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' The Missouri River Basin: The Agreements and the Results ' The first detail dated back to 1933, when President Roosevelt ordered the construction of the Ft. Peck Project on the Missouri River in eastern Montana. Ft. Peck Reservoir, with a current capacity of nearly 19 million acre-feet, was the first major storage reservoir built on the Missouri mainstem. The Fort Peck project was unique. It was begun in the Depression year 1933 by authority of President ... Roosevelt rather than through the normal congressional authorization process. The project was to provide jobs in an area of high unemployment and severe economic depression. Roosevelt's authority to order the dam built was vested in the National Industrial ' Recovery Act of ... 1934. Title II ..., "with a view to increasing employment quickly,"gave the President the power to construct public-works projects. ... [TJhe President was constrained by the proviso "That no river or harbor ' improvements shall be carried out unless they shall have ... been adopted by the Congress or are recommended by the ... [Corps]. " ... [The Corps) had ' recommended on 30 September 1933 that a dam be built across the Missouri at the Fort Peck project site. On 14 October, Roosevelt approved [the Fort Peck project) .... ' ... Its immediate purpose was to create jobs, but its long-term function was to assure an adequate minimum flow for navigation in the 795 miles of ' river channel below Sioux City. Irrigation was not among its purposes, despite its western location and although the area was suffering from an extended drought. ,,,111 t U er basin interests contested the assertion that Ft. Peck's rim ur ose PP P ~'3' P P ' was to control river flows to the benefit of the six foot navigation channel over 1,000 miles downstream in the lower Missouri River. Irrigation advocates pointed out that the first three Public Works Administration allocations of money for the Fort Peck project were "for the construction of a dam at Fort Peck for water conservation and control of ' flow for navigation. " Upper basin interests contended that the money would not have been allocated at that time had the words "for water conservation" not been included. However, the phrase was dropped when ' legislation [to add hydropower facilities) for the Fort Peck Dam was submitted to Congress [and eruzcted in 1938].1'2 ' 11 Id. at 5-6. 12 Id. at 5. Footnote omitted. 37