
The Tennessee Valley Authority is one of the more celebrated legacies of the New Deal. It is credited with bringing civilization in the form of flood control, navigation, irrigation, fertilizer, and electricity to the impoverished Tennessee Valley. And to this day, the staunchly Conservative residents of Tennessee are happy to pay their electric bills to America's only federally owned utility. In fact, in 2013, when President Obama suggesting privatizing the TVA in his budget, both of Tennessee's Republican Senators howled in protest.
Because of that success, there were a lot of proposals to make more TVAs. The photo above shows the 9 Authorities whose discussion were being discussed in congress that would cover the entire country. The TVA's own jurisdiction would expand north to cover the Cumberland River and south to cover all the rivers east of the Mississippi that flow into the Gulf. To this would be added:
-An Ohio-Great Lakes Authority covering the Ohio River and all the rivers flowing in and out of the Great Lakes
-An Atlantic Seaboard Authority covering all the rivers flowing into the Atlantic from Florida to Maine
-An Arkansas Valley Authority covering the Arkansas, Red, White, and Rio Grande Rivers and generally all rivers West of the Mississippi flowing into the Gulf
-A Missouri Valley Authority covering the Missouri River
-A Columbia Valley Authority covering the Columbia River and all rivers flowing into the Pacific north of the California border
-A Colorado Valley Authority covering the Colorado River
-A Southwestern Authority covering the Great Basin
-And a California Authority covering the rivers flowing into the Pacific south of the Oregon border
The source of the photo is from a
pamphlet opposed to the idea, claiming that the 27 men who would be in charge of each authority would somehow become socialist dictators. (I apologize for the poor quality, but this was made in 1950.
It should be made clear that even though we only wound up with one TVA, that doesn't mean our other rivers were untouched, not even close, they were dredged, dammed, and channelized six ways till Sunday. The one difference I see ITTL is that now river control would be fully coordinated, which is good, because the patchwork of authorities we have now leads to mismanagement and water wars between states, most infamously with the Colorado River.