Getting the Record: A Guide to Requesting TVA Transmission and Siting Documents
Companion to The Whole Record: What the Tennessee Valley Authority Publishes When Nothing Requires It — concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21996375, version 1.0 published 26 August 2026 at 10.5281/zenodo.21996376.
Companion to The Whole Record: What the Tennessee Valley Authority Publishes When Nothing Requires It — concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21996375, version 1.0 published 26 August 2026 at 10.5281/zenodo.21996376.
This guide was written as Chapter 14 of that volume and is published separately because it changes audience. The volume is written about TVA; this guide is written to a person who wants a document TVA has not published, and it addresses that person in the second person throughout.
It sets out eight federal FOIA request targets against TVA, five Tennessee state and local targets, Mississippi and the other five states in TVA's service territory, federal agencies other than TVA, court records, and what needs no request at all. For each: what it would establish, which statute reaches it, the clocks, the fee categories, and the exemptions to expect. One worked precedent runs throughout — Faizer v. TVA , No. 3:24-cv-00190 (E.D. Tenn.), dismissed by stipulation on 13 March 2026 after TVA released records it had withheld under Exemptions 4 and 5.
Every target states what it would establish, which is the test a request should pass before it is sent. Requests that cannot answer that question are not in this guide.
Version 1.0 changes no finding and no citation. It exists because the parent volume published as version 1.0 and this guide was still numbered 0.1, so the volume appeared to be citing a draft. It carries one repair: four endnotes cited “§14.3A,” the section's number from when this material was Chapter 14 of the volume, and now read §3A. A cross-reference check on 14 September 2026 found no other broken pointer in either direction.
Coverage and verification limits are stated in the endnotes where they bear, including which opinions were read in full and which were verified only through another court's quotation.