Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
meetings, and we'd have people come in from the field offices, and we'd sit around and
talk about each of these research projects. Some of them would be continuing projects,
and you'd have to say, "Well, this project starts with a small amount of money this year
and then next year we'll have a big amount of money. The following year we'll have a
bigger amount of money and then it will start petering off.
You had to work up the long term, not just what was going to happen for the next year,
and project out ahead. That was part of the things the Office of Research and
Development did. They were
this stuff into the future so that they would
have some sense of dollar values. Just when they'd start a project, they wanted to be sure
that they'd be able to carry that project through and not have to drop it half way through
or something like that because of improper planning.
But anyway, a lot of time went into those programming conferences where they would get
the people getting ready to make their presentations. Then they had one big programming
conference in OCE where all the lab directors would come in and make their pitch before
all the monitors in headquarters and the Office of Research and Development. They would
all tell about all the good things they were going to do and the great results they were
going to get from all these research projects.
If you didn't really know what they were going to do and what the prospects were for
results, they could really give you a song and dance. You had to know your stuff or it
would sound pretty good to you, eventhough it might not have been so great. So you had
to know what was going on when yo u sat in those meetings and making your decisions.
Hell, the whole group would work together and decide on which things were most
important.
The problem was that even though you could find areas that seemed really important, who
did you take money away from. Some new project would come in that everybody agreed
that it was a great thing that we ought to be doing it, but who lost money to pay for that
new project Nobody wanted to lose money, they wanted to keep their own, their level
up where it has been always. They were all trying to protect the amount of funds they had
so it got to be quite a game there if you try to preserve your amount of money.
Q ..
So it would be like your people from hydrology would be fighting with the people from
the structural side and the geotech people?
it was kind of hard--they served that
kind
A
Everybody was in competition, yes.
of being the mediator or the.
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