--fish story that--uh--historians know a lot about I think if they read about TVA. And that is the snail darter. Did you ever--uh--get involved with that issue?

JACO: Phil I was--I was the person--my crew was directly responsible for the snail darter. At that time I w--

MUMMERT: Why don't you give a little background of what--uh--happened.

JACO: The snail darter happened-- it's fish that we didn't know 00:41:00existed, and then a--after it was discovered we still didn't know was existed. A professor at the University of Tennessee took the fish and keyed it out in taxonomic tables and said: "This is a new fish. It's unknown, it's not known anywhere else." And so, it became a very controversial fish as to what was going to happen to it when we built a new reservoir that TVA was building, called the Tellico Reservoir. And it became so controversial, that it end up in courts and the Tellico Project was finally stopped. And we spent an awful lot of money looking for a snail darter somewhere else, trying to see it if didn't exist somewhere else. Ultimately, we did find it in two more locations. And it--it--it still exists and--and it's still a controversial thing. And then I don't want to get into the details of it, but we--we--we stopped the protocol of 00:42:00the Tellico Project for a while and didn't get started again for several years until dictated by Congress that we should finish it.

MUMMERT: Well and--and that--uh--the university professor used the new--I think it was new at the time Endangered Species Act to--uh--.

JACO: That--that was--that was the Act in which we went to court over, that we were threatening a species that was going to be exterminated. And the Endangered Species Act declared that once that fish had been declared threatened or endangered, we could not endanger it again. And so, the states went to--went to court over it, the states and some private citizen. Incu--I--I should mention Dave because he's proud of it. Dr. David Etnier at the University of Tennessee. Dr. David Etnier. This is the fellow that--that says it's--was going to be exterminated. And we spent a lot of money in TVA trying to find it, trying to propagate it. We actually set up a lab to prop--to--to propagate it 00:43:00and--uh--we found out that that was not too acceptable either that--that--to go get the fish to use for--for the generation to propagate. We couldn't do that, they were endangered. But at any rate, we finally got it settled. But it--it was one of the other things that happened with the Threatened and Endangered Species Act--and I'm glad you brought that up, because it caused other problems in other places in TVA.

MUMMERT: What sorts of things? Just--uh--I guess the Endangered Species Act en--enabled anyone--citizens to identify things they thought were unique or--.

JACO: Petition, go to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and say: "Hey, this ought to be looked in to." And usually it was looked into in it on a--on a Federal basis. And we looked in to it. We--in the Tellico, I told about how close our cooperation was between us and state. We found ourselves on opposite sides in the Tellico project. And it had a third--third factor in it 00:44:00really in that the Little Tennessee River, at the time we built Fontana Dam, the whole regime of temperature was changing below Fontana Dam. And the Little Tennessee River, where Tellico--where on the lower stretches where Tellico was going to be built, was below Chilhowee Reservoir and the state was managing that for cold water fish, for the trout water. And if we--if we built Tellico, we were going to do away with one of the trout fisheries of East Tennessee, and the state did not want that. And so, it got mixed up, it was hard to tell what was threatened and endangered species we were protecting and where it was cold water fish that we were protecting.

MUMMERT: That was the--that was Tennessee they had the interest in the trout fishing? It wasn't new--North Carolina?

JACO: Tennessee. And it was at different fisheries. Yeah it--it wa--they didn't have many trout fisheries in Tennessee, the Hiwassee River, that 00:45:00river, the Doe River up above Watauga. Their cool water fishing--their cold water fishing was--was pretty rare in East Tennessee and it was something different and it generated a different kind of funds and attracted a different fisherman.

MUMMERT: I--uh--again steered away or--uh--have been focusing on fisheries, but--uh--any--uh--evolving issues with--uh--land--uh--wildlife through your later decades that you had to deal with?

