History of River Governance in the United States

By Douglas S. Kenney, University of Colorado (USA)

I. Introduction
The most difficult and long-standing challenge in the field of natural resources is the
management of transboundary resources. No resource raises as many difficult governance
issues than the so-called "fugitive resource": water. Unlike most natural resources, water
is innately mobile and elusive, traversing physical boundaries with a seemingly
premeditated disregard for the consequences on human institutions. The most obvious
type of boundary crossed is geographic; however, the lack of congruence between
hydrologic and political regions is only one element hindering the establishment of
regionally integrated arrangements for resource governance, as several additional forces
unduly fragment water institutions. The perspectives of agencies, congressional
committees, interest groups, professional disciplines, political processes, management
programs, budgeting practices, judicial inquiries, the media, and so on, are often highly
reductionist, providing a formidable and entrenched barrier to integrated regional water
governance. When chronic issues of competing values and ideologies are also considered,
it is quickly evident why two centuries of research and experimentation have failed to
produce a universally accepted institutional model for the governance of the United
State’s regional water resources.

Designing and modifying governance arrangements to achieve the goals of regional

resource management are the common objectives of both river basin and watershed
management initiatives—the former term, in this context, referring to large, interstate
resources, while the latter term describes smaller, sub-state basins. Throughout most of
American history, river basins have been an active laboratory for intergovernmental
experimentation; however, in recent years, experimentation at this scale has waned as the
watershed, rather than the river basin, has become the hydrologic region receiving the
greatest attention. A tremendous variety and number of small (sub-state) watershed
partnerships have recently spread across the country, transforming regional water
governance through their emphasis on land-water integration, consensus decision-
making, and participatory government.

Despite the similar conceptual nature of river basin administration and the modern
"watershed movement," these efforts are often viewed (and implemented) as unrelated
activities. In part, this is because water management efforts at these two regional scales
have typically featured different objectives—something that is at least partially explained
by the timing of the efforts. Efforts at the river basin scale have traditionally focused on
the allocation and development of water for regional economic development purposes,
while the more recent watershed initiatives typically deal with more "environmentally
friendly" goals associated with ecosystem restoration and comprehensive resource
management. These differences hide the fact that both types of regional water

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management efforts share many common features and raise similar governance
challenges. Both practical and philosophical considerations suggest that these two efforts
should be more closely coordinated.

The following report provides an overview of the barriers and governance challenges
associated with regional water management in the United States (US). This historical
review is provided to illustrate the progress made in this area, to identify the major
components of the unfinished agenda, and to identify themes and lessons that might be
applicable to other regions.

II. Governance of River Basins: The Institutional Challenge

River Governance in Theory and Practice

It is widely acknowledged that the effective management of transboundary resources
requires a holistic viewpoint and coordinated action (Cairns and Crawford, 1991;
Mitchell, 1990). The exact nature of this challenge varies from country to country and
region to region, but conceptually, there is broad agreement about the normative ideas
that should guide the design of governance arrangements.

A somewhat maddening variety of related terms and concepts have emerged to describe a
model of resource management that eschews disjointed, incremental and narrowly-
focused decision-making in favor of more integrated approaches (Margerum and Born,
1995). Organized under headings such as “integrated environmental management” (IEM)
and “ecosystem management,” these approaches articulate a vision of improved resource
governance culled together from ideas across a variety of disciplines: e.g., the biological
sciences contributing a focus on systems (ecosystems) and human-environment
interactions; economics offering insights into the control of transboundary impacts and
externalities; public administration stressing the importance of program integration and
coordination; planning and related management sciences emphasizing modes of
interaction and intergovernmental decision-making and the importance of
multidisciplinarity; and so on. Key recurring themes include the importance of
governance arrangements supporting integration, coordination, a systems perspective,
multiple objectives, multiple time frames, and the sustainability of environmental and
human institutions. Much of this literature is conceptual and normative; what is often
missing is an articulation of how this ideal is to be achieved—i.e., how to convert theory
to practice. Margerum and Born (1995) suggest this requires a focus on process elements,
and specifically, the crafting of arrangements that are inclusive, interconnective, strategic,
and goal-focused.

In the context of regional water management, these ideas have congealed under the
heading of “unified river basin management” (URBM), and later, “integrated river basin
management” (IRBM), which in turn is affiliated with the more generic (and recent)

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terminology of “integrated water resources management” (IWRM) (or merely “integrated
water management” (IWM)), a concept inexorably linked to the larger organizing
principle of “sustainable development” (SD). The histories, interconnections and nuances
of these terms are summarized by many authors (e.g., see Dworsky and Allee, 1981;
White, 1998; Turton, 1999; Guruswamy and Tarlock, 2005; Jeffrey and Gearey, 2006).
As noted above in the discussion of IEM, the elements of IWRM are diverse, calling for
holistic governance across activity areas (particularly water development and
management), resources (land and water), outcomes (ecosystem health versus human
needs), and process elements (including equity and pragmatic decision-making). Also
central is the notion that IWRM should be applied at “catchment” scales: watersheds,
sub-basins, and basins. As discussed in the literature (e.g., Jeffrey and Gearey, 2006), and
illustrated later in the review of US history, these lofty ideals have rarely been
approached, in part due to governance arrangements that fail to embrace the substantive
focus of IWRM, and perhaps more importantly, by arrangements that offer flawed or
incomplete procedural elements—especially regarding coordination and conflict
resolution.

One of the latest incarnations of this search for improved arrangements is the European
Water Framework Directive, adopted in 2000. The Directive calls for an integrated
strategy to water governance organized at the scale of transboundary river basins and
emphasizing achievement of well-defined environmental protection objectives through
processes featuring extensive intergovernmental coordination and public/stakeholder
involvement. The new Directive replaces seven of the European Union’s “first wave”
directives in an attempt to provide a more coherent and streamlined approach to river
governance, and an approach that builds upon positive experiences in basins including
the Maas, Schelde and especially the Rhine River. Conceptually, the Directive draws
upon ideas well documented in the scholarly literature, and to a lesser extent, reiterates
themes from the US experience—such as the recognition that greater roles for
stakeholders and the public are desirable as part of water governance. In other respects,
however, the Directive emphasizes themes often downplayed in the US river basin
experience, including the focus on water quality and environmental health, the reliance
on basin management plans, and the central role of economics and economic rationality
in decision-making. As discussed later, these ideas have been more actively embraced in
the US at the scale of small watersheds, and only recently.

