VI The Alabama— Coosa 

 River System: 



INTEGRATED SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT 

 BY A SINGLE LICENSEE 



The difficulties that have beset efforts to develop the Hells Canyon 

 Reach of the Snake River arise from circumstances that do not 

 necessarily prevail on all river basins. There are conditions under 

 which a river system can be efficiently developed, and the system's 

 output efficiently distributed, even under divided ownership. The 

 Alabama-Coosa river system has characteristics that illustrate these 

 possibilities. 



Two of the conditions that impede development of the Hells 

 Canyon Reach are indivisibility and direct interdependence. Both 

 were discussed in Chapter III as factors that prevent an efficient 

 allocation of resources in a pure market economy. Even though 

 the federal government interceded in the interest of efficient de- 

 velopment as prescribed by the Federal Power Act, the powers of 

 the government seemingly were not employed to ensure the most 

 efficient plan of development. 



Part of the difficulty stems from the indivisibility of an excellent 

 storage site when regarded as part of a hydraulically interdependent 

 system. In the Hells Canyon Reach, the characteristics of the site 

 for storage, coupled with the stream flow and the fall in that reach 

 of river, represent a hydroelectric potential which vastly exceeds 

 the present needs of the most eligible private developer. Such 

 conditions may be more or less typical of many of the storage sites 



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