darrell mach - united states bureau of reclamation darrell.pdfdarrell mach storey: this is brit...

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS

DARRELL MACH

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STATUS OF INTERVIEWS:OPEN FOR RESEARCH

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Interviews Conducted and Edited by:Brit Allan StoreySenior HistorianBureau of Reclamation

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Interviews conducted–1993Interview edited and published–2017

Oral History ProgramBureau of ReclamationDenver, Colorado

SUGGESTED CITATION:

MACH, DARRELL D. ORAL HISTORYINTERVIEW. Transcript of tape-recorded Bureauof Reclamation Oral History Interviews conductedby Brit Allan Storey, Senior Historian, Bureau ofReclamation, Washington D.C. in 1993. Edited byBrit Allan Storey, further edited and desktoppublished by Andrew H. Gahan. Repository for therecord copy of the interview transcript is theNational Archives and Records Administration inCollege Park, Maryland.

Record copies of this transcript are printed on 20 lb.,100% cotton, archival quality paper. All other copies areprinted on normal duplicating paper.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Statement of Donation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Editorial Convention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Oral History Interview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Early Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Local Draft Board. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Getting into Reclamation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Small Country School. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Interest in Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6College Counselor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Engineering Rotation Training.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Special Assignment in the Earth Laboratory. . . . . 12Canals and Headworks Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Need for a Change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Decided to Leave the Chief Engineer's Office. . . . 18Transferred to Grand Island. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Working in the Chief Engineer's Office.. . . . . . . . 21Major Projects in Grand Valley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Enjoyed Supervising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Required Management Skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Technical Expertise in Management. . . . . . . . . . . 27Turning Engineers into Managers. . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Management Training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31Training Beyond Interpersonal Relations. . . . . . . 33Grand Island Projects Office. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Southern California Development Office. . . . . . . 36Importing Water to the Colorado River Basin. . . . 38Commissioner's Office Planning Division.. . . . . . 39Office of Land Use and Water Policy. . . . . . . . . . 40

Bureau of Reclamation History Program

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Heady Stuff. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Planning Officer in Amarillo, Texas. . . . . . . . . . . 43Rio Grande Regional Environmental Project.. . . . 44Problems with the Rio Grande Study.. . . . . . . . . . 46International Contacts with Mexico.. . . . . . . . . . . 48International Boundary and Water Commission. . 51The Deal with Mexico. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Planning Program in the Southwest Region. . . . . 54Reclamation's Assistance in State Water Plans. . . 58Southwest Regional Directors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Southwest Region Considered an "Outlands". . . . 63Mid-Pacific Regional Planning Officer. . . . . . . . . 64Planning Projects in Sacramento. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Heading the Planning Division in the Commissioner's

Office. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Commissioner Robert Broadbent.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Commissioner Becomes a Presidential Appointee

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Managing Reclamation's Planning Program. . . . . 72Chairman of the Souris-Red [Rivers] Engineering

Board. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Reclamation Losing Its Salability. . . . . . . . . . . . . 731988 Reorganization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Commissioner Dennis Underwood. . . . . . . . . . . . 76Commissioner Dan Beard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Commissioner C. Dale Duvall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Assistant Commissioners for Engineering and

Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Changes in the Reclamation Program. . . . . . . . . . 86Red-Souris Engineering Board/International Joint

Commission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Commission an Adjunct of the State Department

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90Agreements on the Red-Souris Issue. . . . . . . . . . . 92Weather Modification Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Oral History of Darrell Mach

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Statement of Donation


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v

Editorial Convention

A note on editorial conventions. In the text of theseinterviews, information in parentheses, ( ), is actually on thetape. Information in brackets, [ ], has been added to the tapeeither by the editor to clarify meaning or at the request of theinterviewee in order to correct, enlarge, or clarify theinterview as it was originally spoken. Words havesometimes been struck out by editor or interviewee in orderto clarify meaning or eliminate repetition. In the case ofstrikeouts, that material has been printed at 50% density toaid in reading the interviews but assuring that the struckoutmaterial is readable.

The transcriber and editor also have removed someextraneous words such as false starts and repetitions withoutindicating their removal. The meaning of the interview hasnot been changed by this editing.

While we attempt to conform to most standardacademic rules of usage (see The Chicago Manual ofStyle), we do not conform to those standards in thisinterview for individual’s titles which then would only becapitalized in the text when they are specifically used as atitle connected to a name, e.g., “Secretary of the InteriorGale Norton” as opposed to “Gale Norton, the secretary ofthe interior;” or “Commissioner John Keys” as opposed to“the commissioner, who was John Keys at the time.” Theconvention in the Federal government is to capitalize titlesalways. Likewise formal titles of acts and offices arecapitalized but abbreviated usages are not, e.g., Division ofPlanning as opposed to “planning;” the Reclamation ProjectsAuthorization and Adjustment Act of 1992, as opposed to“the 1992 act.”

The convention with acronyms is that if they arepronounced as a word then they are treated as if they are aword. If they are spelled out by the speaker then they have ahyphen between each letter. An example is the Agency for


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International Development’s acronym: said as a word, itappears as AID but spelled out it appears as A-I-D; anotherexample is the acronym for State Historic PreservationOfficer: SHPO when said as a word, but S-H-P-O whenspelled out.


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Introduction

In 1988, Reclamation began to create a historyprogram. While headquartered in Denver, the historyprogram was developed as a bureau-wide program.

One component of Reclamation's history program isits oral history activity. The primary objectives ofReclamation's oral history activities are: preservation ofhistorical data not normally available through Reclamationrecords (supplementing already available data on the wholerange of Reclamation's history); making the preserved dataavailable to researchers inside and outside Reclamation.

Questions, comments, and suggestions may beaddressed to:

Andrew H. GahanHistorian

Environmental Compliance Division (84-53000)Policy and AdministrationBureau of ReclamationP. O. Box 25007Denver, Colorado 80225-0007

FAX: (720) 544-0639

For additional information about Reclamation’shistory program see:

www.usbr.gov/history


http://www.usbr.gov/history

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1

Oral History InterviewsDarrell Mach

Storey: This is Brit Allan Storey, senior historian of theBureau of Reclamation, interviewing DarrellMach of the Bureau of Reclamation, in theBureau's Washington, D.C., offices in the MainInterior Building, at about one o'clock in theafternoon, on October 6, 1993. This is tape one. [Three-minute gap in tape.]

Early Life

Mach: . . . harvest fields. The country I grew up in waswheat country, and a neighbor that knew mewanted to know if I would drive truck for him inthe wheat harvest, and so I did that for about amonth, and then started looking for a job more inmy field of engineering, and had got someinformation from my, at that time, girlfriend,[who] became my wife–but she was working forGeological Survey in Denver, Colorado, at theFederal Center. And in corresponding with her,she indicated that she had seen a vacancy noticefor the Bureau of Reclamation who were hiringgraduate engineers in what they called anEngineering Rotation Training Program. So shesent me one, and on the basis of that I applied tothe Bureau of Reclamation for a job. And beingin Denver and where she was at made it kind ofconvenient from that standpoint. So that wasbasically how I went to work for the Bureau ofReclamation.

Storey: Well, I hate to say this, but my tape recorder wasnot functioning! (laughter) Could you go through


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your early life in Oklahoma again for me please? I'm sorry.

Mach: Yeah, okay. I'll start over again. Got to get mythoughts back to where I was at. (Storey: Yeah.) I was born and raised in Oklahoma, grew up on afarm there in the state. We were living in thewest central part of Oklahoma in what'sconsidered to be the Wheat Belt in the state. Went to school at a little two-room schoolhousethrough grade school. In fact, by the time I wasgoing to school, it was down to one room. Therewas only enough students to fill one room–hadeight grades all in the same room, one teacher. Went to high school at a small country highschool. It was sitting out on the corner of asection of land. There was no town involvedwith it although there was a post office aboutthree-quarters of a mile away. And to give anindication of the size of the high school, the yearI graduated there were fifty-four students in thewhole high school, that's grades nine throughtwelve, and my class was a class of thirteenstudents, seven boys and six girls. That kind ofgives you an idea what the size of the schoolwas. (Storey: Uh-huh.) Again, upon graduatingfrom high school I entered the University ofOklahoma in civil engineering and enrolled thereand started to college at the University ofOklahoma. Graduated from the university fiveyears later as a civil engineer.

Does that cover the part you were missing?

Storey: Yeah. And then you were drafted?


