Franklin D. Roosevelt

Message to Congress on National Planning and Development of Natural Resources.

June 03, 1937

To the Congress:

Nature has given recurrent and poignant warnings through dust storms, floods and droughts that we must act while there is yet time if we would preserve for ourselves and our posterity the natural sources of a virile national life.

Experience has taught us that the prudent husbandry of our national estate requires far-sighted management. Floods, droughts and dust storms are in a very real sense manifestations of nature's refusal to tolerate continued abuse of her bounties. Prudent management demands not merely works which will guard against these calamities, but carefully formulated plans to prevent their occurrence. Such plans require coordination of many related activities.

For instance, our recent experiences of floods have made clear that the problem must be approached as one involving more than great works on main streams at the places where major disasters threaten to occur. There must also be measures of prevention and control among tributaries and throughout the entire headwaters areas. A comprehensive plan of flood control must embrace not only downstream levees and floodways, and retarding dams and reservoirs on major tributaries, but also smaller dams and reservoirs on the lesser tributaries, and measures of applied conservation throughout an entire drainage area, such as restoration of forests and grasses on inferior lands, and encouragement of farm practices which diminish runoff and prevent erosion on arable lands.

Taking care of our natural estate together with the stopping of existing waste and building it back to a higher productivity is a national problem. At last we have undertaken a national policy.

But it is not wise to direct everything from Washington. National planning should start at the bottom or, in other words, the problems of townships, counties and states, should be coordinated through large geographical regions and come to the Capitol of the nation for final coordination. Thus the Congress would receive a complete picture in which no local detail had been overlooked.

It is also well to remember that improvements of our national heritage frequently confer special benefits upon regions immediately affected, and a large measure of cooperation from state and local agencies in the undertaking and financing of important projects may fairly be asked for.

Any division of the United States into regions for the husbandry of its resources must possess some degree of flexibility. The area most suitable as a region for the carrying out of an integrated program designed to prevent floods is the basin including the watersheds of a pivotal river. But other problems dependent upon other combinations of natural economic and social factors, may require a somewhat different area to permit the most effective functional program. For instance, the problem of the Great Plains area is a problem of deficient rainfall, relatively high winds, loose, friable soils, and unsuitable agricultural practices. The natural area for solution of the Great Plains drought problem is different from that for the solution of dynamic water problems presented by the rivers which traverse that area. The rational area for administration of a Great Plains rehabilitation program crosses the drainage areas of a number of parallel major tributaries of the Mississippi River. It should therefore be kept in mind that in establishing a region for one type of comprehensive program, parts or all of the same area may be included in a different region for another type of comprehensive program with the result of a federal system, as it were, of programs and administrative areas for solution of basically different yet interrelated problems.

Neither the exact scope nor the most appropriate administrative mechanism for regional husbandry can at the start be projected upon any single blue print. But it is important that we set up without delay some regional machinery to acquaint us with our problem.

I think, however, that for the time being we might give consideration to the creation of seven regional authorities or agencies; one on the Atlantic Seaboard; a second for the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley; a third for the drainage basin of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers; a fourth embracing the drainage basins of the Missouri River and the Red River of the north; a fifth embracing the drainage basins of the Arkansas, Red, and Rio Grande Rivers; a sixth for the basins of the Colorado River and rivers flowing into the Pacific south of the California-Oregon line; and a seventh for the Columbia River Basin. And in addition I should leave undisturbed the Mississippi River Commission which is well equipped to handle the problems immediately attending the channel of that great river.

Apart from the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Columbia ,Valley Authority, and the Mississippi River Commission, the work of these regional bodies, at least in their early years, would consist chiefly in developing integrated plans to conserve and safeguard the prudent use of waters, water-power, soils, forests and other resources of the areas entrusted to their charge.

Such regional bodies would also provide a useful mechanism through which consultation among the various governmental agencies working in the field could be effected for the development of integrated programs of related activities. Projected programs would be reported by the regional bodies annually to the Congress through the President after he has had the projects checked and revised in light of national budgetary considerations and of national planning policies. When the National Planning Board is established, I should expect to use that agency to coordinate the development of regional planning to ensure conformity to national policy, but not to give to the proposed National Planning Board any executive authority over the construction of public works or over management of completed works.

Projects authorized to be undertaken by the Congress could then be carried out in whole or in part by those departments of the Government best equipped. for the purpose, or if desirable in any particular case by one of the regional bodies. There should be a close coordination of the work done by the various agencies of government to prevent friction, overlapping and unnecessary administrative expense and to ensure the integrated development of related activities. There should be the closest cooperation also with the developing state and local agencies in this field, particularly the state, regional and local planning boards and the commissions on interstate cooperation which work through interstate compacts ratified by the Congress and through interstate administrative arrangements. And provision should be made for the effective administration of hydro-electric projects which have been or may be undertaken as a part of a multiple purpose watershed development. The water-power resources of the nation must be protected from private monopoly and used for the benefit of the people.

This proposal is in the interest of economy and the prevention of overlapping or one-sided developments. It leaves the Congress wholly free to determine what shall be undertaken and provides the Congress with a complete picture not only of the needs of each one of the regions but of the relationship of each of the regions to the whole of the Nation.

If, for example, the Congress could have had before it at this session a complete picture of immediate and long-term needs I think its task in providing for flood prevention and drought emergencies would have been an easier one.

For nearly a year I have studied this great subject intensively and have discussed it with many of the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. My recommendations in this message fall into the same category as my former recommendation relating to the reorganization of the Executive branch of the Government. I hope, therefore, that both of these important matters may have your attention at this session.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress on National Planning and Development of Natural Resources. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209663

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