 The dam faced its first major test in March 1929, when several cloudbursts atop the Cumberland Plateau caused the Caney Fork to expand to record flood volumes, sending wreckage and uprooted trees crashing into the dam.The Great Falls Power House was flooded and a substation was destroyed, but the dam held.The passage of the TVA Act in 1933 gave the Tennessee Valley Authority oversight of flood control operations in the Tennessee River watershed, where most of TEPCO's dams were located.