Water Resources People and Issues
licensing hydroelectric power development. I don't know the details of how it
evolved into an independent agency, but I think it started when it tried to do
comprehensive planning on its own. The Corps of Engineers saw this as a
threat to its water resources authority and started the actions which eventually
led to the Corps' being authorized to make the 308 reports. It was not my idea,
or the Select Committee's recommendation to set up the Water Resources
Council, but I had the hope that once it was set up, it might evolve into an
independent agency, and we would have a group with some power to do
rational comprehensive planning with the states.
That was an idea of mine, but I can't remember whether I've ever articulated
it in a published article. I may have said it in a speech or answered a question,
but anyway, that was the idea in the back of my head. It would have been
something like a Department of Water Resources which might well have
expanded into a Department of Natural Resources if Henry had said there was
a group at Interior that had something like that in mind. I'm sure there was,
because he was there, but I think they were primarily interested in aggrandizing
the Interior Department by bringing in the water resources programs of the
Corps. I don't know exactly what was Henry's role in the department, either
in the Truman administration or when he came back in the Kennedy
administration with Stewart Udall. He was one of these people in the
department that always came to meetings, but you never did know really what
they did except that when they stopped you from doing something, they could
pretty well do it because they had the ear of the secretary.
Let me ask you another question along the same lines. The relationship between
Senate Document 97 and the Water Resources Council, now, it may be that
there's no real relationship, but if I as an historian look at the Water Resources
Council some time after 1965 and I also look at some of the guidance offered
in Senate Document 97, I can easily jump to the conclusion that there was a
relationship. In particular I have in mind that Senate Document 97 talks about
regional planning, river basin planning basically. It talks about multipurpose
planning in the sense of treating hydroelectric power generation and recreation
facilities and fish and wildlife conservation as subjects that have to be
responded to and integrated in any kind of water project plans.
So, you know, the Water Resources Council, with its strong emphasis on river
basin planning, would seem to be a natural outgrowth of that kind of approach.
I wrong?
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