The Tennessee Valley Authority is mentioned in The Bob Zadek Show in two distinct contexts: as the owner-operator of the Tellico Dam in the Supreme Court case Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, discussed by Tony Francois, and as a New Deal-era government purchaser in Amity Shlaes’s account of General Electric. Neither excerpt treats the authority as a subject in its own right; it enters each conversation as an institution already established and referred to in passing.
The Tellico Dam and Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill
In the July 13, 2018 episode, Tony Francois described Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill as a case involving a dam — the Tellico Dam, which he placed, with uncertainty, in Tennessee or Kentucky. The dam was almost complete in the mid-1970s, federally funded and built, and all of this long before the Endangered Species Act went into effect, though it was not quite done before the ESA took effect. All that remained was to close the spillway and start filling it. A group of environmentalists sued the Tennessee Valley Authority, which Francois identified as the owner-operator of the dam, because the completion of the dam — the final step — would potentially harm a small population of very small fish called snail darters that relied on water from the reservoir. Can California’s Endangered Species Survive U.S. Fish & Wildlife Policy? (2018)
Francois framed the issue as a conflict between two congressional acts: Congress passed the ESA, but it also authorized and funded the multi-million dollar public works project and appropriated money for it after the ESA was passed. The question was whether Congress could really have meant that even a great big important public works project like this would have to give way to an endangered species. The Supreme Court’s answer, Francois said, was yes, and it said two really significant things. First, that the ESA makes protection of endangered wildlife the federal government’s number one priority over all other federal activities — a remarkable thing to say, Francois noted, because you do not find that anywhere in the text of the Endangered Species Act. Second, that statement was not a period at the end but a comma: after the comma comes “no matter the cost,” which Francois said is also not really in the Endangered Species Act. Can California’s Endangered Species Survive U.S. Fish & Wildlife Policy? (2018)
Francois said the decision supercharged the authority of the Fish and Wildlife Service and another agency that deals with sea-going wildlife within the Commerce Department, NOAA Fisheries, empowering these agencies to play a much stronger role than the members of Congress who had voted for the ESA. In response, Congress in the late 1970s passed a bipartisan amendment to the act — Francois invited listeners to picture that happening now — which was supposed to provide some discretion for the government in whether or not to designate critical habitat and to consider the economic impact of habitat designations. In adopting these amendments, several important senators and congressmen said they had not meant for this to be the be-all end-all of the federal government, that it was just one of the things the government is supposed to do. Can California’s Endangered Species Survive U.S. Fish & Wildlife Policy? (2018)
The Delta Smelt and the Question of Who Pays
Later in the same episode, Bob Zadek drew a parallel between the snail darter and the Delta smelt, a small fish a couple of inches long that resides in the San Francisco Bay Delta. Francois described the Delta as a series of channels among a bunch of islands east of Walnut Creek and out toward Stockton and Pittsburg and Brentwood, at the north and south end of it. The Delta is also the through-way for transfer of the California Water Project and the Central Valley Project water supplies, originally stored in reservoirs north of the Delta such as Shasta, Oroville and Folsom, and then sent via two canals to Southern California — both the Los Angeles metro area and farms south of Stockton all the way down to Bakersfield. Francois called this water supply a basic piece of infrastructure, like the water from a tap in San Francisco, like roads, bridges and telephone lines, and said it makes it possible for the farming communities of the Central Valley to exist and to thrive. Can California’s Endangered Species Survive U.S. Fish & Wildlife Policy? (2018)
Protections for the Delta smelt, Francois said, have resulted in significant restrictions on the ability to move water stored north of the Delta through the Delta, as a result of the operation of two sets of pumps at the south end. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s consultation with the Bureau of Reclamation under the ESA to protect the Delta smelt, because the Bureau operates these pumps, has resulted in significant restrictions on when and how much those pumps can operate to get the water the government has stored for the benefit of these farming communities to them; if the pumps cannot operate, the water does not get to them. Francois said this has caused enormous economic and cultural harm to these communities, significant economic harm not just to farm owners but to farm workers, because of the amount of land that has had to be fallowed over the years. Can California’s Endangered Species Survive U.S. Fish & Wildlife Policy? (2018)
Zadek used the discussion to press a distinction between the goal of species protection and the question of cost allocation. He said he had not declared war on the gray gopher or the Mississippi gopher frog, and that the issue was not the important result but how we get there and, most importantly, who pays. Under the formulation of the federal government, Zadek said, the government tells a family that happens to own some timberland that it must absorb a $34 million bill because the government has decided the gray gopher frog may like to live there someday. Putting aside what he called the absurdity of the conclusion, Zadek took issue with the how: if the federal government determines that part of its mission is to protect this potential habitat, then the federal government should buy the land at market value; if it can force the purchase under the eminent domain regime, it should pay the landowner the $34 million or whatever it has deprived them of. He said he did not quarrel with the result, though it seemed insane and irrational, but asked why there should be a lottery in which this family gets the short straw and has to pay for the folly. The question, he said, is not whether to preserve a species — the goal is laudable — but who should pay; if the country has decided that part of its wealth should be spent preserving a species, then all should bear the cost, and the political process will tell elected officials whether the public supports them. Can California’s Endangered Species Survive U.S. Fish & Wildlife Policy? (2018)
The TVA in Amity Shlaes’s Account of General Electric
In the December 29, 2019 episode, Amity Shlaes described General Electric as a company whose soul was divided. On one hand, GE in the early 1960s was, in her phrase, a bunch of Mad Men who were quite cynical, thought a lot about marketing, wanted to be cool and create slogans, have good distribution, make money and work with government very cynically. GE, she said, was a big provider that sold turbines to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which she characterized as government from the New Deal. On the other hand was the old GE, which was very individual — Thomas Edison, a man alone in a lab, coming up with an idea that changes the world. Close Enough to Socialism: Amity Schlaes on The Great Society (2019)
Shlaes also recounted that GE got caught up in its own divided soul and hypocrisy: executives at GE had been colluding illegally in violation of American antitrust law with Westinghouse and other companies in their industry to fix prices and charge too much to the TVA. In her telling, GE was cheating the American taxpayer. There was a bloody court case, actual GE executives went to jail — unusual in antitrust — the unions crowed with laughter at the slip-up, and the stock went in the toilet. Lemuel Boulware’s department, which Shlaes called his little propaganda mill, fell apart; Boulware retired; Ronald Reagan was fired and his television show, GE Theater, part of the propaganda effort, was canceled. Close Enough to Socialism: Amity Schlaes on The Great Society (2019)
Across episodes
The two episodes touch the Tennessee Valley Authority in unrelated ways: the 2018 episode treats it as the dam-owning defendant in Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill and as the backdrop to the Delta smelt dispute, while the 2019 episode mentions it only as a New Deal government purchaser of GE turbines and as the overcharged customer in an antitrust price-fixing case. The excerpts show no development of a single question across the two treatments, and no guest in either episode addresses the authority’s own structure, governance or history.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the Tennessee Valley Authority’s founding, its statutory charter, its geographic scope or its current operations. They do not state the outcome of Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill beyond the two propositions Francois attributes to the Court, nor do they identify the amendment Congress passed in response by name. The Tellico Dam’s location is given only as Francois’s uncertain recollection of Tennessee or Kentucky, and no excerpt addresses the TVA’s role in the Delta smelt dispute, where the pumps at issue are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation.