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University of California • Berkeley

Berkeley Gazette, October 10, 1975

Engineering professor
McGauhey dies at 71

8 SKS^Tfy • He re«red from teaching

instructor at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute while
earning a civil engineering
degree there. He taught
toere until 1951, becoming
head of the department of

ined the Berkeley faculty
His special areas of re^
j search included waste
water reclamation re
moval of detergents from
water, water pollution prob
lems, and solid waste man
agement.

He was a member of
many organizations con
cerned with water quality
In 1950, he received the Ful-
er Award from the Water
works Association, and in

fiW Ed>dr, Award f™

me Water Pollution Control
Federation.

He is survived by his
widow Margo. Funeral ser
vices will be private

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a
legal agreement between the Regents of the University
of California and P.H. MoGauhey, dated 31 August, 1973.
The manuscript is thereby made available for research
purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript,
Including the right to publish, are reserved to The
Bancroft Library of the University of California at
Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for
publication without the written permission of the
Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of
California at Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office,
4-86 Library, and should Include identification of the
specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the
passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with P.H. MoGauhey requires that he be
notified of the request and allowed thirty days In which
to respond.

The Bancroft Library University of California/Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office

P. H. MoGauhey

THE SANITARY ENGINEERING RESEARCH LABORATORY:
ADMINISTRATION, RESEARCH, AND CONSULTATION, 1950-1972

With an Introduction by
Linvil G. Rich

An Interview Conducted by
Maloa Chall

Copy No
01974 by The Regents of the University of California

P. H. McOauhey
ca. 1958

Photograph by Vernon Tarr, Richmond Field Station

TABLE OP CONTENTS — P.H. MoGauhey

PREFACE 1

INTRODUCTION by Linvll G. Rloh 11

INTERVIEW HISTORY Iv

CAREER CHRONOLOGY vil

I CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND THE FIRST CAREER, 1904-1950 1

Family Background - Grandparents and Parents 1

Early Life In Eastern Oregon 5

Elementary School In One-Room Schoolhouse 5

High School In La Grande 8

College In Corvallls 10

Decision to Teach 12

Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1927-1948 14

Sanatorium Years 17

The Move to California, 1948 20

An Attitude Toward Life and Work 22

Avocations: Photography and Writing 24

The McGauhey Family and the Homestead Ranch 2?

II BACKGROUND OP SANITARY ENGINEERING EDUCATION AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 31

Evolution of Sanitary Education Curriculum In

the United States 31

Pioneers In the Profession 39

Evolution of Sanitary Engineering Curriculum at

Berkeley, 1905-19^5 M

Development After World War II 43

The School of Public Health 4?

Re-evaluation of the Curriculum 49
Challenges of Developing Problems of Air,

Land, and Water Pollution 54
Reorganizing the Curriculum: Advanced Degrees,

Academic Flexibility 56

Ill THE SANITARY ENGINEERING RESEARCH LABORATORY,

1950-1970 66

Crisis in Solid Waste Management 66

The Richmond Field Station 69

Acquiring the Station 70

Utilizing the Station 71

Organizing the Sanitary Engineering Research

Laboratory (SERL) 74

Insuring Academic Integrity 76

P.H. McGauhey Joins an Enlarging Staff, 1951 79

P.H. McGauhey Appointed Director, 1956 84
Reorganizing Staffing Patterns and

Administration 85

Some Philosophy About Administration 88

Directing Research 91

Financing Research 93

The Value of SERL in Research and Training 95

IV RESEARCH AT THE SANITARY ENGINEERING RESEARCH

LABORATORY 100

Obtaining the Research Grant 100

Some Criteria for Determining Grants 104

Techniques of Writing Grant Proposals 115
Determining Contemporary Environmental

Research Goals 120

Some Noteworthy Research at SERL 123

Solid Waste Management 126

Solid Waste Defined 126

Problems of Disposal 131

Packaging and Recycling 135

A Look at the Future 145

Stating the Assumptions 148

Economic Evaluation of Water 150

Value Judgments Other than Dollars 152

Developing the Criteria 156

Water Quality 160

Reaction to the First Reports 162

The 160-acre Limit 163

Assumptions 167

San Franolsco Bay Studies 171

Algal Systems 172

New Directions in Public Policy 182

The Results of Research 188

The Professor and the University Structure 190

Teaching 195

Objectives of Education 197

V OUTSIDE CONSULTING 200

The Philosophy of Consultation 200

Some of the Assignments 201

Kuwait 201

Israel 206

India 207

Chile 213

Lake Tahoe 214

Wastewater Treatment 220

Solid Waste Disposal 221

Hawaii 221

Writing and Lecturing 223

Curriculum, Research, and Other Matters 225

APPENDIX 231

INDEX 256

PREFACE

The development of sanitary engineering in California since the turn
of the century is the subject of a series of interviews conducted by the
Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library under a grant from
the Water Resources Center of the University of California.

