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The Upper Basins' Political Conundrum: A Deal is Not a Deal The Historical Agreements los Congress appropriated monies for navigation improvements on the lower Missouri as-early as 1832, when a program for the removal of snags originally authorized for the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers was expanded to the Missouri.104 In 1910, Congress authorized a six foot (in depth) navigation channel from the mouth of the river up to Kansas City. Extension of this channel up to Sioux City, Iowa, was authorized in 1927. Furthermore, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), which has jurisdiction over the nation's public works projects for navigation and flood control, was also authorized at that time to study the feasibility of a nine foot channel from the mouth of the Missouri to Kansas City.los Meanwhile, irrigation interests had obtained some benefits from the federal reclamation program with a variety of projects constructed on various tributaries in the western portion of the basin. The first of these were authorized by the Secretary of the Interior in 1903 under the authority of the then newly enacted Reclamation Act of 1902.1°6 Initially, upper basin irrigation interests, supported by Reclamation, and lower basin flood control and navigation interests, supported by the Corps, had gone their separate ways. However, this changed in the late 1930s, as the upper and lower basins started coming into conflict over the development and utilization of the waters of the basin. This conflict, as with the conflicts in the Colorado River Basin, eventually played out in the form of Congressional authorizing legislation which memorialized a political agreement between upstream and downstream interests. 103 This summary is drawn from J. FERRELL, BIG DAM ERA: A LEGISLATIVE AND INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE PICK-SLOAN MISSOURI BASIN PROGRAM 1-73 (1993) unless noted to the contrary. Other major works which document the history of the agreements concerning federal water resources development in the Missouri River Basin are J. THORSON, supra note 100; M. RIDGEWAY, THE MISSOURI BASIN'S PICK-SLOAN PLAN: A CASE STUDY IN CONGRESSIONAL POLICY DETERMINATION (Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 35, 1955); and Guhin, The Law of the Missouri, 30 S. DAR L. REV. 347 (1985). 104 Guhin, suprn note 103, at 351. 105 J. FERRELL, supra note 103, at 175-76. 106 Seetion 4 of the Act gave the Secretary the authority, "Upon the determination ... [by him] that any irrigation project is practicable," to undertake the construction of the same. Congressional authorization of individual projects was not, at the time, required. Reclamation Act of 1902, ch. 1093, § 4, 32 Stat. 389 (codified in part at 43 U.S.C.A. §§ 419, 461(1986)). 34 1 1 1 ~~ 1