Months of anguish and uncertainty turned to jubilation Thursday for people living near Chandler Mountain, after Alabama Power withdrew its application to build a project that could have cost them their homes.

“I sat on my dock [Thursday] night, knowing that, for a while, nobody can take it from me,” said Fran Summerlin, one of the key organizers of local opposition to the project.

Alabama Power was seeking permission to build new dams and reservoirs that likely would have forced many residents off their land in St. Clair and Etowah Counties, near the towns of Steele and Gallant.

Summerlin lives on a farm just next to one of the proposed dams, which almost certainly would have forced her to relocate if the project had moved forward. Now that won’t happen.

“I’ve been going from being totally unbelievably thrilled, to crying, to celebration to not really understanding how this happened,” Summerlin said. “Just a whole boatload of emotions.”

She worked for Alabama Power 31 years, then they tried to take her land

The project was especially personal for Kim Lankford, who operates a 400-acre cattle farm at the base of Chandler Mountain on the Etowah County side.

The farm has been in her family for five generations, and she still has a weathered deed from 1853 awarding the property to her great-great-grandfather.

Lankford also worked at Alabama Power for 31 years, before retiring in 2017 to spend more time with her parents on the family farm. She lost her father to a brain bleed in May, and during his final days, she learned she might also lose the farm to the company she spent three decades working for.

“It was devastating,” she said. “And especially just losing Daddy, you know, it just, it hurt. And to know that I’m retired from that company, I put almost 32 years in with them, and then they’re going to try and take something that’s been in my family five generations.”

Lankford said her father suffered the stroke in November 2022, but survived until May, after Alabama Power had filed its preliminary application.

“The good Lord saw that he didn’t have to suffer with seeing what was going on,” Lankford said. “And I say suffer because it would have been suffering to him, because he loved this place so much. “

She said her father and grandfather worked the land every day until they were no longer able.

“My daddy, he told our pastor, he said ‘I’m closer to God at the farm than I am anywhere else,’” Lankford said. “And he said, ‘I go over there and I kneel beside a tree, and I talk to Him and I talk to my cows.’”

Then on Thursday, she got the news that she, her husband and their 115 cattle and seven miniature horses would keep the land after all.

“I know my daddy and my pawpaw are smiling from heaven,” Lankford said.

When asked how she would celebrate the news, Lankford said she would do what she had done with her father for so many years.

“I’m going to go to the farm and talk to my cows,” she said. “Take care of them and ride across that beautiful farm and thank the Lord. I’ll probably do a lot of talking to him today.”

On Thursday night at the Greasy Cove General Store, a couple miles down the road from Lankford’s farm in Gallant, what was supposed to be another community meeting to get more residents involved in the fight turned into a victory party instead.

“We all celebrated last night at Greasy Cove over club sandwiches and sweet tea,” said Ben Lyon, another of the organizers of the local opposition.

The Chandler Mountain Project was intended to be a pumped storage hydropower facility, with two reservoirs, one atop the mountain and one wrapped around the foot of the mountain below. The project would involve pumping water from the lower reservoir uphill when power was plentiful then letting it flow back downhill to generate electricity during peak usage times.

The company said that it had relied on input from numerous stakeholders in its decision to withdraw its application.

“After careful evaluation and meaningful conversations with numerous stakeholders, Alabama Power has decided to withdraw the April 14, 2023 [preliminary application], thereby terminating the licensing process for the Chandler Mountain Pumped Storage Project,” the company said in its letter to FERC.

Summerlin said she was proud of the community’s ability to rally together and save their land.

“I was told by so many people that there was just no point, that you couldn’t fight Alabama Power, that they were too powerful,” she said. “But I was determined. I knew that you couldn’t just roll over and die.”

Environmental groups celebrate

Local environmental groups including Coosa Riverkeeper, the Alabama Rivers Alliance and Energy Alabama also played key roles in organizing opposition to the project, working with residents to file public comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and to document the historical, environmental and cultural points of interest in the area to urge the federal authorities to reject the project proposal.

“We are thrilled that this vital part of the Coosa River watershed and the folks that love the area will be spared from this project,” Coosa Riverkeeper Justinn Overton said in a news release. “The Coosa River is a resource that provides life to so many communities and critters, and we are honored to be a part of a coalition that works to protect both the Coosa and Alabamians.”

Jack West, director of special projects for the Alabama Rivers Alliance, said the withdrawal of the proposal showed the power of local activism.

“This victory highlights the resilience and determination of those who value the land, waters, and world-class biodiversity of Alabama and want to protect it for generations to come,” he said.

The Center for Biological Diversity said the decision may have saved the Canoe Creek clubshell, an endangered mussel known to exist only in Canoe Creek.

“This dirty, energy-wasting, fossil fuel-burning boondoggle would have driven Alabama’s Canoe Creek clubshell extinct and jeopardized dozens of other imperiled animals and plants with extinction,” Perrin de Jong, Southeast staff attorney at the Center said in a news release. “This is a big victory for Alabama’s wildlife and wild waters and everyone who loves them. I couldn’t be happier to see this terrible project get flushed down the tubes.”

Some residents still wary for the future

Alabama Power has formally withdrawn its application for the project and given up preliminary permits issued by FERC, some residents worry that the project may be revived in the future.

Lyon said that some residents remain skeptical that the fight is over, and Summerlin said some are trying to have the area formally protected as a nature preserve.

“Obviously, everybody had a great sense of relief,” Lyon said. “There are some people that are still a little skeptical as to the permanence of the retraction of the application.”

Still, Lyon said he thinks it would be hard to move forward with the project down the line given the amount of opposition it generated.

“I don’t see any way that this project could ever go forward,” he said.