. The TVA was established by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 for flood control and locally controlled hydroelectric power on the Tennessee River. It was a massive project controlled by a public corporation designed to modernize the rural, Southern communities within the Tennessee Valley. The TVA also established extensive education programs, and a library service that distributed books in the many rural hamlets that lacked a library. The TVA was locally and nationally controversial. On the national scale, opponents led by Wendell Willkie said the TVA was a form of state socialism, and the other utility companies it competed against were also against the project. Local people were both apprehensive but also hopeful about the changes the TVA would bring. In his role as one of the TVA directors, Lilienthal was skilled at administration and at creating supporters for the project. In part due to his experience at the TVA, Lilienthal was often sent abroad to work on water development projects. Lyndon Johnson dispatched him to the Mekong River to oversee development of a project there. He was also sent to India and Pakistan to report on the dispute between the two nations, for Collier's magazine. He thought that the Kashmir dispute was intractable, but there were other areas of mutual concern of the two nations were agreement could be found - such as the allotment of the water of the Indus River. He reported this idea to the World Bank, and its president, Eugene R. Black, agreed with the assessment. This led to the Indus Water Treaty, which to this day governs water allocation between India and Pakistan. Atomic energy Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II and victory by the Allies, Lilienthal was fascinated and appalled by the information he soon absorbed about the power of the new weapon. In January 1946, U.S. Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson asked Lilienthal to chair a five-member panel of consultants to a committee including him and four others, who were to advise President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes about the position of the United States at the United Nations on the new menace of nuclear weapons. At the time, the US held a monopoly on these weapons. Lilienthal described the purpose of Acheson's request: Those charged with foreign policy -- the Secretary of State (Byrnes) and the