Ernest Graves
We did a lot of work in revising the study program in terms of the public hearings we
were going to have, at what stage you did what things, the way in which the Corps
would develop its plan and build the environmental impact statement--so that as you
came down to the conclusion of one of these studies, you had met all the requirements
of the National Environmental Policy Act at the same time that you had the Corps study
done.
There were some tricky things because of the way these two interacted. But I felt we
had a pretty good situation. What happened in some cases, but not all, was that projects
that had had a lot of support from the community lost that support due to the efforts
of the environmental advocates.
Whether the projects were good or bad is a difficult judgment to make because it
depends on what your goals are for a particular area. Typically, a member of Congress
and the businessmen and perhaps a lot of the private property owners wanted the flood
protection, and the landholders in the reservoir area weren't a vocal opposition. Some
might have been, but some were probably willing to be bought out. The land wasn't that
promising, anyway.
With the environmental movement active, a lot of this was turned around. Then you
might have a different member of Congress. You might have had a Republican for
years. Then you got a Democrat, and so forth.
Some of the studies that had been supported fell apart. The object was to get that
decided. If there was no support, then you could send in a negative report and get it off
the books. Our goal was to have no more than six studies per district. There had been
two to three times that number in some cases.
Q:
Just because they had sat there too long?
A:
Yes. They were just kicking around. They were getting low levels of funding and they
were on the books. If you looked at the size of the districts, the time of the district
engineer, the fact that he had to hold public hearings and so forth, a district couldn't
handle more than six. You couldn't do all the things that had to be done.
Q:
You were chairman of the Upper Mississippi Basin Coordinating Committee while you
were out there.
A:
That's right. There was an evolution going on in planning. There was a commission for
the Upper Mississippi River Basin, and there was a commission for the Great Lakes
Basin, as well. The Corps had always tried to have these interagency liaison activities.
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