Overcoming Institutional Fragmentation

Only rarely does an opportunity exist to establish new river governance arrangements
upon a blank institutional canvas. Rather, the challenge is to transform what currently
exists into somewhat that better resembles the normative ideal. Achieving the ideal of
integrated governance arrangements for river basins—regardless of the term used to
describe it—requires identifying and addressing those factors that promote and perpetuate
institutional fragmentation, i.e., the imprecise delineation of authorities and
responsibilities for various facets of resource management among different governmental
jurisdictions, or among agencies from the same jurisdiction. The establishment of highly

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centralized governments or basin organizations is often the advocated solution to this
fragmentation, and while this can be part of the solution, this approach can suggest too
simplistic and narrow a viewpoint. The reality is that consolidation of bureaucracies into
“superagencies” is rarely a practical or sufficient solution to the problems of institutional
fragmentation, as this can merely transpose areas of conflict from the
intergovernmental/interagency scale to the intra-governmental/intra-agency scale; the
underlying conflicts still exist. Additionally, reorganization does little to fill institutional
gaps that might currently exist, and does not recognize that the existing fragmentation is
at least partially intentional and, for some parties, desirable, as it expresses legitimate
differences in values, goals and affiliations within society, and it reflects thousands of
past decisions on issues where water was not the primary concern. The existing
institutional framework, therefore, is not immutable, but it is almost certainly resistant to
change, and often for good, deliberate reasons. Given these considerations, institutional
fragmentation is best viewed as a phenomenon to be strategically managed rather than an
error to be corrected.

Fragmentation in US Water Institutions: Major Considerations

Water institutions in the US are fragmented by a variety of geographic,

intergovernmental, and interagency considerations. Each of these considerations is too
complex to be fully detailed here. Nonetheless, an overview of these issues is central to
understanding the challenge of overcoming institutional fragmentation in the US, and to
distinguishing between those historical lessons that are widely transferable and those
which are too US-specific to be of wider applicability.

Geographic Factors and Issues of Scale

The most obvious source of institutional fragmentation in regional water institutions has
already been noted: the lack of congruence between governance arrangements (normally
delineated by political boundaries) with those natural regions defined by relevant
physical processes and landscape features. All rivers in the continental US are either
international, interstate, sub-state, or a combination of these regions. In fact, the river
channel itself forms part of the state-line boundaries for at least 39 of the 50 American
States. Overcoming the resulting fragmentation problems requires reorganizing
institutional arrangements at the proper geographic scale, but defining that scale is not a
simple matter. In the context of water resources, hydrologic regions defined by
topography have traditionally been advocated as providing the appropriate scale for
governance and management activities. However, in the modern era, water projects
and diversion facilities have breached and interconnected most major river basins in the
US and elsewhere, suggesting that management units be defined in terms of hydraulics
(e.g., service areas) rather than hydrology (Weatherford, 1990). A related idea is to
establish institutional arrangements at a geographic region encompassing a particular
problem or functional responsibility of chief concern. This philosophy was clearly
articulated by the National Resources Committee (NRC) in its seminal report entitled

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Regional Factors in National Planning and Development (1935:vii), which called for
administrative regions encompassing the "general coincidence of major planning
problems." This construct has since been termed the "problemshed" by Lord (1982) and
others. But even this logic has limited utility in resource governance, as factors such as
introduced (exotic) species and global climate change continuously modify relevant
geographic scales. Ultimately, arrangements that allow for some flexibility in geographic
scope are ideal.

Fundamental Intergovernmental Qualities

The manner in which the US is structured creates several types of fragmentation

problems associated with competing levels of government (Federal, State and local),
branches of government (legislative, executive and judicial), and between the public and
private sectors. In water issues, conflicts between Federal and State roles are among the
most common. Over time, the US has evolved from a republic of 50 relatively
autonomous and equal political States to a hierarchical federation with a strong Federal
(national) government. In the realm of water resources, it is the relationship between the
Federal government and the State governments that is most significant and contentious.
Within their borders, States have important roles in many aspects of water management,
such as intra-state allocation of water among users; however, at the interstate scale—the
typical scale for large river basins—the Federal government has several key
responsibilities associated with commerce, water allocation and development, land
management, and environmental protection. The judicial resolution of regional water
disputes have been central in the expansion of Federal power, including the interpretation
of several key elements of the US Constitution—specifically the commerce and property
clauses (Fox, 1964; President’s Water Resources Policy Commission, 1950). These
interpretations provide for a strong Federal role in all rivers that are navigable or are
tributary to navigable rivers, and those that drain the roughly one-third of the US that has
been reserved as public land for purposes such as forest and rangeland management and
the preservation of scenic and biologically significant areas.

In addition to apportioning power among the Federal, State and local levels, the
American political system also allocates decision-making authority within each of these
levels among the three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive.
Each branch has the ability to influence regional water management decision-making,
and in ways that is constantly evolving. At the Federal level, Congress (the legislative
branch) historically played the central role, as the authorization of water projects and the
subsequent appropriation of development funds were the primary water concerns. Over
time, however, the role of the judiciary and the executive branch has grown significantly
as economic, environmental, and process-related criteria were injected into water
development decision processes that were previously made almost entirely on political
grounds, and as management goals such as water quality management and biodiversity
protection assumed a more prominent role (Gottlieb, 1988; McCool, 1987).

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Within States, the most important intergovernmental consideration is often the effort to
balance public and private roles in water resources management. This issue is most
intense regarding water allocation (and reallocation) within the western States (Howe and
Ingram, 2005). There, “private rights” proponents have historically been successful in
arguing that the most efficient mechanism for allocating resources (or the right to use
resources) is through a system of private rights subject to legal protection and market
exchanges, rather than by subjecting shared resources to bureaucratic control and
oversight. Market opponents, meanwhile, argue that natural resources have broad, non-
market, intergenerational, and systemic values that cannot be adequately appreciated or
preserved through a system of private rights. In practice, western water resources are
currently controlled by a framework that nests private rights and market mechanisms
within governmental frameworks within States, but across State lines (including the large
river basin scale), private rights and market mechanisms are largely absent. More humid
regions in the central and eastern US have been slow to embrace intra-state water rights
and water markets, although private licenses to use water are commonly issued by
relevant State agencies.

