Engineer Memoirs
At breakfast one morning Veysey and Koisch got into the most incredible argument
about the Cross-Florida Barge Canal. Koisch, in his inimitable fashion, said to Veysey,
"Sooner or later they would wake up, and Congress would vote the money, and they
would dig the canal."
Veysey was horrified, because as far as he was concerned, it had been stopped and the
environmentalists had won. This was over, and to hear from this Corps of Engineers
general that they were going to dig it, sooner or later--
Q:
Scared the hell out of him, I suppose.
A:
Veysey just couldn't understand it. I think Frank was wrong in that particular judgment,
because the canal was dead politically. There was still a group of navigation interests
in Florida that was interested, but they represented a relatively small political force
compared with the widespread opposition to the canal from the environmental
movement.
Q:
That was out of Koisch's bailiwick.
A:
It was, but Koisch had been the Director of Civil Works when the project had been
stopped, so he was very familiar with the project and all the background and
controversy. This had nothing to do with Koisch's immediate responsibilities. It was
just a breakfast conversation about the direction of the civil works program. As far as
Koisch was concerned, get the shovels and start digging, which, of course, was the very
image of the Corps that Veysey deplored. When Veysey became the Assistant Secretary
of the Army for Civil Works, he was determined to turn the image of the Corps around
to an agency that was among the most, if not the most, responsive to environmental
concerns.
Q:
Which is the direction in which General Clarke had started it.
A:
I would say Clarke was a middle-of-the-roader. He didn't want to shut down all the
Corps' efforts. But he was very dynamic in reaching out toward the environmental
community. Gribble was more passive.
This occurred in the Marco Island permit case. Ken McIntyre, who was my deputy, did
most of the substantive work on this. When it came time for the Chief of Engineers to
make a decision on Marco Island, I recommended to him that he deny the permit. Left
totally to his own instincts, I doubt that Bill Gribble would have denied that permit.
However, when the staff had developed this fully, he satisfied himself as to what was
going on, then approved our recommendation. I don't mean to imply that he was a
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