Ernest Graves
justified and didn't have serious environmental impact. It did not have the egregious
problems attributed to the other projects.
We didn't think that the write-up by the people who prepared the list made a good case
against the Richard B. Russell Dam. We thought it was mostly a fabrication--just a
bunch of reasons put together, I guess, by Kathy Fletcher.
Carter, as governor of Georgia, had signed the state assurances on local cooperation
on the Richard B. Russell Dam. So we thought in our perhaps too narrow logic, that
it would look bad if Carter turned around and stopped this dam that he had previously
agreed to. So we had said, "Don't stop Richard B. Russell."
It was obvious from Frank Moore's conversation on the phone that Carter saw it
differently. He apparently wanted to demonstrate to the environmental movement that
nothing was sacred, and that even this project that he had started would be stopped.
Moore kept asking me what the dam was like and how it compared with Buford and
other dams in Georgia. He was obviously looking for ammunition to try to persuade
Carter not to put this dam on the list. But he failed to persuade the President. It was on
the list. Carter announced 21 projects on Monday, including the Richard B. Russell
Dam.
All hell broke loose. Congress was furious.
We had proposed a study. I closeted myself with some of the top people in OCE, and
we got the districts cranking. I was one of the main ones to work up a plan for this
study. The study plan called for us to review all projects, which we did. In this initial
screening we got down to 51 that deserved further study. Then we went into a drill to
study these 51 more carefully. We finally got down to 17 that were recommended for
reduction or change.
We worked day and night, seven days a week. It was really a fantastic thing we went
through. I have most of the papers upstairs. I have been meaning, at some stage, to try
to write all this up.
When we got down near the wire on the projects that required detailed study, we
scheduled public meetings to hear views on these.
We tried to put out balanced announcements and we tried to work with the members
of Congress. One member involved in Richard B. Russell was from South Carolina. We
were discussing with him what we were going to do, and he was calling us repeatedly
and appearing to us to be a supporter of the project.
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