Ernest Graves
This is a big subject which we really don't have time to explore, the whole question of
water policy. If some of the policies that the Corps was proposing had been adopted,
the costs to the federal government would have been billions of dollars.
The logic was this. The federal government has a responsibility to help with flood
control. In many cases, the best flood control is to acquire land and by this means
prevent its development. Therefore, the federal government is going to buy billions of
dollars worth of land in the flood plain.
OMB took one look at that and said, "No way do we want to allow a policy like this
to become embedded in law." Congress may authorize Prairie de Chien, or Congress
may authorize Charles River. But we don't want these projects to become precedents
so that any time you have a lowland like this, you can get an authorized project.
You can show some terrific benefit-cost ratios on projects like this. So OMB fought
this every way they could. Basically, they managed to let Prairie du Chien and the
Charles River project be isolated, rather than the wave of the future.
I was a member of the Board of Rivers and Harbors when I was a division engineer, and
during my brief time as Deputy Chief, I became president of the board. There was a
stream of these coming through then, but they never made it. Basically, they didn't
make it because people decided that the federal government shouldn't be in this
business.
Q:
I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that nonstructural solutions had advocates in the
Corps.
A:
Oh, yes. There wasn't any problem there because the Corps is very adaptive. Bill
Cassidy and Fred Clarke were very innovative. When they saw the way that the
sentiment was running, they responded. Perhaps there were some people who had been
in structural work all their lives that didn't agree. But not the leadership. If this was the
way, if these nonstructural solutions were the way to go, the division engineers and the
district engineers thought that was great. But OMB was worried about the Treasury.
Q:
Which was a legitimate concern of theirs.
A:
Oh, yes. That was all right. In a democracy, you have these checks and balances. You
count on these opposing things to produce some measure of sanity.
Q:
When you talk about General Clarke and adaptiveness, I think about the Environmental
Advisory Board [EAB].
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