Well, in a way we were a division in Civil Works there for awhile just before I retired.
A
It was almost like that, except even though we were assigned to civil works, we were still
kind of serving like I thought we should serve. Maybe it should have been, if not called
a division maybe some special office or something and with a fairly high grade. Maybe
not as high as the Chief of Engineering and Chief of Planning but at least have a pretty
high grade so that it would have some recognition.
Throughout the years, there was always a lot of concern from the field offices about what
hydrology and hydraulics people were doing. Even when you'd go to a conference and
the headquarter's office, for example, would have a lot of comments on what a district had
done on one of their reports. Things that really should be changed, and they became the
subject of
The people in the districts said, "Ah, we shouldn't change the district engineer or the
Chief of Planning report. We can change all that later. But changing something later can
be very traumatic sometimes if it is going to impact some Congressman's district. If the
district engineer promises him a project and then you get it authorized and you can't build
it because of changes in hydrology or hydraulics or any other changes later on, then he
blows his top at the district engineer. The district engineer then might have a little trouble
being a general.
But, anyway, politics always gets in the way of doing things impartially. But it just
seemed to me if the hydrology and hydraulics element hadn't had to report directly to one
of these other guys, they could be a lot more impartial in providing information.
Q ..
Did you or anyone else ever try to get that done in any of the districts or divisions?
A
Well, I don't know that it ever got anywhere. There were a lot of people who thought
about it, thought it would be nice if they could do that but they never got any
encouragement from anybody. So it was very difficult to move ahead. It was very
difficult developing those Water Control Management Branches in the division offices.
That was tough. But somehow Al got that started. He was able to get the first one or two
going.
He'd keep putting pressure on all the Chiefs of Engineering in the division offices every
time he talked to them about establishing a Water Control Center. His persistence paid
off in a lot of ways, I think. It helped the organization a lot.
But, anyway, that gives you a little bit of a flavor for how they got some sort of a career
ladder for the discipline.
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