Theodore M.
You remember, this was at the time of the beginning of the 1960 campaign.It
was December 1959, and Jack Kennedy was already a candidate and so was
Lyndon Johnson. And I don't remember just when it was, probably several
months after the hearing, Bob Kerr announced that he was supporting Lyndon
Johnson.
About a week later we got a bill from the people in Massachusetts for
||content||
,500
or
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,800 for the banquet and the reception and the luncheon, and maybe even
for the police escort. I'll always feel that they didn't send that bill as long as
they thought maybe Senator Kerr might be on their side.
Amazing.
A: Well, I had a lot of interesting times with that committee.
Recreation Act
Ted, there were several acts passed in the mid-1960s of rather important
significance to the environmental community and others. One act, for instance,
was the Recreation Act in which Congress mandated that the value of
recreation could be used in calculating the cost-benefit ratio to justify projects.
Did you get involved in that legislation? Then there was another act,
establishing the Land and Water Conservation Fund, in which Congress
specified that funds collected from park fees and so forth could be used to
purchase more park lands; there are some other aspects to that legislation.
Were you involved in that?
As to recreation, the agencies had used that all along. The Corps of
A:
Engineers had a law, going back as far as 1930, which said that recreational
boating shall be considered as coming within the definition of commerce
and as commercial navigation.
Then the 1944 Flood Control Act authorized the Corps of Engineers to include
provisions for recreation in reservoir projects. That law, in my opinion, makes
recreation a federal purpose just like flood control or navigation.
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