________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
Okay.
A:
It was not only the regulatory mission. It had to do with some other policies for issues that we
thought were pretty cut and dried. It evolved over quite a period of time--maybe two years of
evolvement before we really got to the point where Secretary Gianelli was saying, "This is
the way it's going to be."
So, we had a lot of things that we'd send up and would get back with a statement, "No, that's
not quite right," but the guidance back wasn't really specific on what was right or what was
wrong.
We didn't have many regulatory problems in the Ohio River Division. We weren't big in that
business. We had, navigationwise, a rather well-defined river. In the 404 program we didn't
have a lot of things going on. We were basically tracking along with other's experiences and
keeping abreast of the dialogues.
We did have a lot of navigation, and we started having that dialogue because we were very
involved with the navigation associations--the Ohio River Improvement Association,
initially, then DINAMO [Development of Inland Navigation in America's Ohio Valley]
started out in this era. User fees were already an issue, largely put aside. The waterway folks
were, of course, very interested that the new administration stay with them, since they all felt
they were good businessmen and Republican administration kind of folks. They were more
than a little dismayed later on when their administration pushed for cost recovery and
waterway user fees.
We were watching that dialogue. This then became the "creative financing" initiative. Cost-
sharing came out of that period, but again, down the line. Early it was mostly the question,
"Shouldn't so and so pay for this?" My answer, when I was asked that question, was, "Well,
we're doing it the way the laws call for. This would be a change in policy, so I guess I'm not
the person to ask that question."
I think it was during all of those times when the secretary would be traveling around and
have those kinds of conversations with many different people that I suppose it jelled in his
own mind. I think it was jelled to begin with on direction, but specifics and how to write the
policies and all of the implementing kinds of things took a long time to come out. So, it was
a long period where things were indirect and, even in the field, rather confusing if you were
concerned about really getting things done.
Now we in the Ohio River Division started to see, in particular, our own instances of that
change in a couple of areas. One was the Section 202 flood control project, which I talked
about already.
Another area was up in the Muskingum area of Ohio where there were several dams
constructed for flood control. A lot of them were dry reservoirs, and there were
encroachments into the reservoir and the backwater areas by developers who built houses.
We had gone to court trying to evict people because we felt we couldn't tolerate a house in
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