History

Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968

The Creation of the Nationwide Rivers Inventory

Public Law 90-542 (The Wild and Scenic Rivers (WSR) Act of 1968) established a National Wild and Scenic Rivers System (NWSRS) for the protection of rivers with important/unique values. The WSR Act designated the first eight rivers for inclusion in the NWSRS (Clearwater, Eleven Point, Feather, Rio Grande, Rogue, St. Croix, Salmon (Idaho), and Wolf) and prescribes the methods and standards by which additional rivers may be added.

In Section 5(d) of the WSR Act, Congress calls for the identification of potential wild, scenic, and recreational river areas within the nation. In partial fulfillment of that section, the National Park Service maintains the Nationwide Rivers Inventory as a national listing of potentially eligible and eligible river segments. Section 5(d) states:

"In all planning for the use and development of water and related land resources, consideration shall be given by all Federal agencies involved to potential national wild, scenic and recreational river areas, and all river basin and project plan reports submitted to the Congress shall consider and discuss any such potential. The Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture shall make specific studies and investigations to determine which additional wild, scenic and recreational river areas within the United States shall be evaluated in planning reports by all Federal agencies as potential alternative uses of the water and related land resources involved."

The roots of the NRI can be traced back to 1969 when the Department of the Interior's Associate Solicitor for Parks and Recreation informed the Acting Director of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR) that Section 5(d) authorized the Secretary of the Interior to "conduct studies and investigations for the purpose of identifying additional wild, scenic and recreational river areas." BOR's Assistant Director for State Grants and Resource Studies drafted a memo to all Regional Directors that provided a legal interpretation of Section 5(d) and proposed 44 rivers for inclusion in a national list.

In 1971, BOR sent a memo to all Regional Directors providing the procedures for adding and deleting rivers on the Section 5(d) list, and an outline for compiling a Summary Report to determine a river's eligibility for inclusion on the list. Data collected for the Summary Reports included river length, ORVs, and surrounding land ownership.

Shillalah Falls in Cumberland Gap, KY - NPS/Scott Teodorski

Phase I of the Eastern Rivers Study Process

The inventory process to identify potentially eligible rivers (which would become the NRI) began in the mid-1970s under then-BOR Director James Watt. In 1976, BOR initiated the Eastern Wild and Scenic Rivers Study in cooperation with state and local agencies. Southeast regional staff collected US Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps east of the Mississippi and identified free-flowing river segments 25 miles or longer. In some cases, rivers shorter than 25 miles were included if the rivers were thought to be regionally or nationally significant.

These rivers and their maps were sent to BOR's eastern regional offices to identify segments that were impounded by dams or channelized, and to delete them from the list. BOR created a point system to assess development impacts within one-quarter mile of the rivers' banks. River segments having a cumulative point-per-mile total of 100 or more were deleted, as were most intermittent streams. BOR circulated the resulting list of rivers to Federal and state resource agencies, citizen groups, and individuals, for review and revision. Public meetings were held in each region and additional nominations and deletions were considered at that time. BOR staff flew over the river segments on the list and recorded them on videotape to evaluate cultural and water resource developments, scenic quality, and flow, and to delete ineligible segments. Following field and aerial evaluation, the revised list of segments was again circulated for review, and comments were used to prepare the final list of rivers. 75% of the rivers initially listed were deleted through this process largely due to the amount of development within the river corridor.

Phase II of the Eastern Rivers Study Process

BOR was absorbed into the Department of the Interior's Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service (HCRS) in 1977. In 1978, the HCRS surveyed 13 states in the northeast for their opinions and ideas regarding the potential for an additional inventory of urban, cultural and recreational rivers. Nine of those states, five of which had their own Wild and Scenic River programs, responded with support for conducting the study. HCRS held a regional workshop in December,1979, to coordinate data collection.

Public and private officials were notified of the study's objectives and asked to suggest potential candidate rivers. HCRS regional offices conducted literature reviews to assess existing data, requested additional data and information, and hosted workshops with state river agencies to gather public comments and information. HCRS staff additional public comments, the final list of urban, cultural, and recreational rivers was compiled by the regions and submitted to the HCRS Washington office.

