Theodore M.
Belle Fourche Project
A: Yes, we got involved with them more on the Western projects-I guess it may
have been the Belle Fourche project in western South Dakota primarily. Studies
that were made by the Geological Survey showed that after the Bureau of
Reclamation built that project, there wasn't enough water to fill the dam
because the Soil Conservation Service built a lot of small dams that evaporated
a lot of water.
We had some arguments with the Soil Conservation Service over that
project,-that's the only one that I remember specifically-but we still dealt
with them through Ernie Wiecking's shop, rather than directly with the SCS.
In other words, the secretary's office handled the interdepartmental fights.
With Ernie
and Howard Cook and Nat Back, they had a strong team.
The one person that always was there from the Soil Conservation Service was
Carl Brown. He was also on the Subcommittee on Benefits and Costs at
FIREBRICK and there were a lot of arguments there on the economics of the SCS
program.
But I was not the principal
on that. Jack Dixon was the
department's member on that, and then later, Reginald Price-both of them are
deceased now. So I didn't get too much involved with the economics of the
Soil Conservation Service program. I did work much more closely with the
Corps, and I guess somehow had a lot more rapport with the Corps because I
knew most of the people, and they knew I had come from the Corps, and I
knew how the Corps operated.
And the Bureau wasn't nearly as much involved in that upstream/downstream
controversy as the Corps and the SCS.
At some point the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Parks Service got
tired of working with
through Michael Strauss.
of the reasons
was that there were more conflicts between the agencies. After the Upper
Colorado River Basin Compact was approved in the early
which opened
up the possibility of building dams on the upper Colorado River, the Bureau of
Reclamation went right ahead with a proposed
project including Echo
Park Dam in the Dinosaur National Monument. I had the job of negotiating
that with the Park Service. At first, the Park Service was perfectly content, if
we gave them million, to build up the dinosaur display area-you see,
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