Water Resources
and Issues
A: The draft report was really was what we called the substantiating material in
the final report. And that was basically what it was. Of course, we did an awful
lot of refinement of that first draft, with the help of Ed Ackerman, Abel
Wolman, and Gilbert White. We worked on it for the rest of the fall because
Senator Kerr wanted to get it finished by January. You remember, this was an
election year, a presidential election year, the year that the Kennedy-Johnson
ticket was elected. Kerr was supporting them all the way down, and it took a
lot of courage on Kerr's part, because of Oklahoma's being a Southern Baptist
state and it was felt that they just didn't quite trust Catholic Yankees from New
England. But Kerr came out very strong for the ticket in Oklahoma and
everywhere in the South.
Can I interject something at this point?
Sure.
The recommendations that are in this report include recommendations for more
scientific research, for biennial assessments of water supply/demand
relationships, even something about nonstructural management of water
resources.
The question in my mind is-and I'm looking at it with the benefit of
hindsight and particularly some of the things that Clinton Anderson is later
involved with-was there at that time a feeling among the senators who were
involved that some of this activity would more appropriately be done at the
state level rather than at the federal level? Was this a call for greater
state/federal cooperation? Was that-1 don't want to use the term "hidden
agenda" -something that was implicit in much of what was being said there?
You know, later on, of course, in `63 you had the Water Resources Research
Act that gives money to the states for a lot of scientific research at the land
grant universities. Was there any feeling about that? Was there any active
involvement on the part of some organization like
[Interstate Council
on Water Policy] or anything like that?
A: All of that came later. Let me just finish telling how we got the report finished.
We did get it finished in January 1961, well within our budget. As a matter of
fact, we didn't even spend all the money we had because we got some hundreds
of thousands of dollars of free work from the federal agency people.
138
Previous Page
