Tennessee Valley Authority

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Tennessee Valley Authority

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), independent U.S. government corporate agency, created in 1933 by act of Congress; it is responsible for the integrated development of the Tennessee River basin. The history of TVA began in the early 1920s, when Senator George William Norris sponsored a plan to have the government take over and operate Wilson Dam and other installations that had been built by the government for national defense purposes during World War I at Muscle Shoals , Alabama. However, legislation to this effect was vetoed in 1928 and in 1931 by Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. The 1933 TVA Act, redrafted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, went far beyond the earlier proposals and launched the federal government into a vast scheme of regional planning and development—an undertaking that became the model for similar river projects.

The establishment of the TVA marked the first time that an agency was directed to address the total resource development needs of a major region. TVA was instructed to take on the problems presented by devastating floods, badly eroded lands, a deficient economy, and a steady outmigration—all in one unified development effort. The act provided for the integrated development of the whole Tennessee River basin, an area of about 41,000 sq mi (106,200 sq km) that covers parts of seven states. The TVA is governed by a three-person board of directors. The fact that its main offices are located in the region, rather than in Washington, D.C., allows the TVA to maintain a close working relationship with the people of the region.

Facets and Activities of the TVA

In 1998 the TVA generated more electricity than any other U.S. utility, supplying 8 million residents. The most noteworthy feature of TVA is the system of multipurpose dams and reservoirs that have contributed greatly to the economic life of the area. There are some 50 dams in the hydroelectric system with an installed capacity in excess of 6 million kW. To meet the growing demand for power over and above the hydroelectric capacity of the system, the TVA began in 1940 to construct steam-generating facilities. By the late 1990s, 62% of the TVA's installed capacity was provided by coal-burning steam plants.

Steadily mounting power demands encouraged TVA to add nuclear power plants in the early 1970s. Design and management flaws and a 1975 accident at Browns Ferry resulted in plant closures and construction delays, but by 1996 three facilties (Watts Bar, Sequoyah, and Browns Ferry) were open and operating.

Electric power from all sources is allocated with a view to promoting the widest possible use of electricity throughout the area—with local municipalities, state and federal agencies, and farmer cooperatives receiving priority over private utility companies and industries. The availability of low-cost electricity has attracted large numbers of businesses and industries to the area, and a 630-mi (1,014-km) navigation channel extending from the mouth of the Tennessee River to Knoxville, Tenn., has been responsible for an enormous increase in river traffic, chiefly in coal, construction material, grain, petroleum, chemicals, and forest products.

Other TVA activities, carried out in cooperation with local authorities, include land conservation; environmental research; tree planting; malaria control; the development of fish, wildlife, and mineral resources; social and educational programs; and the establishment of recreational facilities along the banks of its reservoirs, including the Land Between the Lakes, in W Kentucky and W Tennessee.

Financing the TVA

Throughout much of the history of the TVA, opponents of the authority have argued that it is too costly and that government should not compete with private enterprise. In 1959, Congress authorized the TVA to issue bonds and notes to be used in financing needed additions to power system capacity. The power system became self-financing and by the early 1990s had paid back more than $2.5 billion into the U.S. Treasury. Congressional funding of the TVA's nonpower programs was phased out in the late 1990s, leaving it totally self-supporting.

The TVA Today

By the 1960s many of the regional problems of underdevelopment had been overcome, per capita income had increased dramatically, and rapid outmigration had ended. However, the TVA continues to seek ways to make the largely rural area an attractive alternative to overcrowded cities. In the late 1960s and early 70s the TVA began to place greater emphasis on environmental protection as industrialization and rising living standards resulted in greater demands on the environment. In the conflict between economic and environmental objectives the TVA sought a suitable balance, particularly in its power program. Despite the TVA's environmental protection efforts, the agency has been criticized principally by environmental groups. Controversial issues have involved construction of the Tellico Dam and Reservoir on the Little Tennessee River, the nuclear power program, and the TVA's purchase of pollution credits from Wisconsin Power and Light in 1992.

