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Show throughout the land. These opportunities are needed to perpetuate freedom. The great task of building an expanding national economy of increasing strength through the development and conservation of our water and land resources is one which calls for active cooperation of all the people, in a long-range program in which individuals, local, State, and Federal Governments, must jointly participate. In this task, the Federal Government, as trustee for the whole people, has a crucial and decisive part. It will require at once bold imagination and prudent husbanding of our resources, imagi- nation to see the inspiring possibilities before us, care and foresight to insure that we do not waste our substance and efforts, and so fall short of the realization of the great objectives for which this Federal Union was created: "To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, pro- mote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity." Outline of Policy On these principles the Commission has framed a water policy for the American people which is embodied in the following series of recom- mendations : Program Planning 1. As a guide to national investment in natural resources development, all Federal agencies should be directed to judge new river basin pro- grams in terms of a set of clearly defined national objectives established by Congress. 2. These objectives, as outlined in detail by this Commission, should reflect the general purpose of water resources investment to achieve the maxi- mum susta-ined use of lakes, rivers, and their as- sociated land and ground water resources, to sup- port a continuing high level of prosperity through- out the country. They should include the safe- guarding of our resources against deterioration from soil erosion, wasteful forest practices, and floods; the improvement and higher utilization of these resources to support an expanding economy and national security; assistance to regional de- velopment; expansion of all types of recreational opportunity to meet increasing needs; protection of public health; and opportunity for greater use of transportation and electric power. 3. Congress should direct the responsible Fed- eral agencies to submit new proposals for water resources development to Congress only in the form of basin programs which deal with entire basins as units and which take into account all relevant purposes in water and land development. This multiple-purpose basin approach should ap- ply to the whole process by which water resources projects move from the survey to the authoriza- tion and appropriation stages. It would enable Congress and the people concerned to have a clear picture of the entire program for each basin and its relation to the economic and social devel- opment of the region and the Nation. 4. To insure the preparation of sound basin programs, Congress should direct the responsible Federal agencies to cooperate with each other and with the appropriate State agencies in the neces- sary surveys and plans. Such action requires some definite coordination of the efforts of Fed- eral and State agencies. While administrative reorganization in the field of natural resources is outside the assignment of this Commission, the Commission believes that, lacking such agency reorganization as was recommended by the Com- mission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (Hoover Commission), Con- gress should set up a separate river basin commis- sion for each of the major basins. These com- missions, set upon a representative basis, should be authorized to coordinate the surveys, construction 10 |