Engineering was always viewed as the guy who was suppose to be the most knowledgeable
about the Corps of Engineers' activities. That prevailed when Lloyd [Duscha] came into
Washington. He became the top civilian, as I mentioned before. Everybody looked up
to him as having the choice spot in the Corps as far as a civilian was concerned. He was
recognized world-wide because of that particular job.
But, anyway, getting on to this, how we finally got some improvement in the career
ladder. We came up with a concept of a Water Control Management Branch within the
division offices to not only handle the hydrology and hydraulics but primarily the big
responsibility was operating all the reservoirs and taking care of all the management
activities that went along with that. That was tough to sell but that finally got the blessing
of the headquarters.
In most of the divisions that gave a Grade
were several of them around the
country now--people began to say, "Hey, if I stick in hydrology and hydraulics, I may get
to be a 15 in division office. Well, that was the same grade as the Chief of Engineering
in the District, so it looked pretty good. So there were more people that stuck with it, I
think, after they found that there were opportunities.
There were a few divisions that never did adopt the job because Planning and even
Engineering kind of objected to having it. Planning didn't want to have it if it wasn't
going to be in planning. If it would have been in Planning, maybe they would have liked
to have it there. But in Engineering, a lot of them didn't even push for it. They finally
got them in most of the division offices.
Those positions have played a key role in a lot of the big water management problems
we've had around country. They had a place to go to that really had some responsibility
in that area.
Q ..
That's really one of those questions of professional jealousy more that anything else--the
people in the Structures and Engineering Division just didn't concern themselves with your
special discipline or they just didn't want to see your people rise up. But that's sort of self
defeating though on their part to operate like that?
A
One of the things that made it very difficult for hydrology and hydraulics, there was no
exact spot for it. The hydrology people did all kinds of work for planners to get the plans
put together for feasibility reports. They needed all this hydrology in the planning.
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