Water Resources People and Issues
could name some other states that made us feel-or at least made the senators
feel-that we were not yet ready to turn things over to the states yet. So Ed
Ackerman's idea was not a major thrust with the committee. Remember, the
members were in positions that enabled them to bring federal largess into their
states. And Kerr, at least, felt that was his role.
Looking at the recommendations, as you pointed out, there were not a great
many recommendations, but the first one was that the federal government, in
cooperation with the states, should do comprehensive river basic planning in
all the major river basins. That came about because of Senator Kerr's interest
in the Arkansas-White-Red basin study. He felt that was wonderful because it
provided lists of all of the potential projects and when his constituents wanted
something he could go either to the Bureau of Reclamation or Corps of
Engineers and get them to recommend it. And so the river basin planning was
to be a state/federal undertaking. The recommendation starts out saying, "The
federal government, in cooperation with the states" should prepare the plans.
In other words, Kerr's thrust always was with the federal government being
responsible.
And to encourage the states to cooperate, the committee's idea was that the
federal government would give the states money to stimulate state participation,
so that was the next recommendation.
And then, I guess because of the fact that we couldn't really resolve the
questions about desalting or weather modification, scientific problems which
are still far from resolution, the committee recommended that the federal
government should mount a coordinated scientific research program on water.
Water Resources Research Act of 1964
So, the idea that eventually became the Water Resources Research Act of 1964
was not really considered by the committee, even though at the hearing in
Detroit, probably in December of 1959, the idea was broached by a Professor
[Raleigh] Barlow of Michigan State-the hearing was in Detroit but he was
from Michigan State-and he said something very simply, like, "This problem
is just as serious and it should be approached in the same way as we
approached agriculture almost a hundred years ago in the Morrill Act. We need
to establish university programs to find answers to water resources problems,
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