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Local Draft Board

Mach: Yeah, as I indicated, the county I grew up in wassmall enough that the local Selective ServiceBoard, or draft board as everybody called them,knew most of the boys that were in the county thatwere eligible for draft and those of us that weregoing to college. As long as we stayed incollege and were pursuing a full-time collegedegree, they didn't bother us as far as beingdrafted was concerned. So I remained classed as1A all during college, but I never did have to askfor a deferment because they never bothered me. But literally, the day after I graduated, I receiveda letter in the mail indicating that I was to reportfor an induction physical for the Army.

So about a week after I graduated I was inOklahoma City being examined as a draftinductee. In my case, I wound up beingclassified as 4F because of my eyesight–I'mtotally blind in one eye and didn't meet the sightstandards that the Army had set at that particulartime. So I wound up not having to go into themilitary. But also in the process, because I hadgotten my induction notice right after graduatingand knew this was going to happen, I didn't havea job upon graduating. So when I found out that Iwas classified 4F and wouldn't have to go intothe Army, I started looking for something to do. We lived in wheat country and our neighborknew I was there, so he asked me if I woulddrive truck for him that summer during wheatharvest. So I spent about a month driving thewheat truck. I was probably the best-educatedtruck driver they had around there at that


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particular time. But it worked out alright.

Getting into Reclamation

In the meantime, my girlfriend at that time,who later became my wife, had taken a job withthe Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado, atthe Federal Center. And in corresponding, shehad indicated that she had seen a vacancy noticeor announcement that the Bureau of Reclamationwas hiring civil engineers as rotation engineeringtrainees. So she sent me a copy of the notice, andI applied to the Bureau of Reclamation and theyhired me. So that's how I came to work for theBureau of Reclamation. It was convenient frommy standpoint because that's where my girlfriendwas at and we had intended getting married. Soit made it nice that she was there and we bothwere in essence working in the same place.

Storey: Did your family farm have anything to do with aReclamation project, by chance?

Mach: No. The area that we lived in was all dry-landwheat. The average rainfall is about thirty tothirty-five inches, so it was good wheat countryand there was no irrigation going on in the area. I had never heard of the Bureau of Reclamationprior to applying for the position. My wife wasprobably ninety percent of the reason forapplying to the Bureau because she was inDenver and the Bureau was also in Denver.

Storey: What was the name of your high school?

Mach: The high school was named Omega and that was


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the post office also. I mentioned it, it was aboutthree-quarters of a mile away. We alwayslaughed about it because it was, again, a two-room schoolhouse about five miles away, whosename was Alpha. So we always figured we hadthe beginning and the end. You started at Alphaand ended up at Omega and that was thecompletion of your high school education. (laughter)

Storey: Well how did you get interested in civilengineering as a profession?

Small Country School

Mach: Well, that's kind of (chuckles) sometimes astrange story, I guess, as much as anything. Again, going to a very small high school, theeducational opportunity was limited. We onlyhad a fixed number of teachers and you took thesubjects that they could teach. At that particulartime our superintendent was a business majorand so we took bookkeeping. I even took typingand shorthand. I graduated from high school andmy intent, Brit, in high school was probably towind up as maybe an accountant, a C-P-A orsomething like that dealing with business,because that was the orientation of the school.

The last year of my high school, when I wasin the twelfth grade, the state of Oklahoma madea decision that it needed to do something to aidthese small country high schools that they hadscattered throughout the state, that most of thekids graduating from these high schools weresimply not going any further, as far as their


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education, because of a lack of counseling, a lackof opportunity, limited education and everything. So they sent a team to all of these high schools totest all of the senior students that year. Theytested the manual dexterity and it was a type oftest, part of it was the California Mental MaturityTest, I think is what they called it. It wassupposed to measure your I-Q, but they also runus through a series of tests that was supposed togive an indication of what you were suited to do,what your mental attitude and your manualdexterity and everything said you ought to pursue. Again, we had thirteen of us in high school therein the senior class that year.

Interest in Engineering

This is the part that I'm really kind ofembarrassed about. When I was in grade schoolI skipped a grade simply because they neededsomething to keep me busy, school was very easyfor me. And in these tests that I took I scored inthe top five percent in the state of Oklahoma. Sothe counseling that they gave me was that I shouldpursue some scientific field. They weresuggesting engineering, law, or something likethat, and that this was my aptitude. Also at thesame time–it was kind of several things comingtogether at the same time–my parents took theLife magazine as a subscription and I read anarticle on the civil engineers graduating fromGeorgia Tech, and they indicated that graduateengineers were being offered $500 a month. Tome that sounded like a fortune. We werebasically sharecroppers and had very littlemoney, so $500 a month sounded like great. So I


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decided on that basis that civil engineering wasmy field, that that's where I was going to go. Soit was fairly late in my high school time that Idecided to do an engineering career. I knewnothing about it. I didn't know what a civilengineer did, other than what I'd read in thisarticle in Life magazine.

It became a real burden in the end, becausewhen I got into college at that time if you were aresident of the state you did not have to take anentrance exam. You automatically were admittedinto the state colleges, and the University ofOklahoma, of course, was a state college. Sothey allowed me to enter, but when I got intocollege or got there, they did make us takebasically an entrance exam, although it wasn'tused to decide whether or not you could beenrolled in the school. It was to look at whatyour deficiencies might be and what you neededto take to strengthen your deficiencies. In mycase, because of the orientation of our teachers inhigh school, they discovered that I had very littlemathematics, had no geometry, no physics, andnone of what are generally considered to be thescience subjects, general science or anything likethat. I had bookkeeping, shorthand and typingand some History and English, but none of theseother subjects that I needed very badly to evenbegin to start my engineering school.

The other aspect of it was that I was fortunatein one sense, but also unfortunate in anothersense, to have the Chairman of the School ofCivil Engineering as my advisor. When he sawthese test results and what I needed to do to get a


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degree in civil engineering, he decided that I hadto get to work. So my first year in college wasreally a series of subjects to make up for what Ididn't take in high school. I took plane geometry,solid geometry, trigonometry, basic mathematicsand then evolving to college algebra and all ofthose subjects, just to get myself up to a pointwhere I could begin to really start on what theyconsidered to be the normal civil engineeringcurriculum. The other aspect of having him as anadvisor, his basic philosophy was that no self-respecting engineering student should take lessthan twenty-one credit hours a semester. So Iwas kind of busy the first couple of years incollege.

The other aspect of it was because I hadskipped a grade [in grammar school], and[because of] my birth date, in college I wassixteen years old when I entered into college andobviously was not the kind of a person who wasgoing to sit down and argue with the Chairman ofthe School of Civil Engineering about what Ishould or should not do. So I was a very meeklamb being led to the slaughter my first couple ofyears of college and was able to continue thework and begin to enjoy it. It opened up somedoors that I didn't know were there. The librarywe had at the high school I was in was basicallyfiction-type books–but I had literally read everybook in the high school library. But [I began] todiscover things like mathematics and theneventually working into calculus and physics andchemistry that I didn't know existed, and foundthat I was beginning to enjoy it. So the further Iwent into school, the more I enjoyed it and the


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more I realized I'd made a good choice. But thefirst couple of years it was just blind luck that Iwent the way I went.

Storey: Do you mind my asking when this was?

Mach: I graduated from high school in 1953 and enteredschool that fall, I entered college the fall of 1953and graduated in 1958.

Storey: Was this chairman influential in developing yourcareer, other than just being a counselor?

College Counselor

Mach: He was very encouraging as far as supportingcivil engineering as a field, realizing andunderstanding a little bit of my background. AndI was not unique, in the sense that a lot of thestudents were farm boys like myself, never beenin a big city, literally. So he was veryencouraging and very supportive in that sense. And talked about the kind of things thatengineering could do and the challenges thatwere there. And of course he was very sold oncivil engineering, obviously, and obviouslysupported that type of a thing as well.

So, yes, I think he was encouraging andsupportive in that sense and not just assigning meto certain subjects and certain classes that I hadto take. He took the time to talk about it, and infact, before I graduated I actually worked as astudent assistant to him in teaching somesurveying classes in my last two years of college. I think I was classified as a student assistant to


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get some money to be able to stay in college, andI actually worked for him. The one surveyingclass that I worked with him, he taught one hourof lecture and then I took them out for two hoursto the field and did the field exercises with them. So I came to like him quite well and enjoyed myassociation with him.

Storey: What was his name?

Mach: Keely was his name. K-E-E-L-Y, I believe itwas. He was probably about sixty at that time soI'm sure now, that by this time, he's probably longgone. He retired, probably about ten years after Ileft school he retired from the university. I reallylost track of him. His first name was Jack, JackKeely.

Storey: Jack Keely. Did you ever think about going backto the farm or anything like that?

