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And Policies, 1961-70 HISTORY OF FEDERAL WATER RESOURCES PROGRAMS AND POLICIES, 1961-70 Beatrice Hort Holmes U.S. Department of Agriculture Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service Miscellaneous Publication No. 1379 HISTORY OF FEDERAL WATER RESOURCES PROGRAMS AND POLICIES, 1961-70. Beatrice Hort Ho!- mes, Natural Resource Economics Division, Economics, Statis- tics, and Cooperatives Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication No. 1379. ABSTRACT This publication is a comprehensive account of major Fed- eral programs and policies relating to conservation and development of water and related land resources and to water pollution control in the years 1961 to 1970. It discusses most relevant Federal legislation and the functioning of Federal and federally-assisted programs involving research, planning, construction, and regulation. Also discussed are national, regional, and local political issues related to water programs and policies; presidential, congressional, and agency policymaking processes; and origins of the environmental movement and its effects on water resources programs and policies. Keywords: Water resources development, water pollution control, water resources planning, water legislation, environmental legislation, Federal agencies, environmental movement, and water politics. Washington, D.C. September 1979 HISTORY OF FEDERAL WATER RESOURCES PROGRAMS AND POLICIES, 1961-70 Beatrice Hort Holmes U.S. Department of Agriculture Economics, Statistics, and cooperatives Service Miscellaneous Publication No. 1379 Por sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402 Stock Number 001-000-04059-6 PREFACE This is the author's second history of the Federal Govern- ment's involvement in water resources development and regulation. The first covered 160 years (1).1 It extended from the first glimmerings of Federal interest in navigation to the huge omnibus rivers and harbors and flood control acts of the 1950's. This report covers only 10 yea:rs. But it is more than twice the length of the first volume because these 10 years called for a more detailed examination. These were the years in which water pollution control became the most important Federal water resources program. Provision of domestic water and sewer systems also became an important Federal program. These were the years in which technological research and development in desalting water and treating wastewater became important Federal programs Plans were readied to make weather modification the third great Federal.. water research and development program. They were also the years that saw the revival of something resembling the New Deal concept of using Federal investments in water projects to improve the economies of depressed areas, although the New Deal emphasis on providing construction jobs for the un- employed was absent. Moreover, in many cases, the emphasis was on water and sewer projects, waste treatment projects, local flood protection works, and small watershed projects, rather than the large multiple-purpose reservoirs of the thirties. These were the years in which the long-reiterated rec- ommendations of official commissions of experts to centralize Federal water resources policy making and to organize all water development planning on the river basin level began to be implemented. They were also years in which the public (both national and local) appeared to lose interest in water development and become concerned with water pollution control and preservation of natural settings. To a certain extent, the public also lost interest in rivers as such, and become concerned with estuaries, coastal beaches, and the Great Lakes. This was the period in which the long-held view of one type of water resources expert (that nonstructural methods of flood damage reduction would prove more effective than further construction of dams, levees, and channel projects) began to affect Federal programs and policies. In contrast, the long-held 1Hereafter, footnotes (signified by superior numbers) will contain explanatory materials only. All citations (signaled by numbers in parentheses) will be found in the back of the book, grouped by chapters. In views of another type of water expert (that shortages of water for municipal and agricultural use were a major problem, and that Federal importation of water over long distances was the principal solution to this problem) appeared, for the time being at any rate, to be decisively rejected. The first volume of this history was divided into five time periods: (1) beginnings of Federal interest in water as a national resource in the nineteenth century; (2) the progressive period, 1901-20; (3) the era of "normalcy," 1921-33; (4) the New Deal, 1933-43; and (5) the post-World War II period, 1944-60. It charted the development of the total Federal water resources program in each time period by: Examining briefly the ideological background out of which programs and policies arose. Describing executive branch policy-making methods, and, where appropriate, overall water resources program planning methods and achievements. Describing water development agency enabling legis- lation, project authorization and appropriations procedures, economic justification methods, requirements for local cooperation, and long range planning methods and achievements. Pointing out certain recurrent themes in the politics of water development, such as the conflict between the executive and legislative branches over control of water development programs, the extent to which political support for programs was either sectional or national, and the tendency for programs formerly supported by national political ideologies to become the object of mainly sec- tional or local concerns. The significant events that affected or occurred in Federal water resources programs in the 1960's, however, were more numerous. It seemed impossible to draw an accurate and bal- anced picture of the Federal water program, in the context of contemporary public affairs, by using the same simple de- scriptive and analytical scheme that had been used in discussing previous time periods. Therefore, this history is divided into three sections: (1) The Early 1960's, (2) Water in the National Mind, and (3) Water Resources Agency Programs, 1966-70. Section I covers 1961-65, with some overlap into early 1966. It begins with a relatively static picture in chapter 1, the Federal water resources agencies, and chapter 2, the report of the Senate select committee and its implementation. The Federal water resources program was expanding, to be sure, and seemingly basic reforms were being made in it. However, this expansion was predictable on the basis of the politics of the 1950's. The reforms being made were consistent with the relatively slow iv pace of changes in public opinions and institutions typical of that period. Chapter 3, The Wars Over Water, concerns water con- troversies, and "crises" that we:re considered at the time to be the most significant that the Federal water program was involved in. Some of these controversies were continued into the second half of the decade. Their further ramifications are discussed in subsequent chapters. For instance, the resolution and some of the consequences of the controversy over the cen- tral Arizona project are taken up again in chapter 6, which con- cerns the program of the Bureau of Reclamation during the years 1966-70. The controversy over pollution by detergents is taken up again in chapter 8, which concerns the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration in the second half of the decade. However, apart from the detergents controversy and the Great Lakes water pollution control controversy (which seemed to grow out of the Chicago diversion case), the issues discussed in chapter 3 appeared, at the time, to be further examples of the same kind of conflicts over apportionment of water supplies, or between dams and exceptional scenic resources, that had also occurred in the 1950's. Section II, Water in the National Mind, which is coextensive with chapter 4, provides a bridge between the relatively static period of the early 1960's and the more dynamic period of the later 1960's. Section II provides an overview of the ideological currents that created the Federal water program as it was in 1961 and the continuing effect of these currents on the development of the Federal water program of the 1960's. It also attempts to explain the changes in public opinion that acceler- ated in the second half of the decade and produced the epoch- making environmentalist program changes of 1969-70. Section II pays very little attention to the numerous controversies over flood control, navigation, and water supply projects that were especially characteristic of the late 1960's and 1970. (These are discussed in later chapters in the context of the program of the particular agency concerned.) But it does describe a number of other widely publicized environmental controversies of the period and attempts to explain the effect of these controversies on public opinion and Federal Government action. Section II includes an account of presidential policies in the Kennedy, Johnson, and early Nixon administrations. It also includes a discussion of the presidential and congressional processes that resulted in some of the best known program changes of the end of the decade, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the great increase in the sewage treat- ment plant
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