Bibliography

See P. J. Hubbard, Origins of the TVA (1961, repr. 1968); J. Moore, ed., The Economic Impact of TVA (1967); N. Callahan, TVA: Bridge over Troubled Waters (1980); W. U. Chandler, Myth of TVA: Conservation and Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1933-1983 (1984).

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Tennessee Valley Authority

The Oxford Companion to United States History | 2001 | | © The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Tennessee Valley Authority. Established in May 1933 during the frenzied first one hundred days of the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) sought to revitalize one of America's poorest regions.At the time, the farms and small towns in the seven states that bordered the nearly impassable Tennessee River and its tributaries presented a bleak checkerboard of weather‐beaten shacks lacking electricity, crumbling churches, and one‐room schools.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not the first public official who sought to harness the Tennessee River's power and address the valley's crippling poverty, but his vision surpassed anything previously imagined. Proposing the TVA to Congress, Roosevelt declared: “It is time [for] national planning for a complete river watershed involving many States and the future lives and welfare of millions.” Under agency heads Arthur E. Morgan (1878–1976) and then the Chicago lawyer David E. Lilienthal (1899–1981), the TVA built sixteen dams to prevent spring floods and limit soil erosion, supplied the valley with cheap electricity and recreational facilities, provided farmers with inexpensive fertilizer, and established a model community of neatly placed modern homes. Like most TVA programs and, indeed, most New Deal programs, this model community was racially segregated. Indeed, the TVA's insistence on local control, or “grassroots democracy,” meant that discriminatory political and social structures often remained in place, even while the agency fought to eradicate poverty.

For supporters and critics, TVA symbolized the best and worst of the New Deal. Roosevelt's opponents saw it as a frightening instance of government excess; some even denounced it as “creeping socialism.” New Dealers, however, pointed to the project as a shining example of government action at its best. For the first time, thanks to TVA, recalled one enthusiast, “the poor and dispossessed of America could imagine a new kind of world, a life based on brotherhood and mutuality.” A particularly strong supporter was Senator George W. Norris (1861–1944) of Nebraska, a long‐time advocate of public power development. TVA's massive Norris Dam near Knoxville was named in his honor.

The TVA's legacy proved mixed. Within a decade the agency transformed an unpredictable river into a manageable waterway providing vast amounts of hydroelectric power to thousands of isolated rural homes. Malaria, once endemic in the area, was virtually eliminated. The TVA's accomplishments, moreover, eventually including nuclear power, laid the groundwork for industrial development and economic expansion in the Tennessee Valley. But that progress did not end economic inequities or racism or redistribute political power. As the twentieth century ended, the TVA survived, its spectacular dams a major tourist destination. But it survived simply as another big power company, no longer as a model of visionary government planning.
See also Electrical Industry; Electricity and Electrification; New Deal Era, The; South, The.

Bibliography

Thomas McCraw , TVA and the Power Fight, 1933–1939, 1971.
Erwin C. Hargrove and Paul K. Conkin, eds., TVA: Fifty Years of Grassroots Bureaucracy, 1983.

Bryant Simon

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Paul S. Boyer. "Tennessee Valley Authority." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (November 16, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-TennesseeValleyAuthority.html

Paul S. Boyer. "Tennessee Valley Authority." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Retrieved November 16, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-TennesseeValleyAuthority.html

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Tennessee Valley Authority

A Dictionary of World History | 2000 | © A Dictionary of World History 2000, originally published by Oxford University Press 2000. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) An independent federal government agency in the USA. Created by Congress (1933) as part of the NEW DEAL proposals to offset unemployment by a programme of public works, it set out to provide for the development of the whole Tennessee River basin. It took over a project (begun in 1916) for extracting nitrate at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In addition the TVA was authorized to construct new dams and improve existing ones, to control floods and generate cheap hydro-electric power, to check erosion, and to provide afforestation across seven states.

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