Theodore M.
the same way we did with the land grant colleges in the
Act." I think
it was 1862.
So Barlow was really the instigator of this idea which was incorporated into the
Water Resources Research Act enacted in 1964. A lot of other people have
claimed credit, and later I guess you'd have to give Senator Clint Anderson the
credit for getting it enacted. Clint Anderson was a member of the Kerr
Committee. He wasn't at the Detroit hearing, but I may have discussed it with
Ben Stong, who was Clint Anderson's staff man on the Senate Interior
Committee. He pursued the idea with Clint Anderson and lined up support
from the land grant colleges. Ben Stong was the person who was assigned by
Senator Anderson to help with implementation of the recommendations of the
Select Committee. I was back at the Legislative Reference Service by that time
and
closely with Ben Stong. Senator Kerr had died on January 1963,
which was almost two years after the report was published and before any of
the implementing legislation had been enacted. Senator Anderson, picked this
up as chairman of the Senate Interior Committee, because the water research
program was the responsibility of that committee.
One thing happened which was not remembered very much, but you remember
I mentioned how closely the Geological Survey had worked for the Senate
committee. They set up a whole section under Roy Oltman, and we had five
or six people there working as hydrologists, providing the data which went into
the Nathaniel Wollman study, as well as coordinating with all the other federal
agencies.
The first thing that happened after the Select Committee report was issued was
that President Kennedy, who had just recently taken office, sent a message to
the Congress which more or less embraced the report with both arms. I
sometimes wondered if he really loved it so much or whether he was trying to
get Bob Kerr on his team because of some votes that were coming up. Anyway,
President Kennedy's message to Congress outlined what he was going to do.
Among other things, he asked the National Academy of Sciences to do a study
of water research, and he ordered the federal agencies to look into the planning
side. That's what really got things going.
At the Geological Survey, the Water Resources Division was headed by Luna
Leopold at that time, and he proposed the establishment of a Water Resources
Research Institute to make the research study that the committee recommended.
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