Mach: Well, I have to admit that, you know, when inhigh school farming was probably my realinterest in the sense of if someone would'veasked me what I would like to be at that time,while I was in high school, I would have said afarmer. The problem was that even at that timeit was necessary to get some kind of aid andassistance from your parents to be able to getstarted in farming. To start with nothing wasvery difficult, and of course my parents beingsharecroppers we really had nothing there either. So there was no hope of really being able to gointo farming as a whole-time occupation and tobe able to even get started. I mean the cost ofmachinery, the land, and all the other things that


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go along with it, it was prohibitive then as it isnow. So I did think about it, but only to theextent of understanding and realizing I wouldn'tbe able to do it.

Storey: So you went to Reclamation in Denver. (Mach:Uh-huh.) And did you go into the rotationprogram?

Engineering Rotation Training

Mach: Yes. I started out in the Engineering RotationTraining Program. I was supposed to be in theprogram for about twelve months. My permanentassignment that they gave me at the beginningwas to be in the Canals and Headworks Sectionof the Canals Branch of the Chief Engineer'sOffice. I spent three months in that assignment tobegin with, and then they had a rotation programset up to assign me to various different things todo. I then went into, the next three months was inEarth Dams Design. And then I went to theHydraulics Laboratory for three months, and thenthey sent me to Thermopolis, Wyoming, to workon Anchor Dam of the Owl Creek Project as aconstruction experience. That was for the1

1. Owl Creek Unit of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program isin Hot Springs County in north-central Wyoming. The unit comprisesa narrow valley extending about 30 miles westerly from the mouth ofOwl Creek and provides supplemental water to 12,740 acres ofirrigated land to stabilize the agricultural economy of the area. Principal features of the development include Anchor Dam andReservoir and pumping facilities to deliver water to the three distinctareas of the unit. For more information, see Wm. Joe Simonds, "TheOwl Creek Unit, Big Horn Basin Division, Pick-Sloan Missouri BasinProgram," Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 1999,

(continued...)


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summer. I went out around the end of June andcame back in October.

Storey: That would have been the summer of '59, wouldit?

Mach: That would have been the summer of '59. Andthen when I got back to Denver after that fieldassignment, then my last assignment was to be inthe Earth Laboratory working in there. I was inthere for about a month-and-a-half, maybe closeto two months.

Special Assignment in the Earth Laboratory

At that time one of our designers in EarthDams was a man by the name of Dr. Jack Hill. And he was doing some major kind of innovativeresearch work on what they called negative porepressures and its impact on embankments andstuff, and he wanted to do some laboratorytesting. I'm not really sure why, but I got to workwith Jack Hill on doing this. What we did wasto build what he called a one-dimensionalconsolidometer, and we encased it in a containerso that we could impose a vacuum on it. And bydoing that then we were able to measure thenegative pore pressures within the soil samplethat was in this one-dimensional consolidometer. And I worked on that for about two months. They kept me in the Earth Labs over the three-month term because they wanted me to finish thiswork that I was doing for Hill. It was very

1. (...continued)www.usbr.gov/history/projhist.html.


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enjoyable. I found it very interesting.

So anyway, after I finished this assignment, itwas a little over four months long, then Isupposedly went back to my permanentassignment. But as part of the training program,each time you completed an assignment you wereevaluated and you had an opportunity to evaluatethe assignment, both. And then at the completionof the total program, you had an opportunity todecide whether this was what you wanted to do,whatever it was you were assigned to. And sothey asked me if I wanted to go back to Canalsand Headworks. And really at that time I didn'thave a real clear idea of what I wanted to do, soI did go back to the Canals and HeadworksSection and went to work there as a, quote, "full-time design engineer." Of course, I had beenwith the Bureau almost eighteen months in thefield assignment and this long assignment in theEarth Lab, it took me about eighteen months toget off the training program. So I was still prettygreen yet, no doubt about that, but consideredmyself to be an engineer at that time.

Storey: And what projects were you working on? Doyou happen to remember?

Canals and Headworks Section

Mach: Yes, some of them. I worked on the intake towerfor the Whiskeytown Dam and Reservoir doingdesign work.2

2. Whiskeytown Dam and Reservoir are part of the Shasta-Trinity Division Unit of the Central Valley Project in northern

(continued...)


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Storey: California, I believe?

Mach: California, right, on the Trinity [River] and upperSacramento [River] area. I worked on doingrehabilitation of a project in, I think it was theKlamath Project up in Oregon. I'm not real sure3

now. I'd have to do some real digging to go backinto it. (Storey: Uh-huh.) I worked on individualstructures on a variety of different projects,would work on just one structure within thewhole project, so I never really worked on atotal project at that particular point in time.

Let's see, I came back there in '59, so I guessI spent about five or six months in Canals andHeadworks as a designer. That was probablywhere I made the major shift in my career. Evenafter six months, I found myself doing the samething over again, and was getting very bored. Aninteresting aspect of this–I've told this story anumber of times, so I won't have any problemwith it getting told. But at that time we were allin Building 53, and we all sat at drafting tablesand we were in one wing of Building 53, and youcouldn't hardly see from one end of the wing tothe other end, it was that long. And everybody

2. (...continued)California. Whiskeytown Dam is on the Clear Creek drainage basinnorth of Redding, California. For more information, see Eric A.Stene, "Trinity Division, Central Valley Project," Denver: Bureau ofReclamation History Program, 1996,www.usbr.gov/history/projhist.html. 3. One of Reclamation's oldest projects, the Klamath Projectsprovides irrigation water to roughly 240,000 acres lands south centralOregon and north central California. For more information, see EricA. Stene, "Klamath Project," Denver: Bureau of Reclamation HistoryProgram, 1994, www.usbr.gov/history/projhist.html.


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was lined up one right behind the other,everybody sitting at drafting tables, no partitions,no nothing. It was open space in the absolute.

Need for a Change

But sitting one row in front of me and to myleft was a man that was, I would guess, lateforties and early fifties, somewhere around thatage. This person, I used to watch him withfascination. He would–oh, the other aspect youneed to understand was at that time, the ChiefEngineer's Office, they rang a bell at seven-thirtyin the morning, that was when you were to go towork, and you worked until four o'clock in theafternoon. They rang a bell when you were toquit. So it was like a factory, an assembly line. A bell rang, you went to work, a bell rang andyou quit. Interesting attitude toward personneland human resources and human relationship.

But anyway, this man would come to work,and I'll characterize him in the wintertimebecause that was always the most interesting timeof the year for me to watch him. He would cometo work dressed very formally. He had a feltdress hat on, he had a dress topcoat on, he worea full suit and tie. He would come into the officeat; I don't know the exact time but I'm going tosay seven-fifteen. He would walk up to his desk,his drafting table. He would take his hat off, hehad a place to put his hat; he would take histopcoat off, he had a hanger in his drawer andhe'd take it out and put the topcoat on and hang iton the coat rack. He would take his suit coat offand take a hanger out of the drawer and hang it up


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next to his topcoat. He'd take his tie off–anddrafting tables have one long flat drawer and onenarrow drawer that you put your pencils in–andin this pencils drawer he had a space there thathe would fold his tie up and lay his tie down inthat drawer. And also then all of our desks werecovered with an oilskin tablecloth type of acover so that if something happened the waterwouldn't get on the drawings and stuff that youhad on your desk. And he would start rolling uphis top and he had this down to such a sciencethat when he had it all the way rolled up and putin the hanger at the top of the desk the bell wouldring. And he had this timed out perfect.

In the afternoon, it was the exact opposite ofthat, except he started at about three forty-five. And he would take his tie out of his drawer andput his tie on, he would tie it up and everythingand put it on; take his coat off of the coat rackand put his coat on and put the hanger away; takehis topcoat off, put it on, put the hanger away; puthis hat on. He would reach for the cover and itwas like the bell was attached to his hand, whenhe touched the cover the bell would ring and hecovered up his desk and he left. I mean, this manwas a robot. He had this timed perfect. Everyday I'd sit there and watch him fascinated. Nevercame a minute early and never left a minute late.

And of course, you know, there was severallayers of supervision at that particular point intime. We were in a subsection so we had aSubsection Chief, and then there was a SectionChief and then there was the Branch Chief. Andthe Branch Chief was–I don't even know where


17

his office was, it was somewhere else in thebuilding. You never talked to the Branch Chief,he was too high up the ladder. But theSubsection Chief and the Section Chief, therewere times when they would come back and lookat what this person was working on and discusswhat, you know, what was good or bad or whatthey wanted to change or whatever it was. During that process this man would simply pushhimself back away, completely away from hisdesk and not participate in the discussion. He'dsimply sit there and look out the window and hisimmediate supervisor and his supervisor'ssupervisor would sit there and talk away andthey'd finally come to an agreement. The topsupervisor would leave, the immediatesupervisor would turn to him and tell him whatthey want done and he'd leave, and the guy wouldpull up to his desk and go back to work again.

