A Conservationist Shakes the TVA

For the biggest utility, an advocate of that oldtime religion

One of his many critics in the energy industry sputters that he is "bad news." Another calls his contributions to the Administration's energy policy "a nightmare." To a smaller but highly influential circle of supporters in Washington, he is a brilliant idealist who rightfully challenges the American myth that growth is good and correctly places a higher priority on conservation than on the creation of new power supplies.

At 52, S. (for Simon) David Freeman is the most controversial energy expert in the Federal Government, and one of the mightiest. Last week President Carter, who admires Freeman's populist approach, appointed him to the most respected operating position Washington has to offer in energy: chairmanship of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest and only federally owned utility (1977 sales: $1.96 billion).

The TVA was founded by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 as a daring experimental power and soil-reclamation project designed to be a model for regional development. During the depressed '30s, the seven-state TVA brought the cheap electricity and fertilizers and flood control that lifted the Tennessee Valley from poverty to the brink of prosperity.

But as it grew, the semiautonomous TVA became increasingly a business, losing much of its original New Deal idealism. Switching from its initial reliance on dams, the TVA built large coal plants and the world's largest nuclear power station. To finance expansion, the TVA began to raise rates. Even though these rates remained far below commercial levels, disillusioned customers nonetheless started to complain. Environmentalists were alarmed by violations of federal clean-air standards and a 1975 near disaster at Brown's Ferry nuclear power station in Alabama. Next, environmentalists sued to block the TVA from building the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River, which would wipe out the snail darter, a three-inch perch found only in those waters; that battle goes on.

TVA'S longtime chairman Aubrey ("Red") Wagner, eager to expand, had put down his critics. His credo: "Our job is to provide all the power consumers need at prices they can afford." Wagner's ally on the three-man board was William Jenkins, who complained bitterly about harassment by environmentalists and quit. But Jimmy Carter felt that the TVA had lost its sense of mission. It had, he complained, "become dormant and just another power company." One result was that to fill a vacant directorship nine months ago, Carter appointed Freeman, then a principal architect of the Administration's energy policy. The President decided to make him the chairman upon Wagner's retirement May 18.

The son of an Orthodox Jewish immigrant umbrella maker, Freeman grew up in Chattanooga and still remembers when the city was ravaged by floods before TVA dams tamed the Tennessee River. Says he: "If you were a member of the generation that saw the light bulb replace a kerosene lantern and benefited from the blessing of electric pumps that drew the water from the well, so you didn't have to carry water from the well, then you really appreciated what the TVA had accomplished." Recalls Freeman: "TVA and religion were the two biggest things in my life."

After graduation from Georgia Tech, Freeman joined the TVA'S engineering design section in Knoxville. Then he financed his way through law school at the University of Tennessee, working part time at TVA while finishing first in his class. He returned full time to TVA as an attorney but was lured away to become principal deputy to Federal Power Commission Chairman Joseph Swidler. Later, Freeman led a Ford Foundation research project on the looming U.S. energy crisis. The resulting book, A Time to Choose, published in 1974, outlined alternatives to big power growth and became an energy primer for Candidate Carter, who later recruited Freeman to join James Schlesinger in drafting the Administration's energy program. As one top oil industry executive complains: "The major flaw in the President's energy plan was Freeman's basic philosophy that the only solution to our problem is to drive the growth rate to zero as quickly as possible."

Freeman rejects such charges. "Conservation and growth are not mutually exclusive," he argues. "Instead, conservation fits into the American concept of efficiency." Freeman plans to continue many TVA projects that he found "in the incubator." Probably he will accelerate the TVA'S program of granting no-interest loans to insulate homes. He shares the President's distrust of nuclear power plants, and supported Carter's decision to postpone the building of a prototype breeder reactor on Tennessee's Clinch River, which falls within the TVA'S domain.

Freeman says that he has no intention of blocking construction of the seven nuclear power plants already being built or on order for the TVA, but he severely questions whether the next increase in generating capacity should be nuclear. He hopes to imbue the TVA with its original Rooseveltian mission of being the cutting edge of enlightened developments in the energy field. In the process, Freeman can be expected to push those projects dearest to President Carter's heart and his. Chief among these are experimental nonpolluting coal-burning plants and solar energy. "It's not bad," muses Freeman, "if we help people unplug from the TVA and plug into the sun."

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