Engineer Memoirs
soon left the Department of Energy, and we ended up handling only the real estate-none of
the government construction management.
It was the Department of Energy that moved us out of the Forrestal Building. I thought the
Corps was in very good shape to work with the Department of Energy, but there were people
in the organization that wanted to build their own engineering capability. Even after I retired,
I met with and talked to the people in Department of Energy and explained my view that they
needed an organization to get on top of the hazardous and nuclear waste problem. We spent
half a day on that subject with their top people. Recently they have given the Corps some
work out at Hanford and other places. The point I'm trying to make here is it takes a long time
to get the relationships and associations going.
With EPA it took six or seven years following an initial
kind of arrangement.
Finally, while Doug Costle was administrator of EPA, we signed an agreement for 600
years of Corps effort to help the administrator of EPA with the waste water problem.
When I left the job as Chief of Engineers the last couple of things I said to General
were, "Leave the districts alone," and, "go get the hazardous waste program." He indicated
his concern that the Corps was not qualified to do the hazardous waste program. I said,
"Neither is anyone else, and the Corps can become qualified more quickly than anyone else."
That's worked out to a degree.
Work for others has to be kept on the Chief of Engineers' things-to-do list. It doesn't matter
who the others are, but you either go forward or you're going to go backwards. With the
Corps' construction involvement going down, it has to find other places to use its talent, and
work for others is one way.
I never thought we had quite enough work for the Department of State. We made some
inroads on that. The trip to China was a by-product, to some extent. There were other flashes.
The Corps could and should have done the foreign building office work in the embassy field.
was another organization within Department of State that sporadically gave the Corps
work internationally. HUD, in their protocol with the Russians "housing and other
construction," gave us the "other construction" piece as mentioned earlier.
Then there were the laboratories. At that time our laboratories, WES, CERL, and CRREL
[Waterways Experiment Station, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, and Cold
Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory] performed a significant amount of work not
only for other federal agencies but for certain industries at times. The CPAR program, which
Bob Page put together, is a good idea. I felt all along that if the Corps was going to execute
research at public expense, the public was entitled to know the results and that information
should be transferred to them. Thanks to Bob Page that happened, ultimately.
I also thought the United States Corps of Engineers labs should be allowed to support private
industry. After I retired and was president of PRC, Engineer Group, the Dutch put their Delft
Laboratories behind one of their contractors to bid on a major international bridge job.
Finally, the Corps of Engineers laboratories were allowed by Congress to support private
industry under certain conditions.
The mayor of Seattle came to see me in 1979 and asked for some help on a new bridge. He
wanted the Corps of Engineers' technical advice on it. I was told by the staff we couldn't do
it because there was no authority. That was correct. On the other hand, there was no directive
not to do it. It was a vacuum. At least that was my understanding.
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