Hie idea ibr documenting this history was initiated by Henry Ongerth,
chief of the Bureau of Sanitary Engineering of the California State Depart
ment of Public Health. In a letter to Professor Arthur Pillsbury, director
of the Water Resources Center, he suggested that funds be provided to in
terview Chester Gillespie, the first chief of the Bureau (1915-1 9^7), and
Professor Charles Oilman Hyde, head of the Department of Sanitary Engineer
ing on the Berkeley campus from 1905-19^. David Todd, professor of Civil
Engineering, provided leads for other interviews and the series came to
fruition. Major funding came from the WRC with some additional assistance
from the Department of Hydraulic and Sanitary Engineering on the Berkeley
campus.

Mr. Hyde was not well enough to interview, but Chester Gillespie,
Wilfred Langelier (chemist and water purification specialist UCB 1916-1955),
and Percy H. McGauhey (director of the Sanitary Engineering Research Labora
tory, UCB, 1956-1969) did tape their memoirs. As a result there is on record
information about administration, teaching, and research in sanitary engineer
ing from 1905-1971, a period which spans the time when the major emphasis
of the sanitary engineer was prevention of typhoid fever, to today, when con
cern is with prevention and control of pollution of the total environment.

These interviews have benefited greatly from the expert advice and
assistance of Henry Ongerth and professors David Todd, Erman Pearson, and
Robert Selleck.

The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record auto
biographical interviews with persons prominent in recent California history.
The Office is under the administrative supervision of James D. Hart, di
rector of The Bancroft Library.

Willa Baum, Head
Regional Oral
History Office

22 February 1971
Regional Oral History Office
Room ^86, The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

INTRODUCTION

In the kaleidoscope of one's memories, most people appear
and disappear In association with a bewildering Jumble of
events and associations. They leave memories that reach no
further than the events and experiences with which they are
associated. Here and there, however, certain people step out
of the time continuum and establish a presence that transcends
these associations. They make their Introduction, they create
vivid memories and then they remain to exercise a continuing
Influence. P. H. McGauhey Is such a person.

Mack McGauhey has many accomplishments to his credit. As
an educator, he has worked diligently for the elevation of
standards In the teaching of sanitary engineering. As a
researcher, he has contributed to the technology of water and
waste treatment. As an engineer, he has served his profession
In many capacities. But, as significant as these accomplish
ments are, they stand short In comparison with his greatest
accomplishment- -the enrichment of the lives of countless
graduate students who were fortunate enough to have known him.
A broad fraternity of us exists who are In debt to Mack, both
personally and professionally. Some of us were attracted to
careers In sanitary engineering as a result of having had Mack
as a teacher. Others made It through the rugged trek of
graduate study only because Mack cared. And, doubtlessly,
there are those of us who attained their professional niche only
because of a recommendation (too charitable, perhaps) that he
had provided.

My own memory kaleidoscope Include the following vignettes
with Mack: the first dinner In a professor's home; a search
by match light below a sewer outfall late one night for mint
to garnish our juleps; water sampling forays as an excuse for
sun bathing and tale telling; Mack's sponsorship in the
hospitality rooms at the first professional meeting; week-end
explorations of the Mother Lode country, Reno, Yosemite, Lassen,
etc. ; the introduction to rum drinks with exotic names like the
Missionary's Downfall, the Shark's Tooth, and the Vicious
Virgin; and the mornings after.

Then, too, Mack has a way with words and phrases, both
sense and nonsense. A "slow leak" to describe a time-wasting
activity or "I feel more like I do now than when I first came in"

ill

to describe an over-indulged dinner. His llmerioks, though
classic had best not be repeated here. Oh yes — Mack is the
only person I know who "gave church up for Lent and never went
back. "

The best way to describe Mack is that he is a humanist
with class. It is the humanist in him that touches people.
It is the class that makes him an institution.

Llnvll G. Rich,
Professor
Environmental Systems

February

Clemson, South Carolina

INTERVIEW HISTORY

Percy McGauhey was Interviewed by the Regional Oral
History Office in order to document the founding and subsequent
work of the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory as well
as other developments In the field of sanitary engineering.

