Ernest Graves
They have come up with a cost-sharing formula which says the local interests will
provide all the money and then the Corps will build it. Well, I don't think they will get
the Corps to build it. The local interests--the states--will build it themselves. Why
should they take their state money and bring it in here to Washington for the federal
government to spend?
The state water agencies can build that kind of thing. You can argue about whether they
know as much about it as the Corps, but they can hire the Corps to come in and look
over their shoulder and tell them whether the plans are right or not. They don't have to
turn all the construction money over to the Corps to get the work done. The Corps
won't do the construction unless the cost-sharing formula provides a substantial federal
contribution to the construction cost. Whether the Reagan administration and Congress
will reach a compromise on this, I don't know.4
A:
There was an interesting dichotomy there in the Carter administration. President Carter
felt strongly that he wanted to oppose water projects. He wanted to stop projects. He
wanted to demonstrate that he was doing something. He wasn't too concerned about
the reaction he was going to get in Congress.
Talking it over with people at the time, we felt that he was showing the attitude of a
governor toward the state legislature in many states. I think Carter certainly felt this to
be true in the state of Georgia. The governor dominated the political scene, and the
legislature definitely tended to be under the domination of the governor. He had been
able, in Georgia, to work his will with the state legislature.
So when it came to the water project review, he tended to view the U.S. Congress in
the same way, that if he made a strong stand on what he believed in, then the Congress
would go along. Many who had been in Washington felt that the balance of power
between the President and the Congress wasn't the same as it is between a governor
and the state legislature.
The Corps had the attitude that these projects had been authorized by Congress and the
money appropriated for the construction through a well-established process. If this were
to be set aside, then it would require us to go through the same process that we would
have to study it, and then we would have to have public hearings, and then we would
have to have a formal decision. We proposed in meetings with the staff at the Office of
Management and Budget and then the staff of the White House that we conduct this
review this way, that we have several steps, and that we end up with public hearings.
4
They did in 1986 with the enactment of Public Law 99662, the Water Resources Development Act of
1986.
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