Bugün öğrendim ki: Şimdi ABD'deki en büyük elektrik üreticilerinden biri olarak bilinen Tennessee Valley Authority, 1936'da Kongre ve Roosevelt tarafından, o zamanlar dünyanın en fakir bölgelerinden biri olan Appalachia bölgesinin altyapısını ve ekonomisini iyileştirmek için kuruldu. ülke

---

> “It was a dark and stormy night….” That classic line has opened a thousand > cornball novels. In the early 1930s, here in the Tennessee Valley, it was > always the prelude to a real horror story. The Tennessee River ran wild in > those days, flooding regularly, causing loss of homes and businesses, > topsoil and crops, livestock and lives. > > On the fairest of days, the river was more or less non-navigable—making it > hard for people to get their goods to market—and filled with hazards, the > most famous of which are the Muscle Shoals in Alabama. Moreover, it was > frequently fetid: three out of five people in North Alabama (near the > Shoals) would suffer in their lifetime from malaria. Then, only three in 100 people had electricity to light their lives and labors; far fewer had running water. It was a hard life in the Tennessee Valley then. The wild and raging river only made it harder.