Final Report

FINAL REPORT ANNUAL IDSTORICAL REPORT SUMMARY SOUTHWESTERN DIVISION U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS SWD PILOT REGIONAL IDSTORY PROJECT CALENDAR YEAR 2004 Gregory Graves, Ph.D. Peter Neushul, Ph.D. Graves & Neushul Historical Consultants 915 Camino Lindo Goleta, CA 93117 1O March 2008 2 Preface This is the first annual historical report summary for the Southwestern Division (SWD) of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The SWD pilot regional history project is part of the reorganization of the Corps of Engineers known as USACE 2012. The new methodology, or "regionalization" of the annual historical reporting of the districts of the Southwestern Division has presented opportunities for new examination of their activities in a given year. The geographic boundaries of the Fort Worth, Galveston, Little Rock and Tulsa districts are combined to give a regional view of the work and activities of the U.S. Army Corps Engineers in northern Arkansas, Oklahoma, southern Kansas, southern Missouri, portions of Louisiana and New Mexico, and Texas. Each of the four districts and the division submitted a report on its major activities for the calendar year 2004. Our task as historians has been to examine the submissions, and compile and refer to them in an overview, placing them in historical context using primary and secondary materials. The Evolution of Regionalization Regionalization is part of the continuing effort to streamline the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dating back to the 1960s and 1970s. In civil works, the Corps of Engineers had an amazing list of accomplishments by mid-century. Water resources developments included flood control projects nationwide, thousands of miles of inland waterways, deepwater ports, and reservoirs that supplied much of the nation's drinking water and hydroelectric power. Other civil works missions included emergency management of large-scale disasters and recreation services on Corps' projects. In military construction, 3 the second major Corps mission, the agency had built most of the Army and Air Force's installations in the U.S. and around the world, including posts, bases, training centers, arsenals, and recruiting facilities. By the late 1950s, the organization had grown to approximately 35,000 civilians and several hundred military officers in order to meet the nation's needs for big dams, water resources infrastructure, and defense. Those employees worked in 39 Corps districts, 11 division offices, and 6 laboratories across the nation and in and around Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. This was the traditional U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, providing valued services to the nation and the armed forces through well-designed and engineered projects. 1 During the 1960s, challenges arose to the traditional Corps. The engineer- dominated organization made decisions based on engineering feasibility, and water resources economists began to question such decision-making and to demand multi- disciplinary participation in the process. 2 In addition, the burgeoning environmental movement began to attack Corps' water resources development planning as inadequate to address issues of environmental quality. On the military construction side of the Corps, the U.S. Army began to insert itself more into Corps of Engineers functions. During the 1970s, for example, the Office of the Chief of Engineers became HQUSACE (Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), and the Corps became a Major Command 1 See John R. Ferrell, Big Dam Era: A Legislative and Institutional History ofthe Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program (Omaha, NB: Missouri River Division, U.S. Anny Corps of Engineers, 1993), passim, for a discussion of the Corps mid-twentieth-century civil works program. 2 See Arthur Maass, Muddy Waters: Army Engineers and the Nation's Rivers (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1951), passim, for economic challenges to the Corps traditional engineering. 4 (MACOM) of the Army. Such efforts to bring the Corps of Engineers into the chain of command of the U.S. Army represented another challenge to the traditional Corps.3 Several events in the ensuing decades accelerated the pace for streamlining the traditional Corps, and set the stage for regionalization. Federal environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972, placed new burdens on the Corps water resources planning process. For sixteen years beginning in 1970, Congress passed no major federal water resources legislation. Actual construction of Corps water resources projects had all but halted, and this impasse continued well into the 1980s. In 1986, a bipartisan effort in Congress resulted in passage of the Water Resources Development Act of that year. The act provided funding for more than 300 projects that had been authorized, while de-authorizing hundreds that had low federal interest. In addition, WRDA-86 established new cost sharing requirements, especially increasing the local sponsor's share in flood control projects. The act also provided for a major water resources bill every two years. For the Corps, WRDA-86 meant extensive new work, but it also required much greater cooperation with local sponsors in water resources projects. 4 Another challenge to tradition came in the realm of the Corps project processes. Private sector criticism of the Corps cited the lengthy studies, planning, and construction, and found redundancies throughout the process. Part of the streamlining process was the idea that the Corps needed to incorporate management techniques used by private 3 See Gregory Graves, Pursuing Excellence in Water Planning and Policy Analysis: A History ofthe U.S. Army Institute for Water Resources (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1995), Chapter One, for an analysis of the economist and environmentalist challenge to the traditional Corps. 4 See Martin Reuss, Reshaping National Water Politics: The Emergence ofthe Water Resources Development Act of 1986 (lWRPolicy Study 91-PS-1, 1991), pp. 1-39. See also Graves, Pursuing Excellence in Water Planning and Policy Analysis, pp. 247-48. 5 engineering firms. Two individuals stand out in bringing Project Management to the Corps. Robert Page, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, had come to the position from private enterprise in 1986. Along with securing the passage ofWRDA-86, Page made it another goal to change the Corps' traditional "stovepipe approach" to planning, design, and construction, wherein project plans made their way back and forth through district, division, and headquarters branches. Instead, Page favored the less- cumbersome approach of Project Management, where one individual was the primary manager of a project from its beginnings to completion. The other individual was Lieutenant General Henry Hatch, Chief of Engineers, from 1988 to 1991. Hatch too was committed to bringing Project Management to the civil works, military construction, and support activities throughout Corps field offices. Project Management was difficult to impose on the compartmentalized "stovepipe culture" of the Corps; yet it inexorably transformed the traditional way of bringing projects to completion. 5 Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Corps of Engineers underwent its next step towards regionalization. A congressionally mandated initiative called Reorganization began as an overall drawdown of the U.S. Army. As part of that drawdown, Reorganization targeted some smaller Corps districts and rival division offices for closure. Immediately upon its announcement of 10 district and 5 division closures, Reorganization encountered political reality when Congress arose to denounce the plan. This included the new budget-cutting conservatives who, in some instances, blocked closure of offices in their political districts. Reorganization subsequently 5 William F. Willingham, A History ofthe North Central Division ofthe U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers, (USACE NCD n.d.), p. 116. See also Donita Moorhus and Gregory Graves, "The Limits of Vision: A History of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, 1988-1992," unpublished ms, August 1998, Office of the ChiefofEngineers, Office of History, pp. 17-18. 6 dwindled to a few nominal changes; no districts were closed. Despite the economic reality that several small districts had little civil works or military construction work load, politicians faced the dilemma of taking thousands of federal jobs away from small cities. Political reality won, but the initiative placed the Corps into flux, and the organization remains so today. Next came "Reinventing Government" initiated during the Bill Clinton administration in the early 1990s. The idea was for organizations like the Corps of Engineers to do more work with fewer personnel. With applied technology and better distribution of resources, fewer people could do the same amount or more work through increased productivity. Government payrolls would decline, technology would fill in the gap partly, and the rest could be done by non-duplication of services in field offices. In essence, this is the regionalization initiative now being implemented by the Corps of Engineers. Regionalization is a part ofUSACE 2012, initiated under the tour of duty of Lieutenant General Robert Flowers, Chief of Engineers from 2002 to 2005. Upon taking command, Flowers organized a team of Corps employees to study ways to improve the organization's efficiency. In 2003, he announced the launching ofUSACE 2012. The October report came almost exactly two years after

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