in revenue as the project was underway. Timber cleared for the project provided $99,000 and farmland and housing seized by the agency was leased with a revenue close to $566,000. Labor costs for the project totaled $24.7 million, with most of this associated with the construction of the main Tellico Dam structure. Engineering, planning, and administrative services for the project cost $14.7 million. Environmental impacts, controversies, and legal action Before construction began on Tellico Dam, the Tennessee Fish and Game Commission addressed concerns to TVA personnel that the construction of Tellico Dam would bring the demise of trout fishing on the Little Tennessee. TVA attempted to control and defuse local controversy regarding the Tellico Project with the formation of local group known as the Little Tennessee River Valley Development Association (LTRVDA) in 1963. However, within a year, the LTRVDA was unable to control local opposition. Citing the loss of prime farmland, in December 1964 the Tennessee Farm Bureau Association passed resolutions protesting the completion of Tellico Dam. One year later, delegates from the Cherokee Nation filed a petition protesting the desecration of their ancestral lands that were proposed to be flooded for the Tellico Dam. This petition was sent to the office of Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas, who forwarded the petition to President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1971, University of Tennessee (UT) economics professor Keith Phillips criticized TVA's plans for Tellico Dam in a reappraisal of the project. Phillips found fault with the cost and benefits evaluation conducted by the TVA, and suggested that the agency's officials on the project were technically incompetent. Following continued press of TVA's excessive and "abusive" power regarding the agency's property acquisition methods for the Tellico Project, Republican Governor Winfield Dunn wrote in a 1971 letter of dissent to TVA chair Wagner to stop construction of Tellico Dam, stating that the TVA should recognize "that the Little Tennessee as it now exists is a waterway too valuable for the State of Tennessee to sacrifice." TVA rejected Dunn's request in a letter of response one year later. Finding an opportunity, Little Tennessee Valley farmers and environmentalists formed a joint activist group known as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in 1972. The EDF brought suit against TVA under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), claiming that no environmental impact statement (EIS) had been made, violating the NEPA. In court, TVA personnel presented an EIS completed