Interagency (and Intra-Agency) Delineations

In addition to the geographic and intergovernmental considerations fragmenting water

institutions, the US water resources bureaucracy is further fragmented by the division of
responsibilities and authorities along substantive lines or with respect to different
administrative roles, and/or based on competing values and ideologies.

Many of the most important natural resource agencies and authorizing statutes are
defined in substantive or functional terms, rather than in terms of geography—although
each agency has a geographic limit on its scope of authority. Over time, certain agencies
have become associated with specific areas; specialization at the Federal level, for
example, includes the water supply emphasis of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and US
Army Corps of Engineers, the water quality focus of the US Environmental Protection
Agency, and the water resource monitoring function of the US Geological Survey.
Similar specialization is seen at State and local levels. This specialization is logical in
many respects, as it reflects (and is partly derivative of) the narrow focus of many
academic disciplines that contribute to resource management, and also derives from the
fact that specialized agencies generally often enjoy greater political success than those
with a broader focus (Clark and McCool, 1985). Yet, functional specialization
discourages the efficient development of regionally integrated policies. In the field of
water resources, this is best evidenced by the historically poor job of integrating land and
water management programs, water quantity and water quality programs, and policies for
the joint control of surface water and groundwater.

Specialization (and thus institutional fragmentation) is also seen by arrangements that

allocate administrative roles to different agencies. In this context, the term
"administrative roles" is used to describe activities such as regulation, system operations,
and planning and policymaking. Each of these roles not only requires unique personnel

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skills, but places different agencies (and divisions within agencies) in significantly
different political situations (Clarke and McCool, 1985). Agencies that provide
services—such as providing water supplies—normally develop supportive relationships
with the constituencies they serve, while agencies that regulate activities—such as water
quality, endangered species, or environmental preservation agencies—often operate in a
more adversarial environment with the regulated community. As a consequence, agencies
that have both regulatory and service-providing roles for a given resource can have
powerful internal incentives to subordinate their regulatory functions. This phenomenon
can encourage the creation of independent regulatory agencies, such as the US
Environmental Protection Agency, to oversee and moderate the behavior of agencies
preoccupied with service-providing functions. Again, while this approach is logical on
many levels and can help to restore balance to the bureaucracy, it can further fragment
decision-making authority and can impede efforts to bring an integrated focus to regional
resource governance.

Perhaps the least appreciated source of institutional fragmentation involves the presence
of incompatible ideologies about what constitutes good public policy and proper resource
use. When divergent ideologies form the basis of different agency mandates, programs,
and interest group positions, it is extremely difficult to expect any water institution to
produce management regimes which are internally consistent and integrated (Feldman,
1991). Given the wide variety of uses and values associated with water resources, it is
likely that divergent ideologies will always be among the major sources of institutional
fragmentation; nonetheless, processes which encourage the exchange of ideas and the
consideration of multiple values offer the promise of increasing the level of holism in
regional water management efforts. For this reason, many authors strongly suggest that
new institutional arrangements for water management be designed from a "process
orientation"—i.e., be designed to satisfy criteria such as public participation, value-
pluralism, and democratic decision-making—rather than being constructed to pursue
specific predetermined management outcomes (Fox, 1976; Harrison, 1986; Lord, 1984).
As noted later, the establishment of processes which are collaborative and inclusive has
been the most exciting initial achievement of the watershed movement (Yaffee et al.,
1996; Born and Genskow, 2001).

III. The US Experience

The institutional fragmentation currently seen in US water institutions is the product of
several decades of incremental, and often uncoordinated, rulemaking. Predictably, several
efforts have been made over time to combat the forces that fragment regional water
institutions, with mixed success. These efforts have occurred in a wide variety of river
basins and watersheds across the country and have taken place in eras exhibiting salient
differences in sociopolitical trends. In the following pages, the US experience with
regional water management is reviewed over six time periods: (1) early history; (2) the
Progressive Conservation era (circa 1890 to 1920s); (3) the Depression era (1929 to
1942); (4) the era of the basin interagency committee (1943 to the early 1960s); (5) the

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emergence of cooperative Federalism (1960s through 1980s); and (6) the modern era.
Although the exact chronological divisions between these six eras are imprecise, each of
these eras features important intergovernmental and bureaucratic trends that distinguish
them from other periods in US history.

Early History
Navigation was among the first regional issues to test the intergovernmental limits of the
new Republic (Shallat, 1992). As early as 1784, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the
State of Maryland had created a Bi-State Commission to investigate the navigation
potential of the Potomac River and the possibility of opening a road connecting the
navigational networks of the Potomac and Ohio River basins (Schad, 1964). This effort
was soon followed by the country’s first major regional water resources report: the
Gallatin Report of 1808. This report outlined an ambitious plan for the development of a
national system of waterways, a vision that began to be fulfilled with a frenzy of canal
building activity in the 1820s (Fox, 1964).

Most of the early navigation projects were financed by either private parties or the States,
often with disastrous results (MacGill, 1917). In many cases, the scope of these projects
proved to be beyond the financial resources of these entities, prompting many parties to
advocate a greater Federal role in navigation improvements. This soon happened in many
ways. First, in the creation of the US Army Corps of Engineers as the country’s chief
engineering body, and later in 1824, in a prominent court decision (Gibbons v. Ogden)
and congressional act (General Survey Act) that affirmed a federal role in regulating and
promoting navigation (Maass, 1951; Clark and McCool, 1985; Shallat, 1992).

Although the 1824 legislation initially limited the Federal role to research and planning,
supportive constituencies quickly managed to secure large Federal water development
appropriations for navigation projects, mainly on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers
(Maass, 1951; Shallat, 1992). By the 1860s, the Corps was active in repairing the
damages originating with floods and Civil War battles on the Mississippi and Missouri
River systems. Efforts to repair these two river systems and integrate them with the Great
Lakes network included important (although fleeting) institutional innovations, including
the creation of some of the US's first major regional water organizations in the
Mississippi River (in 1879) and the Missouri River (in 1884), an ironic historical footnote
considering the eventual failure to logically integrate the development and administration
of these two basins (Thorson, 1994).

