MINERAL ORES AND WATER POWER 



pie of the Tennessee Valley by means of objectives 

 definitely stated: navigation, flood control, reforesta- 

 tion, fertilizer manufacture, and power generation. All 

 of these worthy objectives have been attained, some of 

 them with notable success; the price paid has been 

 enormous, a total well over $900,000,000. Though a 

 billion dollars might be considered fairly liberal, the 

 great failure of the TVA is not its dollars cost but that 

 these vast sums have not been invested intelligently to 

 achieve the ends sought and to serve the needs of 

 tomorrow. 



Flood control was certainly one of the primary ob- 

 jectives. The TVA reservoirs have drowned out some 

 seven hundred and thirty thousand acres of fertile 

 bottomland, an area roughly equal to Rhode Island. 

 More acres are permanently under water than the Army 

 Engineers estimate would ever be covered by a flood 

 so great that it might be reasonably expected only once 

 in five hundred years. Total losses in crops to the farmers 

 and in local taxes to the towns of the Valley have never 

 been cast up, but in 1941 the Tennessee Farm Bureau 

 estimated that the annual value of food crops alone 

 formerly produced on the 561,000 acres then flooded by 

 TVA was $13,415,300. Balance that against $1,784,061- 

 official estimate of the Army Engineers of the total 

 average yearly flood loss, and the plain horse sense of 

 the average American suffers a terrific shock. 



Elaborate schemes to achieve simple ends, the stable 

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