Tennessee Valley Authority Act

The Tennessee Valley Authority Act, signed into law by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, created an independent public corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), charged with controlling the Tennessee River's floodwaters, improving the river's navigation, assisting area farmers, and creating cheap electric power as well as with the daunting task of improving the lives of the people living within the Tennessee River valley. The valley, consisting of nearly 41,000 square miles and portions of seven states, was home to almost three million of the poorest people in the United States—most living without electricity or indoor plumbing. Never before had the federal government attempted a public works program as broad and encompassing as the TVA.

On June 3, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson had signed the National Defense Act, which called for the creation of a facility to produce nitrates for manufacturing munitions during the war and fertilizer during peacetime. The site selected, Muscle Shoals, was situated on the Tennessee River in northern Alabama. Construction began immediately on two plants and two hydroelectric dams to generate the power for the plants. Before construction was completed, however, World War I ended, and public support for the project turned into suspicion of the government's intentions. Thus, the plants and dams fell idle as politicians, businessmen, and the public fought over what to do with Muscle Shoals.

Two main camps emerged—those who believed that the government should lease the facility to private business for development and those who maintained that the government should not abandon the project but should continue it in the name of the public good. Owing largely to the efforts and persistence of Nebraska's Senator George Norris, the government retained control of the Muscle Shoals project through the Tennessee Valley Authority Act.