465 



to the States, carried the implication that private initiative and 

 the States woukl assume both decision and cost burdens, and respon- 

 sibility for actual performance. To the extent that this did not happen, 

 on projects that were ardently sought by local communities and regions, 

 the pressure for action was redirected toward the Congress to assume 

 the initiative. Moreover, some spokesmen for State governments also 

 urged the Congress to act. 



Another factor militating toward congressional assumption of pol- 

 icy responsibility was the difficult}' encountered by the executive 

 branch in resolving internal differences among agencies. These inter- 

 agency conflicts were in turn based on built-in clilferences in organic 

 law and long-standing professional commitments to specialized water 

 functions. Complex projects required balanced emphasis on all useful 

 functions; they also required a unity of planning that could not be 

 achieved by a consortimn of relatively independent agencies; and 

 any single agency charged with the planning of a project could not 

 avoid giving priority emphasis to the function for which it had 

 exclusive responsibility. Under these conditions, neither agreement on 

 functional emphasis, nor leadership in the formulation of water 

 policy could reasonably be expected to be provided by the executive 

 branch. 



Nor was there available any useful national consensus as to water 

 IDolic}'. One obstacle to the fonnulation of such a consensus was the 

 essentially local character of water resources, such that each region 

 and each locality was pitted against all others in the quest for project 

 support. Moreover, the extremely difficult and abstruse technical prob- 

 lems of technologically advanced management of water made public 

 understanding hard to achieve. Finally, there was the long history of 

 conflict among interest groups with competing plans for uses of water 

 or affected (favorably or adversely) by its development: the coal and 

 power industries, railroads, conservationists, irrigation farmers, wa- 

 terway construction industry, public power advocates, farm organi- 

 zations, and others. 



Toward the clase of the decade of the 1950s, there was apparent a 

 growing need for the Congress to participate more actively in the 

 formulation of water policy. The need for resolution of the water 

 policy issue was becoming pressing. There was a general sense of the 

 national need for a stepped-up rate of investment in j^ublic capital. 

 A rising population of an increasingly urban character was creating 

 new requirements for municipal and industrial water supplies, and 

 at the same time was raising unprecedented problems of pollution. 

 These new aspects were superimposed on a long list of older considera- 

 tions of the control and use of water. 



"When the select committee was formed, its membership was drawn 

 mainly from constituencies deeply concerned with water problems. 

 There was a strong motivation to arrive at a set of findings that would 

 provide a basis for action. The committee was aided by a highly quali- 

 fied supporting staff, objectively constituted and largely without pre- 

 vious agency commitments. 



The select committee was able to exploit the fortunate circumstance 

 that a nationally recognized research institution specializing in re- 

 source policy problems had its own plan of investigation that was 



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