Sanitary engineering Is not a subject likely to Inspire
excitement among many people, but translated as environmental
engineering and brought Into focus as near at hand as the dally
paper, It becomes a fascinating scientific discipline even to
the average man. When this topic Is explained by someone as
articulate, reflective, and deeply committed as Professor
McGauhey, who combines these qualities with a balanced perspec
tive on life and a capital sense of humor, much stimulation
can be generated about a facility simply called a Sanitary
Engineering Research Laboratory.

On June 30 » 1969 » Percy MoGauhey retired from the faculty
of the University of California as Emeritus Professor of
Sanitary Engineering and Public Health. One year later he was
still diligently carrying on his customary full seven-day-a-
week work schedule, completing research, writing reports and
articles for Journals, and undertaking new consulting assign
ments. Into this already over-crowded calendar he quite
characteristically agreed to set aside time for an additional
item — the oral history interview.

Pour taping sessions, each approximately two and one-half
hours long, were held in his office at the Sanitary Engineering
Research Laboratory in Richmond, California on July 16, July 25»
September 1?, 1970, and September 11, 1971. SERL had been his
chief base of operations from the time he Joined the staff as
research engineer in 1951 » one year after the laboratory was
organized, through 1969, the last thirteen years of which he
functioned as its director.

In 1971 it seemed that everyone in the United States was
concerned about air and water pollution, solid waste management,
and the many other aspects of environmental quality and degrada
tion which had been undergoing rigorous scientific study at SERL
since 1950. The object of the four interviews was to obtain
from Professor MoGauhey a first-hand account of the origin and

development of SERL, its relationships both to the University's
engineering department and to the general community outside of
aoademia, something about the research undertaken during the
lab's dynamic twenty year history, and in the course of the
telling thereof, to learn some of the pertinent details of
Professor McGauhey's education and career.

The major topics to be covered in each taping session were
agreed upon in advance by Professor MoGauhey and the interviewer
who then submitted to him prior to each appointment a general
outline of the more specific items planned for discussion. He,
in turn, prepared notes to insure that he brought out the many
points he considered germane.

When it came time for him to review the edited and chaptered
transcripts of the taped Interviews which were sent to him in
April 1972, Professor MoGauhey felt that he had not dealt
thoroughly or clearly enough with some matters and decided,
therefore, to amplify those portions which he thought he had
neglected. Because of his skill as an author of scientific
articles, as well as of poetry and humorous essays, the additions
fit perfectly into the transcriptions and have improved immeasur
ably the manuscript as a research tool. The kind of wisdom
Imparted throughout this volume on so many aspects of life and
education cannot be defined in a table of contents or an index.
Neither can the wry humor so characteristic of Professor
MoGauhey' s form of expression. The memoir is replete with these
aspects of his personality as well as with his grasp of facts
and his sense of history.

Even while reviewing the transcript he kept up with other
assignments, some of which included travel to Hawaii, Seattle,
and other sections of the country. In the summer of 1973 he
suffered a bout with Illness which circumscribed his activities
for a short time. Nonetheless, this slightly-built man with
his tremendous stamina and recuperative powers was soon hard at
work again. By October, 1973 he had completed his editing and
returned the oral history manuscript to this office for
completion.

Professor MoGauhey 's honors and awards were not discussed
during the Interviews. It is appropriate therefore to record
here two distinguished awards. In 1971 Utah State University
at Logan, Utah awarded him an honorary doctorate for contributions
to the profession and science of water resources. In January,
1973 he was elected to membership In the National Academy of

Engineering for "oreativeness and leadership in environmental
engineering in water, wastewater, solid wastes, and recycling."
This is recognized as one of the highest honors that can be
awarded an American engineer.

As these honors indicate, and as the reader will quickly
recognize, Professor MoGauhey represents not only a model of a
professor, research scientist, and engineer, but the type of
individual now being paid homage during this country's
bicentennial celebration: a descendant of pioneer Americans
who took literally the promise of the American dream, and who
achieved it through the application of strenous physical labor
and a never-ending quest for education and excellence.

