As Leuchtenberg writes, "It is understandable that they [Wallace and Ickes] felt concern, for whatever the proposed seven TVAs were, "little" they were not, though the press succeeded in fastening that label on them. Among them were the TVA itself with an expanded grant; an Atlantic Seaboard Authority, "for the drainage basins of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, from the east, below the Suwanee River"; a Great Lakes—Ohio Valley Authority, "for the drainage basins of the rivers flowing into any of the Great Lakes and of the Ohio River, except the drainage basins of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, and of the rivers flowing into the Mississippi River above Cairo, Ill., from the east"; a Missouri Valley Authority, "for the drainage basins of the Missouri River and the Red River of the North, and of the riven flowing into the Mississippi River above Cairo, Ill., from the west"; an Arkansas Valley Authority, "for the drainage basins of the Arkansas, Red, and Rio Grande rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico west of the Mississippi River"; and a Southwestern Authority, "for the drainage basins of the Colorado River and of the rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean south of the California-Oregon line, and for the Great Basin."65 If all of these new institutions were to be action agencies, the regular departments would have little left to do in the sphere of water resources..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=N3PDNiJcneoC&pg=PA192
Incidentally, legislation to establish a Columbia Valley Authority was introduced in 1935. Its problems foreshadowed the difficulties of the regional-authorities proposals of 1937:
"The experience of Senator James Pope suggested the kind of difficulty the committee was going to encounter. In 1935 he had introduced legislation to create a Columbia Valley Authority only to meet stout resistance from corporations (especially utilities), government agencies protective of their turf, and champions of states' rights resentful of any intrusion by Washington. Even in Pope's home state of Idaho, "the articulate regional reaction was overwhelmingly hostile," the political scientist Charles McKinley has noted. "A special committee of the Idaho State Chamber of Commerce, which included representatives of the leading wool-growers' association, the principal reclamation projects of the Boise Valley, the state mining association, the state bankers association, and the Master of the state grange, voiced determined opposition." In the summer of 1935 the Pacific Northwest Regional Planning Commission sought to ameliorate the controversy by conducting a study under the auspices of the National Resources Committee, an agency that the President, who wanted to "put the physical development of the country on a planned basis," had established by executive order. The Commission dealt a blow to the valley authority approach in that region by expressing dismay at the thought of combining electric energy generation and distribution with "ameliorative and philanthropic tasks" of the sort the TVA was supposed to be undertaking, though it had no hesitancy about supporting public power development. The National Resources Committee, with one conspicuous abstention, passed on the recommendation to the President with its approval. The lone holdout was the Secretary of War, who would not countenance any proposal that stripped the Corps of Engineers of the right to transmit and market power. In taking this stand, he could depend on the strong backing of businessmen in the region, who had a chummy relationship with the Corps and who were disturbed by the possibility that the report's advocacy of a new administrative agency would jeopardize the utilities and might ultimately lead to a valley authority in the Columbia basin. This alliance between the Corps and the business community had an influential agent in Washington in Charles McNary of Oregon, who permitted the lobbyist of the Portland Chamber of Commerce to set up a desk in his office in the United States Senate.
"The Secretary of War's recalcitrance aroused the ire of Ickes, who, quite apart from the fact that he was always spoiling for a fight, came in conflict with the War Department in each of his three roles—as Secretary of the Interior, as Public Works Administrator, and as chairman cif the Informal Committee on Power Policy. Ickes first learned of the bias of the Corps of Engineers when early in the First Hundred Days of 1933 the President, at the urging of Senator Norris, asked him to look into a rumor of collusion between the Corps and the Alabama Power Company, an allegation that turned out to be well-founded. That experience instilled a distrust he never got over. Nearly two decades later he was still fuming:
"'It is to be doubted whether any Federal agency in the history of this country has so wantonly wasted money on worthless projects as has the Corps of Army Engineers. It is beyond human imagination. . No more lawless or irresponsible Federal group . . . has ever attempted to operate in the United States, either outside of or within the law. ... Nothing could be worse for the country than this wilful and expensive Corps of Army Engineers closely banded together in a self-serving clique in defiance of their superior officers and in contempt of the public welfare. The United States has had enough of 'mutiny *for* the bounty.'
"All through the spring of 1937 Ickes railed at the War Department. In particular, he sought, at first with poor results, to persuade Roosevelt to vest control of generating, transmitting, and marketing power at Bonneville in Interior rather than the War Department. "I do not trust the Army engineers on power,.'he noted in his diary. Early in May Ickes had a heated set-to with Secretary of War Harry Woodring over "a most extraordinary request for funds by the Army engineers for flood-control projects, especially in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys." He found Woodring "very dogmatic and arbitrary," "very lordly," "contemptuous," and "sarcastic," in sum a "midget General MacArthur. who "struts about with inflated chest more sure of himself and more disagreeable and dictatorial than any man I have met in the Government."
"Roosevelt, recognizing how intense was the hostility of business groups and legislators such as McNary in the Pacific Northwest to anything approaching a valley authority and how potent was the sentiment for states' rights, chose to compromise on a "temporary" solution that not delay disposal of Bonneville power, but it was a compromise McKinley has written, that was "a distinct victory over the private-utility and chamber-of-commerce views on power policy" and "also a setback to the ambitions of the Corps of Engineers," as well as those of the Bureau of Reclamation. The statute, while leaving the Corps with the assignment of generating power, provided for an administrator chosen by and responsible to the Secretary of the Interior and stipulated, contrary to what the Corps wanted, that when energy was marketed, public distribution agencies and consumers should be favored. It also did not foreclose the possibility of a Columbia Valley Authority in the future. "Had it not been for the active, though delayed, intervention of the president, buttressed by the studies and recommendations of the National Resources Committee and its regional agency," McKinley has concluded, "the legislation would have lacked many features of a regional program." Still, the Columbia River saga suggested that if the committee decided to embrace "the little TVAs" solution, it would not have easy going..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=0m9XuIyDiugC&pg=PA165 https://books.google.com/books?id=0m9XuIyDiugC&pg=PA166