The much dryer and sparsely populated American West was largely uninvolved in the era
of canal building and navigation improvements, but nonetheless inherited the legal and
political legacy of a strong Federal role in regional water issues. In the West, railroads
emerged as the primary transportation system, which did not foster a sense of regional
identity in western river basins and is at least partially responsible for the lack of
emphasis given to regional governance as the West matured (Teclaff, 1967; Fox, 1964).

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The river basin did not become a focus of study in the western US until the Progressive
Conservation movement.

The Progressive Conservation Era (1890s to 1920s)

The study of western water resources and institutional arrangements is generally
considered to originate with John Wesley Powell's Report on the Arid Region of the
United States in 1878, in which he began to formulate ideas about appropriate
institutional arrangements for the region. In crafting his "Grand Plan" for the West,
Powell was highly influenced by the Hispanic "pueblo" communities and the Mormons,
where social organization was largely fashioned around the needs of communities to
jointly and cooperatively manage scarce water supplies. Sociopolitical organization on a
scale defined by the needs of water management was an idea imported to the New World
via Spain and had its origins in the ancient fluvial societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and
China (Wittfogel, 1955; Teclaff, 1967). Writing in The Century in 1890, Powell
articulated his belief that the political institutions of the arid West should follow these
examples and be organized along "hydrographic" districts. Powell's ideas for linking land
and water institutions were considered revolutionary, and largely differed from existing
Federal land disposal policies and from the emergence of private water allocation systems
in the western States that separated ownership of land and water (Stegner, 1953; Pisani,
1992; Hays, 1959).

Powell’s desire to minimize the Federal role in river development was also controversial,
and conflicted with those who doubted that the States or private parties could
independently raise the capital for river basin development—especially when Federal
water development subsidies were soon made available, following up on the national
precedent began with the canal building era. The Reclamation Act of 1902, adopted in the
year of Powell's death, established the basic framework of the Federal reclamation
(irrigation) program and created the Reclamation Service (which became the US Bureau
of Reclamation in 1923) to implement the massive effort. The Federal reclamation
program was initially designed to feature close executive branch oversight and rigorous
financial scrutiny, but quickly evolved into a campaign featuring heavy subsidies and
congressional abuses (Holmes, 1972; Wahl, 1989).

The remainder of the Progressive Conservation movement was kinder to the ideas of
Powell, as the river basin was frequently endorsed as the proper scale for the
development and management of the country’s water resources (Hays, 1959; Schad,
1964). In his letter appointing the Inland Waterways Commission in 1907, President
Theodore Roosevelt asserted that "Every river system, from its headwaters in the forest to
its mouth on the coast, is a single unit and should be treated as such" (Inland Waterways
Commission, 1908). With this charge, it is not surprising that the reports of the
commission (1907-1912) all strongly endorsed the river basin as the proper unit of
governance. Water resources management at the smaller watershed scale was also
endorsed in theory, but it was the river basin that was the subject of most intense research
and experimentation.

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Also popular at this time was the notion of multiple-purpose river basin development, an
idea that seemed to gain momentum when the Newlands Commission was created in
1917 to provide Congress with plans for the comprehensive development of river basins
nationwide (Schad, 1964). However, the idea of an independent Federal commission
directing multiple-purpose river development was strongly opposed by the US Army
Corps of Engineers, who desired a unifunctional focus (navigation) and wanted to retain
its central role in water planning (Hays, 1959). Largely due to the Corps' opposition and
to a national preoccupation with World War I, the Newlands Commission was quickly
de-authorized in the Federal Water Power Act of 1920, which ironically created the
Federal Power Commission and assured a strong Federal role in future hydropower
development—a key component in multiple-purpose river development. Despite its initial
opposition, the Corps’ soon joined with the Federal Power Commission in developing a
series of comprehensive river basin development plans known simply as the “308
Reports” (Schad, 1964; Teclaff, 1967). Over two hundred 308 Reports have since been
completed.

Up to this time, there had been little experimentation with administrative arrangements
for regional water development and management. At the sub-state (watershed) scale, the
creation of the Miami (of Ohio) Conservancy District in 1914 to pursue a flood control
mandate is a notable, but isolated, experiment. Similarly, the national impact of the
Federal water organizations established in the Mississippi and Missouri basins (in the
1870s and 1880s) was marginal. The only significant institutional arrangement for river
basin administration to have emerged by the 1920s was the interstate water compact—
pioneered in the Colorado River Basin (Hundley, Jr., 1975). A water compact is a legally
binding agreement among States that apportions the flow among each jurisdiction. Such
compacts were often required as a precursor to federally funded river basin development,
odd given that the very act of apportioning a river runs counter to the idea of viewing and
governing the resource as an integrated unit. Nonetheless, the use of interstate compacts
for apportioning rivers and promoting multiple-purpose river development were
innovations that proved to be highly popular and were frequently copied nationwide. In
the 50 years following the negotiation of the Colorado River Compact, 18 other western
rivers were apportioned via the interstate compact process and at least 500 multiple-
purpose projects were built (National Water Commission, 1973; Martin et al., 1960;
McCormick, 1994). Many of these compacts establish river basin commissions, however,
their roles are generally limited to monitoring compliance with the quantitative
apportionments.

The Depression Era (1929 to 1942)

On October 29th, 1929, the economic and social fabric of the US was thrown into chaos
as the stock market crash signaled the start of the Great Depression. Trends in favor of
Federal primacy and regionally oriented river basin development became firmly
entrenched during the Depression, as regional water development became an integral part
of President Roosevelt's national employment and economic development strategy. With

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congressional consent, several New Deal agencies provided the expertise and manpower
for this period of intense national water development (Reisner, 1986; Reuss, 1993). By
the mid-1930s, the four largest concrete multiple-purpose dams ever built in the US were
all under construction: Hoover, Shasta, Bonneville, and Grand Coulee. This level of
development did not ease until World War II.

