Vernon
Well, hydrology is quite similar. There would be one person assigned to sediment.
Another one assigned to water quality. Another one to water control management.
Another one to review basic hydrology reports. So there's not too many experts in OCE.
They had a lot of areas to cover. Of course, another thing, when the district offices want
to have a conference and they want to get assistance on some particular project, they
always want to have the best people they can get from headquarters. They don't want to
take somebody who doesn't have a lot of years experience.
They always try for the person with the most experience, somebody they really know well.
You can't always get them, of course. There is not enough time and energy available for
one person to cover every meeting that goes on. But, one of the things that we talked a
little bit about, I think, was what are the impressions of the other elements regarding
hydrology and hydraulics in terms of doing Corps business. Is it a help or a hindrance and
all that sort of thing.
Well, it's a basic discipline for almost everything you do in water resources. People have
to know enough about it, or they can't get by at all. Planning people have to have a lot
of hydrology and hydraulics. They get upset when they get delayed in their reports
because the division officer and OCE reviews the material and finds that it needs some
additional studies.
Revisions slow down the report process and obviously they get upset about it because that
schedule is what they want to meet. They view these delays with disdain, and the people
that are causing them, the same way. So there was a lot of resentment about comments.
Most of the time, they're really legitimate comments, but once in a while, they will get
some kind of a comment that is just a designer's choice and not really a proven difference.
But the views of the guy in headquarters usually prevail of course. Something like that
happens, that gets the district upset because they have to go back and redo something that
they didn't want to take the time and delay their reports for.
Hydraulics and Hydrology
Q ..
Now, would your section or your branch or division there, would your experts see every
one of the reports that was being prepared in the Corps and all the districts and divisions?
occasionally they wouldn't, we would miss
Most of them. Most of the planning
A
some of them. But generally, you see, most planning reports have a lot of hydrology and
hydraulics background. The material may not always be in the report, it may be in an
appendix which is not published or it may be in a separate document--but they really need
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