a. review of almost all those. I remember one
General Wall, when he was Director
of Civil Works, we had a meeting with all the district engineers. They were all
complaining about comments from OCE. General Wall got up and said, "Well, we didn't
But he was talking
review at OCE, that was the responsibility of the division office.
about the general planning process. I was sitting in the audience and I was looking at him
and I was waving my arm. He said, "Oh, that is except for hydrology and hydraulics.
He says, "We do review hydrology and
at OCE.
Some of them would have preferred that we didn't do that. There are a lot of things that
are very important. If you miss something and it gets through Congress, Congress passes
it, and the project's authorized, then you
out that the project won't work the way the
planning report said it was going to work. You can get in a lot of trouble with
Congressmen and everybody else.
So you have to be pretty careful that you don't plan something and present it to Congress
that isn't fully operable, and not only that but meets all the economic and other tests.
Things like flood frequency have a big impact on the economic viability of a project. If
you make a big mistake in the frequency analysis, it will cause a big mistake in the
benefit/cost ratio. So
elements do have problems.
If a design element in engineering decides they want to go ahead and make a complete
design on something and then find out that it's a wrong size, won't pass enough flow, or
is at the wrong elevation in the structure because it may not pass the right water
temperature or water quality, they find that out too late. Then they've got to redo it and
redesign everything. That can make a big difference, too. So they all have concerns when
the hydrology and hydraulics people say, "Hey, you made a mistake. You need to redo
something and it will cost time and takes extra effort.
So by and large there's a lot complaints about your review. I mean, you don't usually get
bouquets, usually they're throwing bricks at you. But it's a worthwhile type of work if
you occasionally find something that really was botched up, then you can correct it. That
gives you a good feeling of satisfaction and makes you realize that you're doing some
good.
But one of the things that I talked about before, too, was the fact that I wanted the
Hydrology and Hydraulics element to stay as a unit, not to split it up and give parts to the
other major elements. I feel, and most people feel, that it's important that the Hydrology
and Hydraulics people are not influenced by any more political pressure than necessary.
I've seen cases myself in field offices where Hydrology and Hydraulics was under the
Chief of Engineering. He would look at the results of some of those studies and decide
on his own that the results weren't good.
Previous Page