The impressive scale of Depression era water projects was matched by an equally fervent
and ambitious movement to pioneer new institutional arrangements for regional
economic development and water management. The most ambitious of the institutional
reforms was creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933. The TVA is a
highly autonomous and authoritative Federal regional water agency—the first
organization of its type—governed by a three-person board of directors appointed by the
President, and epitomizing two of the virtues most forcefully articulated in the preceding
eras: regionalism and multiple-purpose water development (Selznick, 1966). The broad
mandate of the TVA includes power development, navigation improvements, flood
control, and agricultural and industrial development.

Soon, efforts were underway to create new “valley authorities” in the upper Mississippi,
Cumberland, Arkansas, Wabash, Columbia, Sacramento-San Joaquin, Missouri,
Tombigbee, Connecticut, and Merrimack basins (National Resources Committee, 1935;
Martin et al., 1960; Teclaff, 1967; Donahue, 1987). The Ohio, Arkansas, Red, and Rio
Grande basins were also soon targeted, along with the Atlantic seaboard, northern
California, and the Great Lakes. All of these proposals failed, however, as the emerging
economic recovery and the preoccupation with the new world war lessened Congress'
interest in imposing new forms of governance and redistributing decision-making
authority away from existing agencies (Fox, 1964; Teclaff, 1967). Additional expansion
efforts over the next 20 years were also unsuccessful; the TVA remains the sole example
of this institutional arrangement in the US, although the TVA model has been more
popular outside of the country.

The creation of the TVA was not only the product of a crisis situation, but was the result
of an active search for improved institutional arrangements for regional water
governance. The TVA is an endorsement of the idea that river basins should be managed
as a unit and that land and water institutions should be integrated (Fox, 1964). Although
dwarfed by the attention given the TVA and the valley authority movement, regional
land-water integration was being more effectively accomplished in this era by the
proliferation of soil conservation districts established under State statutes (enacted
between 1937 and 1946) in a national program administered by the U.S. Soil
Conservation Service (Clarke and McCool, 1985). Intergovernmental and private-public
partnerships at the watershed level for erosion control were highly popular Depression-
era innovations that have made a lasting and national impact on small scale (generally
sub-state) regional water development and management, and they continue to play an
important role in promoting the modern watershed movement.

Regionalism was a theme permeating many of the major studies of the day, prompting
the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations ([ACIR] 1972:6) to term the

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decade beginning with the TVA's creation as the "renaissance of regionalism." This
theme was featured in the work of the President's Committee on Water Flow, the
Mississippi Valley Committee of the Public Works Administration, the National
Resources Board and its Water Planning Committee, the National Resources Committee
with its Water Resources Committee, the National Resources Planning Board, and
numerous other investigations into water resources development and management
(Schad, 1964; Teclaff, 1967; Reuss, 1993). Collectively, these investigations identified
several basins suitable for comprehensive development, while the National Resources
Committee took the lead in promoting institutional reforms for river governance.
Although the Committee endorsed the TVA model as well as calling for additional
interstate compacts, the group's primary recommendation was to establish more informal
and flexible arrangements, primarily interagency coordinating committees featuring both
Federal and State representatives and a Federal chairman (National Resources
Committee, 1935). Witnessing the strong bureaucratic opposition generated to defeat the
valley authority movement, the Committee correctly anticipated that interagency
coordinating committees were the more politically pragmatic institutional arrangement
for the future—a future which began in earnest in 1943.

The Era of the Basin Interagency Committee (1943 to 1960)

The inability to create additional valley authorities and other centralized regional
organizations across the country was largely due to the opposition of Federal agencies
who feared losing bureaucratic turf, autonomy, and decision-making authority to new
organizations (Teclaff, 1967; Fox, 1964). Even the small soil conservation districts which
began to spring up in the late 1930s were shaped by intense turf battles among Federal
agencies working to ensure that the districts maintained a narrow focus and low profile.
This bureaucratic opposition also was instrumental in the termination of the numerous
Depression era study commissions and committees during the early years of World War
II. A more politically palatable approach was the use of basin interagency committees.

The era of the basin interagency committee began in 1943 with the establishment of the
Federal Interagency River Basins Committee (FIARBC), a group drawing members from
the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and Army; the Federal Power Commission; and
later, the Department of Commerce and the Public Health Service (National Water
Commission [NWC], 1973). Five so-called "firebrick" committees were formed by 1950,
for the Missouri, Columbia, Pacific Southwest, Arkansas-White-Red, and New York-
New England basins. The FIARBC vehicle was primarily intended to coordinate the
activities of the Federal agencies within river basins and to provide a modest degree of
State participation in Federal planning efforts by including State governors (or their
representatives) on the committees. Largely similar to the firebrick committees were a
wide variety of temporary interagency "coordinating committees" also active in this era,
established to conduct river basin studies in specific regions (Hart, 1971). These study
commissions were primarily limited to the central and eastern United States; in the West,
the focus was primarily on the negotiation of several interstate water allocation compacts.

12
The literature on the firebrick committees is almost uniformly critical of this institutional
arrangement, as the committees had difficulty in truly coordinating and integrating
activities, and their relations "with State and local governments were informal and
tenuous" (National Water Commission [NWC], 1973:416). The weakness of this
approach is that it provided no real incentive for interagency coordination. It was
Congress, and not the firebrick committees, who approved or rejected proposed
development schemes; consequently, when disagreements arose among the committee's
participating agencies, each would simply take their own plans to Congress—a forum
where enforceable decisions could be made and implemented. This was most clearly seen
in the activities of the Missouri Basin Interagency Committee (MBIAC) (Martin et al.,
1960; Maass, 1951; Baumhoff, 1951). There, the Corps of Engineers advocated a river
basin plan emphasizing flood control and navigation improvements, while the Bureau of
Reclamation proposed a scheme emphasizing irrigation and power production. When the
agencies were unable (or unwilling) to integrate the largely incompatible visions,
Congress essentially authorized both. The MBIAC proved useful in coordinating the
implementation of the so-called “Pick-Sloan Plan,” but the opportunity for meaningful
integration had already been lost (Thorson, 1994; Martin et al., 1960). Unfortunately, the
experience in the Missouri Basin was not isolated; a similar experience plagued the
Columbia Basin Interagency Committee when floods in the late 1940s created
momentum for comprehensive development, with the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau
of Reclamation pursuing different solutions (Maass, 1951). Ultimately, the FIARBC
structure was phased-out, only to be replaced in 1954 by a fairly similar structure
overseen by the Interagency Committee on Water Resources.

