Theodore M.
A: Well, it did, and I mentioned that earlier when I was talking about George
Beard. George Beard was the Corps of Engineers representative, and I think
Jack Dixon was the Interior representative for a while, and then later Reginald
Price was the Interior representative. Reginald Price was in the department
after Bill Warne became the Assistant Secretary for Water and Power.
The Green Book was developed with a great deal of discussion; another Corps
person that was involved was Gene Weber. He was the staff person who took
over when George Beard left to go out to the Pacific Northwest. I was only
peripherally involved in that because of my staff role with the chairman and
later the departmental member of the
but I sat in on a lot of the
meetings. There were many arguments. The big argument first was the Bureau
of Reclamation wanted to use gross crop income as the measure of the benefits
from irrigation, and the Corps of Engineers argued that you should take
account of the on-farm costs so you should use the net benefits. Of course,
when you go to the net benefits for agriculture, there's not very much and very
few projects could be authorized.
But then the Corps of Engineers had its policy of using primary and secondary
benefits, and also direct and indirect benefits. By the way that they were
defined, you could do almost anything you want to prevent flood damages, and
the gross value of the crops destroyed by floods was considered a direct
benefit. That was the first battleground over the first draft of the Green Book.
The Green Book in 1950 was the second draft. The first draft was put out, I
think, in 1948, and there were not too many changes in the 1950 draft, but I
think it got more involved with the recreational benefits.
The Corps wanted to use the cost of indulging in recreation, in water-based
as a direct benefit, in other words, figuring that the people who are
going to go boating or fishing or anything at a reservoir will spend a lot of
money for equipment and transportation to get where they're going. The Corps
was using that argument and somehow in the debates, which were dominated
by George Beard, the Corps always seemed to win. I really attribute that to
George Beard, but it seemed to me there were a lot of fallacious ideas on both
sides. And, not having been directly involved, I'm hesitant to step into areas
that Henry Caulfield and possibly Arthur Maass and some others were more
closely involved with than I was.
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