And I'm sitting there looking at this, youknow, and saying, "Is this what I'm going to bedoing in twenty years from now?" (chuckles) Imean, it was very discouraging. It was like arobot, like a machine, and like he had no interestin what he was doing. I mean there was nocommitment to what he was doing. And Idecided I had to get out of there. I just couldn'twatch that day-after-day. I was doing the samething I'd done, you know, a month before. Lostthe challenge. And I had an immediatesupervisor that I really appreciate because theman had enough sense to understand where I wascoming from: a young engineer, I was lookingaround.


18

At that time, when you went to work for theBureau, you came in as a GS-5 and if you didn'tdo anything too bad, six months later they'dpromote you to a GS-7. And again, if you didn'tdo anything too bad, a year later they'd promoteyou to a GS-9. So in eighteen months you'd gofive, seven, nine. But that's where the funstopped. And I could look around at thesemen–there were no women at that time–I couldlook around at these men and these men were intheir fifties, mid-to-late fifties, some older, someyounger, and they were GS-11s and GS-12s andI'm already a GS-9 and I'm barely in my twentiesand I'm saying, you know, "What is my futurehere?" There were just a lot of things about theChief Engineer's Office that were bad.

END SIDE 1, TAPE 1. OCTOBER 6, 1993.BEGIN SIDE 2, TAPE 1. OCTOBER 6, 1993.

Storey: . . . have some sort of excuse to do that.

Decided to Leave the Chief Engineer's Office

Mach: Yeah, you had to have some reason to bewandering around in the hallways. Otherwiseyou were at your desk, I mean that was it. Youworked or you didn't work. And they had whatthey called "Mahogany Row." This is where theChief Engineer and the Assistant Chief Engineer,those kinds of people had their offices and youdidn't go up there unless you were invited. Imean, you didn't even walk down the hallway. Itwas like it was forbidden, I mean that's the onlyway you could describe it.


19

Anyway, I decided I had to get out of thereand my immediate supervisor suggested that I tryan assignment in the field office. He said thatthings wouldn't be quite the same in the field as itwas there in the Chief Engineer's Office. And heknew where the Bureau kept vacancy notices atthe time, and so he brought me this vacancynotice for a job in a place called Grand Island,Nebraska. And it was to be part of what theycalled an Engineering Analysis Section and itwas a GS-9, the same grade I was, and hesuggested I might give some thought aboutapplying for it.

Well I did, I did apply for it and wasselected for the job. And when I got to GrandIsland I found out that engineering analysis wasreally planning. So I had made a major shift inmy career from what I had thought I was going tobe, i.e., a designer, to getting into the planningfield. And I actually remained in planning forabout the next twenty-some years after that. Sothat was a major shift in my career with theBureau of Reclamation. And it was out ofdesperation rather than a wise, learned decision.

Storey: When was that that you went to Grand Island?

Transferred to Grand Island

Mach: I went to Grand Island in 1960, and was there forfive years and, like I say, I discovered the worldof planning and found out that I really liked it. Itwas enjoyable, it was something that Iconsidered more challenging, and it wassomething that I enjoy to do.


20

The other thing that happened in GrandIsland, it was a small office at the time I wentthere. It was considered to be an area office. While I was there it was upgraded to a projectsoffice. We had two major construction projectsunderway and it became a projects office. And Iworked in Engineering Analysis for three yearsand when we upgraded the office to a projectsoffice, in essence everybody was lifted onegrade. So myself and a man by the name ofWilliam C. Klostermeyer were engineering4

analysis, the two of us were the planning group atthat time. And our boss, who's long sinceretired, was promoted to a Branch Chief, so thenthey had to have a Section Chief. Well, sinceBill Klostermeyer and I were the only two in thesection, obviously we both applied for it and Billgot selected and I didn't. And that didn't sit realwell with me because I considered myself to beas good as Bill, and not detracting from Bill, heand I have been friends ever since then, when wemet in Grand Island.

But because of that I started looking aroundand thinking, "You know, I would like to bepromoted also." I was still a GS-9. And sothere was a position came open as head of what

4. William C. Klostermeyer served as Assistant CommissionerAdministration and Liaison from 1988 to 1989. Mr. Klostermeyeralso participated in Reclamation's oral history program. See WilliamC. Klostermeyer, Oral History Interview, Transcript of tape-recordedBureau of Reclamation Oral History Interviews conducted by BritAllan Storey, senior historian, Bureau of Reclamation, and Donald B.Seney, California State University-Sacramento, from 1995 to 1996, inWashington, D.C., edited by Brit Allan Storey and Donald B. Seney,2006, www.usbr.gov/history.oralhist.html.


21

they called the Design Data Section. They werecollecting design data for the Chief Engineer'sOffice for these two construction projects that wehad underway. So I applied and was selected forthat job and for the first time became asupervisor. I was Chief of the Design DataBranch, a GS-11, and I supervised about twelveor thirteen basically technicians. I think therewas one engineer in the group; the rest were allcivil engineering technicians. So I wasintroduced to the world of supervision and beinga supervisor. [I] discovered it was a lot morefun to be a supervisor than it was to be a worker,and stayed in management ever since then, andhave always held a management or supervisoryposition ever since then. And that was about in1963.

Storey: If we could go back to your time at the DenverOffice, or then I guess it was known as the E&RCenter.

Working in the Chief Engineer's Office

Mach: No, it was called the Chief Engineer's Officethen.

Storey: Okay. Good.

Mach: It was not the E&R Center.

Storey: Did you know the Chief of Engineers?

Mach: I knew who he was. I never met him and, youknow, obviously I saw him. Grant Bloodgood


22

was the Chief Engineer at that time. And I think5

not too long after I went to work, I think thatactually became Assistant Commissioner andChief Engineer. (Storey: Uh-huh.) Had a dualtitle back then.

Storey: Yeah, I think that may have happened in '63, butI'm not sure.

Mach: I'm not sure either.

Storey: It may have happened earlier. Did you ever seeMahogany Row?

Mach: I saw it once, as much by accident as anything. When I was working in the HydraulicsLaboratory on the training program, any time wehad to get drawings or reproductions done, it hadto be done in Building 53, and the lab was inBuilding 56. And I think they still do, but at thattime they had bicycles in Building 56 and you'djump on the bicycle and literally ride down thehallway, across the street into Building 53, downthe hallway to where the reproduction was andpick up the drawings that had been printed. So Idid get sent over to pick up some drawings and Iwent down what was called Mahogany Row onmy bicycle at that particular time, one time. That's the only time I ever was in that area.

Storey: What was it like? Was it actually paneledwood?

5. Grant Bloodgood was Assistant Commissioner and ChiefEngineer for the Bureau of Reclamation from 1958 to 1963.


23

Mach: No, not really. It was mostly like the rest of thebuilding although all their offices wereindividual. They had walls and doors and Iguess the thing that probably impressed me at thattime more than anything else, they had individualwindow air conditioners. Nobody else did. (Storey: Uh-huh.) The building wasn't air-conditioned at that time. But those few that wereon what everybody referred to as Mahogany Rowhad window air conditioning. Some of theoffices were paneled but I really didn't see theinsides of the offices.

Storey: Yeah. Was riding your bicycle through thereconsidered a mistake or anything?

Mach: Well, probably if I had done it on any kind ofregular basis they would have stopped me. Itwas a one-time occasion and so it was one ofthose things that nobody bothered me at thatparticular time.

Storey: Yeah. Okay. Go ahead with Grand Island then,if you would.

Major Projects in Grand Valley

Mach: Well, Grand Island was a small field office therein Nebraska. We had two major projects underconstruction: the Ainsworth Project up in the6

6. The Ainsworth Unit of the Pick-Sloan Missouri BasinProgram is located in North-central Nebraska. The storage facilitiesare on the Snake River approximately 14 miles upstream from itsconfluence with the Niobrara River, in Cherry County southwest ofValentine. The irrigable lands extend 22 miles from west to east and

(continued...)


24

northwestern part of the state and then theFarwell Project which was more in the central7

part of the state. Both irrigation projects. And Iwas doing design data originally on the FarwellProject, that's where I started. Eventually Ifinished up the design data on the AinsworthProject as both–the Farwell Project was aheadon the construction schedule, so we completedFarwell and then we did the design data andfinished it up on the Ainsworth Project. I wasthere five years. It was an excellent learningexperience and when I came into planning in thesense of dealing with laying out projects andputting them together, not doing specific detaildesign work. And it was my first experience inthat direction and, if you like, it was also my firstexperience in supervision and [I] decided that Iliked that even better than anything else.