While the true spirit of unified basin planning was not embraced by the Federal
construction agencies in this era, they did quickly learn to utilize the rhetoric of basin
planning to generate support for additional construction projects (Dworsky and Allee,
1981; Reisner, 1986; Martin et al., 1960). The Bureau of Reclamation proved to be
especially skilled in using this political strategy for meeting the increasingly stringent
economic feasibility requirements for new irrigation projects. By jointly considering non-
economically justifiable projects along with so-called "cash register" hydroelectric power
projects within a single basin plan, Reclamation achieved authorization and
appropriations for a long list of projects of dubious economic and environmental merit.
This technique was first used in 1942 in the development of the Big Horn River in
Wyoming and then applied on a larger scale in Reclamation’s portion of the Pick-Sloan
Plan in the Missouri basin.

Water development also emerged as the driving force behind Federal programs aimed at
the watershed level. Beginning in 1954, the "small watersheds program" of the U.S. Soil
Conservation Service encouraged local organizations and State agencies to enter into
voluntary arrangements offered by Federal extension agents to receive technical
information and Federal financial assistance for projects serving a variety of purposes,
including flood control, agricultural water development and management, fish and
wildlife enhancement, and municipal and industrial water supply (Holmes, 1979). The
nature of the cost-sharing arrangements ensured that the majority of the projects were
primarily for flood control, and then only in small upland watersheds—a specialization

13
needed to avoid destructive turf battles with the more powerful Corps of Engineers
(Clarke and McCool, 1985).

The failure of Federal agencies to meaningfully coordinate activities and their continued
reluctance to encourage coequal State participation in river basin planning, development
and management were addressed by numerous postwar study commissions during this
era, including the First Hoover Commission (1949), the President's Water Resources
Policy Commission (1950), the Second Hoover Commission (1955), and the President's
Advisory Committee on Water Resources Policy (1956). Collectively, these committees
recommended reforms that would consolidate the numerous Federal water agencies into a
single agency or department, establish permanent basin-level advisory committees to
focus decision-making at this regional level and to encourage Federal-State partnerships,
and create “review boards” to oversee congressional water project authorizations. Very
few of the recommendations from any of these reports were immediately or fully acted
upon, although they did influence the sweeping reforms that awaited in the 1960s (ACIR,
1972).

The Era of Cooperative Federalism (1960 to circa 1980)

The 1960s were a highly turbulent era in the US history of river basin administration, as
many of the dominant trends and assumptions developed in earlier eras were significantly
modified in an effort to respond to new water resource concerns—especially the
environmental movement—as well as to broader sociopolitical developments
emphasizing intergovernmental partnerships and greater public input into decision-
making. The "era of Cooperative Federalism" begins with the dismantling of the basin
interagency committees and with efforts to develop arrangements featuring greater
Federal-State cooperation, a reduced policymaking role for Federal water agencies, a
greater respect for environmental values, and an attempt to limit the influence of the
water development advocates that had become so dominant in previous decades. As
discussed earlier and documented in the many commission and committee reports of the
1950s, this movement was fueled by the consistent failure of Federal agencies to
effectively integrate their activities. The National Water Commission ([NWC], 1973)
attributed the lack of decision-making productivity of the basin interagency committees
on their need to achieve unanimity among the participating agencies, since
implementation of committee agreements was voluntary. The committees had no
independent authority, funding, or staffing, and were simply children of the participating
agencies. Due to this need to achieve unanimity among the participating agencies, the
committees were ineffective in reconciling separate agency plans and policies, choosing
instead to allow Congress to simply layer divergent plans together as was done in the
Pick-Sloan Plan.

A second criticism working against the basin interagency committees was their
subordination of the States in regional water development planning and decision-making
processes (NWC, 1973). The congressional recognition of States' rights in regional water
resources planning and development had been well articulated by the 1940s, but in

14
practice the Federal water development bureaucracy offered few opportunities for
meaningful State participation in river governance (ACIR, 1972). The inclusion of State
representatives in the firebrick committees was a partial solution to this deficiency and an
important precedent for Federal-State cooperation in river basin planning; more
substantial innovations, however, were considered necessary.

Two new and highly distinct forms of river basin organizations appeared in the 1960s as
the basin interagency committees finally began to give way to more formal and
regionally accountable organizations. The first of the new arrangements was confined to
the New England region, where the Delaware River Basin Commission was established
in 1961 through the first use of a Federal-interstate compact—an arrangement later
duplicated in the neighboring Susquehanna Basin (Voight, 1972). The Delaware River
Basin Commission (DRBC) and the highly similar Susquehanna River Basin
Commission (SRBC) are innovative in many ways. One key innovation is their high level
of independent authorities, a quality that is derivative of having the participation of the
Federal government as both a compact signatory and a full voting member of the
commission. Additionally, these organizations are distinguished from most other river
basin organizations by their comprehensive scopes, with both organizations having
important roles in the areas of water supply management, pollution abatement, flood
control, river regulation, recreation, environmental protection, and a variety of other
water concerns. It is these features of the Federal-interstate compact commissions that
draw the bulk of the scholarly praise; however, the regional water organizations featured
in the Delaware and Susquehanna Basin have several other notable qualities lacking in
earlier arrangements, including their possession of independent and technically
competent staffs, their problemshed orientations, and their reliance on State political
leaders (i.e., governors) rather than water bureaucrats for guiding policy decisions
(ACIR, 1972; NWC, 1973; Derthick, 1974; GAO, 1981). However, despite widespread
praise of the institutional form, the DRBC and SRBC remain the only two examples of
regional water management via the Federal-interstate compact vehicle.

