Vernon
The GS weren't experts in water control management. They hadn't even asked us into the
thing until they got the go ahead on the project. So that kind of thing really irked me.
But, as I say, individually I have nothing but the best of feelings about all of my
relationships with the GS.
The Bureau of Reclamation and the Soil Conservation Service (SCS)
Q ..
Well, if you had problems with GS, you also dealt with other Federal agencies. You've
said Interior was very aggressive. What about the Department of Agriculture and the Soil
Conservation Service? How were they to deal with? They must have had some significant
flood and water quality issues to deal with.
A
I'd say our major differences probably with both the Bureau of Reclamation and the SCS
are when communities or state organizations would want flood control projects and they
would try to play one agency against another really. They'd go to one agency then they'd
go to the other agency, and they'd try to get the Bureau to study a project for them or they
get the Corps to study a project for them or get SCS to do work for them. There were
many examples through my career where one agency had started doing an investigation
for a particular watershed, and that ended up [with] another agency taking over the
project.
I remember one in particular. When I was doing my paper on water supply at Catholic
University, I was checking out a lot of things. One of the projects down in the southwest,
I've forgotten the name of it right now, but the Bureau of Reclamation had studied it for
irrigation. They had added some flood control, which the Corps had developed for them,
the benefits for it. But they couldn't come up with an economically justified project, so
they dropped it.
The Corps, at that time, was able to take benefits for water quality. Now I don't know
just why the Bureau didn't have that option then, but apparently they didn't have that
option. So the Corps, by adding water quality as a purpose, was able to come up with
enough benefits to make an economically justified project out of it. There was some water
supply on that project, too, which was a part of several purposes. When the Bureau
studied it, they couldn't make it economically feasible but the Corps was able to because
they handled the additional benefits.
There was another problem, not just with the Bureau of Reclamation and the SCS on the
design procedures, because the Corps was designing all their projects for the probable
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