JACO: Mostly with w--w--wildlife. I guess the big thing that happened when I was at Decatur, TVA decided, that somebody had the bright idea that the land that was going to be generated between--between the Cumberland Reservoir, a river the Cumberland was going to be a big peninsula down in the lowest end of the Tennessee River. And I'm not sure, it seems like to me it was some 00:46:0055,000 acres. But, it was proposed that it become a recreation area c--and--and it finally did, it became Land Between the Lakes. In that area, there was a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service waterfowl refuge. And so we agreed if we did the Land Between the Lakes we'd move that waterfowl refuge. And so we had to go over on the Cumberland River and find a place that we could buy and establish a new refuge, which we did. And so we maintained this and we maintained a number of wildlife--wildlife refuges up and down TVA for migratory waterfowl for as long as I was with Fish and Wildlife. And we established one--when we established a new Tellico Reservoir, it was the last one we established. But, all of those fell under our purveyance. The Fish and Wildlife Service provided the 00:47:00people, TVA c--correlated the water. Some of them had what we called pumped storage areas. That is, when TVA was in flood season, they flooded great areas behind dikes, and then when the water went down, we let the water out--pumped it out from behind those dikes. It--it was--could best be used and so there's what we called de-watered areas and were largely used for wildfife--wildlife, some squirrels and deer, but mostly for--for migratory waterfowl.

MUMMERT: I see. --Um--as your career--uh--progressed--uh--were there--uh--were there things that TVA did in--uh--Fisheries or Wildlife that--uh--had an impact--uh--beyond the Tennessee Valley? Were there many that or--? 00:48:00Or you just, so many that you don't know or--?

JACO: Yeah, a big impact beyond the Tenn--Tennessee Valley. And we had a number of people who came in from foreign countries who visited with us to see what we did and how we did it on reservoirs. --Uh--largely, I guess the last group we had were from the Three Gorges [Dam] group in China. We had and it was--they came over to find out what we did differently. And technically, we did a lot of things differently because they didn't have the--the scientific equipment over there to do it with. But they've been catching fish for a million years. They're way ahead of us catching fish. But, at any rate, we--we did a great deal of that. And personally, it meant a lot to me because at the same time, the Dingell-Johnson Act came along, there was established an American Fisheries Society (AFS), which was a coalition of all the fisheries people in really North America--Canada, the United States, and a some in--in Mexico. And we 00:49:00became deeply inv--I became deeply involved in that. And--and it was established at--it was set up in sections, had cold water fisheries and warm water fisheries and we had various sections that did different things. In the Southeast, one of the ones we did to share information was--was a Warm Water Streams Committee and a Reservoir Committee--two different committees, that we had representatives on those committees. We went once a year, anyway, and had a common membership that met together and shared papers of what we've done new this year and--and then they carried it back home. And then we had national groups that--that--that did different things that--. We all--several of us belonged to that shared. We had a fisheries administrator section, which were the people that administered the fisheries groups from various states. And we had, I--at one time, I 00:50:00headed up a committee that was Environmental Concerns Committee that was--that generated fisheries policy for the field. What was our policy going to be on things? And so, we--we not only shared a lot of what we knew, but we learned a lot from other people that we were able to bring back. --Uh--and I guess it may be a good thing to say, it Phil, so everybody understands. In the fisheries business, until recently when people started raising fish here in the United States--fish cultures--there was no proprietary information. None of us had anything we minded sharing with somebody else. And so, if you had something new, you shared it with somebody else. One of the--one of the things that I was most proud of when I was with TVA is back in the 30s, there was a group of people in Texas that developed an electro fishing rig, they called it. It was a big generator and a boat. It had a negative circuit and a positive 00:51:00circuit suspended one above the other in the water. And they would go along and generate great amounts of electricity and get rid of gar, which was a fish that they didn't think they wanted in some of the rivers in Texas. Well, later on, a guy in Georgia got interested in that and got me interested in it. And we looked at it together what we did, and we generated an electric fishing rig that is widely used in the United States now and sold commercially, on a big boat that was safe, that delivered direct current to the water. Fish surround themselves in direct current. They head toward the pole and if you can pulse it a little bit, they'll swim toward that pole, which means that you can pick them up from down below and let them come to the surface, and look at them, put them back in a live box, and put them back in. So, that became a big sampling tool and we were able to distribute that around to a lot of places.

MUMMERT: So you invented that?

