Government Agencies - Water-related History
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The history of United States Army Corps of Engineers can be traced back to 16 June 1775, when the Continental Congress organized an army with a chief engineer and two assistants.[10] Colonel Richard Gridley became General George Washington's first chief engineer; however, it was not until 1779 that Congress created a separate Corps of Engineers. One of its first tasks was to build fortifications near Boston at Bunker Hill. The first Corps was mostly composed of French subjects, who had been hired by General Washington from the service of Louis XVI.
The Corps of Engineers as it is known today came into being on 16 March 1802, when President Thomas Jefferson was authorized to "organize and establish a Corps of Engineers ... that the said Corps ... shall be stationed at West Point in the State of New York and shall constitute a Military Academy." The United States Military Academy was under the direction of the Corps of Engineers until 1866. The Corps's authority over river works in the United States began with its fortification of New Orleans after the War of 1812. A Corps of Topographical Engineers, was separately authorized on 4 July 1838, consisted only of officers, and was used for mapping and the design and construction of federal civil works such as lighthouses and other coastal fortifications and navigational routes. It included such officers as George Meade. It was merged with the Corps of Engineers on 31 March 1863, at which point the Corps of Engineers also assumed the Lakes Survey District mission for the Great Lakes.[13] In the mid-1800s, Corps of Engineers' officers ran Lighthouse Districts in tandem with US Naval officers…[From: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, History; Wikipedia]
United States Geological Survey
Prompted by a report from the National Academy of Sciences the USGS was created by an act of Congress on March 3, 1879. It was charged with the "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain." This task was driven by the need to inventory the vast lands added to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
Clarence King, the first director of USGS, assembled the new organization from disparate regional survey agencies. After a short tenure, King was succeeded in the director's chair by John Wesley Powell. [From: United States Geological Survey, History; Wikipedia]
A Brief History of Bureau of Reclamation
Early History of Reclamation
In 1907, the USRS separated from the USGS to become an independent bureau within the Department of the Interior. The Congress and the Executive Branch, including USRS, were then just beginning a learning period during which the economic and technical needs of Reclamation projects became clearer. Initially, overly optimistic about the ability of water users to repay construction costs, Congress set a 10-year repayment period. Subsequently, the repayment period was increased to 20 years, then to 40 years, and ultimately to an indefinite period based on “ability to pay.” Other issues that arose included: soil science problems related both to construction and to arability (ability of soils to grow good crops); economic viability of projects (repayment potential) including climatic limitations on the value of crops; waterlogging of irrigated lands on projects, resulting in the need for expensive drainage projects; and the need for practical farming experience for people successfully to take up project farms. Many projects were far behind their repayment schedules, and settlers were vocally discontented.
The learning period for Reclamation and the Congress resulted in substantial changes when the USRS was renamed the Bureau of Reclamation in 1923 and, in 1924, the Fact Finder’s Act began major adjustments to the basic Reclamation program. Those adjustments were suggested by the Fact Finder’s Report which resulted from an in-depth study of the economic problems and settler unrest on Reclamation’s 20-plus projects. Elwood Mead, one of the members of the Fact Finder’s Commission, was appointed Commissioner of Reclamation in 1924 as the reshaping of Reclamation continued. A signal of the changes came in 1928, for instance, when the Congress authorized the Boulder Canyon Project (Hoover Dam), and, for the first time, large appropriations began to flow to Reclamation from the general funds of the United States instead of from public land revenues and other specific sources.
In 1928, the Boulder Canyon Act ratified the Colorado River Compact and authorized construction of Hoover Dam, which was a key element in implementation of the Compact. Subsequently, during the Depression, Congress authorized almost 40 projects for the dual purposes of promoting infrastructure development and providing public works jobs. Among these projects were the beginnings of the Central Valley Project in California, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project in Colorado, and the Columbia Basin Project in Washington.
Ultimately, of Reclamation’s more than 180 projects, about 70 were authorized before World War II. The remainder were authorized during and after World War II in small and major authorizations, such as the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program (1944), the Colorado River Storage Project (1956), and the Third Powerplant at Grand Coulee Dam (1966). The last really big project construction authorization occurred in 1968 when Congress approved the Colorado River Basin Project Act which included the Central Arizona Project, the Dolores Project, the Animas-La Plata Project, the Central Utah Project, and several other projects. [From U.S Bureau of Reclamation: http://www.usbr.gov/history/BRIEFHist.pdf]
A Brief History of the BLM
The BLM was created in 1946, when the Department of the Interior merged two older agencies: the General Land Office, created in 1800 to sell off the public lands and encourage settlement; and the Grazing Service, created in 1934 to manage grazing on public lands. The conflicting mandates of land disposal and land stewardship contributed to a schizophrenic nature that remains to this day.
The General Land Office
The General Land Office's man-date was to dispose of the hundreds of millions of acres the federal government had acquired from treaties with Indian tribes, English land grants, and other land deals. The very first branch, located in Cincinnati, gave western settlers access to auctions of public domain land that had previously been held in New York City and other eastern ports.
And dispose of the land they did. By 1860, the General Land Office had disposed of 300 million acres of federal land, most of which had been sold for pennies per acre. Local land offices, understaffed and responsible for thousands of square miles of public domain, were neither equipped nor inclined to investigate the validity of individual claims. In fact, cash sales and commission payments for land agents virtually guaranteed speculation, fraud, and mismanagement. Agents were too busy trying to sell claims to worry about enforcement of the laws.
Congress designed land laws with the intent of giving small farmers or war veterans the advantage of securing land over big business and land speculators. But these good intentions nearly always produced the opposite results.
Collectively, the various homestead and lands acts actually encouraged extractive industries to move in on unclaimed lands, take valuable resources for well below market rates, and leave the land in less than desirable states. Of course, the General Land Office, which often benefited from these policies, had an incentive to accept the claims and ignore the problems.
A large part of the problem is that the land laws failed to account for the aridity of the West. By letting people have only 160 acres, laws such as the Homestead Act made it impossible for anyone to have enough land to earn a living. The only way to make money from the land was to get around the laws.
In response to public concerns, Congress in 1891 allowed the president to withdraw forest lands from settlement or disposal. In two years, President Cleveland created seventeen forest reserves of nearly 18 million acres, all initially managed by the General Land Office.
In 1905, Gifford Pinchot convinced Congress to transfer these reserves to his Bureau of Forestry within the Department of Agriculture. But the General Land Office still had plenty to do: issuing leases and collecting fees and royalties from minerals off of the lands recently withdrawn from settlement under the Withdrawal Act of 1910, administering the Enlarged Homestead Act, and keeping tract of the dwindling public domain.
History of the Department of Interior (DOI)
In 1789 Congress created three Executive Departments: Foreign Affairs (later in the same year renamed State), Treasury, and War. It also provided for an Attorney General and a Postmaster General. Domestic matters were apportioned by Congress among these departments.
The idea of setting up a separate department to handle domestic matters was put forward on numerous occasions. It wasn't until March 3, 1849, the last day of the 30th Congress, that a bill was passed to create the Department of the Interior to take charge of the Nation's internal affairs. The Department of Everything Else: Highlights of Interior History
The Interior Department had a wide range of responsibilities entrusted to it: the construction of the national capital's water system, the colonization of freed slaves in Haiti, exploration of western wilderness, oversight of the District of Columbia jail, regulation of territorial governments, management of hospitals and universities, management of public parks,and the basic responsibilities for Indians, public lands, patents, and pensions. In one way or another all of these had to do with the internal development of the Nation or the welfare of its people. [From: DOI website]
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