“you don’t want to do something “unauthorized” to or in the river.”
No kidding. Major hoop jumping and permitting to request cutting down a spindly tree. And then it’s denied. If caught doing it, major fines.
You can’t call and talk to anybody. You leave a voice mail and they call you back in a few days. Once. If you can’t answer, too bad. Start over. again.
And in the meantime, you’d better not plant a tree close to the transmission line ROW or they will come and chop it down. Actually, that is justified as there needs to be a clearance between trees and major transmission lines. See the NERC report on the northeast blackout of 2003 for details (and that was my previous employer’s doing, who I left 2 years before the blackout so I’m in the clear).
Anyway, the point is, they can do things “willy-nilly” that us common folk can’t do.
As a power company employee, there’s worse places to work and better places. But TVA does pretend to be federal when it helps TVA and non-federal when that approach helps TVA.
I retired 3 weeks ago. :)