JACO: Well, we didn't invent it, we just--we just modified it. It's one--it's one of the things that--that we did because it was--there was no equipment for us. And I want, at this point I want to mention a man who's not going to be mentioned anywhere else in your thing. When I was working in North Alabama, the people that--that I worked with at the next office took care of these things that I call dewatered areas. And they had a man that serviced the pumps, who was really a machinist; but that was the job that he had and he built all sorts of equipment that I was able to describe, and he could build. And he--his name was Raymond Snoddy and I want to give him credit for that cause he built a lot of equipment for TVA. And I don't know what he built, I know one of the things he built for me. You age fish--fish that have scales you can age most scales, they put on rings like trees do for growth, and so you--but fish like a 00:53:00catfish can't do that. And so we found out that certain bones on those fish, if you saw them in two, very, very thin and magnify them, they too put on rings. And so we had a spine--what we called a spine saw to saw catfish. And Raymond figured out how to build that thing so it would--would saw down to, I think it seemed like to me five millimeters--a tiny, thin thing, those are still in use. So, various things like that that we just developed as we went along. We had to have it, so we just kept deeper until we got it to work.

MUMMERT: What--looking back over your career--uh--what do you think was your most important accomplishment?

JACO: Well, I guess my most important accomplishment, if I could--had nothing much to do with fisheries, was to getting state people, and Federal 00:54:00people, and TVA people to talk together about problems that had--had vexed them that nobody really attacked together. We--we--we worked a lot of things out. You know, if you think about the things that go on out there now, all of those things had to be worked out. And--and you asked me one time: Do--do you have anything unique?" And I think this is just a unique thing that happened to tell you how far apart we were at one time. There was a papermill down at Charleston, Tennessee, that had to put in an effluent pond, which means that when they pumped their waste water out it had to settle in a series of ponds before it went back into the Hiwassee River. And the guy that was--was the manager down there knew me, called me one day and said: "Ben, we're having real trouble with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency." He said: "We need to build an effluent pond." And they said: 'No, you can't--we don't want you to do that." 00:55:00So, we finally got together with them and--and we--and told them a place on a TVA bank that TVA could let them have some TVA property to do. And so they negotiated that with the TVA Land Branch. And then Tennessee said: "What we'd like you to do is build us a fish hatchery that we can hatch striped bass to put in the reservoir to make up for what you are going to take away from us." Okay. So, the mitigation thing got started and we got--got it all and Tennessee decided what they wanted. And it went on for months and months, then one day my phone rang and it was that guy again. He said: "Ben, we're not able to get this done with Tennessee." He said: "They sent us plans for a fish hatchery and we can't fit that fish hatchery on the--on the land that we have available." Well, and I'm telling you this to show you how far apart people are. At any rate, I went down and took a look at it. Tennessee had sent the plans for a 00:56:00fish hatchery they had built over at Clinton, Tennessee. It was already in existence. And so, they told them what they wanted, they said: "This is what we want." But they didn't give them enough information to say, hey you know, it doesn't have to be configured like this. We want this many ponds, with this many acres in it. And so, it turned out that there wasn't any problem at all with it, except that they just didn't talk together to find out if it be could done differently. Can't you--do you have to do it this way? And--and I think everybody learned a whole lot from that. We learned, and the gaming people learned and certainly the papermill people learned.

MUMMERT: So--uh--you and the people around you though--uh--helped usher in--uh--the era of some more cooperation and communication among the--uh--different governments--and that, certainly, we take for granted today.

JACO: TVA was-- TVA was established to do most of the things that a 00:57:00lot of different agencies do outside in the Tennessee. Agriculture, all this sort of thing. TVA did to begin with. But, basically, TVA was an engineering outfit. It was run by engineers who thought that most everything that had a problem, the first place we went was an engineering solution. Engineering solutions don't fit too well with natural things. That--that nature doesn't do things according to engineer's plan. And so, we had to learn to talk together. It's--it's--I--I can think of one--one of the things that--I'll tell you one other aside that was always a beaut. One of the engineers that I dealt with, that we had these meetings that we would have with the Power, particular for water releases, and we would say: "Well, we need a certain amount of water and it needs to come at a regular rate because we need to support the 00:58:00fish below the--below the dam. Well, we can't do that, it costs too much money. And somebody could always tell us exactly how much money it would cost. And we would have to say--they'd say: "Well, you say you ought to do that, what's--what's the chances you ought to do it?" And we'd say: "Well, if it's better than 50/50, it's a good chance." That's not an acceptable answer. But, at any rate, I was working one day with a man and he came to a meeting and he had his assistant with him, who had just come to work. And the first time I had ever seen a pocket calculator. And we were doing something and this guy got his calculator out and he did it and--and his boss got his slide rule out. And so we got through and we got through with the meeting and went to lunch, and--and I asked the boss, I said: "Tom, that guy know what he's doing?" And Tom said: "I guess he does if his batteries don't burn out." Which--which can tell you what some of them thought about computers. But, I--I'm not sure I'm 00:59:00answering your question. I'm just drifting off.

