Vernon
experience and went into the planning field. So many of the planners have a good
background in hydrology.
Q ..
Well, that seems to be the basis for everything in the Corps now.
A ..
Well, if you don't know whether the water runs uphill or downhill, you`re in trouble.
Q ..
Doesn't make any difference how good the dam is, right?
A ..
You need to know about storms and droughts and all that kind of hydrology in order to
do any planning at all.
Q ..
You mentioned the chiefs of engineering divisions. For many years the Corps was
accused of being resistant to change, and largely because of the people who had been in
these positions, who became virtual institutions in themselves. In your experience in the
Corps have you found it to be an institution that does adapt to change relatively easily?
A
Well, I think in those earlier days it was pretty hard to change things like planning. First
planning came along and that was hard to change. Finally in order to treat planning the
way the Congress wanted it done, they had to actually set up separate planning divisions
within the districts. So you had a planning pipeline that went up through channels. You
had an engineering pipeline. The two had a hard time interchanging a lot of times.
They created a real monster by doing that for the district engineer because now he has a
chief of planning and a chief of engineering, and they both have the same status. When
he's got a technical problem, who does he go to? Which advice should he accept? So he
would have to end up making decisions on technical matters he really is not trained to do.
He was really stuck.
If the planner in most cases is more articulate than the chief of engineering, who is
probably a structures man, he can convince the district engineer to listen to him more than
the chief of engineering can in most cases. At least it has been my experience that the
chiefs of planning, they really had a way about them because their job primarily was
convincing people that this project is good and these are the things that make it good and
all that kind of public relations. That was his job.
Whereas the chief of engineering, his job was to do technical things and not really deal
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