Storey: What did you enjoy about supervision?

Enjoyed Supervising

6. (...continued)14 miles from north to south, beginning near Johnstown andcontinuing eastward to a point near Long Pine, all in Brown and RockCounties. For more information, see Wm. Joe Simonds, "TheAinsworth Unit, Sandhill Division, Pick-Sloan Missouri BasinProgram," Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 1999,www.usbr.gov/history/projhist.html. 7. The Farwell Unit lies between the North and Middle LoupRivers in central Nebraska and provides irrigation water to over52,000 acres, along with flood control, recreation, and fish andwildlife benefits. For mor information, see Wm. Joe Simonds, "TheFarwell Unit, Middle Loup Division, Pick-Sloan Missouri BasinProgram," Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 1996,www.usbr.gov/history/projhist.html.


25

Mach: Oh, I don't know. A couple of things, I guess. One, there was always something to deal with,different. I mean, you know, it was notrepetitious. And as I indicated, one of thereasons I left the Chief Engineer's Office wasbecause it was becoming repetitious. It was alsothe ability to make decisions. One of the thingsthat really, I guess, turned me off of design wasthat everything in design was documented. Youhad manual after manual after manual, bookcases,and there really wasn't anything to decide. Imean, everything was laid out. If you had a wall"X" number of inches thick, you put in this kindof reinforcing steel; if you had load of thisamount you did it this way. I mean there wasnothing left to chance. There was no new designwork being done. Most of the structures werestandardized and already . . . And you just laidout, you just went to a catalog and went, "Oh, thisone will fit," and put it in there. It was likeputting a jigsaw puzzle together, you just pickedout the pieces and put them in.

Whereas being a supervisor, you're alwaysfaced with making decisions. I also found thatI . . . I guess I wanted to start to say I didn't minddealing with people and people problems, but Ialso, to a certain extent, I guess I . . . enjoyed it toa certain extent, dealing with people, supervisingin that general sense of the word. So it wasdifferent, challenging, not repetitious or boring,interesting, and I liked the power. I've alwaysbeen very honest about that part, I like having aposition of authority. I enjoy my current positionbecause everybody likes me. (chuckles) I mean,not in the sense that they like me, but because I


26

write out the checks and I have a lot of influenceand power that is not necessarily written down inthe job description.

Storey: If I'd known this before, I would haveinterviewed you a long time ago. (laughter) No,more seriously, one of the things that I have foundis pretty universal among Reclamation'smanagers is their attitudes about what a managerneeds in terms of skills. Could you comment onwhat you think a manager in Reclamation shouldhave in terms of skills, for me?

Required Management Skills

Mach: Well, I certainly have reached a point where Idon't think that the education background,specifically, is that critical. In other words,when I came with the Bureau you had to be anengineer. There wasn't any other question aboutit. Economists were kind of second-classcitizens. And of course we never heard ofenvironmentalists, so that was not an issue at thattime. But it was almost if you weren't anengineer you didn't go anywhere. And I don'tthink my engineering education per se has helpedme that much from a manager's perspective. Ithink the ability to deal with people, the ability tolisten, the willingness to make decisions, to makea choice–I mean, you can't duck an issue. I meanyou've got to deal with it. And I don't mean it inthe sense of confrontation, but just you've got toface up to it and deal with it. You've got to bewilling to take some risk. There are times whenyou can't find the answers in a book or writtendown someplace, so you have to stick your neck


27

out a little bit. I think that . . . I'm not sure how todescribe it, but able to sense what is happeningoutside in the rest of the world and to be able tolive with the changes, not be stuck with one thingand refuse to listen to new ideas, new concepts,new directions, the kind of things we've talkedabout.

I think, you know, to me I've kind of comeback to if I ever were to criticize the Bureau,was that I think sometimes it did not selectmanagers that were willing to change. In somecases, some managers grew up with a certaintaste, a certain approach, and they wanted to staywith that approach. They didn't want to go tosomething new, something different. Theyweren't able to sense that society was evolvingand changing and modifying, and I think that'simportant. A good manager is able to keep upwith it–and not trendy things, but just how thetides are shifting and that type of thing. I'm notsure it makes sense, but that's kind of in roughterms.

Storey: That's basically what everybody has said to me. The same sorts of issues: you've got to be able tomanage people, you've got to be able to adapt tochange and things like that. Connected to that is avery interesting issue of technical expertise. Iwas talking to Frank Knell this morning aboutthis. How high up in the supervisorymanagement "scheme," if you wish, is technicalexpertise important?

Technical Expertise in Management


28

Mach: I guess my first reaction–and I'm kind of relatingto a field office, or regional office–let me put itthat way, not necessarily a field office but aregional level. I would say really only the firstlevel of supervision really requires any degree oftechnical skill, real skills. My first job as asupervisor, I went into it with a lot of uneasiness,because I was questioning my own ability tomake sound engineering judgements. And even atthat level, a GS-11, I found very quickly that Iwasn't making engineering decisions, I wasmaking people decisions. They weren't comingup and saying, you know, "Should this canal belocated here?" Or, "Should this bridge be tenfeet long or five feet long?" They were saying, "Ineed more help," or "Joe Blow is bothering mystaff and they're not getting their work donebecause he's bothering them. Would you takecare of that problem?" In other words, they werepeople problems, not technical issues.

So I'd say, at best, the first level ofsupervision is the highest you need to go with agreat deal of technical skill or with any degree oftechnical skill. Beyond that, I think the otheraspects, the people skills and those kinds ofthings, are so much more important, and those arethe kind of decisions you're making. And ifyou're using your staff properly, they're the onesthat are making the technical decisions. Theyshould be able to provide you with all thetechnical input you need. You just need to makethe people decisions and those kinds of issuesand not technical decisions. Again, I go back tomy first role as supervisor: that staff ofengineering technicians, they knew what they


29

were doing. I didn't have to tell them how to layout a canal or where to locate it or what kind ofcurves to put in or what drop structure to put in. They knew that. That was all taken care of, theyhad those skills.

Storey: One of the problems we face in the field ofhistory is getting people to look beyond theirtechnical expertise. (Mach: Uh-huh.) And I thinkthat's true also to a large extent among engineersand so on. They want to be engineers, but theywant the money that goes with being a supervisorand so on. How do you grow them (laughs) outof that, as it were?

Turning Engineers into Managers

Mach: I don't know. You know, I've looked at that, I'velooked at myself. I still say today, you know, thatI'm proud of being an engineer. Even after Ibecame a supervisor, Bill Klostermeyer and Itogether took a correspondence course and gotregistered as professional engineers in the stateof Nebraska. It took sixteen hours of examinationto do it. I transferred after that out to SouthernCalifornia and again went back and did somemore study and got a license in the state ofCalifornia, because I wanted to be known as anengineer.

I was proud of that designation. But by thesame token, I have admitted to myself in my lateryears that I don't really enjoy doing engineeringwork. To sit down and do a design is boring tome. I don't want to do that kind of detail. I thinkthat's how you've got to divide the groups. I think


30

that there are people who want to do the detail,who don't want to make the decisions. Andsomehow or another you've got to find those,because I don't think you can ever cure them ofthat direction. Now I appreciate, you know, thereward that goes along with management. I meanit is the place if you really want to get a reward,as far as grade and salary and everything else,obviously management is the way. There's got tobe some kind of a dual career ladder, I think,within the organization, because I don't think youcan take someone who really likes doing detailwork and make a good supervisor out of them. Inmost cases you don't do a good job. They don'tever become good supervisors or goodmanagers. I'd rather use the term "manager" than"supervisor." Beyond that, no, I don't have agood answer to the problem in the sense of howyou can get people to change.

Storey: That's very interesting. Most people have alsosaid they liked doing new things all the time.

Mach: Yeah, that's right.

Storey: I think that's interesting.

Mach: And there's a lot of technicians I've seen, youknow, that they come apart when you put them ina brand new area, and to me that's the fun part ofit.

Storey: Yeah, it is.

Mach: If I did it yesterday, I don't want to do it today.


31

Storey: You've already done that. (Mach: That's right.) Why do it again? (Mach: That's right.) Yeah, Iknow that feeling well.

