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Oh, I'd say that wasn't too long before I retired. Maybe a couple of years before I retired,
in that time frame. But it was a time when funds were tough for operating the reservoirs,
and that was where a big chunk of our money was going. We figured, well, if we don't
attack that chunk, why it's not going to do much good to try some of the others.
We wanted to have our data archived, too, just like everybody else, but if we were going
to have to pay for all of it, maybe it wasn't going to get done. It would be available in our
offices, but just not in the same format that it was with the GS. It is one of those things
you feel bad about having to do, but I felt pretty bad when I would go to these annual
programs of the USGS and see them sticking more and more money into technical analysis
and less and less into data collection.
I had some other troublesome experiences with them. I got along with the people in the
GS very good. I had a lot of really good friends over there. But every once in awhile,
I'd get put out with them about their aggressive nature for doing things because they
weren't slow like we were when they would try to develop a new program or doing
something new. Another example of their aggressiveness was in the water quality area.
We were kind of slow working into the water quality business, but not the GS.
They had two advisory committees. One was a Federal advisory committee and the other
was a non-Federal advisory committee. The only people on the non-Federal advisory
committee were from universities, states, and communities. There were no other Federal
agencies represented.
So what the GS presented to them was not always the same thing they presented to the
Federal agencies. The GS would present the Federal agencies with their programs, and
what they were planning to do. But the thing that kind of griped me, well, a lot of times,
what we in the Federal community got from the GS was something that they were already
committed to. It wasn't something that we could change. There was no way we were
going to get a change because it had already been done.
But when they worked with the non-Federal sector, that committee, they would present
proposals to them for what the GS might be doing and find out how they reacted to those.
Obviously, if you go to people who are looking for information and somebody offers to
go out and get it for you and then don't charge you anything for it, you're going to say,
"Yes, we want that. Hell, they'd take that as a mandate for doing that particular work.
Well, that's what they did with this water quality thing, and it ticked me off for some time
afterwards.
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