Tennessee Valley Authority

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TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY

TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal corporation responsible for power generation in the Tennessee Valley, serves roughly 8.3 million people through 158 municipal and cooperative power distributors. TVA furnishes power to an 80,000-square-mile area, including the state of Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, thus making the corporation one of America's largest electrical power producers.

Born of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's innovative solution to help stimulate the area's economy during the Great Depression, the TVA development began after World War I (1914–1918). A government-owned dam and nitrate-producing facility at Muscle Shoals, on the Tennessee River in northwestern Alabama, became the seedling of the audacious experiment. Nebraska Senator George W. Norris hoped at the time to build more dams similar to the Wilson Dam at Muscle Shoals, bringing public control to the Tennessee River. Almost single-handedly, Norris held the dam in government ownership until President Roosevelt's vision expanded it into a broader concept of multipurpose development and regional planning. On 18 May 1933, Congress responded to Roosevelt's prodding and enacted the Tennessee Valley Act.

TVA was to be more than a flood control and power agency. It was seen as having a wide mandate for economic development, recreation, reforestation, and the production of fertilizer. But the agency was in sad shape at its start. The best timber had already been cut, the land had been farmed too long, and crop yields were declining.

Controversy also surrounded TVA. Private utilities fought the agency's power policies, and an internal feud between Chairman Arthur Morgan and directors David Lilienthal and Harcourt Morgan unsettled TVA's direction until 1938.

Nevertheless, the agency pushed forward. By 1941, it operated eleven dams with six more under construction, and it was selling low-cost electric power to 500,000 consumers throughout six states. TVA technicians developed fertilizers, and 25,000 demonstration farms taught local citizens the benefits of more scientific farming. Additionally, the agency helped replant forests, controlled forest fires, and improved habitat for wildlife. During World War II (1939–1945), 70 percent of TVA power went to defense industries, among them the Oak Ridge atomic project. At the war's end, TVA had completed a 652-mile navigation channel, becoming the largest electricity supplier in the United States.

Attacked for being too radical, TVA also found itself criticized for being too conciliatory to established interests and ideas. Director Lilienthal claimed that TVA practiced "grassroots democracy" by reaching out in a massive educational effort to involve the rural population of the valley. However, critics saw mostly manipulation in this approach.

The 1960s saw unprecedented growth in the Tennessee Valley. At the same time, TVA began building nuclear plants as a new source of power. The agency survived reproach from both conservatives and environmentalists and, by the early 1970s, claimed an impressive record. In 1972, an estimated $395 million in flood damages had been averted by TVA dams. Power revenues came to $642 million, of which TVA returned $75 million to the U.S. Treasury. Along with industrial customers, 2 million residential consumers used TVA power.

The TVA manages an integrated, technically advanced system of dams, locks, and reservoirs in the Tennessee River watershed. The balanced system facilitates navigation, controls flooding, and provides hydropower to benefit users. As of 2002, it included three nuclear generating plants, eleven coal-fired plants, twenty-nine hydraulic dams, five combustion turbine plants, a pumped-storage plant, and roughly 17,000 miles of transmission lines, making the TVA the largest public power system in the nation. TVA's generation mix consisted of 63 percent coal, 31 percent nuclear, and 6 percent hydroelectric.

The agency serves 158 local municipal and cooperative power distributors that deliver power to homes and businesses within the seven-state area. Also involving itself in technical assistance to communities and industries, TVA conducts economic research and analysis, industrial research, and conceptual site engineering and architectural services. It also provides technical and financial support to small and minority-owned businesses as well as working with regional industrial development associations to recruit new industry and develop strategies for creating jobs.

Preserving wildlife habitat, TVA oversees more than 122,000 acres of public land designated for natural-resource management. Forty percent of it is administered by other agencies, while the remainder falls under TVA management. The agency launched the Natural Heritage Project in 1976, with the help of the Nature Conservancy, to analyze and manage biodiversity on TVA lands and to improve compliance with federal environmental regulations. The project monitors threatened and endangered plant and animal species in the TVA service area. Since its beginnings, the Natural Heritage Project has supplied environmental data on TVA activities ranging from transmission-line construction to economic development.

TVA has also developed a land-use system of 10,700 acres classified as TVA Natural Areas. The specified sites are designated as Habitat Protection Areas, Small Wild Areas, Ecological Study Areas, or Wildlife Observation Areas and include limitations on activities that could endanger important natural features.

Throughout the Tennessee Valley, TVA operates roughly 100 public recreation facilities, including campgrounds, day-use areas, and boat-launching ramps.