 The Office of Production Management predicted that wartime industrial production would peak in 1943, and that the generating capacity of existing and planned TVA projects would be short by 230,000 kilowatts of electric power.Congress approved the project in January 1942 and President Roosevelt signed the bill into law on January 30, 1942.Construction began immediately on February 2 as a rush project, and it used blueprints, civil engineers, construction workers, and construction machinery from the nearby Cherokee Dam, which had been completed a few weeks earlier in late 1941.