Representation of the Region in Missouri Basin Organization

Recently two new and important proposals have been made concerning the character of the needed basin organization for the development and proper utilization of the resources of the Missouri Valley. A Missouri Basin Survey Commission was appointed by President Truman in 1952 to make a “thorough re-evaluation of the whole problem.” In its 1953 report this survey group recommended the establishment of a federal Missouri Basin Commission with authority to “direct and coordinate the activities of all federal agencies relating to resource development.” In December, 1952 the Missouri River States Committee, composed of the governors of the ten basin states, accepted a Council of State Governments' draft of a federal-interstate compact as the desirable framework for basin organization. Each of these proposals would create a new commission to integrate basin planning and secure coordination among all governmental agencies in the operation of water facilities. At one point in its report the Missouri Basin Survey Commission describes the course of the Missouri as “a crude but large question mark across the surface of one-sixth of the nation” and uses the description to symbolize “the great array of problems which await satisfactory solution in the Basin.” Certainly the physical, planning, and policy problems of Missouri Basin conservation and development are difficult enough.