Water Resources People and Issues
Water Resources Council
When the bill to create the Water Resources Council and the river basin
commissions-the Water Resources Planning Act-when that first was
introduced, the states were pretty much dead against it for quite a while until
languages evolved that essentially gave the states one vote and the federal
government one vote, which made the states
equal. But I always looked on
the river basin commission as a team consisting of one horse and one rider, the
federal government being the horse and the states being the rider.
I think there may have been some commitment made to the states in order to
get the Interstate Conference on Water Problems to support the bill. At first,
the states wanted to have a representative on the Water Resources Council, but
the Justice Department and other federal people opposed it, arguing that it
would be unconstitutional to have a federal agency with an officer appointed
by states and not a federal employee. But I think as a kind of a sop to the
states, they agreed that one of the principal officials of the Water Resources
Council would be from the states, and the states did see that Harold Wilm from
New York was appointed as an assistant director. I guess he was supposed to
be the state representative in the administration of the council, but was not
a member.
One of the big mistakes when the staff was set up was the agreement that there
be on the staff one person from Interior and one from the Corps of Engineers
and one from the Agriculture Department, just to kind of, you might say,
protect the interests of the various departments. In a way, it kind of
emasculated the council; kept it from really doing any staff work that adversely
affected any of the agencies. And there's a provision in that act that said
nothing in this law setting up this council shall have any effect on the activities
or authorities of existing federal agencies. So, the council was kind of
emasculated before it was created.
Department of Natural Resources
Q: Well, if you don't mind, let me go back a bit and I want to trace a couple of
things here.First of all, Henry Caulfield, when I interviewed him, suggested
that in 1961, soon after Kennedy became President, a small group of people
within the Department of the
agreed for the creation of a Department
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