Tennessee Valley Authority
- Date:
- 1933 - present
- Areas Of Involvement:
- electricity
- dam
- hydroelectric power
- production
- flood control
- Related People:
- George W. Norris
- David E. Lilienthal
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), U.S. government agency established in 1933 to control floods, improve navigation, improve the living standards of farmers, and produce electrical power along the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The Tennessee River was subject to severe periodic flooding, and navigation along the river’s middle course was interrupted by a series of shoals at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In 1933 the U.S. Congress passed a bill establishing the TVA, thus consolidating all the activities of the various government agencies in the area and placing them under the control of a single one. A massive program of building dams, hydroelectric generating stations, and flood-control projects ensued. The fusion of a broad range of specific powers with a sense of social responsibility to the region made the TVA significant as a prototype of natural-resource planning. Its jurisdiction is generally limited to the drainage basin of the Tennessee River, which covers parts of seven states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The TVA is a public corporation governed by a board of three directors appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. The constitutionality of the TVA was immediately challenged upon the agency’s establishment, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court in the case of Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (1936) and in later decisions.
All dams in the system are managed as a unit, with primary emphasis on flood control, which has proved extremely effective; no major flood damage has occurred on the Tennessee River since the system of dams was completed. The TVA has built navigation locks into each of its nine main dams, deepened and otherwise improved the channel, and encouraged the development of port facilities along the river. As a result, traffic on the river increased from 33,000,000 ton-miles in 1933 to several billion ton-miles by the late 20th century. The cheap electricity provided by the new dams spurred the industrial development of what had been a chronically depressed regional economy. The waters impounded by the dams created the “Great Lakes of the South,” which the TVA helped develop into a prime boating, fishing, and recreational area. The TVA carried out a vigorous mosquito eradication program on its reservoirs, thus eliminating the endemic malaria that had previously been traceable to the river. The agency also improved forestry and land conservation practices in the region.
The most controversial activity of the TVA is the production and sale of electric power, which has been resisted by privately owned power companies. The TVA contracts with municipalities and cooperatives to supply wholesale power for distribution and has joined with them in purchasing the facilities of privately owned electric-utility companies in the region. These purchases have established an integrated power service area in which the TVA is the sole supplier of power. The TVA power system, which includes more than 50 dams, as well as coal-fired thermal plants and operable nuclear plants, possesses a huge generating capacity. Power is sold in bulk, about half to federal agencies and half to large industries and locally owned municipal and cooperative distribution systems; and electric rates in the Tennessee River valley are among the lowest in the nation. Because of critics’ claims that the low rates are made possible by the TVA’s tax exemption and lack of obligation to show a profit on its operations, a schedule of payments was worked out by which the TVA would refund to the national treasury over a period of years all federal electric-power investment in the valley. The TVA nuclear power plant program was seriously curtailed in the 1980s because of quality control problems and safety deficiencies in several plants already completed or under construction.