The Tennessee Valley Authority, or the TVA, remains one of the most ambitious public work projects ever conceived or attempted in the United States. Its story is not a fairy tale by any means. It was very controversial from the beginning. It was a story that involved quite a few setbacks, and some outright failures. After its completion and in the years that have passed since, it has brought affordable electricity to thousands of people. It brought the devastating floods of the Tennessee River under control, and opened the river to navigation that had been impossible in the past. It enabled the Tennessee valley to introduce agricultural improvements that moved it out of the past and into the prosperity of the twentieth century.

In the area of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the Tennessee River drops 140 feet in elevation in about thirty miles. This drop created the rapids, or "shoals", that give the area its name. It is here that the story of the TVA began. This area of rapids marked the limit of navigation on the River, and in 1916 the Federal Government purchased land there with the intention of building a dam. The dam was intended to be used to produce electricity to power factories that would be used for the production of explosives needed in the war effort. World War I ended before the project got off the ground. The Government debated what to do with the property throughout the 1920's with the most popular idea being to just sell it to private interests to recoup the money spent to purchase it. Henry Ford was one of the interested buyers. He planned to build a nitrate processing plant there to take advantage of the same natural resource that had led to the idea of explosive plants originally.

During this period a group of Senators led by George W. Norris of Nebraska were leading a fight in Congress to retain public control over the property. Several times, they introduced bills to develop the land for public use, but the mood of Congress and the Nation was against such projects in the prosperity of the early twenties, and the attempted bills were usually easily defeated. Then came the great depression. The mood of America changed concerning the idea of the Federal Government engaging in economic activities that it deemed in the public interest. With the election of Franklin Roosevelt as President, the country had a leader with an interest in conservation, and in the idea of public works to help pull the country out of the economic hole into which it had fallen.

President Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act into law on May 18, 1933. It was a wide sweeping piece of legislation that aimed at improving the navigability of the River as well as providing measures for flood control. It also addressed such issues as reforestation and improvements in agriculture. It had national defense implications as well, creating nitrate and phosphorus plants on the government lands at Muscle Shoals.

It contained also something that was unique in American legislation. The Tennessee River ran through parts of seven different states, and flowed through some of the most economically underdeveloped sections of the South. Section 23 of Tennessee Valley Authority Act gave the TVA a mandate to improve the economic and social well being of the people of the region. The Government was creating an entity whose purpose was to make the lives of a group of people in a certain region, better.

The TVA was quick to realize that the way to fulfill their mandate was to use the hydroelectric potential of the Tennessee River to provide electricity at affordable prices to the residents of the surrounding area. This was, at the time, the surest way to improve the economic conditions and the social well being because the majority of the area was not served by electricity in the first place, and where it was available, it was too expensive for the average farmer and citizen.

The decision to produce low cost electricity, in effect, put the Federal government into direct competition with the emerging electric companies, who raised a storm of protest. They insisted that government involvement in what should be private enterprise violated the Constitution and they carried their case all the way to the Supreme Court. Eventually, the Court ruled in favor of the TVA, and the work began.

It did not begin smoothly, however. In order to create the hydroelectric plants necessary to produce the electricity, dams had to be built and large areas of land flooded. It was only natural that this would lead to the forced removal of people in the targeted areas. Some of these people, mostly poor and rural, had lived on this land, or their ancestors had lived there, for a long time. The TVA suffered from some bad public relations. Even in less traumatic matters, the opposition to "city folk in suits" telling the farmers how to rotate crops or harvest the forests, was widespread. The TVA was viewed as the "government" in an "us vs. them" mentality that persisted for years.

The TVA endured however, and over the years it transformed the Tennessee Valley and brought it into a certain degree of prosperity. It opened up the River to navigation, and became the largest provider of electricity in the country. The growth of the area quickly used up the hydroelectric capacity and first fossil fuel and eventually nuclear power stations were added to the electrical production mix.

The Tennessee Valley Authority today is still one of the largest and most reliable electrical producers in the country. The passing years have made a lot of changes in the operation of the TVA, and it now faces competition. In the past few years, it has been a leader in the reintroduction of nuclear power. It has streamlined its workforce, and made much progress in improving its public image. It is viewed as a model for third world economic development, and this vision has kept it as somewhat of a political hot potato between those who oppose big government and favor private enterprise.

Regardless of the political issues involved, one fact is beyond dispute. The Tennessee Valley Authority took an entire region of people who were locked into the past and were watching the future and all its wonders and prosperity unfold leaving them behind, and propelled them into the future. It opened doors, and provided a new way of life, usually coming on the end of its miles of electrical transmission lines, but in countless other ways as well.