In 1966 increasing attention was given to the compact as a device for water resources planning, development, and management. The principle, of course, is not new; ORSANCO, the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, has an outstanding record in pollution control under an interstate compact signed in 1948. The first agency established to use the compact for broader purposes is the Delaware River Basin Commission, brought into being by the interstate-federal compact signed in 1961 by New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the federal government. The Delaware Commission has evolved slowly. It may now be at the crossroads. Completion of the Delaware Estuary Comprehensive Study by The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration provides the Commission with a framework and large quantities of data on which to build an effective water quality management program. It remains to be seen whether the Commission can respond to this challenge.
Three of the governments represented in the Delaware compact are involved in the draft compact just completed for a Susquehanna River Basin agency. The powers provided for the agency are very similar to those of the Delaware Commission. It, too, would be an interstate-federal agency, in which the powers and responsibilities of both the state and federal governments would be combined. Discussion of the draft is now underway in the affected states—Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York. There are preliminary stirrings in the Potomac Basin. Conversations at this stage are exploring possible mechanisms by which a draft compact can be evolved. The discussions to date seem to provide no clear indication of what the governmental form might be and the extent of powers to be vested in the regional agency.
Efforts to establish a compact for the Hudson River came from three sides in 1966. Early in the year the New York State legislature enacted a bill to set up an interstate compact commission, with New York, already actively engaged in a broad, statewide resource program, contributing nine, and New Jersey and the federal government each three members.
At the same time, the Interior Department's Bureau of Outdoor Recreation conducted a special study and proposed a commission similar to the Delaware Basin Commission in its interstate-federal format. Each of the three sovereign powers—New York, New Jersey, and the federal government—would have one representative and one vote. The responsibilities and powers of the proposed agency relating to water would be considerably less than those under the Delaware Basin compact; but similar to New York's proposal, they would include responsibilities for some related land resources.
But as the year ended, the Hudson River had to a large extent become the temporary responsibility of the Secretary of the Interior. A bill signed by the President in September encourages the Hudson River Basin states to form a compact "to assure the development, preservation, and restoration of the natural, scenic, historic, and recreational resources of the Hudson River Basin," and directs the Secretary of the Interior to assist in this endeavor. In the meantime, no federal agency may grant a license for any project affecting conservation and development of the river without review by the Secretary. The Secretary's responsibility includes a report to the President by mid-1968, and is to terminate whenever an interstate compact commission has been formed or within three years of enactment. Participants in the compact would be New York, New Jersey, and the federal government, and, if they so desire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont. While the Secretary has no veto power, as had been the intention at one stage, the ninety-day period that is set aside for review and consultation is a useful device for forestalling unwise developments.
The bill specifically exempts projects under license applied for prior to mid-1966. Thus, the controversial Storm King Mountain project, discussed on page 1, will be technically exempted. Since the Storm King affair was at least one of the factors triggering the legislation, it is somewhat ironical that as the bill underwent amending its final form no longer relates to it, though the spirit of the legislation may, of course, affect the outcome in a less perceptible way. Until the compact commission envisioned in the federal legislation has been put together, there is also the broader problem of how the legislation voted earlier by New York will fit into the federal framework. Widening the area to include three New England states, under the more comprehensive river basin concept introduced into the bill in committee, also widens the political conflict.
Efforts to establish an interstate compact among the states of the Columbia Basin have, after many years, foundered on the conflicting interests between the upstream and downstream states. The possibility that a Columbia River Basin Commission would be established under the Water Resources Planning Act of 1965 has not improved the prospect. Such a commission presumably would perform at least some of the activities envisaged under the interstate compact, as well as take over the activities of the venerable discussion group, the Columbia Basin Inter-Agency Committee.
Revived interest in regional organization for water resource management picks up a thread that has been largely neglected since the 1940's, when the debate centered around the proposed Columbia and Missouri Valley authorities. Until recently little emphasis—perhaps less than there was twenty years ago—has been placed on the need for management as well as planning. Not just planning—the process of deciding where, when, and of what size to build structures—but also day-to-day management of water resources systems is required to produce a variety of water-related outputs and services. Federal legislation has not come to grips with this problem. The river basin commissions to be established under the 1965 Water Resources Planning Act can do just that—plan but nothing else. Compact agencies need not have such limitations.
The turn toward compacts of the Delaware type may signify a growing realization that water resources are intimately related to land utilization, not in traditional precipitation-vegetation-runoff ways, but in connection with demands of the heavily urbanized, industrial metropolitan areas. Thus, the questions of water quality and water-based recreation loom, large; accessibility to water surfaces of various types must be an integral part of water resources planning and management, as must be the compatibility of uses of adjacent land.
Developing knowledge of the complex technologic and economic relationships in sophisticated water resources management has not been matched by increased understanding of the institutional, political, and legal problems involved. Compacts are a means by which virtually any type of agency can be established. Imaginative thinking is needed about the structure of regional agencies, the range of their responsibilities, and the mechanisms by which they can be related to other public agencies and to the private sector of the economy.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1967 issue of Resources magazine.
