Water Resources Pcople and Issues
Beginning about 1961 and then introduced annually thereafter for the next two
or three years, there was a bill that would have authorized the establishment
of a water resources council. Again, was your advice requested or solicited
in the preparation of these bills?
A: I don't think I had any significant involvement after the basic Senate Select
Committee report.
Q: Do you recollect what your reaction was toward this bill; toward the idea that
the bill addressed?
A: Yes. I was for it. I had been very strongly involved in the recommendations
drafted by the Senate Select Committee, which then carried over in some
fashion or other and finally into the creation of the Water Resources Council.
It's hard to trace the ancestry of some of those ideas. You're better at that
than I am.
Q: Do you recollect some of the reasons why this bill wasn't passed until 1965?
It was first of all the Water Resources Council Act of 1961, '62. Do you
recollect any of the political problems that perhaps kept the bill from being
passed?
A: I don't have a solid basis for judgment on that. I was deeply involved in
research at Chicago. I heard a lot of secondhand opinions from friends in
Washington, including the argument that the major federal agencies were
opposed to it, just as they had been opposed to a permanent National
Resources Planning Board. But I wasn't on the battlefront enough for a valid
opinion. Ted Schad would know.
Q: I want to go back and pick up a few loose threads for a moment. People
whom you had gotten to know in the forties or even earlier-I presume you
probably kept up acquaintances with them later on?
First of all, Hoyt and Langbein. An obvious, of course, grouping together.
When did you get to know these people? I'm sure you must have gotten to
know Walter Langbein pretty well.
42
Previous Page
