BOARD02242

• Board Meeting Date: 1/17/1962
• Description: Minutes and Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

2772

not be obliterated and eliminated, I think we
will have done a great job. But as the bill
now reads, local act~vities and local programs
and the local concept that we have been seeking
and expressing and pushing for and living for,
and I might say, almost dying for, they must not
be removed - they must not be wiped out. They
must be included.

I

The bill sets up a council, a national
council, and it makes the membership of that
council several of the Cabinet officers. And
the bill quite frankly admits that these Cabinet
officers will not have time to devote very much
of an effort to this great program of water re-
sources planning and each of these Cabinet
officers, under the bill, would appoint a subordi-
nate who would look after the work that would be
before them. I've had quite a lot of experience
in Washington; I've had quite a lot of experience
with departments there and I know of the jealousies;
I know of the bickering; I know of the wire-pulling
back and forth;. the jockeying, and I' m greatly in
fear that by appointing Cabinet officers on this
council, men who know absolutely nothing, abso-
lutely zero, when it comes to the importance of
water uses and the plans and the methods and the
activities that are necessary to put water to
use, I must agree with Mr. Kuiper when he says
that this council might very well be made up of
men representing each use. There ought to be a
man on that council who is an expert and has had
experience and a background and a great reputa-
tion in reclamation. I .don't say that reclama-
tion as a national policy is number one to the
whole nation because I know that it isn't. Dom-
estic use is a tragically important matter. I
know, a. few years ago, that New York state had
great dificulty over their domestic water and
there should be somebody on that council who is
an expert and knows all the answers to the domes-
tic use of water. There ought to be somebody on
there that knows something about the hydraulic use
of water and the recreational use. Why not have an
expert on that council representing the recreation-
al use? And the industrial use? The mechanical
use and the flood control? Each one of these im-
portant uses of water ought to have representation
at the very top of this whole measure of working
out a plan and a policy and a planning commission.
And I think that change certainly should be made.

I