Public Power And The New Deal

In late January 1933,  President Roosevelt traveled to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to announce the beginning of what would become the Tennessee Valley Authority:

During World War I, the Army Corps of Engineers began building an immense dam across the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals, intended to generate power for adjacent plants making military explosives. The project employed more than 18,000 workers and involved about 1,700 temporary buildings.
But it remained unfinished at the armistice and didn't contribute to the war effort. By the time it was finally completed, in 1924, the dam had cost $150 million, and only a portion of its planned generators had been installed. It was a national embarrassment, criticized by private-sector power companies as a prime example of federal waste.
Henry Ford offered to buy the complex from the government for $5 million, but Congress declined this low-ball offer. Supported by his friend Thomas Edison, Ford next proposed a huge commercial hydropower development above the dam, including a 75-mile-long urban strip circling an immense reservoir.
Nothing came of this, largely because veteran Nebraska Senator George W. Norris, who believed the government should control the development of natural resources, blocked any attempts to privatize the project. During the 1920s, Norris repeatedly proposed plans for public development of the region’s water-power potential. Several of these bills, passed by Congress, died under vetoes from President Calvin Coolidge and President Herbert Hoover. In 1932, Norris, a liberal Republican, endorsed Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate.
In January 1933, the senator joined the incoming president at the Muscle Shoals Wilson Dam for a dramatic announcement. The new administration would fund comprehensive development of the Tennessee Valley, adding at least 11 dams above the Wilson one to create "the greatest interconnected power system in the world," with a generating capacity of an estimated 3 million horsepower, the New York Times reported.

This was one of the biggest federal projects which allowed the New South to develop in the latter half of the 20th Century.  Not that Southerners would ever say thanks.