Blue Creek in Curecanti National Recreation Area, CO - NPS/Lisa Lynch

Phase I of the Western Rivers Study Process

As HCRS completed "Phase II" in the eastern U.S., the agency started "Phase I" in the west. In January 1979, HCRS’s Northeast Regional Director suggested that HCRS could conduct a western rivers inventory that built upon the lessons learned from the eastern inventory. By April, general information and data sheets were mailed out to public and private sector officials soliciting their involvement in the western inventory. The western inventory process used six steps, or filters, to conduct the inventory process:

1. Length (segments greater than or equal to 1/2 mile)

2. Water Resource Development (rivers free of existing impoundments or other alterations such as channelization, straightening, dikes, and levees)

3. Cultural Development (a point system was used to grade projects found within ¼ mile on each side of the riverbank)

4. Input by Experts (the river list was circulated for comment)

5. Aerial Survey (approximately 20% of the total river mileage in each physiographic section was videotaped)

6. River Evaluation (a list of the top free-flowing segments for each physiographic region (a geographical area characterized by distinct landforms, geology, climate, and ecosystems) was developed)

President Carter signing the Memorandum

Presidential Memorandum

By the late 1970s, development along rivers was beginning to outpace the federal government’s ability to identify and study those rivers that may have qualified for protection under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. On August 2, 1979, recognizing “the important natural, historic, and recreational values of our Nation's river corridors,” President Jimmy Carter signed the Presidential Memorandum to the Secretary of the Interior and the Presidential Memorandum to the Heads of Departments and Agencies, which outlined the need to improve techniques for identifying and designating Wild and Scenic Rivers. These memorandums directed the Secretary of the Interior and Heads of Departments and Agencies to take actions such as shortening the length of time used to study rivers for designation and revising the guidelines for studying Wild and Scenic Rivers.

Phase II of the Western Rivers Study Process

In 1980, HCRS western Regional Directors began mailing out general information and data collection sheets to public and private sector officials to collect data for the "Western Recreational Rivers Study." One goal of the study was to obtain a full range of data on the stream segments listed during the Wild and Scenic Rivers study. The other goal was to add any stream segments with outstanding or multiple natural or scientific resource values that were either overlooked or did not qualify under Phase I of the Wild and Scenic study process.

The National Park Service published and distributed an initial draft of the eastern states' segments in March 1980, and a final version of the completed NRI (which included segments from the eastern and western phases of study) in August 1982.

Cover of the original printed Nationwide Rivers Inventory - NPS

Updating and Revising the NRI

On May 17, 1982, the Director of the National Park Service issued a memorandum to the Regional Directors informing them of the procedures for revising the NRI. Regional offices were instructed to submit requests for changes to the NRI to the Rivers and Trails Division. Requests for additions had to contain the same information gathered for the original NRI, and requests for deletions had to contain justification for the proposed deletion. No changes were considered effective until transmitted to federal agency heads by the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks or other identified responsible departmental officials in Washington.

While an annual update to the NRI was originally envisioned and the Director determined that "a large number of change requests could lead to a somewhat more frequent revision," updates to the NRI had to be performed within the existing budgetary allocations and have not been conducted at this frequency.

Between 1982 and 1988, there were at least 2 rounds of additions made to the original NRI. Other than the Manumuskin River (NJ), data on the number of segments added in the first revision cannot be located. The second revision added the Chester (MD), Merrimack (NH), and Connecticut (CT) rivers to the NRI on January 26, 1988. 3 years later, the NRI was republished and distributed with the additional revisions.

In 1990, NPS officials at the national and regional levels began to discuss an update of the NRI. NPS staff created goals and objectives for the NRI update and determined the update should take place in two phases:

1. Identification of federal lands river segments found eligible for wild and scenic river designation through agency study

2. Identification of segments which the states believed were potentially eligible

The federal lands update was initiated as part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1993. The update added new information on existing listings and added new river segments found on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), NPS, and U.S. Forest Service (USFS). NPS hired 6 interns over the course of a year to compile segment information from natural resource agency management plans. With NPS Director Roger Kennedy's signature, 1,012 segments equaling 12,713 river miles were added, and 464 river segments were updated.

In 2016, the geospatial data for the Nationwide Rivers Inventory was updated with high resolution National Hydrography Data at a scale of 1:24,000. The updated data also includes additional attribute information and technical corrections to the data based on more recent studies and readily available information.