Water Resources People and issues
Columbia Basin Report
Q: I think the actual report was about `49.
A: Okay. So the
Flood was about `48, and before the water went down,
the Bureau was rushing its Columbia basin report to get it ready, and we got
our report up to the-either to the Congress or the Bureau of the
Budget-before the Corps did.
Q: Uh-huh.
A: And we did that by working all night, and I'll never forget this. Those were the
days when you had to type things twice to get enough carbon copies. You
know, they did have-what did they call that brown
Q:
A: Thermofax.
Q: Oh, Thermofax, right.
A: That's the first copying machine-and the copies didn't look like anything.
They were brown and they faded. Jack Dixon had a secretary named Mrs.
Dalton, and after we hammered out the decisions on the Columbia Basin
project, she typed the secretary's covering letter which must have been at least
10 pages long, -first there was a commissioner's report to the secretary, which
was already in. Then the secretary's report to the President, and the
Congress, -or maybe just to the President. Once we got that out, we could
release the report.
We had a lot of meetings and hammered out the decisions. Jebbie Davidson
was the assistant secretary that really was insisting on a postage stamp power
rate over the whole Columbia basin. The Bureau reluctantly gave in on that.
We didn't particularly believe in the postage stamp rate, and would have
preferred a higher power rate in Idaho to provide a greater subsidy to
irrigation, but we gave in just to get the report finished before the Corps did.
We finally got everything finished and the long letter was typed and we were
putting our surnames on the file copy. They had a block on the side of the file
74
Previous Page
