Engineer Memoirs
A:
It was very hard. When I went up there to be division engineer in the North Central
Division just before Christmas of 1970, [Major General Charles I.] Chuck McGinnis,
who was later the Director of Civil Works, was the district engineer in Saint Paul. And
he was wrestling with this.
The district had had some hair-raising experiences with projects--flood control
projects, dams that had been proposed and had been under study for years--some as
much as ten years. Right then and there in the late 1960s, early 1970s, these flood
control projects were coming up for the final public hearings before the district engineer
made his report. That would have been forwarded into Washington to the Board of
Engineers for Rivers and Harbors as to whether there should be a project.
The environmental movement was very active. The Corps was clobbered in these public
hearings. Generally, the hearings were viewed as an opportunity to demonstrate public
support for these projects. But in the hearings for these projects, there wasn't support,
or support was minimal, and there was vehement opposition. The Corps, perhaps not
for the first time, was caught in the position of presenting a recommendation that didn't
have strong public support.
This is the antithesis of the philosophy of the civil works program. The civil works
program was the Corps of Engineers out there doing for the citizens of the United
States what they wanted done. Here they had been working away on these things three,
four, five, six, seven, even ten years, and they came up with their report as to what was
to be done and the citizens all got up and said, "We don't want that done." Minnesota
epitomized that problem for the Corps because of the swing in sentiment up there away
from a development ethic to a preservation ethic.
Q:
I think it may be going the other way now in Minnesota, actually.
A:
The problem with the preservation ethic is that it is economically stagnant. If you're
concerned about jobs and economic development, it's an illusion to think that you can
pursue that without disturbing the environment. If you're going to preserve the
environment in its natural state, then you're not going to get the kind of development
that creates a lot of industry and jobs. I think perhaps there after the tremendous
economic growth of the '50s after World War II and extending into the '60s when the
economy was going great, there was a tendency to feel that all this was going to take
care of itself. The environmental movement felt, "We've had all the development we
need. Now we should preserve the environment."
I think since then it's become evident that you have to have some development if you're
going to keep creating jobs and have prosperity.
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