Rivers and Harbors Act

Rivers and Harbors Act may refer to one of many pieces of legislation and appropriations passed by the United States Congress since the first such legislation in 1824. At that time Congress appropriated $75,000 to improve navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers by removing sandbars, snags, and other obstacles. Like when first passed, the legislation was to be administered by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), under its Chief Engineer and the Secretary of War (more recently the Secretary of the Army).
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled in Gibbons v. Ogden that federal authority covered interstate commerce including riverine navigation, under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. This ruling in large part ended considerable divisiveness regarding transportation improvements between those supporting Federalism versus States rights advocates. Shortly thereafter (April, 1824), the General Survey Act authorized the president to have surveys made of routes for roads and canals "of national importance, in a commercial or military point of view, or necessary for the transportation of public mail." The President assigned responsibility for the surveys to the Corps of Engineers. To broaden the scope of possible improvements, Congress passed the first federal rivers and harbors legislation in May, again with the USACE charged to administer the work.
New river and harbor legislation in 1826, authorized the president to have river surveys made to clean out and deepen selected waterways and to make various other river and harbor improvements. That year Congress also authorized the first survey for a canal between Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, and expanded the Army engineers' workload. Although the 1824 act to improve the Mississippi and Ohio rivers is often called the first rivers and harbors legislation, the 1826 act was the first to combine authorizations for both surveys and the projects themselves, thereby establishing a pattern that continues to the present day.
Early legislation.
Many of the early river and harbor legislation included authorizations for initial surveys of the navigation safety of rivers then used for transportation; as these were developed, authorizations for specific improvements were added. Many of these improvements were driven by the rapid growth in the use of steamboats on inland waters and the great commercial success of the Erie Canal, financed solely by the state of New York.
In 1828 the Corps conducted an initial survey of the Tennessee River, and in 1829 the first steam-powered snagboat was launched at New Albany, Indiana, on the Ohio River. The Cumberland River in Tennessee and Kentucky was authorized for development in 1832, and the Hudson River in New York was authorized in 1834. While other works were being implemented by the individual states, the panic of 1837 led to a near collapse of federal waterway improvement program. In 1852 the Tennessee River was authorized for development, as was the Illinois Waterway, downstream of the state-constructed Illinois and Michigan Canal. While the federal government and the Corps concentrated on navigable rivers, it also assisted in canal work, mostly constructed by individual states. For example, the River and Harbor Act of August 11, 18S8, pursuant to the report of the engineers, provides $102,000 for improving the Muskingum River in Ohio with construction of a lock at Taylorsville and the reconstruction of the lock at Zanesville. It also includes an early reference to water power associated with, and subservient to, the water's usage for navigation. The act includes that the Secretary of War is (hereby) authorized and empowered to grant leases or licenses for the use of the water powers on the Muskingum River at such rate and on such conditions and for such periods of time as may seem to him just, equitable, and expedient. Provided, that the leases or licenses shall be limited to the use of the surplus water not required for navigation, and he is also empowered to grant leases or licenses for the occupation of such lands belonging to the United States on the Muskingum River as may be required for mill-sites or for other purposes not inconsistent with the requirements of navigation. All moneys received under such leases or licenses shall be turned into the Treasury of the United States, and the itemized statement shall accompany the annual report of the Chief of Engineers. But nothing in this act shall be construed to affect any vested rights, if such there be, of any lessee of water power on said river.
The Civil War ended civil works on rivers and harbors from 1861.
Later legislation.
Following the Civil war railroads became recipients of federal funding; funding for river and harbor improvements increased sharply. The 1869 appropriations for rivers and harbors exceeded $2 million, and rapidly grew to tens of millions of dollars per year by the close of the 19th century; the Rivers and Harbors Acts between 1869 and 1930 are illustrative. Each of these acts identifies hundreds of projects to be built by the Secretary of War under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers. The pattern established the Corps' close connection to civil works construction.
Gifford Pinchot observed that, "Under the powers granted or applied in the Constitution of the United States, the federal government has control over navigatable rivers and their tributaries. Yet for a hundred years after the Constitution was adopted, Congress left the regulation of water power entirely to the states. Federal stream legislation at its beginning had to do chiefly with preventing or removing obstructions to navigation. This changed over the later periods, with the construction of dams and locks for greater navigation improvement. With the advent of Edison's DC light bulb the early 1880s, and the later use of AC, with its superior ability to be transmitted great distances, the demand for electricity rose rapidly. Starting about this time, river and harbor legislation had to deal with a proliferation of hydroelectric plants and other competing modern multipurpose improvements.
List of later acts.
NOTE: Titling of these acts over the years has been inconsistent. If the act itself is not self-titled, the convention used here ("River and Harbor Act of 19xx") is only for consistency of reference only with the US Code in the recognized database at the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University.