©2025 League of Conservation Voters
1983 Scorecard Vote
212
161
58
The vote is on the Wise (D-WV) Amendment to the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill (HR 3132), to delete $26 million earmarked for construction of this project. The Stonewall Jackson Dam is one of the best examples of bogus “cost-benefit analysis” by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps claimed that 47% of the benefits from this $216 million project will come from water quality improvement, yet federal water pollution and strip mining laws now provide for direct treatment or control of the pollutants at their discharge point — a far more effective method of reducing water pollution. 15% of the benefits are claimed for recreational facilities to be built and operated by the state, which the West Virginia Senate has announced it won’t fund. Other benefits are wildly overestimated, while the cost estimates for the dam assume an absurd interest rate of under 5%. The project would displace between 1,000 and 1,800 residents and flood 10% of the county’s farmland in a state where agricultural land is scarce.
Wise Amendment adopted 213-161; June 6, 1983. YES is the pro-environmental vote. (The Senate, however, voted in favor of construction funding, which was included in the final bill passed by Congress and signed by the President.)
©2025 League of Conservation Voters