The second and more nationally significant innovation evolved more directly from the
previous era of interagency committees and the associated critiques—particularly those
of the President's Advisory Committee on Water Resources Policy (1956) and the Senate
Select Committee on National Water Resources (1961). The Water Resources Planning
Act of 1965 reformed river planning and governance in several ways, including the
establishment of a Water Resources Council (in Title I) to coordinate regional planning,
and the establishment of interagency-interstate commissions (in Title II) to coordinate
agencies active in particular basins (ACIR, 1972; Hart, 1971; NWC, 1973; Holmes,
1979). So-called “Title II Commissions” were established in the Pacific-Northwest, Great
Lakes, Ohio, New England, Missouri, and Upper Mississippi Basins (ACIR, 1972). The
commissions featured a mixture of Federal and State members, and were headed by
chairmen appointed by the President and not affiliated with any of the participating
agencies.

The structure and performance of the Title II Commissions and the Federal-interstate
compact commissions were analyzed by many organizations, including in reports of the

15
Water Resources Council (1967), National Water Commission (1973), Advisory
Commission on Intergovernmental Relations ([ACIR] 1972), General Accounting Office
(1981), and in the academic community (e.g., Derthick, 1974; Ingram, 1973). With few
exceptions, Title II Commissions were described as improvements over the basin
interagency committees of earlier decades, primarily due to their improved treatment of
the States; however, the commissions were not highly praised. A sentiment more
commonly expressed was that the Federal-interstate compact commission format,
pioneered in the Delaware River basin and copied in the Susquehanna River basin, was
the more promising institutional arrangement for the emerging era of water management
and State primacy.

During the 1970s, while these new organizational forms were evolving and adjusting to
their institutional settings, the environmental movement born in the 1960s began to yield
the fruit of Federal legislation in a variety of subject areas, including land management,
pollution abatement, species protection, and resource preservation (Revesz, 1996). Not
only has this body of legislation greatly increased protections for environmental
resources and other public interests, but has mandated a greater role for citizens, social
scientists, and the courts in all facets of regional water governance. It has also, in some
cases, reinvigorated efforts to organize management efforts at relevant regional scales.
One example is sections 208, 209 and 319 of the Clean Water Act (as amended), which
collectively endorse addressing water quality issues from a regional perspective
considering land-water interactions. The modern era of river governance in the US is
focused on effects to accommodate these new substantive and procedural priorities.

Modern Era: Evolving Trends in Federalism

Recent decades in the US has seen a variety of trends, not all consistent, that have further
modified the roles and responsibilities of the different levels of government. To a large
extent, this evolution is tied to the ongoing transition of regional water institutions from
focusing on water development to resource management. At the highest levels of
government, the trend away from Federal primacy continues as Federal-State
partnerships (Cooperative Federalism) mature and increasingly give way to arrangements
featuring State primacy (New Federalism). In some cases, this situation is not so much a
case of transfer of authority or responsibility from the Federal to State level, but the
abandonment of Federal leadership and activity, with the presumption that some roles
were becoming obsolete (e.g., those related to regional water development) and that the
States would step forward where necessary to fill the other voids created. Often, it is local
governments and the non-governmental sector that are coming forward, especially at the
scale of small watersheds. At the river basin scale, the void that has emerged remains
largely vacant.

Recent decades have featured a virtual hiatus in the use of Federal study commissions
and financing to address regional water issues. One illustration of this was the decision
by President Reagan in 1981 and 1982 to terminate the Title II Commissions, the Water
Resources Council, and the associated regional planning framework established under the

16
Water Resources Planning Act (WRPA). The demise of the Title II Commissions can
largely be traced to a familiar cause—i.e., their inability to make enforceable decisions,
as the power to make substantive decisions was largely retained by member agencies
(and by Congress), forcing the organizations to operate using a unanimity rule that was
poorly suited to the conflict resolution and regulatory challenges associated with the
modern era of environmental management (ACIR, 1972; Gregg, 1989).

In some regions, the dismantling of the WRPA framework stimulated new State-oriented
innovation, with the most acclaimed example being establishment of the Northwest
Power Planning Council, later renamed the Northwest Power and Conservation Council
(NPCC) (Volkman and Lee, 1988; Wandschneider, 1984). The NPCC is an interstate
compact body comprised of governor appointees from the States of Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, and Montana, funded by hydropower revenues, and mandated to manage the
inherent conflicts between hydropower production and salmon fishery management in the
Columbia River system. Substantively, the Council was charged with preparing a fish and
wildlife plan and a regional energy plan in order to guide management of existing
facilities and to direct the scope and nature of any future development. From a procedural
standpoint, the NPCC was charged with organizing the many competing constituencies,
including the basin's fish and wildlife agencies, Indian tribes, power and business
interests, and the general public. In the spirit of New Federalism, implementation of the
plans emerging from the State-dominated NPCC are primarily implemented by Federal
agencies. This governance structure has been widely praised in the literature; Volkman
and Lee (1988:577), for example, cite the innovation as descending from “Powell's idea
of river basin government, adapted to the realities of State boundaries, and to the
possibilities inherent in the new era of water management."

Aside from the innovation in the Pacific Northwest, however, the 1980s and 1990s have
been relatively devoid of major organizational and policy initiatives in the realm of river
basin administration. For perhaps the first time in American history, it is the sub-state
(i.e., watershed) level—rather than the scale of interstate river basins—where the most
notable institutional experiments and innovations are occurring in regional water
management. Efforts to integrate so-called "ecosystem management" concepts into
Federal programs, including modern versions of the Clean Water Act and the Endangered
Species Act, have sparked an explosion of scholarly research and on-the-ground
experimentation in sub-state regional water institutions (Yaffee et al., 1996).

Most significant is the rapid proliferation in the 1990s of various “watershed

partnerships” (Kenney et al., 2000; Born and Genskow, 2001; Sabatier et al., 2005).
These organizations take many forms, but generally are groups comprised of government
agencies (Federal, State and local), landowners, concerned citizens, and interest groups
organized at the scale of watersheds, working cooperatively to develop and implement
plans to address environmental problems associated with water and other natural
resources. In the past 15 years, thousands of watershed partnerships have sprung up
across the United States, especially where problems of intergovernmental fragmentation
are most evident, where the drawbacks to poorly integrated natural resources
management have led to serious environmental problems, and where efforts to solve

17
environmental problems through regulatory approaches have been ineffective and
contrary to social and economic goals. By including a variety of stakeholders and by
featuring collaborative decision-making processes, these watershed partnerships are as
much a political and social experiment as an administrative strategy.

