The Great Depression of the 1930s heavily struck the lives of Americans. The situation was particularly critical in the Tennessee Valley: 30% of the population was suffering of malaria, per capita income had decreased to $639 only. As agricultural lands had been intensely exploited, they became infertile and peasants’ conditions were becoming extremely precarious, with an average annual income of 100 dollars.
The “Tennessee Valley Authority” institution
In 1933 President Roosevelt instituted the “Tennessee Valley Authority” to modernize the region, while prioritizing energy production as a key development factor. The TVA had a huge and difficult task to tackle: in order to build dams and reorganize the Valley’s swampy areas, more than 15,000 families had to be displaced; which caused strong opposition, especially in rural areas, vis-à-vis the project. However, in the end the “TVA men” succeeded in improving the agricultural production and revitalizing the local economy. Following its implementation, the TVA program built a system of 29 central hydroelectric dams. The TVA covered 7 states: most of the state of Tennessee, parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and some areas of Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Various were the opponents of Roosevelt’s initiative that were critical of the federal Government invasion vis-à-vis the states own autonomy, addressing on many occasions the US Supreme Court. In 1936, with a historic sentence, the Court declared constitutional the law instituting the TVA, making reference to the federal Government control over the river navigation rights. The institutive law of the Authority had specifically contemplated such appeals to the Supreme Court and so possible future declarations of unconstitutionality of some of its parts were not to be considered as invalidating factors of other operative norms.
The Tennessee Valley Authority was defined as “a regional agency for economic development” in charge of the following tasks:
- the improvement of navigability and the management of fluvial floods;
- the reforestation and the utilization of adjacent lands;
- the support to agricultural and industrial development;
- the function of “national defence” with the use of federal Government properties;
- the exclusive use of nitrate factories in the region.
The TVA had the power:
- to decide on the displacement of schools, roads, telephone lines in order to reorganize the territory;
- to transfer the population from areas where dams were to be constructed to areas where malaria had been removed.
The TVA could designate its own workers as law-enforcement agents authorized to:
- arrest, in case of resistance;
- execute arrest warrants;
- carry out investigations.
President Roosevelt defined the TVA as a “corporation” possessing government powers but equipped with the flexibility and initiative powers of a private enterprise.
Financing the TVA
In order to finance its operations, the TVA could issue bonds (within five years from its establishment) with an up to 50 years maturity, of $50 millions max., and an interest rate of no more than 3.5%, upon the authorization of the US Secretary of the Treasury. The law provided that, in case the TVA was unable to repay the bonds, the Federal Treasury could take over and honor its duties to the creditors. However, the Treasury would acquire the bonds and could resell them later on. Moreover, the US Treasury could intervene in the “secondary market” and purchase TVA circulating bonds at any time and at any price.
The TVA could issue bonds only after the project to be financed was approved by the Federal Energy Commission, which was obliged to examine the request in a short time and as a priority. In 1939, the Tennessee Valley Authority was authorized to issue additional bonds for $61.5 millions with the same federal guarantee, in order to purchase power stations in Tennessee. In 1957, the TVA obtained a new authorization to issue $30 millions worth of bonds for new investments; this time, however, with no federal guarantee. The TVA had to pay to the involved States and local bodies a part of its profits, coming from selling electrical power (mainly to the states of Alabama and Tennessee, and to a lesser extent to the other ones): until 1940 it was 10% and from 1948 onwards 5%. The “surplus” of power-sales and manufactured products, after the deduction of operational costs, amortization and circulating capital, is given by the TVA to the US Treasury.
The TVA Model
Long story short, Roosevelt’s project founded an agency capable of realizing investments enjoying a long-term profitability, especially in the hydro-electric sector, of which it was becoming the owner. The TVA enjoyed the federal Government guarantee, but was committed to rigorously repay its loans – although in a 50 year timeframe –, essentially from the profits of the hydroelectric power stations it built. The initiative was successful. Not only did the TVA directly repay its loans to the public, but it could operate without a federal guarantee from 1957 onwards, and it became the first hydroelectric power supplier in the US and now continues to generate profits of $1 billion per year to the benefit of the US federal Treasury.
Its Law-Enforcement Powers
One TVA’s peculiarity was its power of law enforcement. It enabled the TVA “federal agents” to act in a context where they had to clash with locally-elected “sheriffs” who often were supporting local groups who were abusive towards the displaced poor population and hence had no interest towards the hydrogeological reorganization of the territory, necessary to defeat malaria and re-launch production.
A Model for the “World”
The example of the TVA was adopted by the US Democrats as a model to enhance development in other countries. The opening of “agencies” imitating the TVA operational rationale, in fact, as recommended by one of President Roosevelt’s key-advisors, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, became one of the World Bank’s (established in Bretton Woods together with the IMF) main conditions for granting its loans. Such is the case of the Italian “Cassa per il Mezzogiorno” (lit. “Fund for the South”), which was created to comply with the conditions for getting a loan of $50 millions by the World Bank, granted to the De Gasperi government for the modernization of infrastructures in the Italian South.
However, the “Cassa”, unlike the TVA, did not have the duty to pay back the loans, thus it did not become the owner of the public works realized, and did not enjoy any “enforcement power”. The “Cassa” had initially been devised as a 10-year entity, but its duration was continuously extended. Furthermore, its tasks were also extended after a few years from the realization of infrastructures to both tourism and industrial activities, thus deeply altering its nature, up to eventually determining its closure. With the end of the “Cassa”, also a considerable technical knowhow, acquired in the first decades and specialized in the design and realization of infrastructural projects, was lost; a heritage which might have been useful in today’s situation with regard to the efficient and timely use of the European structural funds.
A European “New Deal”
In this moment of European history when – in order to give a future to the new generations – the necessity of a “New Deal” becomes apparent, the example of the TVA can be instructive for the enactment of federal institutional and financial instruments necessary to realize a crucial sustainable plan for development, in tandem with the austerity measures to be taken at the member-states level.
Translated by Alon Helled
Log in