MUMMERT: Yes, you are--. --Uh--do you have any other--uh--most mem--most mem--?

JACO: Well, one of the ot--other things that I spent a great deal of time and TVA has spent a great deal of time. In the Tennessee River were freshwater clams called mussels. And these mussels were developed in a flowing stream. Different streams flowed very rapidly in some places, very slowly in other places. But we didn't--we being the people that were in TVA didn't worry about mussels because that was an unknown thing. But, by 1957, we had some mussel diggers who---people who collected mussels. And they collected them by dragging hooks along the bottom that would catch in the mantle of the mussel and they would harvest them. They sold those shells to the Japanese cultured pearl industry in Japan, because it--they found out that mussel shells ground into beads could be 01:00:00coated with nacre and produce pearls, and it's the only shell that they ever found that could do that, freshwater mussel shell. And so, it became very important to the Japanese and they came to this country, and it then became important to the people that collected mussels. And so we became very interested in 1957 in what we could do, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent us a biologist in to work with us and we tried to investigate what was happening. And--and found out that, basically, in the mainstream reservoirs there wasn't a whole lot that we could do about those things. They were going to continue to regenerate but below dams. And then we got into the regeneration and found out that almost each species of mussel is generated by spreading eggs, if you will, in the water, that embed themselves in the gills of certain fish. Each mussel shell has a specific fish they must have. And they, in turn, fall off 01:01:00and become mussels. And so we got interested in--in that part of and hired a couple of malacologists to come in. All--all of this is just something else we did. But, then we had people that got really involved in it and found out how to generate cultured pearls a lot more cheaply another way. And so cultur--cultured pearls are not as expensive as they once were unless you get pearls that come from the Inland Sea in Japan, from companies like Mikimoto, and so forth that are still very valuable pearls. But, then we got interested in saving what mussels were left, and we found out that we had a whole series of mussels that were classified threatened and endangered up on the Clinch and Powell Rivers and some other river. And so we set about having people on staff that dealt with that, to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to set aside with the Game and Fish people, certain areas of those streams that should be used for 01:02:00mussels. And--and we then got also involved with the universities with fresh water mussels on the Clinch and Powell Rivers, deeply involved with--with--with Virginia Tech. They--they had people that were interested. But things like that happened and we just proliferated. Everything was changed. I told you that--that I had an interesting job. I was looking--I made a list of things that--that I thought you might ought to talk about and you've talked about several of them. But, there's all sorts of things that--that went on that it was never a dull life. We--we had something going all the time and it was very interesting. A lot of it was controversial and--and most of it we were able to solve.

MUMMERT: That's--uh--a fitting note to I think--uh--end the--the interview on. And--uh--with--if you'll let me ask you one final question, this may be the most difficult one. --Uh--are there any questions that I have not asked 01:03:00that you wish I had? Maybe there's something on your list there.

JACO: I--I--. Well, we did so many things we had--and--and you had so much--shotgunned so much of it. One--one of the things, I think Phil, maybe that we should touch on, that we need to talk about is the control of aquatic vegetation. That also fell under our bailiwick in a lot of years. And as waters warm up, and they slow down and we get silt in streams, we've had more and more problems with aquatic vegetation growing in the shallows of TVA reservoirs. And we spent a lot of time and money, trying to figure out first how to get control of them. And of course, we all know how to get control of them with chemicals, but we really don't want to use those chemicals if we can get--. And so we set about trying to find out and found out that there was a fish that 01:04:00originated in the eastern area of the USSR called the white amur that eats vegetation. That's what it lives on. And we set about, at one time, we spent $1 million dollars generating white amur fish to put in the Guntersville Reservoir to control the--the vegetation. And that's just one part of vegetation control. But, we used that and by, once again, fisheries scientists in Arkansas had figured out how to generate one sex fish. We had all female fish so that they didn't--didn't have a chance of expanding and going anywhere else. And so we bought enough of those that were generated in Arkansas to put in Guntersville to control the weeds. Did a pretty good job of it as long as they lasted, but then it was going to be a terribly expensive thing to keep putting them in and TVA decided not to do that. And so the weed problems are back and now somebody, I don't know who, but I'm sure that we can contend with them a little 01:05:00bit by fluctuating reservoir levels but not to a great deal but except on the margin.

