John W. Morris
A
This was covered in detail earlier in our interview, but I will recount it briefly. You will recall,
it grew out of a requirement by Senator Hruska of Nebraska when I was in Omaha. His new
idea was to have all water-related federal money coming into the region through the Corps for
management. My reaction was that that would be too controversial and that we'd be better off
appointing the Corps as the coordinating agency of a committee made up of local people and
the other agencies to develop a plan.
That first urban study turned out to be very helpful and attractive. Other cities requested help,
and that effort developed into a program as discussed earlier. I don't know how many of these
studies we did. I think we must have done 30 or so. It was a good engineering program which
lasted over six years. There's no reason why those urban studies aren't of continued value.
My thought was then, and still is, a vision that if those studies were properly done and could
be integrated into a software program in some fashion, then the city manager could very easily
determine his budgets, his future priorities for investments, and on this integrated plan, make
sure that the federal funds available are put to the most productive use and in the right
sequence.
Q..
Did it continue after you were Chief?
A
I think we had some studies going on. I'd have to go back and check. The districts took about
three years to do one, as I recall.
Q ..
I might toss in one other topic here, for maybe just a couple of minutes. We've been talking.
about dredging. Was the disposal of dredged material a controversial issue while you were
Chief?
A
It always was, and-yes. We covered this matter in some detail in the director of Civil Works
period; however, it did continue through the 1976 to 1980 period. The study envisioned by
Frank Koisch and commissioned by the Congress [in 1971 or
to evaluate dredge
material was still active and is going on, as far as I know. By the end of my term as Chief, we
had learned that dredge material is not as bad as claimed. In the meantime, dredge "spoil" was
guilty until we could prove otherwise, and much dredging was stopped.
As mentioned before, the problem was really worldwide. That circumstance led to the
international dredging conference in London where the Corps played a big role. Out of that
came certain international standards on dredging.
As a sidelight, we had to change our hopper-dredging procedures. For years we let the hopper
overflow to get rid of excess water allowing the hoppers to contain more material. Well, the
overflowing was stopped to reduce or avoid pollution. That meant we made a lot more trips
to sea than before, and that meant we didn't get as much dredging done as we used to for the
same cost.
You will recall that because of these experiences, I wrote a letter while Chief to Mr. Roger
Peterson, president of the Audubon Society, and proposed that if he would give us the criteria,
I thought we could build wetlands and habitat for endangered species, or whatever. I'm still
convinced the Corps can be helpful in this regard.
As you can guess, we undertook quite an aggressive program to put the best light on the
dredge material situation. After all, a great factor in the U.S. economic picture was the
operation of ports, harbors, and waterways.
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