Pick–Sloan Missouri Basin Program
[2] The original Pick plan was supported by the National Rivers and Harbors Congress, the Mississippi Valley Association, the Propeller Club of the United States, the American Merchant Marine Conference, the Mississippi Valley Flood Control Association, and other lower-basin residents.
Senators Joseph O'Mahoney (D-WY) and Eugene Millikin (R-CO) offered amendments to the plan that would also provide for the interests of people in the upper basin.
The amendments created an emphasis on irrigation over river navigation and gave precedence to arid states for the use of basin water.
O'Mahoney and Millikin's amendments also called for Congress to inform any states associated with proposed watershed development.
[3] The Sloan plan pushed for reservoir storage in upper tributaries of the Missouri River located in smaller dams, which would provide irrigation for 4.8 million acres in areas where the land suffered from drought.
The combined Pick-Sloan plan allowed the Corps of Engineers jurisdiction over flood control, navigation projects and five main-stem dams.
In addition, the Corps of Engineers and the Reclamation Bureau were both given authority to develop hydroelectric power on the Missouri River.
It was officially titled as the Missouri River Basin Development Program and was presented in conjunction with the Flood Control Act of 1944.
They claimed that the MVA would provide a more unified solution to water development on the Missouri River than the merged ideas of opposing bureaucracies.
[8] In South Dakota, politicians and other proponents of the Pick-Sloan Program and dam construction had promised 1 million acres (4.0×10^3 km2) of irrigation as “appropriate compensation” for lost land.
[9] According to Native American historian Vine Deloria Jr., the "Pick–Sloan plan was, without doubt, the single most destructive act ever perpetrated on any tribe by the United States.
