John
Morris
That caused us to put out this book, Dredging for the Birds. Later, years later, I wrote a
letter and advised the head of the Audubon Society that if he would describe the habitat
needed for certain endangered species, the Corps could build them.
As mentioned, NEPA contained no grandfather clause, and we were in violation of the law
as soon as it was passed. I ultimately set up a group of congressional briefings. Lieutenant
Colonel John Wall, who had been with me in Vietnam, prepared the briefings on where we
stood in implementing NEPA and spoke to various sections of the Congress.
We especially needed to explain why we had not implemented NEPA in the operational field,
particularly in the dredging field. We were getting to it, but the priorities addressed new work
first, then ongoing construction, et cetera, and O&M [operation and maintenance] last. I also
explained to the EPA that they could stop dredging, but our plan was to have all in order in
a couple of years, and showed them our time schedule. As a consequence of these efforts, we
didn't have to stop anything in the operational field.
That was, I think, an initiative which saved the taxpayer and us a lot of money. Because of this
dredging issue, Bill Murden and I spent a couple of days on a Corps hopper dredge in Portland
so I could better understand the business. I began to realize that dredging was an expensive
operation and that probably the Corps should turn over to private industry the hopper dredge
business. It took a little while to ferment this idea, but privatization was finalized during my
term as Chief.
Q ..
Lock and Dam 26 was another important issue with environmental implications.
A
We had been repairing and upgrading the locks and dams on the Ohio River under Section
109 of the Water Resource Act of 1919, which gave the Chief of Engineers authority [not
financing] to maintain, repair, and rehabilitate existing locks and dams up to current traffic
without further congressional approval. The word "current" may not be the precise word in
the legislation. The interpretation in the Chief's office for years had been that "current" meant
today's traffic, not the traffic when originally authorized. As a consequence of that, we'd
upgraded practically all of the Ohio River locks to actual 1970 traffic levels.
Lock and Dam 26 came along. General Charles "Chuck" Noble was the division engineer in
the Lower Mississippi Valley Division. This was early in the process. He called me up one
day in early 1973 and said that he was going to issue a request for proposals on a new Lock
and Dam 26. I remember distinctly asking him if he had an environmental impact statement.
He said, "Well, we don't need one. There's no opposition, there's no environmental problem
here."
I don't remember the dates exactly, but before he ever got around to a contract, we were
challenged. The challenge was that we were going to build a lock and dam to increase the
traffic from the original design to meet 1972 traffic requirements.
Well, when we looked at this law and really got into it, Joe Tofani said, "I've known for a
long time that we were on shaky ground with that law, but now that they've called our hand,
we might as well accept the fact that we're not doing this right and back up and regroup."
The Water Resources Congress, a rather powerful organization, called a meeting at the Coal
Building in D.C. to discuss Lock and Dam 26. Their thrust was to harness their political
power to either redefine the original language or to pass an amendment to relieve Lock and
Dam 26. Of course, the fact of life is there was no point in spending millions of dollars to
meet original traffic by rebuilding a
lock. So the objective never changed,
but how to reach it became the issue.
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