Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Over and over again, he would denounce “the profligate waste of natural
resources” and the “gigantic waste” that industrial advance has entailed.
17
After his election and before his inauguration as president, Roosevelt made
a point of traveling to Muscle Shoals, where he made the following extem-
poraneous remarks:
I am determined on two things. . . .The first is to put Muscle Shoals to work.The
second is make Muscle Shoals a part of an even greater development that will take
in all of that magnificent Tennessee River from the mountains of Virginia down
to the Ohio and the Gulf....Muscle Shoals is more today than a mere opportu-
nity for the Federal Government to do a kind turn for the people in one small sec-
tion of a couple of States. Muscle Shoals gives us the opportunity to accomplish a
great purpose for the people of many States and, indeed, for the whole Union.
Because there we have an opportunity of setting an example of planning, not just
for ourselves but for the generations to come, tying in industry and agriculture and
forestry and flood prevention, tying them all into a unified whole over a distance
of a thousand miles.
18
Within weeks of his inauguration as president, Roosevelt moved to
establish the Tennessee Valley Authority, combining Senator Norris's inter-
ests in power, the agriculturists' concerns with fertilizer production, and his
own vision of regional planning in an all-encompassing bill, which he
signed on May 18, 1933.
19
Roosevelt turned his attention next to selecting a director for the TVA.
He had consulted Arthur E. Morgan, president of Antioch University, a
flood-control engineer, and a scholar of the utopian writer Edward Bel-
lamy. Morgan had shown a serious interest in community redevelopment
while at Yellow Springs, Ohio.
A TECHNICAL UTOPIA
Morgan's interview with FDR reinforces the notion that Roosevelt was
interested in the TVA primarily as an exemplar of regional planning and not
merely as a source of power and fertilizer. Morgan later reported: “He
talked chiefly about a designed and planned social and economic order.
That was what was first in his mind.”
20
Within a month of the signing of the TVA Bill, Morgan began planning
a new community to be associated with a new dam at Cove Creek, Ten-
nessee. It would be a permanent town, rather than temporary housing for
