Department of Natural Resources. The second Hoover Commission pro- 

 posed in 1955 the creation of a Water Resources Board and assignment of 

 the Soil Conservation function of constructing dams for flood control to 

 the Corps of Engineers. Last mentioned is the June 1970 report to the 

 President by the Public Land Law Review Commission recommending a 

 Department of Natural Resources which would bring together the major 

 public land agencies. 



No reference, however, is made to any of the series of major studies and 

 reports concerning marine resources and their management which had 

 appeared during the last fifteen years. The series began with the 1958 Na- 

 tional Academy of Sciences report, "Oceanography 1960-1970." It cul- 

 minated in the Report of the Commission on Marine Science, Engineering 

 and Resources, "Our Nation and the Sea," in 1969. The organizational 

 and program content of what the Commission called the national program 

 in marine and atmospheric affairs derived in part from several earlier 

 studies by the Interagency Committee on Oceanography, particularly its 

 1963 report, "Oceanography, the Ten Years Ahead." Further development 

 of these ideas took place in congressional hearings, especially those held 

 by the Subcommittee on Oceanography of the House Merchant Marine 

 and Fisheries Committee in 1965, and in the 1966 report, "EfTective Use 

 of the Sea" by the Panel on Oceanography of the President's Science 

 Advisory Committee. The concept of a national program was given 

 practical form and budgetary and programmatic meaning by the activities 

 of the Cabinet-level National Council on Marine Resources and Engineer- 

 ing Development, established by Congress as an interim body in the 

 Executive Office of the President and chaired by the Vice President. Its 

 activities during the five years of its existence are reported in its annual 

 reports, 1967 to 1971. These reports all testified to the meagemess and 

 fragmentation of the national effort at sea, in the light of the prospective 

 national need, and to the benefits to be found in more centralized man- 

 agement of Federal marine development efforts and the intimately linked 

 atmospheric and oceanographic research programs. 



The formation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- 

 tion (NOAA) by Reorganization Plan :^4 of 1970, is sometimes cited as 

 solving Federal fragmentation in marine and atmospheric affairs. But, as 

 noted in the "Papers" the formation of NOAA ". . . still left the related 

 offshore oil, gas, and mineral resource, and earth sciences programs sep- 

 arately managed by Interior." * And this is far from the whole story. 

 Interior also retained or has since been assigned programs with significant 

 marine components in recreation (the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, the 

 National Park Service, the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife), in 

 water as a resource (the Office of Saline Water, the Office of Water Re- 



* Op. cit. p. 117. 



