Comprehensive Valleywide Land Plan

TVA’s Comprehensive Valleywide Land Plan (CVLP) comprises the framework for its reservoir lands planning program. TVA adopted the overarching CVLP as part of the 2011 Natural Resource Plan to help guide resource management and administration decisions across the entire TVA reservoir system. The CVLP provides a holistic approach to balancing shoreline development, recreational use, sensitive and natural resource management, and other uses by taking a regional look at resource demands and trends.

The CVLP creates uniformity in the lands planning process by instituting one planning methodology (Single Use Parcel Allocation methodology) for all reservoirs across the Tennessee Valley and ensuring consistency in TVA reservoir land management plans (RLMPs). TVA develops RLMPs to manage its 293,000 acres of public lands around its reservoirs. RLMPs support land and water program goals while balancing other competing and sometimes conflicting resource uses.

Under the CVLP, TVA’s implementation of reservoir lands planning expanded the spectrum of TVA reservoir land management from a reservoir-specific focus to a more comprehensive Valleywide perspective. The 2011 CVLP established target ranges for each land planning zone across the region and enabled TVA and the public to consider whether too much or too little attention was/is being given to any particular land uses on a system-wide basis. See definitions of these land planning zones.

The CVLP allocation ranges represent the percentage of suitable land acreage within each land use zone. The 2011 CVLP allocation ranges were developed using land use allocations in RLMPs prepared under the Single Use Parcel Allocation methodology (Zones 1 through 7). RLMPs developed under previous planning methodologies were converted to Zones 1 through 7 using “rapid land assessments.” The “rapid land assessments” were initial allocation estimates based on the best information available at the time, but did not always reflect the actual uses of TVA parcels.

In July 2017, TVA completed the Multiple Reservoir Land Management Plans project and met a long standing goal to have all RLMPs prepared under the Single Use Parcel Allocation methodology. TVA recognized the updated allocations in the eight RLMPs varied from the allocation estimates developed with the “rapid land assessments.” Because the eight RLMPs involved approximately 138,221 acres (47 percent) of the 293,000 acres of TVA-managed land, TVA recalculated the 2011 CVLP allocation ranges to incorporate the allocations in the eight RLMPs.

In August 2017, the TVA Board of Directors approved final RLMPs for the eight reservoirs and the following updates to the 2011 CVLP allocation ranges: