Cadillac Desert_ The American West and Its Disappearing Water - Marc Reisner [201]
Politicians beach themselves in such ideological shallows for various reasons: the power of money, the selfishness of their constituents, or their own venality. The system thrives as it does, however, largely because of the power and nature of the committee system in Congress. The leadership of the appropriations and public-works committees that approve and fund water projects traditionally comes from the South and West, where water projects are sacrosanct. In 1980, for example, Congressman Jamie Whitten of Mississippi was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee; Congressman Tom Bevill of Alabama was chairman of its Subcommittee on Public Works; Congressman Ray Roberts of Texas was chairman of the House Public Works Committee; Jennings Randolph of West Virginia was chairman of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee; Mike Gravel of Alaska was chairman of its Subcommittee on Water Resources; Mark Hatfield of Oregon was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. In that same year, 1980, 288 individual projects were included for funding in the omnibus Public Works Appropriations bill. Only eight got more than $25 million. All but one of the eight were located in the South or West. The most expensive item on the menu was the $3 billion Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which was to receive $243 million—in a single year. The waterway is in the districts of Bevill, Whitten, and the immortal John Stennis, who was second in seniority on the Senate Appropriations Committee that year.
Together, the House and Senate committees and the water-development agencies run a remarkably efficient operation. They work in concert, rewarding those who vote for water projects and punishing those who do not, sometimes to the point of stopping virtually any federal money from going into their districts. They would, of course, much rather use the carrot than the stick. In 1978, before he had even set foot in Washington, Senator-elect Alan Simpson of Wyoming was paid a special visit by three high-ranking officers in the Corps of Engineers asking if there was anything they could “do” for him. Once in Washington, Simpson was approached again, this time by the leaders of the appropriate committees, who made him the same offer. Every freshman Senator and Congressman got the same treatment, even Bob Edgar. “The old-boy network comes to you,” says Edgar, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 1974, at the age of thirty-one. “They say, ‘You’ve got a water project in your district? You want one? Let us take care of it for you.’ Then they come around a few months later and get their pound of flesh. You actually risk very little by going along. You get a lot of money thrown into your district for a project that few of your constituents oppose. In return, you vote for a lot of projects your constituents don’t know about or care about. Not many of my constituents are going to base their vote for or against me on whether or not I supported Stonewall Jackson Dam in West Virginia. Then everyone wonders why we’re running such big federal deficits, and they cut the social programs, which must be the culprit.”
As it turned out, Edgar did not support Stonewall Jackson Dam in West Virginia, nor did he support dozens of other projects ear-marked for funding in the Appropriations Committee that year. He has even made a concerted effort to have them taken out, year after year. For this, Edgar has become a virtual pariah among his colleagues and a hero among conservation groups. By general consensus, no one among the 535 members of Congress has been quite as willing to risk his political career attacking the pork-barrel system. The reason may have something to do with the fact that Edgar is a former Methodist minister who became a Congressman almost by accident. Well-built, handsome, a picture of rectitude in repose,