Theodore M.
work at the Conservation Foundation, and I knew I would enjoy working with
him.
It turned out to be a lot of fun, and in a way I was glad to be back at work on
a policy study. I was only supposed to work three days a week, but I ended up
working a lot more. The commission met only a half a dozen times; we had
three field hearings and frequent staff meetings. I think we did a lot of good
work in evolving a policy which would take the primary
for
groundwater out of federal hands and give the primary responsibility to the
states with action to be taken by local governments and the private sector.
Governor Babbitt was a good chairman, but he didn't always follow the script
we prepared for him. We proposed a lo-point program under which each state
would have a program for managing its groundwater, starting with mapping of
aquifers, setting ambient standards, and coordinating groundwater with surface
water.
Conjunctive management is what it is called, but we also stressed managing
groundwater with other natural resources, a much broader concept. One of the
big fallacies in resource management is that we've never really had an overall
look at resources. This was one of the places where the Conservation
Foundation has taken a leadership role: multimedia environmental
management. This was where the Congress has been led astray because the
federal agencies have never coordinated programs for water pollution control,
air pollution control, and solid waste management. Sometimes the programs are
in the same committee and sometimes they aren't.
The Conservation Foundation has done work trying to remedy that situation.
The modus operandi has changed from when they were funding Leopold and
and Hoyt and [Walter] Langbein to do studies. Now they
are doing most of the studies with their own small staffs, financed with grants.
The groundwater policy study took a little bit longer than we expected. It was
supposed to be about an
study, but it was almost two years before we
completely
We had put out the draft report and gotten back comments
and were revising the draft when I got a call from
Consulting
Corporation, which had a contract with the
[United States Agency for
International Development] for help on the Gambia River basin. The
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