The Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee: The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly hard hit by the Great Depression. The TVA was envisioned not only as an electricity provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and electricity to rapidly modernize the region's economy and society. It was the first large regional planning agency of the federal government and remains the largest.