MUMMERT: Um--hmm. So that the challenges continue.

JACO: They do. And you know, I--I won't get into it but there's just endless numbers of things that we got involved in that--that--that unless somebody asked a question you wouldn't--you wouldn't know to talk about it. Heated water research, we set up a heated water research station over at the Gallatin Steam Plant in Middle Tennessee for a while to find out if we couldn't use heated water to generate and raise commercially fish like tilapia that are saleable fish and sold in all the markets. That they're very hard to raise because they can't endure cold temperatures, and so you needed them in the heated water all the time. And we set up an operation over there to try to find out if we couldn't raise--. We wr--we tried catfish-- grow--grow faster in 01:06:00heated water. Just take the heated water from the steam plant and mix it with other water and control the temperatures. So, we controlled it 365 days a year. And we ran that for several years.

MUMMERT: Successfully?

JACO: We were successful and we--and we put out some information on it. But, everything changes. By the time we were doing that, the culture of those fish were changing to such extent somebody found out how to do it better another way, and now they've found out that they can grow them in heated buildings. And they found a way to heat the buildings, and I think some of the biggest tilapia people that I dealt with before I got out were in North Dakota.

MUMMERT: Is there anything else that you would like to say?

JACO: No, I--I just look, stuff that I--just ran through stuff that we did. We-- we had a lot of problems that we dealt with too, Phil. One--one 01:07:00of the problems we dealt with that back in the, really in the late 1950s, all the people in the Tennessee Valley, there was still a lot of cotton farming. And people that farmed cotton used two kinds of cotton poison on boll weevils and bollworms, which was a barth. It was--it was obviously washing off after they used it, washing into tributary streams and killing fish. And we set out to find out to what extent it was killing fish and had a group of people that came up from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) the Disease Control people from Atlanta to work with us. And we went around monitoring streams. We got on the back of what's now Redstone Arsenal, it got in a stream and it had--all the silt in it had tremendous amounts of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) in it. And we couldn't--we couldn't figure out why, and we went on and--. Well, to make a long story short, we found out that after World War II, when Redstone Arsenal didn't have anybody on there, they leased out some of the buildings. 01:08:00And one of the groups that boug--that leased them were people that manufactured DDT. We found out that when they had a bad batch of DDT that didn't work well, they just went out and dumped it in a pasture. And all of this was washing into a stream. Well, to make a long story short, all that was washing down stream and getting in fish. And, a lot of people, particularly in a little town called Triana in North Alabama, that was at the mouth of this stream, which was an all-Black town, nothing there but no--all the residents were Black. And they had tremendous levels of DDT in their blood, and that alarmed everybody and we set off to find out what we might do about it. And so we--we got--got into that and actually built a little reservoir for the city of Triana so that they might buy fish and put in there to catch rather than going down on the creek and catching them. It's a big long story but-- but it--it's quite interesting.

MUMMERT: I--uh--covered some of that story not too long ago with--uh--someone you probably worked with, which is Tom Hunter, who was--

JACO: He was in a different division.

MUMMERT: He was in a different division, but he was involved in community economic development.

JACO: We--at that time, we had a Chairman of the Board who was very, very interested in minorities. And he was extremely interested in what he thought we had done to the little town of Triana. That was Dave Freeman, Dave was very interested in that. And so we did--he--he stayed right with--probably stayed right close with Tom also.

MUMMERT: Well, Mr. Jaco, I appreciate your time. This has been a wonderful interview, you've had a fantastic career. And it's changed--things have changed a lot over those 30 years and you've got to see them and actually create some of those changes too, I suspect--mostly for the better, I think.

JACO: Phil I--. Well, I hope it's for the better. But we--we had a great gang of people and we have really enjoyed it. I like to think that we contributed a lot to the field of fisheries, and I like to think that I met an awful lot of wonderful people, an awful lot of skilled people by being able to work with TVA.

MUMMERT: Thank you.

JACO: You're welcome