Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
were able to get more and more money to do more things. It not only became a great
organization for hydrology, but planners really wanted to use it, too. It got so that it was
doing more and more planning.
They added a branch, a Planning Branch, to the HEC after it had been in existence for a
while so that it served not only hydrology but planning, too. For quite a few years the
hydrology people in Washington called the shots and got all the money for it. Then, as
time went on and it got more and more involved in planning, they had some reorganization
on who was going to call the shots for HEC.
The Institute for Water Resources [IWR] ended up being the ones that theoretically were
their bosses. Although they didn't have much capability to give them technical direction
except in the planning area. So the headquarters hydrology people still had to go out there
for the annual meetings.
I guess they still do have an annual meetings where people from headquarters and any of
the field offices that want to attend. They would go over the program that HEC was
proposing for the next year and give them direction by saying, "We don't like that too
well. Spend more time on this and less time on that. What are you going to accomplish
and what have you accomplished?" Those meetings used to be pretty interesting. We'd
get into some pretty heated debates sometimes about what was most important.
Q ..
So they would come up with a theoretical research program then for a fiscal year?
A ..
Right.
Q ..
Were they doing reimbursable work at the same time as that?
A ..
Some were, yes.
Q ..
But mostly research programs?
A
Well, a lot of their funding through the years has been reimbursable work. A district
would have a special problem and, rather than going out to private interest to get the job
done, they would go to HEC. The whole concept was, "Hey, give us your tough
problems. If you've got a tough problem that you're having a hard time figuring a
to handle it, give it to us and we'll try and solve it for you. That way maybe we can apply
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