Theodore M.
project that was spread around through other parts of the academy. I became
so engulfed in the administrative work that I wasn't able to do much
substantive work.
It was my job to keep those studies going, plus a lot of other different studies
that were under way, and also to raise money for new studies. I guess that's
why I
able to keep up with what the water resources agencies and the
Congress were doing. I did get involved in the
River studies for the
Corps. This was the study of the potential reuse of the Potomac estuary for
water supply through development of a water purification plant at Blue Plains.
The other part of that was an overall study of the water resources requirements
of the Washington metropolitan area.
I had worked out the legislative authorization for that study with Senator
Charles Mathias's staff. It was needed because Sixes Bridge and Verona Dams
were authorized in the `74 act, but before you could move into construction,
you had to do these other studies to show that they were the only way to get
water for the Washington metropolitan area. I was at the academy when that
came up and we drafted some language to permit the Corps to ask the National
Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering to make the
studies. I was involved in getting the legislation, but when it came before the
Environmental Studies Board for approval, they turned it down because the
board felt that it was not an appropriate study for the academy. Most of our
studies were of a more generic nature. Another part of the National Research
Council, the Assembly of Engineering, agreed to do it and eventually it led to
the creation of the Water Sciences and Technology Board to do studies like
that.
So I was working on all kinds of things like that, and I wasn't really following
water policy in the way that I had for years, except, of course, water pollution
control policy, which was the purpose of the work for the Rockefeller
Commission.
Did you get involved in restudying the Corps' original Potomac report-the
famous
report that ran into a road block.
No. I did not, but that's where they got the proposal for Verona and Sixes
Bridge.
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