Lakes of TN - All man made!?

[An Einnseanair]

Originally Posted by thebruiser500

Why on earth does TVA own all the prime lake front property? Do they have plans to sell it or let normal people take it? It seems to me they are absolutely stunting the growth of TN in an unnatural way and actively preventing Tennesseeans from being happy.

A very controversial history there. The TVA purchased the land using government eminent domain laws because they were going to cover the former farmland with water. But they used the same laws to keep buying up the bank and get most of the lakefront property.

From an article in 1979:

David Freeman, chairman of the T.V.A., explains that the land along the lake will be more valuable because of its waterfront position. the “TVA made it more valuable,” he says. “Why shouldn't T.V.A. get the benefit from selling the land for a plant that will bring more jobs to the area?”

Some of the land they kept for conservation and security. Other land they sold at a huge profit. And some was given away to corporations and developers.... along with cries of corruption. Tellico was the last dam, and the one that generated the most controversy.

Originally Posted by thebruiser500

This Raccoon Lake is kind of crazy, so they must lose electricity if they are pumping it up during the day only to harvest it at night? Is this a way to turn excess solar power during the day into night time hydro?

Again, that's backwards. They pump up at night and generate electricity during peak demand in the afternoon.

Electricity demand rises and falls during the day. It generally peaks late-afternoon on hot summer days when every air conditioner in the valley is running wide open. The lull is late at night just before dawn before people wake up.

Electricity producers have access to three types of generators:

1. Baseline: Runs at a constant efficient rate all the time. Takes time to spin up or down. Large coal plants and Nuclear. When they were built last century these generated the cheapest electricity. TVA has a lot of these.
2. Peaking: Runs only when required. Can be spun up or down quickly based on demand. Some small coal plants, hydro, gas. These usually cost more to run (or used to), so are only run when needed.
3. Environmental: Cannot be controlled; dependent on environmental factors. Solar, wind, sometimes hydro depending during periods of drought.

Decades ago before the surge in Environmental production, everything was base or peaking. It would be extremely expensive and wasteful to generate enough baseload to handle peak summer loads, so they built enough base to handle the average load then used peaking units as needed to get to the max. But still, during the lulls (late night just before dawn), they were producing more base energy than needed.

So in comes Raccoon Mt., which is an energy "battery". Except it's a physical (gravity) battery instead of chemical energy like in a AAA cell. At night when the nuclear and large coal plants are still running at max efficiency they use the excess power to pump water up the mountain. Then in the afternoon, instead of paying someone to spin up a gas plant, they use that stored energy to produce their own electricity. There *is* some loss due to inefficiencies, but overall it works.

These days, the baseline generation is more expensive (large coal, anyway... nuclear is still cheap) and peaking generation is cheaper. The TVA has already shut down several large aging coal plants. But Raccoon Mt. is still useful because now we have Environmental energy. The sun and wind could provide us with all the energy we need, but it isn't regular or controllable. So we need a way to store the energy produced while the sun is shining and wind is blowing so we can use it when it's cloudless and windless. Pumped-storage plants like Racoon Mt. are one such way, but they will never be mainstream because of the environmental costs of building large lakes.

[thebruiser500]

this history of tva and the lakes seems very interesting and something i want to read and learn more about.

crltn, vince - let me say that i see where you are coming from and feel the same way that nature is awesome to have and new development is ugly. but imo, government hoarding land away from citizens is neither moral nor a good long term solution.

the biggest problem is that new development is ugly. well, why is that? it's not because people in tennessee just love ugly things. it's because governments are doing way too much central planning, way overbuilding roads, telling citizens what they can and cannot build with regulations like parking minimums, setbacks, "fire safety", and zoning.

govt forces new developments to be ugly with their china style central planning, then they use that as a pretext for them to steal and hoard the people's land!

oh and also, govt artificially prevents our towns and cities from becoming dense with their zoning,roads, parking and so on... and thus people are forced to spread out more than they would want to.

to repeat, i entirely feel the same way about your concern, but think in practice govt causes this problem and them snatching up the best land is both morally wrong and won't solve anything

[GraniteStater]

All southern states are mostly reservoirs, no naturally occurring lakes. Most people don't know this because the official label on many digital and physical sources call them "lakes" regardless of whether they are artificial or not. The best quality lakes are always naturally occurring and the tend to have very expensive real estate prices as a result, especially less than a few hours from a major metropolitan area with old and new money competing for properties and land.

[thebruiser500]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

All southern states are mostly reservoirs, no naturally occurring lakes. Most people don't know this because the official label on many digital and physical sources call them "lakes" regardless of whether they are artificial or not. The best quality lakes are always naturally occurring and the tend to have very expensive real estate prices as a result, especially less than a few hours from a major metropolitan area with old and new money competing for properties and land.

can you please explain in what respect natural lakes are 'the best quality'? i'm not doubting you here, just curious what you are referring to

[VinceTheExplorer]

Originally Posted by thebruiser500

this history of tva and the lakes seems very interesting and something i want to read and learn more about.

crltn, vince - let me say that i see where you are coming from and feel the same way that nature is awesome to have and new development is ugly. but imo, government hoarding land away from citizens is neither moral nor a good long term solution.

the biggest problem is that new development is ugly. well, why is that? it's not because people in tennessee just love ugly things. it's because governments are doing way too much central planning, way overbuilding roads, telling citizens what they can and cannot build with regulations like parking minimums, setbacks, "fire safety", and zoning.

govt forces new developments to be ugly with their china style central planning, then they use that as a pretext for them to steal and hoard the people's land!

oh and also, govt artificially prevents our towns and cities from becoming dense with their zoning,roads, parking and so on... and thus people are forced to spread out more than they would want to.

to repeat, i entirely feel the same way about your concern, but think in practice govt causes this problem and them snatching up the best land is both morally wrong and won't solve anything

None of which matters as many here prefer to have the lesser of two evils (govt hoarding of land versus subdivisions and such) from private ownership, subdividing and the raping of our natural resources by the human factor in “normal” people as you call them.

In the end many are drawn here because of the opportunities these outdoor spaces afford, and leaving land in the hands of private homeowners isn’t always a good idea for the reasons mentioned.

We can see it many different ways and tilt the conversation whichever way, but we live here because of what you dislike so much and appreciate what the TVA has done for the area.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by thebruiser500

can you please explain in what respect natural lakes are 'the best quality'? i'm not doubting you here, just curious what you are referring to

Sure thing, most reservoirs in the south have a buildup of higher levels of sediment in the water as they are artificial, meaning the water tends not to be very clear most of the time. In lakes Up North you have sandy soils that tend to filter the water quality naturally to a much greater extent, meaning you can often see to the bottom of the lake visually, even ones that are quite deep.