authorization for comprehensive basin studies in 1920. I'm sure there were an
awful lot of behind-the-scenes operations that I've never seen documented.
I'm sure one of the antecedents for the House Document 308 report was when
the Federal Power Commission staff decided to do these comprehensive studies
and asked for funds. They put it in the budget, instead, the Congress authorized
the Corps to make the list of river basins which eventually was published as
House Document 308. When the studies were authorized, there was a
requirement for some coordination with the Bureau of Reclamation and the
and they were participants in parts of the studies but it was a far cry from
the coordination contemplated when the
Commission was authorized.
The 308 report on the Tennessee River basin provided the basis for the
Tennessee Valley Authority, which solved the coordination problem by keeping
the old-line agencies out of the basin, so they didn't like it. But the need for
coordination of the agencies' activities within river basins was still evident. So
when the issue came up in the water policy commissions, there were a lot of
conflicting opinions. When President Truman's Water Resources Policy
Commission took up the subject, one of the ways that they got agreement was
what we used to call the "Quaker"method-when there's something that you
can't get agreement on, you drop it out. And so when you look at the
commission's recommendation for river basin commissions, it kind of got
down to the fact that since you can't really resolve this Corps of
Engineers/Bureau of
problem, and you have a real problem
with state lines that you can't resolve, you should set up an organization to
handle the problems. It was a kind of a mild recommendation and I think a
good recommendation. Of course, it formed the basis for a lot of planning that
we've done since then.
Certainly the Senate Select Committee was definitely working on the basis of
the river basin as the organizational unit for planning and wanted river basin
plans drawn for all river basins. But Senator Bob Kerr didn't have independent
river basin commissions in mind. He had in mind another Arkansas-White-Red
basin type of report and he wanted an authorization in each basin like the
Pick-Sloan Plan-an authorization that approved a plan and authorized the
initial stages, and when you find a project you want, you just bring it to the
Congress and get it authorized easily because it's already in the overall plan.
91
Previous Page
