OCR Text |
Show it is merely setting forth in an orderly fashion and perhaps carrying a step forward a policy which has developed as a result of the constructive think- ing of many able people in Government agencies and departments, special commissions, congres- sional committees, on the floor of Congress, and in the White House over a period extending back more than a century and a half. The most important key to the evolution of that policy has been increasing recognition of com- prehensive development of an entire river system for many purposes, as the means of achieving pub- lic objectives in the use of water and associated land resources. The evolution has taken policy from the earlier single-purpose, single-project approach, through the period of comprehensive single-purpose programs, including many projects in the same basin, to the present state of law governing most water resources planning. This provides for comprehensive planning, in which a number of purposes are subordinate to a speci- fied principal purpose such as flood control, navi- gation, or irrigation. This Commission is convinced that the next step forward must be the application of unified responsibility to the planning of multiple-pur- pose basin-wide developments. This need not be in accordance with the Tennessee Valley Author- ity pattern so far as organization is concerned. But it must take advantage of what the country has learned from that experiment in unified de- velopment of the water resources of basins. There is today no single, uniform Federal pol- icy governing comprehensive development of water and land resources. Some statutes of uni- form application separately control various as- pects or functions. Others are geared to a comprehensive approach, but focus attention on individual projects, specific areas, or single river basins. Insofar as it may now be achieved, there- fore, comprehensive development of river basins must depend upon a number of statutes passed at different times, devoted to individual segments of basin development and administered by sep- arate executive agencies. Efforts have been made to deal with this lack of unity through governmental reorganization. So far the recommendations along this line have not been accepted. This Commission is there- fore recommending the achievement of the necessary coordination through the unification of policy governing the actions of existing agencies, or of a single agency should such be adopted. This unification of policy should be assured through enactment of a single national water re- sources policy law controlling the activities of the Government departments as presently organized or as they may be reorganized. From Project to Program Long before there was legislation contem- plating comprehensive multiple-purpose basin programs, Congress was recognizing the inter- relationships between the functions which were ultimately to compose such programs. First it recognized the relationship between navigation and flood control in 1879; then in 1888 the rela- tionship between irrigation and flood control; 9 years later, in 1897, the relationship between forest cover and flood control, navigation, and irrigation. Finally, in 1906, the General Dam Act recognized the relationship among power, navigation, and fish, while an amendment to the Reclamation Act provided for disposal of surplus power at reclamation projects. This period culminated in a series of messages with which President Theodore Roosevelt vetoed certain bills authorizing private development of water power and, more particularly, in the re- ports of President Roosevelt's Inland Waterways and National Conservation Commissions and in his letter transmitting the Waterways Commis- sion reports to Congress. In these messages, as well as in the reports of the two Commissions, the new concept of a river system as a single unit for development purposes came to the fore. In the letter transmitting the Waterway Commis- sion report to Congress the President said: Every stream should be used to its utmost. No stream can be so used unless such use is planned far in advance. When such plans are met, we shall find that, instead of interfering, one use can often |