Mach: You know, personal experience that really camehome to me was that, all my life I've wanted tobe a pilot and couldn't afford it. But in morerecent years I could, and my wife said shewanted to do it too. So she started taking flyinglessons and the agreement was when shesoloed–because she was a white-knuckle flierbefore taking flying lessons–so I agreed with herthat when she soloed, then I would start mylessons. And she did solo and I started mylessons and went all the way through the processand loved every minute of it. But you know,when I got my license and I could just go get inan airplane and take off and fly, flying wasn't thatmuch fun. It was the learning that was the fun;the getting up there with the instructor and doingsomething new and different and acquiring thatskill. And even now it's not that much fun just togo get in an airplane and fly from point "A" topoint "B." If I get into an airplane I'd like to dosomething while I'm doing it. It was the learningthat was fun, not the doing.

Storey: Going back to the supervisory/manager thingonce again. Did you seek formal training of anykind in terms of supervising and managing?

Management Training

Mach: Early in my career I didn't. To be honest aboutit, I didn't know any better. My concern early inmy career as a supervisor was my technical


32

ability, my engineering knowledge and skills. (Storey: Uh-huh.) And as I grew with experienceand time, I began to realize that I neededdifferent skills that I hadn't gotten at the school ofengineering. And so then I did start to try to seekthings, and in fact, the last fifteen years I thinkthat I've probably bent more training officers'ears about training in the Bureau of Reclamation,simply because I think the Bureau has alwaysdone a very lousy job of training managers. Ihave tried to take every course I could find thatdealt with interrelationship with people. I gotinto "I'm OK, You're OK" type of a thing, teambuilding, Johari Window exercises, and those8

kinds of things. You know, everything I couldfind. And I suggested several things that I thoughtthe Bureau ought to do, and was outright rejected.

To me, for people like in my position,Regional Directors, I'm going to say the S-E-S[Senior Executive Service] Corps, I think theBureau ought to have psychologists on board, orpsychiatrists, that would, like for example,shadow me for a week or two weeks and then sitdown with me and say, "Look here's what you'redoing right and here's what you're doing wrong." To help me, because I don't know, and nobody istelling me. One of the things that I've found in mycareer as a manager is the higher up you get theless evaluations you get. I got good evaluationswhen I was a GS-9. The supervisor would sitdown and say, "Yeah, here's what you're doingright and here's what you're doing wrong and you

8. The Johari Window is a technique to help people understandtheir relationship with themselves and others.


33

can do this to improve and I think you ought tolook at this and think about that." But as an S-E-Ser, I have not had a supervisor, which isgenerally either an Assistant Commissioner or aCommissioner, sit down with me and say, youknow, "Here's what you ought to do to improveand here's what you're doing well." Generallywhat you get is, "Well, you know, you dida"–now we've got level one through five–"Well,you know, I think this year you had a level fourperformance and I'm going to recommend that. And, you know, you did a good job." And that'sabout the extent of what you get. I mean, youdon't get any good feedback. And I think that'sreally a lack in the Bureau of Reclamation. Ithink that the higher you get the less feedback youget as far as what you're doing right and wrong.

Storey: Were there any other categories of training thatyou sought out besides interpersonal relations?

Training Beyond Interpersonal Relations

Mach: Well, I've gotten some technical training. Forexample here, when I came into this job, I lookedat, you know, budgeting process and I took acourse on how Congress goes through it'sprocess, where we actually went over and satdown and saw a committee function. And thenwe functioned ourselves as a committee, how tobe a witness at a committee hearing and somethings like that that I would consider to be a littlemore technical. But not a lot of it. It's been, youknow, job-related, but still not that much.

I think the other field that I've probably


34

pursued is things like the Federal ExecutiveInstitutes where they talk about environmentalpolicy and where the world is going from anenvironmental standpoint. In other words, broadissues that I think someone in my position or atthis level ought to be aware of. You need to belooking at a bigger horizon than just the smalllittle world that's within these four walls. (Storey: Uh-huh.) So I've pursued some of thosethings with that level of training.

Storey: Well, I'm afraid our time's about up for today. Iappreciate you taking time. I'd like to ask younow if you are willing to let Reclamationresearchers and outside researchers use the tapesand the transcripts from this interview?

Mach: Yeah. As far as I'm concerned I would bewilling to let somebody else use the tapes. Idon't think I've crucified anybody too badly.

Storey: Okay. Thank you very much.

Mach: Okay.

END SIDE 2, TAPE 1. OCTOBER 6, 1993.BEGIN SIDE 1, TAPE 1. OCTOBER 25, 1993.

Storey: This is tape one of an interview by Brit AllanStorey, senior historian of the Bureau ofReclamation, with Darrell Mach, in the offices ofthe Bureau of Reclamation, in the Main InteriorBuilding in Washington, D.C., on October 25,1993, at about three o'clock in the afternoon.

Grand Island Projects Office


35

Storey: I believe we had gotten to Grand Island in 1960,and you had begun supervisory and managertraining there, while you were there. If we couldpick up there and move on, I'd appreciate it.

Mach: Okay. I got to get back in the swing of thingshere (laughs) and try and remember. Well, myfirst supervisory job was there. I went out toGrand Island, I was basically a person in thePlanning Section that they had at that time. Andthen later was promoted to head up Design Dataon Farwell Project, and eventually also then onthe so-called Ainsworth Project up in northernNebraska. [I] supervised, I think it was aboutfifteen technicians doing design data collectionfor those two projects that were underconstruction at the time. And that was prettywell where we ended up.

I spent five years in Grand Island, and thefinal job I had there was to–we had completedboth of those projects, as far as construction isconcerned. So naturally we had to surplus allthese design data people and move them out, andgot them all taken care of, and then it was my turnto go. So I had to make a choice as to where Iwould transfer to. [I] got offered a job inAmarillo, Texas, on the Canadian River Project,9

and also a job in Southern California in San

9. The Canadian River Project is in the Texas panhandle,providing municipal and industrial water for 11 cities and townsthroughout the High Plains area. Principal storage structure is SanfordDam on the Canadian River about 37 miles northeast of Amarillo. Formore information, see Eric A. Stene, "Canadian River Project,"Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 1995,www.usbr.gov/history/projhist.html.


36

Bernardino, in what was then called the SouthernCalifornia Area Development Office. And forwhatever reason–and right now I can't evenremember why I really did it–I chose to go toSouthern California, rather than out to Texas. And so I transferred out to the so-called SouthernCalifornia Development Office. [I] spent fiveyears there in various roles. [I] went out there in1965 and left in early 1971.

Southern California Development Office

[I] went out as part of what was called OfficeEngineering, became Head of OfficeEngineering. And through reorganization anddownsizing of the office, [I] wound up beingclassified as office engineer and field engineeralso, with field engineering being strictlyimplementation of the Small Project ReclamationAct Loan Program. Those were interesting10

years; worked on some unusual projects. I wasrecently relating some history to some of my staffin talking about while I was there I worked on aprogram called Operation Plowshare. It was aneffort by the federal government in general tofind so-called peaceful uses for atomicexplosions. And the idea was, how you wouldapply it.

So we actually set down and developed a

10. Mr. Mach is referring to the Small Reclamation Projects Actof 1956, 70 Stat. 1044, which was to "encourage State and localparticipation in the development of projects under Federal reclamationlaws and to provide for Federal assistance in the development ofsimilar projects in the seventeen western reclamation States by non-federal organizations."


37

project, a concept, and tried to rough-out somecost estimates of digging a ship channel from theGulf of California in Mexico, all the way up toYuma, Arizona. The idea was, we would digthis channel by planting small nuclear–or at thattime, it was atomic–explosions at the rightintervals, and setting them off, and this wouldcreate a natural ship channel, and we wouldmake Yuma, Arizona, a seaport. Had a couple ofpossibilities.

At that time also, everybody was waiting onthat one major breakthrough in desaltingtechnology that would bring the price of desaltingdown to a reasonable level. And so the ideawas, we dig this ship channel up to Yuma,Arizona, make it a seaport. This would providethe opportunity to ship a lot of products that werebeing produced down in that part of the country. The Imperial Irrigation District, CoachellaIrrigation District–serve a lot of fresh fruit andvegetables coming out of there–cotton, otherproducts like that, ship them out to foreignmarkets. But also at the same time, we couldthen, since this would be a direct connection tothe Pacific Ocean, we could desalt this water andship it over to Southern California in the SanDiego area and take them off the San DiegoAqueduct.

So it would obviously offer an economicboon to the Yuma area, making it a majorseaport, and provide fresh water to San Diegoand other parts of Southern California. So wehad some grandiose ideas of what we could do atthat particular time. Today, obviously, the


38

concept of using atomic blasts to actually dig achannel just seems so ridiculous I don't knowwhy we even dealt with it. But we did, anyway.

