Ernest Graves
stick-in-the-mud. He wasn't. I am just trying to depict what I see to be his natural
leanings, which were not to use the permit program to thwart development. He didn't
see that as the role of the Corps.
Veysey, McIntyre, and I all thought Congress had put the Corps in this role when it
enacted Section 404 of the Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. However, we had to
explain to Veysey that he shouldn't have anything to do with a permit until the Chief
had acted. This was hard for him to swallow, but we told him that he just had to wait.
After the Chief had acted, then he could get the Secretary of the Army into the act if
he wanted.
Since the Chief denied the Marco Island permit, that wasn't necessary. The denial of
the permit was hailed by the environmentalists. This confirmed their fondest
hopes--that the Corps in its administration of the Section 404 permit program would
be a balancing force in development. Developers would no longer be able to run
rampant.
So this satisfied Veysey. This was good. And I think, in the permit area, we did pretty
well. Although there was another permit for some poor guy trying to build a bulkhead
on Lake Washington, near Seattle, which was less fortunate.
A whole string of people had bulkheads to hold their land so they could have a good
waterfront that people could bring a boat against. One poor guy in the middle of this
string had never built a bulkhead. All he wanted to do was put in a bulkhead along this
same line.
Q:
Just like his neighbors had.
A:
Just like his neighbors had. But the fact is that in the absence of a bulkhead, the water
came in on his property, so he would have had to fill. The Army denied that permit.
There was a great controversy over denying this permit. There was some tortured
reasoning that it would damage the fish, or something, if he put in this bulkhead.
The guy wasn't going to fill more than about five feet of land. I don't know exactly
how large Lake Washington is, but the number of fish that would have been damaged
by filling that five feet was nil.
Q:
Exactly.
A:
This was one of many active controversies about reasonableness of these permits.
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