The Muscle Shoals project in Alabama, with the Wilson Dam and power house, and the two nitrate plants, was begun as a war measure under the National Defense Act of 1916. Actual construction, however, did not start until late in 1918, and the war was over before the project could be carried out. A significant element in the creation of the TVA was the establishment of a regional authority transcending State lines. In taking this action Congress showed an awareness of the growing trend toward regional and national planning and an understanding of the fact that many of the problems of the Tennessee Valley could not be solved by the States acting alone. For more than a century the Federal Government has promoted navigation in its inland waterways.
Flood control is intimately related to navigation improvement.
Effective measures require Federal rather than State or local action, and call for the expenditure of large sums for construction work. The development of electricity through water power, as Theodore Roosevelt pointed out more than forty years ago, provides a potential source of income with which the costs of both navigation and flood control may be met. Its work has been carried on with the cooperation of many Federal and State agencies, particularly the agricultural extension services of the land grant colleges and universities. Specifically, the control of water resources called for the construction of a system of dams. Hale's Bar Dam, also in Tennessee, which was bought from private interests in August 1939, is being tied in with the general control system.