The survey sold the idea to the Bureau of the Budget, and in the budget that
went up to Congress in January
would have been the budget for
fiscal year
was a recommendation for establishment of a Water
Resources Research Institute as a part of the U.S. Geological Survey Water
Resources program. This was in the budget, and the Geological Survey has
always taken the position that they didn't really need any more new legislation
on research because they've got a broad, organic act which authorizes them to
do almost anything in the water resources and natural resources area pertaining
to research. And so the Water Resources Research Institute was put in as a line
item in the 1963 budget. I don't remember the amount. It came up to the
Congress and was favorably considered by the House Subcommittee on Interior
Appropriations. This was in the spring of 1962.
I don't know exactly what happened after the subcommittee reported the item
favorably, but it was not included in the appropriations bill when the
appropriations bill passed the House. I was told that staff of the House Interior
and Insular Affairs Committee had felt that this item needed legislation. I don't
have any documentation of that, but I believe at that time Eugene Eaton was
on the staff of the House Interior Committee and he was always very critical
of the Geological Survey.
One way that the states got into this is that Ben Stong asked me to draft letters
to all of the states and ask for their views about how we ought to approach
water resources problems. Senator Anderson eventually published all of the
responses in a committee print and out of that grew the draft of the Water
Resources Act.
I don't know whether Ben Stong drafted the bill or whether he got the Interior
Department or the Legislative Council to draft it, but it was introduced and
eventually became law. It first passed in the Senate, but Wayne Aspinall was
chairman of the House Interior Committee and he was not in favor of setting
up new federal programs. It took a lot of persuading, which was done largely
through Ben Stong , working with the president of Colorado State University,
who helped to convince Wayne Aspinall that this would be a great thing.
Originally, in talking to Ben Stong, we had agreed that there should be not 50
research institutes but a series of regional research institutes to lessen
redundancy. That idea was soon rejected because it was pretty obvious that
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