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Show agencies concerned with water resources develop- ment. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed an Inland Waterways Commission that same year "to evolve a comprehensive plan designed for benefit of the entire country." In transmit- ting the report of this Commission to Congress in 1908, he declared that every waterway should be made "to serve the people as largely and in as many different ways as possible." He added: Every stream should be used to its utmost. No stream can be so used unless such use is planned for in advance. "When such plans are made, we shall find that, instead of interfering, one use can often be made to assist another. Each river system, from its headwaters in the forest to its mouth on the coast, is a single unit and should be treated as such. That same year, in vetoing a bill for non-Fed- eral development on the Rainy River, the Pres- ident asserted that the navigability of inland waters should be improved "upon a consistent unified plan by which each part should be made to help every other part." He declared that some designated official should have the duty of see- ing that developments not be permitted which would ultimately interfere with better utilization of the water or complete development of the power. This policy was reaffirmed by President Taft a few years later when he vetoed an authorization for a private dam a short distance upstream from existing and contemplated Federal navigation improvements. Objecting to a provision that would have permitted the dam to become the property of the State of Arkansas on expiration of the permit, he declared that: To introduce a diversity of title into a series of dams which may all become eventually a part of a single improvement directed at the same end would, in my opinion^ be highly objectionable. Beginning in 1909, Congress required that re- ports on examinations and surveys for navigation works contain data concerning terminal and transfer facilities, the development and utilization of water power, and "such other subjects as may be properly connected with such project." It provided, ho^wever, that consideration of these questions shall be given only to their bearing upon the improvement of navigation, to the possibility and desirability of their being coordinated in a logical and proper manner with improvements for navigation to lessen the cost of such improve- ments and to compensate the Government for navigation expenditures, and as added by a 1912 statute, to their relation to the development and regulation of commerce. Since 1917, it has been required that all flood control examinations and surveys include a com- prehensive study of the watershed and data on the extent and character of the area to be affected by the proposed improvement, the probable effect upon navigation, the possible development and utilization of water power, and "such other uses as may be properly related to or coordinated with the project." Legislation creating a Waterways Commission was passed in 1917 for the purpose of uniting all Federal services in investigating questions relating to navigation development, improvement, and control including the "related questions" of: irrigation, drainage, forestry, arid and swamp land reclamation, clarification of streams, regulation of flow, control of floods, utilization of water power, prevention of soil erosion and waste, storage and conservation of water for agricultural, industrial, municipal, and domestic uses, cooperation of rail- ways and waterways, and promotion of terminal and transfer facilities * * *. The Commission was directed to prepare "a com- prehensive plan or plans for the development of waterways and the water resources of the United States for the purposes of navigation and for every useful purpose." But this experiment in compre- hensive planning was never tested. Largely be- cause of American participation in World War I, the members of the Commission were never ap- pointed, and the provision creating the Commis- sion was repealed in 1920 by the Federal Water Power Act. From World War I to the Depression.- Under the Federal Water Power Act, the Federal Power Commission has broad authority to make investigations and collect data concerning the "utilization of the water resources in any region to be developed." This resulted from insistent demands that per- mission for non-Federal development of power 296 |