So at a controversial time, the leadership the next president appoints to the board could signal the direction in which he believes the country should move. During the last energy crisis in the 1970s, President Carter took advantage of TVA’s unique position to show the country what conservation and efficiency could do for America’s utilities. While that emphasis on conservation was largely lost when President Reagan appointed Marvin Runyon, a former chief executive of Nissan North America, as chairman, the fundamental proposition that TVA is a tool of the president remains.
Some things are different. For one, a new board structure, reformed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) in 2006, dilutes the importance of just one or two nominees. However, the terms were reduced from nine years to five, so the president will still have a captive enterprise to use as he sees fit.
“The good news is that the TVA experiment is not over,” Smith said. “We are on the cusp of the upcoming elections. A new president could re-seize, regain that initiative with TVA and redirect TVA to become the utility that models how you take a heavily coal-dependent utility into the 21st century, in a carbon-constrained world, and do it in an environmentally responsible way.”
On both sides of the political divide there is talk of a “Manhattan Project for energy” and reminders that America put a man on the moon in less than 10 years after President John F. Kennedy pledged to do so. Perhaps only in election years, when Americans ritualistically, if momentarily, suspend their cynicism and long-term memories and let their imaginations soar, can TVA ascend to the potential of fulfilling its original promise, whatever that was.
Still Relevant?
The regional approach to solving problems of economic development and resource management made sense in the 1930s because the Tennessee Valley, which doesn’t lie within the convenience of state borders, was routinely ravaged by floods and had largely been ignored by the federal government.
Today, it is not hard to find regions of the country struggling with development or natural disasters that transcend state borders. So does this mean America needs a TVA in the Midwest? In the Mississippi Delta?
Many Valley residents, even those with fond memories of TVA, say no. The problems TVA was created to address were unique to the region, they say, and it would be unwise to attempt to replicate that model elsewhere. Indeed, some countries have tried, most notably China and its Three Gorges Dam project, with results that have been mixed at best and catastrophic at worst.
"You would absolutely not use this as a model," said Chandler, who questioned the real impact TVA had on the Valley in his book “The Myth of TVA: Conservation and Development in the Tennessee Valley.”
"In many parts of the world," according to Chandler, "the state-owned model is becoming ascendant and I do think that the story of TVA needs to be told because there are many leaders in those countries who have been exposed to the benefits of a combination of government regulation of environmental controls but using the marketplace for the efficiency it can deliver."
So, he says, learning from the mistakes of TVA is "absolutely an important lesson."
Furthermore, American’s taste for a massive government enterprises and projects may be too soured by the federal government’s recent failures during Hurricane Katrina, its extension in two wars abroad and the continued fallout from the mortgage crisis and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s mismanagement.
TVA may just be an oddity only the dire circumstances of the Great Depression and the passing of time and successive generations could have created, an ideological artifact from the 1930s haunted by the ghosts of America’s energy past and of those who came before.
But at a time when Americans and their politicians are thinking and talking big – on foreign policy, economic development and, of course, energy – TVA’s 75 years provide direction and grounding in what is and is not within the realm of the possible. Whatever those boundaries are, there will be costs and consequences never envisioned by America’s leaders or its people.
Moving forward, it may be enough just to acknowledge that.
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