Water Resources: Hydraulics-and-Hydrology - -.
- m--P
Conservation Service
but the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] would hire
hydrologists to work on the scientific aspects of hydrology. We found that it was easier
to train somebody who was an expert in hydrology in the water quality aspects than it was
to bring in biologists and people who were trained in the water quality of the chemical and
biological parts of water quality [and] to teach them the hydrology they needed to know
to go with managing the reservoir.
So a lot of the people that were managing the water quality sections or branches in the
Corps offices were really first trained in hydrology, although we did bring in a lot of
biologists, chemists, and other people, too. But it seemed like they weren't as well
equipped to handle the management part of it. They were pretty good on the technical
aspects, but they didn't really know how to handle the operational part of it as well. So
it usually turned out that the people that were trained in hydrology ended up being in
charge of water quality, too.
Q ..
Now that whole thing was quite a change for the Corps wasn't it?
A
Oh. yes it was. It was a really dramatic change. They were really slow picking up on it
and when they finally got going on it, they did a good job. It just took them a while to get
going. They were just reluctant to take on the whole concept. You would hear how the
Chief of Engineers would get up before the division engineers and tell them, "Yes, we're
really going after this water quality and the environmental concerns. But for the action
to get down to the working level sometimes it was pretty hard to convince those working
level people that they needed to do things like that.
It was typical of a lot of different Corps programs. For example, the Dam Safety Program
of non-Federal dams that the Corps got involved in. The President said, "The Corps will
go out and examine all these non-Federal dams for safety. But there was a limited
amount of money to go with it, the authority to do this and the responsibility to do it.
A lot of the practicing engineers in the Corps were very reluctant to get involved because
they knew they weren't going to be able to spend enough money to really
out for sure
whether those dams were safe or not. Especially the structural engineers and the soils
engineers, too. How do you know what kind of condition that dam is in if you don't go
out and do a lot of testing and soil drilling and things like that to find out if there is
leakage internally in the project or something.
They hadn't had any experience on these projects. They were going off and taking a quick
look at them and deciding whether they were safe or not. So it ended up that the Chief
of Engineers had all the people in the office one day and he told them, "Hey, we've got
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