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But with growing domestic concerns over energy prices and human-induced climate change, the appointments to TVA’s board could signal what a President John McCain or a President Barack Obama believes about the future of America’s energy and environment.

The Evolution of TVA

As a benefactor and beneficiary of the region’s natural resources, TVA stands at the crossroads of the energy-environment debate. That’s because the company not only produces power for its customers but also manages the lakes, rivers and lands impacted by its decisions while ensuring economic development for the region.

“TVA is, of course, the major power producer in the Tennessee Valley and it generates power by means of coal, nuclear power, [hydro]electricity, a little bit of natural gas, and a little bit of green power nowadays,” said John Nolt, professor of philosophy at the University of Tennessee, where he teaches environmental ethics. “But, also, TVA is the region’s largest steward of public lands, except perhaps for the national parks.”

Following the damming of the rivers in the 1930s and 1940s, those stewardship duties were made considerably more difficult by TVA’s decision to produce energy from coal.

Tracked into TVA’s house by the boots of World War II, the coal decision led a company famous the world over for job creation, resource management and cheap, clean power — possibly the original green company — to more dubious honors. TVA became the nation’s largest air polluter, contributing to the erosion it was created to prevent, and devastated Appalachian communities with strip-mining.

"It quickly turned to being basically an electric utility with the stated mandate of delivering electric power at the lowest possible cost," says William Chandler, a Washington, D.C.-based expert in international development, energy and environmental policy.

To get the coal at the cheapest price and continue to fuel post-war energy demand, TVA bought coal from companies engaged in strip-mining, a highly mechanized means of retrieving coal near the surface.

Marie Cirillo, 78, has worked in community development in rural Appalachia for 60 years. She says TVA's decision to buy coal at the cheapest price — which meant strip mining — had devastating consequences for the people of coal Appalachia. (This and other photos by Frank Carlson)

“In the ‘60s there was a lot of shifts in the coal mining industry, going from underground mining to surface mining activities,” said Roger Bollinger, TVA’s program manager for land reclamation in the 1980s, who now volunteers his time at TVA’s welcome center at Norris Dam. “During that period there were no laws, really, to require reclamation,” or restoring the land when the mining was finished.

Due in part to lower labor costs, this type of coal is much cheaper than coal from underground mining. But it tears up the mountains with trenches and scars that never mend and employs far fewer people in the process.

Marie Cirillo, a former nun who over 40 years ago left the convent to pursue work as a community developer in Appalachia, witnessed first-hand the devastation of strip-mining.

"I remember a big part of the story was that when TVA had originally come in here to put the dams up, it was to stop a lot of the erosion," recalled Cirillo. "But then, when they didn't have enough water utility energy, they went into coal. And because strip-mining was the cheapest coal, they were the prime buyers of strip-mined coal.”

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A New Deal Experiment In Job Creation & Renewable Energy

Much like the Yangtze River Valley in China today, where the Three Gorges Dam is nearing completion, the Tennessee Valley in 1933 was an extremely poor region. Over-logging, over-farming and over-mining, coupled with recurring floods, left the Valley's people less prepared to withstand the hardships of the Great Depression than others around the country, said Patricia Ezzell, TVA's historian.

So at a time when the nation's wallet was empty, Congress chartered the TVA to provide thousands of jobs and planning for the economically and ecologically devastated region of the Tennessee Valley through cheap, renewable power production and resource management.

“TVA was a grand experiment," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “President [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt and Senator [George] Norris and others really wanted to show that with very serious and thoughtful planning you could transform a region. And so it was a very visionary plan — it was really supposed to be best that government could offer.”

Even so, the remedy came at a cost: TVA displaced a great number of people from homes and farms where they and their families had lived for generations. More than 25 years after TVA’s creation, the 1960 film “Wild River,” starring Montgomery Clift as an idealistic TVA agent, depicted the story of an old woman refusing to give up her land for the dam and the progress TVA promised.

Spring City, Tenn., is the only location where TVA has the hat trick of coal, hydroelectric and nuclear plants, although the coal plant is no longer in use. But the area was once home to a town called Rhea Springs, flooded out of existence in the late 1930s when construction of the Watts Bar Dam began.

“Rhea Springs was a much sought-after resort community,” said Mary Sue Garrison, mayor of Spring City. “And the people I have known in my life who grew up there talk about it in idyllic terms. It must have been a paradise to them, and now it’s under the water.”

But over the years much of the resentment has died with its bearers and with the thousands of jobs and cheap power the company has provided to the region. Many in the area today recall the origins of the company fondly, saying the region has greatly benefited from the economic growth and electricity TVA brought to the Valley.

“I remember my grandfather and my grandmother had a light bulb that hung down from their ceiling, with just the wires hanging on it. They called it the juice … they actually believed that if you unscrewed that bulb the juice would come out of that light bulb,” said Mayor Winfred “Wimp” Shoopman, of Clinton, Tenn.

However, World War II quickly altered the TVA’s trajectory, forcing the company to ramp up energy production for uranium enrichment for the Manhattan project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and aluminum production at Alcoa Inc. — both located just outside Knoxville, Tenn.

With limited possibilities for more hydroelectric dams, this, of course, meant coal.

“I think it was a necessary evil,” said Rick Christensen, operations supervisor of TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant. “Without electricity we wouldn’t be where we are now. To make electricity, it took coal.”