Inland Waterways Commission

The Inland Waterways Commission was a United States federal agency, created by Congress in March 1907 at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt, to investigate the transportation crisis that recently had affected the nation's ability to move its produce and industrial production efficiently. The immediate crisis centered on insufficient railroad capacity developed by the private sector, and competing but neglected inland shipping, the navigation of which had been deemed under federal purview since 1824.^[1] The temporary commission lasted until the end of Roosevelt's presidency, but his conservationist progressive interest was focused more than on transportation alone. The president wanted water projects to be considered for their multiple uses and in relation to other natural resources and asked for a comprehensive plan for the improvement and control of the river systems of the United States.

Based on long-established legislative structure and more recent bureaucratic additions, the appointed members of the commission included, elected Representative Theodore E. Burton (R OH), as chairman, being also chair of the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors; Senator Francis G. Newlands (D NV), as vice-chair; Senator William Warner (R MO), and Senator John H. Bankhead (D AL). Non-elected commissioners included government technocrats with experience in related fields, including Alexander Mackenzie, Chiefs of Engineers, US Army, and the entity involved in federal navigation improvements since the beginning; William John McGee, as secretary and from the United States Geological Survey; Frederick Haynes Newell, the first Director of the United States Reclamation Service; Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the United States Forest Service, and Herbert Knox Smith, from the Bureau of Corporations and predecessor to the Federal Trade Commission.

By the end of that year, after the commission had looked at shipping on the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, a minority of its members concluded that the nation needed a comprehensive water resources policy along with an autonomous commission of experts to plan and construct water projects that embraced entire river basins. At the end of 1907, and before Roosevelt presented the commission's preliminary report to Congress in late February, Senator Newlands introduced the first bill to create a permanent commission. Over the next decade the subject of hydroelectricity would be closely studied, while Newlands drafted several more bills, with only an emasculated version becoming law in 1917. While supportive of the commission's report generally, most members of Congress considered Newlands's plan either impractical or unconstitutional. Three years later, Congress all but eliminated the hope of centralized water planning when it replaced the Inland Waterways Commission with the Federal Power Commission, following passage of the Federal Water Power Act of 1920.^[2]