As early as the 1870s, state and federal agencies were already looking at the Central Valley as an area in need of a large water transport project. In 1931 California's Department of Water Resources came up with the State Water Plan, which entailed the construction of dams and canals to transport water from the Sacramento River to the rapidly dwindling San Joaquin. The project was still in its planning stages when the Great Depression hit the United States, and California was unable to raise the funds necessary for building the various facilities. As a result the project was transferred to the federal government and switched hands several times between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) before finally being authorized in the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1937 as a USBR undertaking and part of the New Deal, a series of large-scale reforms and construction projects intended to provide jobs for the millions of unemployed during the Depression.