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UUJ';: ", II. AN OVERVIEW OF INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR RIVER BASIN PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT The concept of the river basin as a logical unit for solving water-related problems seems to have taken root in the United States shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Several authors credit this concept to the Inland Waterways Commission and other officials of President Theodore Roosevelt's Administration (Engelbert, 1957) (Hart, 1957) (White, 1957). President Roosevelt himself, in an often-quoted phrase from his letter transmitting the Commission's 1908 report to Congress, stated, "Each river system from its headwaters in the forest to its mouth on the coast is a unit and should be treated as such" (Inland Waterways Commission, 1908). Although the Theodore Roosevelt Administration promoted basinwide water management, the concept was rather slow to gain acceptance and institutional form. Gilbert F. White, a geographer with the National Resources Committee and its successor the National Resources Planning Board, and later a member of two national commissions on water resources, believes that the true seeds of river basin water management were sown in the River and Harbor Act of 1927 (White, 1957). The 1927 Act authorized the Corps of Engineers to undertake comprehensive studies, the so-called "308 reports," of navigation, flood control, irrigation and power for complete . river basins. The first such Corps study was made for the Tennessee River basin and, according to White, greatly aided the eventual creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933. White termed the TVA, ". . . the prototype for unified basinwide programs of multi-purpose projects" (White, 1957, p. 171). -5-