Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
engineer and his chiefs of construction, real estate, programming, engineering, and operations
and a good overview of their activities.
Each one of those sessions lasted three or four hours, and it was a good prep session for me.
So, basically, my first three weeks were involved with testimony preparation.
After that testimony in early February, I was on the road quite a bit, both back in Washington
making contact with other congressional interests that I needed to call on and then going
around to our four districts. I would then go out with them on their projects for a firsthand
understanding. Included in that was the TennesseeTombigbee project, which was a
maximum interest kind of thing at that time, as I discussed before. Because of its particular
nature, under siege from the railroads and environmental groups, under siege in the Congress
with close votes and great concern with our completing the project on time, it remained a
high-interest project throughout my period as division engineer.
So, early on, then, I toured TennTom for my own benefit, got to meet our folks out there,
and got down and familiar with the project in its nitty-gritty detail. The Ohio River
Division's portion of the project, the northern 39 miles of the waterway, was a complex
undertaking. It included the 27-mile-long cut through the divide--175 feet deep at the
divide--and the Bay Springs Lock and Dam. At a lift of 84 feet, Bay Springs was the third
highest lock east of the Mississippi. In the divide cut, 150 million cubic yards of material
were removed to 38 disposal areas, creating a 5,000-acre wildlife management area. In
addition, four highway and two railroad bridges were relocated. Over 40 prime contractors
were involved with the 0 million contract for the divide cut, the largest in the history of
the Corps.
Q:
How did that testimony go the first year?
A:
It went pretty well. They put me toward the last so that I could watch others. Congressman
Myers had always been a very active participant, and the committee yielded to those who had
states within a particular division area to focus the questions. John Myers did that for us.
In the past, he had been unhappy that one of his favorite projects had never been
recommended by the Louisville District or the Ohio River Division, and thereby had been
very tough in his questioning of Ohio River Division Engineers. Two of the persons who
were involved in the division at the time his project--making the Wabash River a navigable
waterway--was not recommended were present. The district engineer of the Louisville
District at the time was Jim Ellis, who now was South Atlantic Division Engineer. The
division engineer at that time was General Vald Heiberg, who now was the Director of Civil
Works.
So, with both of them in the room, John Myers asked a few questions. Knowing all of this
background, I had gone by to meet him and introduce myself beforehand, hopefully talk to
him as a fellow Hoosier. I don't think that did me much good.
Q:
It was worth a try, right?
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