Importing Water to the Colorado River Basin

Also at that time–and this was in the earlyhistory of the Columbia [River] basin versus theColorado [River] basin–did some work onlooking at the possibility of importing water fromthe Columbia Basin. Two major concepts: one[was] to pick the water up at a higher level andbring it down into the Colorado basin, and thendistribute it on to other areas within the basin. The second concept was to take it at the mouth ofthe Columbia, and in a pipeline that would floatin the ocean, the difference in density betweenfresh water and salt water would allow this pipeto simple float. You wouldn't have to have a realgood support, you could just kind of anchor itdown so it wouldn't move around too much, but itwould float, essentially carry it's own weight.

At that time, also, of course, there was aconsulting firm [that] came out with a schemecalled the North American Water and PowerAlliance, I believe it was–NAWPA I think wasthe acronym they used for it. This concept was togo all the way up into Alaska, down throughCanada, and basically throughout the westernhalf or western two-thirds of the United Statesand distribute the water. There was, I can'tremember now, but something like 2,000-3,000feet of head that you could develop forhydroelectric production. Of course you'retalking about bringing millions of acre feet of


39

water down from Alaska, which has plenty ofwater, and providing some economicdevelopment in Canada as well as the northernand western United States. So we worked onsome fairly grandiose schemes. For a smalloffice, we were thinking big at the time.

Commissioner's Office Planning Division

While I was there, that was the first time thatanybody'd expressed an interest in mycapabilities. We had a visit by a man by thename of James O'Brien, who at that time was theAssistant Chief of the Planning Division here inthe Commissioner's Office. Of course the11

Commissioner's Office then was over a hundredpeople strong–it was a fairly large office, hadmajor divisions. [I] met Jim O'Brien, he cameout on a fact-finding tour, and just before he left,he indicated that he was going to send me avacancy notice and suggested that I apply for it. And he did so. He sent me a vacancy notice assoon as he got back and it was for a job here inthe Commissioner's Office in the PlanningDivision. So I did apply for it, and they broughtme back for a week to see what the country waslike. I'd never been east of the Mississippi priorto that, so it was an interesting aspect. [I] did getselected, and became part of the so-calledPlanning Division here in the Commissioner'sOffice. That was in the spring of 1971. So weworked in there.

11. James J. O'Brien was Assistant Commissioner ResourcePlanning for the Bureau of Reclamation from 1974 to 1977.


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At that particular time, geothermal was a realhot issue; pardon the pun a little bit. Reclamation was trying to get actively involvedin geothermal energy. The group that I was withthere in the Planning Division, that was part ofour responsibility. And that lasted for about sixmonths. During that time that I was here, firstcame back, the Department of Interior decidedthat it wanted to establish an office on waterpolicy. And there was legislation introducedshortly after that in Congress that talked about"land use planning," and that kind of became thebuzz word at that particular time. And so theyestablished an Office of Land Use and WaterPlanning, is what they finally wound up labelingit.

Office of Land Use and Water Policy

And I'd been with Reclamation then about ayear and I was called into the Commissioner'sOffice and [he] indicated that this office in thedepartment needed someone to be their so-calledwater policy expert. And [he] wanted to know ifI had any strong objections to being transferred tothe Department of Interior to become the waterpolicy part of Land Use and Water Planning. Ofcourse the thing they dangled in front of me was,at that time I was a GS-13 and they dangled aGS-14 in front of me, and I decided that it wasworth the effort. So I only stayed with theBureau of Reclamation back here the first timefor one year. Then I was transferred to theSecretary's Office into this Office of Land Useand Water Planning, and had a staff of twopeople working under me: one was on detail


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from Reclamation and one was on detail fromU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

And part of our primary effort or work orresponsibility at that time was relationship at thedepartment level with the Water ResourcesCouncil, which was composed of representativesof all of the major departments within the federalgovernment that dealt with water in any way. Atthat time the Secretary of Interior was Chairmanof the Water Resources Council, and so we had afairly important role to play in that wholeoperation. I spent two years in the department,working with the Water Resources Council andother water policies for the department. Again,we were working strictly at the departmentlevel.12

We got to look at all the bureaus' budgetswithin Interior, to see that they were followingthe so-called department's policies on water andwater resource development. And so it was afun time, working with other departments anddeveloping overall strategies. During that period

12. In 1965 Congress passed the Water Resources Planning Act,creating the Water Resources Council made up the Secretary of theInterior, the Secretary of Agriculture. The Secretary of the Army, theSecretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Chairman of theFederal Power Commission. The Council's duties were to maintaincontinuing studies of the nation's water resources "to meet the waterrequirements in each water resource region in the United States," and"make recommendations to the President with respect to Federalpolicies." See, "Water Resources Planning Act," in US Department ofthe Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Federal Reclamation andRelated Laws Annotated, Volume III, Richard K. Pelz, editor(Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1972),1823-1839.


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of time, of course, we had one meeting of theCouncil of Members–that was the only time thatgroup had ever met–and the Council of Memberswas composed of the secretaries of all of thedepartments that were on the Water ResourceCouncil. And this is the one level that theSecretary of Interior chaired. I bring this up,because at the time I was literally fresh off thefarm. I'd been at most an office engineer in afield office stuck several hundred miles awayfrom the Regional Office, so even a RegionalDirector was an important person. And I foundmyself getting ready to brief the Secretary ofInterior as to what he should do and say asChairman of the Council of Members, andactually attended the meeting.

Heady Stuff

So it was pretty heady stuff for a youngengineer–I was in my early thirties, and kind of"feeling my oats," I guess is the best way to putit, to be associating with all of these people. Inever really thought in my initial start of a careerwith Reclamation that I would ever be dealing[with] anything at that level. That was wellbeyond any goals or dreams that I'd set up. So ithad a couple of major impacts on me. One, itobviously caused me to rethink all of my goalsand where I wanted to go with my career,because I had already surpassed what I hadoriginally laid out as my final objective. I had,when I went to work for Reclamation, reallyhoped to head up a small field office some dayand be able to retire out of that kind of a job. And I'd already surpassed or gone beyond that,


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and I was only in my thirties, so I had a longways to go. So I took some deep thinking tofigure out what I was going to do after that. Theother thing, of course, obviously, is that it openeda whole world that I'd never seen before at thatlevel.

I was able to go over to Congress and attendhearings and work on testimony, deal withassistant secretaries other than the one I workedfor, and dealt quite often with what at that timewas called the undersecretary. And this, ofcourse, was during the Nixon administration, and[I] sat in on a couple of meetings, briefings,where both Erlichman and Halderman werethere, and saw them literally sitting across thetable from me. Obviously, later, I may not havenecessarily bragged about that relationship(laughter) but at least at the time it was prettyheady things to be that close to what wasconsidered to be the White House.

I also was able to wangle a couple ofinvitations over to the White House for formalreceptions where visiting dignitaries werecoming in, and they wanted a nice crowd to bethere. So they would invite federal employeesover to attend these. So I was able to seePresident Nixon and his wife on a couple ofoccasions, met a couple of other dignitaries aspart of these receptions. So like I say, it waspretty heady stuff for a little country boy thatcame off of a farm in the wheat country ofOklahoma.

Planning Officer in Amarillo, Texas


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I was back here for three years–came in '71,and at the end of '73 got a call back from theCommissioner and [he] indicated that they had aPlanning Officer in Amarillo, Texas, who wasgetting ready to retire and wanted to know if Iwould like to go out there and replace him. Iwould go out to begin with as the AssistantRegional Planning Officer and get acquaintedwith the job and what was going on, and he wasgoing to be there about another six months to ayear, and I would replace him when he retired. So I decided that was a pretty good move. Theypromised to let me keep my GS-14, and so thatwas a profitable move, if nothing else, to movefrom this country out to Amarillo, Texas, at thesame grade. And they did. I left literally theweek before Christmas and arrived in Amarillo,Texas, on the first of January–went to work rightafter New Year's.

[I] stayed there for five years, and didbecome Regional Planning Officer. [I] had aclose working relationship with theCommissioner in those early years. One of thereasons they wanted me out there was that theregion had a study underway, called the RioGrande Regional Environmental Project,basically was looking at the Rio Grande Project,El Paso, Texas/Las Cruces, New Mexico area. But it also had a relationship with Mexico, sinceMexico's deliveries from the Rio Grande Riverwere done at El Paso. And so there was aninternational relationship as well as two states.

