________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
"Then we'd better address the fact that we can't salami slice away because I have to keep
those three people at that Brookfield Lake because I have a flood control project there. I can't
walk away from a dam that's preventing floods, and I've got lots of these flood control dams
in the Ohio River Division." When we had my people out at 76 lakes, two to three each, we
didn't have any flexibility.
So, the next thing we would have to cut was an engineer or a planner. We didn't have many
of those, either. Now you're cutting into the capability to do the TennTom, to engineer and
construct the other projects and the other missions, and that's the heart of what we were to
do. As much as I'd like to turn some operational stuff over, I couldn't until someone
eliminated the mandate that we operate that mission.
That was the reason for my comment. I was trying to build a backfire to carve out what our
responsibilities were. My feeling was that oftentimes the easy way for Gianelli was to cut a
number and make us sort it out as to where they fell. His feeling was that if he couldn't get it
implemented through his initiatives, he would implement it through cuts because we
wouldn't have enough people to get the missions accomplished.
My response, as I said, was, "Well, you may think we're going to be closing park areas and
stop navigation, but you can't have a catastrophic failure on the Ohio River or a flood control
dam. As long as we've got those responsibilities, we have to maintain them. What's going to
hurt is our capability to do the other things we need to do."
Q:
Now, I think, by the year after you left the division, 40 percent of the civil works engineering
was being done on contract, according to the statistic that's provided here.
A:
When I was there it was about 25 percent.
Q:
It doesn't say, but it had grown to that, and 90 percent in military construction.
A:
Military was always about 90, but civil works was basically down at 20 to 25 percent. That's
what it had been when I was there. I didn't think that was necessarily bad. I mean, I thought
we could pass some more of the civil engineering out. In military construction, I didn't see
that as necessarily bad. The problem was, and is, even to supervise engineering contracts you
have to--with the professional integrity of the Corps in doing the job right on the line--have
a professional force. I mean, the concept of a one-up review of engineering is essential. One
has to have capability to do a one-up review. We did have the expertise in locks and dams
design. Who else has designed those over time?
Different parts of the Corps had expertise in certain things. Nashville District had helped St.
Louis District out on design of Lock and Dam 26. Civil works at that time went to a center of
expertise approach and directed that, for certain type projects, there ought to be a district that
would have the expertise and engineering capability to assist others.
For example, if you're not building much hydropower across the Corps, then you can't afford
to have every district with a hydropower capability, so maybe the biggie in hydropower,
North Pacific Division, ought to be that center of expertise. We had hydropower experience
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