Tennessee Valley Authority Act

Impact

The TVA's greatest impact was on the people of the Tennessee River valley. During the Great Depression, much of the rural South was already very poor, and those who had left the area to find work returned as the depression grew, creating even more strain on the depleted region. The vast majority of the valley's people lived without running water or electricity. They were hounded by disease and very low yearly income. One estimate says that over 30 percent of the people in the Tennessee River valley were infected with malaria, which peaked between 1932 and 1936 despite a decline in the 1920s. Further, the land itself was suffering. The people of the Tennessee Valley were mostly subsistence farmers, had little understanding of crop rotation, and they farmed the land too hard for too long without allowing the soil to replenish itself. Timber had also been stripped from the land, which left the earth vulnerable to erosion and lowered crop yield even further. The Tennessee Valley Authority changed all this.

The TVA, designed to modernize the region, set out to teach farmers how to increase crops yields, to develop fertilizer, to reforest the land stripped of timber, to control forest fires, and to improve habitats for wildlife, including fish and other aquatics species. To control the floodwaters and generate more electricity, the TVA built more dams, which created jobs for local workers. In addition, the TVA funded more research than other organizations did in an effort to combat malaria. The biggest impact, however, came from the electricity generated by the TVA. Providing cheap electricity not only allowed the local people to have lights and modern appliances such as refrigerators for keeping food fresh but also made farming more productive and drew other industries to the area. For instance, a number of textiles mills were built in the area, which created jobs for local women.

By the end of World War II, one of the most economically depressed regions of the United States had been profoundly changed. Sixteen dams were constructed, acres of floodwater storage were created, and a nine-foot navigation channel was carved into the 650 miles of the Tennessee River from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Paducah, Kentucky, making the entire length of the river navigable. Kilowatt production increased by 127 percent, providing electricity to thousands of households. With readily available electricity and controlled floodwater, new towns and cities sprang up along the river, including Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which would play an important roll in the Manhattan Project (to develop the first nuclear weapon) and employ eighty thousand people during World War II. As technology, times, and presidential administrations changed, the Tennessee Valley Authority suffered inevitable ups and downs, but it remains one of the largest producers of electricity in the United States.