Rio Grande Regional Environmental Project


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And the study had not been going very well. The Commissioner had been getting callsregularly from the two irrigation districts andfrom the congressional delegation about gettingthe study straightened out. So I was sent out withtwo directives: one was to obviously learn whatwas going on and to prepare myself to eventuallybecome the Regional Planning Officer; but myprimary job was to get this so-called studystraightened out. I was designated as the studyleader before I even arrived; the Commissionermandated that. And [I] was supposed to makethat my first priority of business, to quote, "getthis study straightened out. And I don't wantthese people calling me any more. I want them toget off my back," was kind of what theCommissioner said.

Gil Stamm was Commissioner at the time. 13

Gil was a close friend of the Regional Director,so they had worked all this out before I'd evenleft. So I went out there with that in mind, anddid get the study pretty well straightened out, anddid get the people at least settled down. [I]wound up dealing with Mexico as well as withthe two states, and became Planning Officerbefore it was over with, and worked under twoRegional Directors: Jim Bradley was RegionalDirector when I went out there, and he retired acouple of years later and Robert Weimer becameRegional Director when Jim Bradley retired. So

13. Gilbert G. Stamm joined the Bureau of Reclamation in 1946. In 1959, Stamm became Chief of the Division of Irrigation and LandUse, and in 1964 appointed Assistant Commissioner. Stamm servedas Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation under the Nixon andFord administrations from 1973 to 1977.


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I worked under two R-Ds [Regional Directors].

Storey: Where had that study gone astray? Or had it?

Problems with the Rio Grande Study

Mach: Well, yeah, it had gone astray. The mainproblem was communication; just what youidentify in many cases. The study was beingconducted in the Regional Office in Amarillo,Texas. The people in the local area, the twoirrigation districts, the two states, and the localpeople in El Paso and Las Cruces really neverknew what was going on. And maybe about onceevery six months somebody might come downand give them a little briefing, but virtually nocommunication between the Regional Office andthe local office. And so they were veryconcerned, number one, about what was goingon. Two, they were upset that decisions werebeing made in Amarillo without theirinvolvement, and therefore without, in theiropinion at least, knowledge of what the real localsituation was.

And so it was just a matter of communication. Basically what we did was twofold. One,obviously, we went down there much moreregularly. We put together a team to conduct thestudy and we would go down at least once amonth and spend two or three days meeting withthe local people, explaining what had been doneand what was going to be done, what the status ofthe study was, the data we were collecting, andwhere it appeared the whole study was going. The other thing we did was to bring under


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contract primarily the New Mexico StateUniversity at Las Cruces to do some of the workfor us, rather than doing all of it out of ourAmarillo Office. We could have done it inAmarillo, but it worked out so much better tohave a local do it–the university had goodqualities and good capabilities.

And so we hired a social analyst to do somesocial study work. We hired their EconomicsDepartment to do some economic studies for us. We also did a cooperative effort betweenUniversity of Texas at El Paso and the NewMexico State University at Las Cruces. The twodepartments combined into one proposal, andhad people from both sides. So by involving thelocals, what they perceived to be the locals, inthe study, and then also providinginformation . . . And we put together kind of a,maybe it was a sounding board or a consultinggroup or a coordinating council–there's a lot ofwords you can use for it–but these are peoplethat we asked for someone to represent the stateof Texas, state of New Mexico, someone torepresent Las Cruces and El Paso, and thensomeone to represent the two districts–irrigationdistricts were there. And then we asked forsomeone from the International Boundary andWater Commission to be there also.

And we would meet with this kind of counciland lay out some recommendations and somethoughts and ideas and directions, and try to gettheir consensus that, "Yeah, this is the way to doit." We would explain what we wanted to do,explain why we wanted to do it, and in the effort,


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convince them that it was the right thing to do,and then they would kind of put their blessingonto it.

It was not a formal group, because we didn'thave the authority to formulate a formalcommittee like that, so it was [on] an informallevel, but it did involve these people and theydid represent the groups that they were supposedto represent. And so we just improved thecommunication links. It took us about two yearsto complete the study, but I thought we came outwith a pretty good study and one that the peoplecould buy-into. And we did get them off theCommissioner's back. So I made some pointswith the Commissioner! (laughter) In fact, wehad a meeting down there, and he flew in to meet,and he went out of his way to come over and talkto me first so that he could give his endorsementof whatever I was doing. I was quite pleasedabout it, thought it was a good effort on his part,to take the trouble to think about something likethat. So it worked out quite well and we got agood study done, and kind of set a direction forthe area.

Storey: What kind of international contacts did you havewith Mexico?

International Contacts with Mexico

Mach: Well, they had representatives of the MexicanGovernment out of Mexico City who would comeup and meet with us. Generally, we weremeeting in Texas. We had one meeting in Juarezitself, which was the border town across from El


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Paso. But these were official representatives ofthe Mexican Government and the state that Juarezand that area set in [the state of Chihuahua], thatwould meet with us.

Storey: And what issues were they interested in?

Mach: Well, obviously, they were very interested in theamount of water they were getting out of the RioGrande River, and that's not the right way, it's theRio Grande. But anyway, the treaty that dividedthe water between the United States and Mexicowas not a fair treaty. It gave the United States a14

certain amount of water, and Mexico gotbasically what was left over. And in years ofshortage, there was not an equal sharing of theshortage. The United States still got it'sentitlement first, and then Mexico literally gotwhat was left, which was very little. So that wasone major concern of the Mexican Governmentwas to try to improve that treaty. And it was atreaty that was negotiated, I think, back in the

14. The Mexican Water Treaty and Protocol is a treaty relating tothe utilization of the waters of the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and ofthe Rio Grande. (Signed at Washington, February 3, 1944; Protocolsigned at Washington, November 14, 1944; ratification advised by theSenate April 18, 1945, subject to certain understandings; ratificationby the President November 1, 1945, subject to said understandings;ratified by Mexico October 16, 1945; ratifications exchanged atWashington, November 8, 1945; proclaimed by the PresidentNovember 27, 1945, subject to said understandings; 59 Stat. 1219.). Article 4 of the treaty contains the requirements for the allotment ofwaters from the Rio Grande. See,"Mexican Water Treaty andProtocol," in US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.Federal Reclamation and Related Laws Annotated, Volume II,Richard K. Pelz, editor (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government PrintingOffice, 1972), 753-754.


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1800s–it was a fairly old one.

The other aspect of it was that Mexicoobviously was having a problem in Juarez, asthey do in many cases, where people weremoving into the city, and hoping to be able to getsome kind of employment or some kind of anincome. And they wanted to stop this migrationfrom the country into the city, because thereweren't jobs available for them, so it was a verypoor city, a lot of poverty. So one of the thingsthey were doing was trying to develop irrigationon the Mexican side of the border. And onesource of water was to drill groundwaterwells–except the Geological Survey hadconclusively shown that there was a connectionbetween the river and the groundwater basin thatlay under the river.

And so basically what Mexico was doingwas pumping water right out of the river, butdoing it through wells, rather than directdiversion. And they were also then drawinggroundwater out from under Texas, as well astaking it out of the Rio Grande, and thisobviously upset the Texans. And it was to apoint there were midnight excursions intoMexico to count wells. It was almost comical,the way they were trying to do it. So Mexico'sinterest was water, and interest in getting whatthey considered to be their fair share of thewater, because they saw it as a means of solvingsome of their problems of poverty and growth inthe city of Juarez. If they could keep the peopleon the farms–these were truly the small family-type farms that they were talking about–if they


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could keep them on the farm, and provide themwith irrigation water, then they could make adecent living and wouldn't be moving into thecities and causing the problems of poverty, andsanitation was a problem in Juarez, because theycouldn't keep up with the growth with water andsewer facilities.

Storey: Well how did all this work? I presume thatReclamation could not say, "Oh yeah, we'll sendyou five million acre feet," or whatever it is. Was the State Department involved? Or how didall this work, actually?

International Boundary and Water Commission

Mach: Well, the State Department was involved,through the International Boundary and WaterCommission, which is a subset of the StateDepartment, and Joe Friedkin was theCommissioner. And in fact was quite oftenreferred to as an ambassador, even though hetechnically didn't hold the status of ambassador. The State Department was interested in trying tonegotiate something with Mexico much similar towhat they did on the Colorado River underMinute 242. So there was an interest there to tryto solve some of these issues.

It started with Lyndon B. Johnson when theydeeded some of what was Texas back to Mexico,because the river had changed channels. If youwent to the channel back in, I don't remember,1700s, 1800s, part of this land was in Mexico,and then the river went around it, and so itbecame part of the United States and there was a


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dedication, actually a ceding of this land back toMexico agai

darrell mach - united states bureau of reclamation darrell.pdfdarrell mach storey: this is brit...

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