Q ..
So it's just expediency more than anything else. It's an easy way to get that political
decision ratified. Then you get a yard stick by which you can gauge all the other ones you
don't want to have authorized.
A ..
That's a way of getting people off your back. Just say, "I didn't just do this arbitrarily,
like you might think I did. I did but it doesn't look that way.
Q ..
All these good scientific principles.
A ..
It's kind of foolish to go through all that process, but I guess it's one way of getting people
off your back.
Q ..
One of the things the Corps has never really gotten involved with on large scales is urban
water supply.
A
Oh, no, they haven't done much of that. As I was mentioning before, I wrote my master's
thesis on water supply. I was trying to figure out ways where the Federal Government
could become more involved and pointed out all the different constraints on Federal
participation in water supply. What the rules were for including it in reservoirs.
There was no way that the Corps really could get involved in a lot of these interbasin
transfers and things like that because of water rights for one thing. One of the things they
didn't really get involved with was conveyance facilities. They could come up with water
supply in a reservoir, given that they had some party that was willing to say that they
needed it for future water supply and were willing to make payments for it.
But some of that storage put in for future water supply probably never will be used for
water supply because the people didn't have to start making payments on it for 10 years
after they said they needed it. Then after the 10 years were up, if they didn't start making
payments, then it no longer was reserved for water supply. If they started making their
payments, then they could maintain their ownership of that storage. But a lot of them who
asked for it for awhile probably would never actually take it. They just said, we're going
to need it. Then, in case they did need it, they could hang on to it.
But as far as going out and doing single water supply reservoirs, I don't think the Corps
has ever built--well, maybe I should take that back, there may be a case a two where
they've built single-purpose water supply reservoirs, but they have to be darn few and far
between.
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