In the new millennium, the flurry of activity at the small watershed level stands in stark
contrast to the void of activity at the river basin scale. To an extent never achieved at the
river basin scale, the watershed has emerged as the focal point for addressing
fundamental issues of resource management and democratic administration, emphasizing
many of the ideas expressed a century earlier by John Wesley Powell—including the
importance of a regional systems perspective, the integration of institutions for land and
water, the link between environmental sustainability and community stability, and
participatory government. Perhaps more significantly, the modern “watershed
movement” is generally seen as a highly pragmatic response to a series of deficiencies
that have plagued US water institutions, namely:

• the limited opportunities for meaningful public involvement in decision-making;

• the frustration with decision-making processes that are frequently adversarial;
• the lack of decision-making processes and forums focused at physically relevant
scales;
• the lack of incentives and opportunities for creative and flexible problem-solving
strategies;
• the frustration over decision-making processes that are time-consuming and costly;
• the difficulty in balancing science, local knowledge, and values as part of decision-
making; and,
• the need to ensure that decisions actually result in on-the-ground action and the
solving of real problems.

Despite the uncoordinated and grassroots nature of the watershed movement, the
arrangements that have evolved have skillfully avoided many of the problems that have
plagued past innovations in regional governance. One of those problems avoided is
agency resistance. Watershed partnerships rarely seek to replace existing bureaucracies,
but rather work to coordinate and improve their functioning. In fact, most watershed
partnerships have no official governmental mandate or power of any kind, although at
least six States offer financial assistance to watershed partnerships that meet certain
standards in terms of structure and membership, and it is very common for Federal
agencies to provide funding and encouragement to watershed partnerships. For example,
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been among the most active
proponents urging establishment and use of watershed partnerships (EPA, 1996), and
members of Federal agencies are typically among the most satisfied participants in these
efforts (Sabatier et al., 2005). Why? Watershed partnerships are frequently viewed by
agencies as a mechanism to help them do their jobs and to overcome the policy gridlock
that frequently characterizes agency decision-making in the modern environmental era.

Also key to watershed partnership functioning is the typical decision to encourage broad
membership and to make decisions through consensus, qualities that can seriously limit

18
the ability of these organizations to tackle highly divisive issues, but which provide
participation incentives on those other issues where the primary barriers to progress are
inadequate coordination and cooperation across jurisdictions. Prime examples of suitable
activity areas are non-point source water pollution management and the restoration of
aquatic habitats, areas where a failure to act can trigger punitive regulatory programs—a
useful incentive (Kenney et al., 2000). An area generally not amenable to the watershed
partnership approach is water allocation (and reallocation), not surprising given the
inherently zero-sum nature of the activity. This observation suggests that watershed
partnerships, while exciting and innovative, are only one partial solution in the ongoing
national search for appropriate regional water governance arrangements, and that the
successes experienced thus far by this model reinforce the salience of correctly matching
institutional arrangements to governance challenges, a common source of error in US
history.

IV. Conclusions
The preceding historical review suggests that the relative inability of the US to develop
effective institutional arrangements for the governance of regional water resources cannot
be attributed to a lack of interest or effort. To the contrary, regional water resources have
attracted a wealth of scholarly attention and, more impressively, intergovernmental
experimentation. Yet, few river basins possess institutional arrangements that are widely
perceived as innovative, and the small watershed has only recently emerged as an active
scale for regional water governance. While it is easy and common to attribute this
disappointing track record to those intergovernmental and inter/intra-agency factors that
promote narrow and short-sighted thinking, the reality is that the fragmentation of
institutions is inevitable in a country that embraces decentralized government and
diffused power and that encourages individuals, interest groups, and agencies to pursue
different objectives derivative of distinct ideological perspectives and self-interests.
Given this context upon which regional water institutions must evolve, it is clear that the
expectations frequently placed on these institutions are unrealistically high. It is also
undoubtedly true, however, that there is room for improvement.

In general, regional water institutions have evolved in accordance with broad trends in
federalism, something that is best illustrated by changes in the Federal-State balance of
power in regional water organizations over time. Historically, these shifts have been
gradual and incremental, however, recent decades (particularly the 1960s and 1970s)
have brought more significant transformations. Perhaps more subtle, but equally
important, have been changes concerning the processes of decision-making, something
closely tied to the transition from a development to a management focus, and in turn to
the changing roles among the branches of government. The public faith in agencies and
in the ideal of unbiased scientific decision-making that was so central to Progressive and
Depression era thinking has eroded over time, as has the key role of Congress in
authorizing and funding water projects offering great political benefits but frequently
failing to meet reasonable standards of integration and economic rationality. In the

19
modern environmental era, the roles of the judiciary, regulatory agencies, and the public
in water governance have expanded, leading to a new and more complex
intergovernmental environment frequently characterized by policy gridlock.
Consequently, new governance arrangements are now at a premium, as evidenced by the
warm reception given the new watershed framework (Born and Genskow, 2001).

Looking forward, it seems likely that the trend toward greater State and local
empowerment in regional water management programs will continue, although a
significant Federal presence—especially in the West—is likely to continue indefinitely.
Better coordination within the Federal bureaucracy is a challenge that is unlikely to wane;
at the Federal level, over 25 agencies have some jurisdiction over water resources (Smith,
1995). Nonetheless, a lasting legacy of environmental laws built on Cooperative
Federalism and New Federalism ideals suggest that many of the greatest opportunities for
innovation and leadership likely belong to State leaders and non-governmental actors, an
opportunity that is increasingly being seized at the watershed level. The lack of progress
at the river basin scale remains troubling, however, as it is uncertain if innovation at the
watershed scale can yield lasting resource management benefits if it is done in isolation
to events and decision-making at this larger scale. Surely achieving the lofty goals of
integrated management includes institutional arrangements that explicitly recognize the
interrelationship between small watersheds, sub-basins, and large river basins, just as
certainly as the many interrelationships between branches and levels of government must
be considered. In the US, this is a formidable and largely uncompleted challenge, despite
two centuries of research and experimentation.

20
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