John
Morris
These items generated great pressure on the members of Congress who dealt with water,
transportation, environment, and to a lesser degree operation of the ports and waterways. The
debates went on for months. Mr. Robert Losche was the lobbyist for the dredging industry,
and I should add an extremely effective one-probably the best in the business.
Finally, with much input from Bill Murden, I went to see Senator [Bennett] Johnston from
Louisiana who was responsible for public works appropriation in the Senate. Bill went with
me and we outlined a plan which would satisfy most complaints and concerns. Basically the
Corps would reduce its existing dredge fleet of some 24 to 26 hopper dredges to 5 or 6,
including 3 new dredges to be authorized. As part of this legislation, the Corps would
guarantee the commercial dredge fleet some 20 million cubic yards annually. This amount was
several times greater than their capacity.
I may have the details off a bit, but the proposal was adopted, passed, and implemented. The
American hopper dredge industry was soon developed, the Corps saved spaces and dollars and
also received three new
the Yaquina, Wheeler, and
I also felt, and still do, that we could privatize the operation of our waterways systems and our
hydropower plants. There are plenty of hydropower plants being operated in this country by
there is resistance within
private industry. Of course, you like to have your own
the family to doing those things, but when you're looking for new missions and you have to
cut man years, how do you man new opportunities? The new missions are the future of the
Corps, especially since the old ones are drying up rapidly.
Those background conditions affect specific projects. Among specific projects, I guess we
should start off with Lock and Dam 26, which has been covered in detail as director of Civil
Works and as deputy.
I remember clearly how much time and effort went into the wording of the authorizing
document. We ultimately got authority and proceeded to construct the first lock and a new
dam. We had been working on the project since 1972 or 1973 when we finally got everything
back in place, and I believe in 1976 we had the groundbreaking.
So Lock and Dam 26 was a landmark, a defining moment, because it threw out the old
authority basis for all the work we had done on the Ohio system. It meant, from now on, if we
changed the capacity, we had to get new authority. It also brought into play the effect of
increased traffic on the environment. Lock and Dam 26 was, in fact, the most important lock
on the upper Mississippi.
in the river because it was the primary bottleneck for the
As discussed earlier, Joe Tofani and I had talked about the 1909 authority, and we had
concluded before the judge's decision that we had stretched our authority. The Corps'
interpretation was if you're going to spend millions to replace something, why not replace it
to modem standards? That was not the question. The question really was, "What did the
words in the law say?"
The answer to that question set a tone which showed up in the Tennessee-Tombigbee project.
That project, which had been in the works almost a hundred years, was well under
construction when challenged by the Izaak Walton League and the Louisville and Nashville
Railroad. I think it was called L&N.
We were challenged on two bases. One, the Corps did not have the environmentall Impact
lacked authority to make
assessments in good shape, and two, the Secretary of the
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