TVA to the states – “Your water policy be damned?”
So, the TVA controls the electricity for 8 million people. Let’s restate that. The Tennessee Valley Authority controls the electricity for 8 million people AND all the water in the rivers and tributaries in TVA’s 80,000 square-mile territory.
The governors of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama can talk all they want to among themselves about critical water issues but the one irrefutable federal agency atop all that dammed-up water is the TVA. And the TVA is not answerable to any state or local government entity including all seven of the state governors in TVA’s territory.
Does that seem un-American? It does to me. Our federal government in 1933 established a supra-government called the TVA and it is unlike any other federal agency. It has the powers of the federal government to take property and until recently, thought it had the power to buy, sell and swap land for a profit.
Aside from having the power directly to compete with free-enterprise utilities, the TVA with its arcane rules and procedures, in effect, is a separate and uncontrolled federal agency.
The Congress refuses to exercise oversight of the TVA and the several states are powerless to make any changes in it. Still, at least three states under TVA’s jurisdiction, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama are developing their own water policies and presumably their own strategies in how to deal with a water crisis.
The last person now standing appears to be the TVA and they shouldn’t be standing in the mix at all.
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net and http://norsworthyopinion.com
So, the TVA controls the electricity for 8 million people. Let’s restate that. The Tennessee Valley Authority controls the electricity for 8 million people AND all the water in the rivers and tributaries in TVA’s 80,000 square-mile territory.
The governors of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama can talk all they want to among themselves about critical water issues but the one irrefutable federal agency atop all that dammed-up water is the TVA. And the TVA is not answerable to any state or local government entity including all seven of the state governors in TVA’s territory.
Does that seem un-American? It does to me. Our federal government in 1933 established a supra-government called the TVA and it is unlike any other federal agency. It has the powers of the federal government to take property and until recently, thought it had the power to buy, sell and swap land for a profit.
Aside from having the power directly to compete with free-enterprise utilities, the TVA with its arcane rules and procedures, in effect, is a separate and uncontrolled federal agency.
The Congress refuses to exercise oversight of the TVA and the several states are powerless to make any changes in it. Still, at least three states under TVA’s jurisdiction, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama are developing their own water policies and presumably their own strategies in how to deal with a water crisis.
The last person now standing appears to be the TVA and they shouldn’t be standing in the mix at all.
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net and http://norsworthyopinion.com
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