Maloa Ghall
Interviewer-Editor

21 February 19 7^

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

vii

P. H. McGAUHEY

6819 SNOWDEN AVENUE
EL CERRITO. CALIFORNIA

94530

CURRICULUM VITAE

Born: Ritter, Oregon, January 20. 1904
Marital Status; Married 1928; no children

Education;

B.S. (Civil Engineering) Oregon State University, June 1927

C.E. (Equivalent M.S.) Virginia Polytechnic Institute, June 1929

M.S. (Hydraulic & Sanitary Engineering) Univ. of Wisconsin, Sept. 1941

D.Sc. (honorary) Utah State University, June 1971
Scholastic Honor Socities;

Tau Beta Pi Phi Kappa Phi

Sigma Tau Sigma Xi

Omicron Delta Kappa Chi Epsilon

Delta Omega
i
Professional & Technical Socities;

American Society of Civil Engineers
President, Virginia Section, 1951

President, Sanitary Engineering Division, San Francisco Section, 1955
National Committee of Refuse Collection & Disposal, 1954 - date
Member Research Committee, Sanitary Engineering Section, 1961 - date
Member numerous local section committees, 1947 - date
Chairman, SED Program Committee for Salt Lake Conference, 1964

Chairman, SED Solid Wastes Research Conference, Milwaukee, 1967
Chairman, Task Committee on Environmental Research, 1971

American Water Works Association;

Chairman, Virginia Section, 1945

Chairman, Purification Division, California Section, 1956

Member, Executive Committee, California Section, 1961 - 1965

Chairman, Visiting Engineers Committee, 1963

Member, numerous local section committees, 1947 - date

Water Pollution Control Federation:

Member, Board of Control, 1961 - 1964
Member, Research Committee, 1952 - 1965

California Water Pollution Control Association:

Executive Committee, East Bay Section, 1954 - 1957

President, 1959

Member, Executive Committee, 1957 - 1965

Member, numerous local section committees, 1953 - date

Inter-American Association of Sanitary Engineers;

viii

National Society of Professional Engineers, 1958 - 1969
Executive Committee, Contra Costa Chapter, 1958 - 1960

American Public Health Association:

American Society of Limnology & Oceanography;

American Society of Engineering Education:

American Academy of Environmental Engineers (Diplomate)
American Association of Professors in Sanitary Engineering

Richmond Engineers Club. President 1961; 1970
Professional Registration:

Certified Professioal Engineer, State of Virginia, Cert. No. 643
C,E. member, Virginia State Board, 1947 - 1951

Registered Civil Engineer, State of California. Cert. No. 7814

Awards

Fuller Award, American Water Works Association, 1950

Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal, WPCF, 1960

Distinguished Service Award, Nat. Clay Pipe Institute, 1964

Service Award, Calif. Water Pollution Control Ass'n., 1966

Outstanding Service Award, Calif. Water Pol. Control Ass'n., 1968

Gordon Maskew Fair Medal, WPCF, 1969

Honorary Member, Inst. of g olid Wastes, APWA, 1970

Experience

Teaching;

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

1927-30: Instructor in Civil Engineering
1930-37: Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering
1937-42: Associate Professor of Sanitary Engineering
1942-48: Professor of Sanitary Engineering
1950-51: Head, Department of Civil Engineering

University of Southern California

1948-50: Professor of Sanitary Engineering

University of California (Berkeley)

1951-57: Research Engineer & Lecturer in Sanitary Engineering
1957-69: Professor of Sanitary & Public Health Engineering and

Director, Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory
1957-63: Chairman, Division of Hydraulic & Sanitary Engineering
1963-65: Chairman, Department of Civil Engineering
1969 - : Professor & Director Emeritus

Research

1930-37: Engaged in research in field of hydrology, mostly concerned
with long-range rainfall-runoff relationships, analysis of
storms that have caused great floods, and prediction of flood

intensities.

1937-'J8: Directed and conducted research studies of various aspects of

stream pollution, paper mill wastes, movement of pollution through
reservoirs, efficiency of sewage treatment plants, etc.

1951-57: Research Engineer and Assistant Director, Sanitary Engineering

Research Laboratory, Univ. of California with particular interest
in ground-water recharge, pollution travel in soils, and solid waste
disposal.

1957-69: Research Engineer and Director of SERL, Univ. of California with
administrative responsibility for development and operation of an
organized research unit involving staff and student research in
air, water, and land environmental control problems. Served as
principal investigator on projects related to ground water recharge,
detergents, septic tank percolation fields, water economics, water
treatment, and solid wastes management.

1966-69; Principal investigator of multi-discipline research project on
Comprehensive Studies of Solid Waste Management.

Professional and Consulting

1927: (Summer) U.S. Bureau of Public Roads on Highway location

1930: (Summer) Topographer, Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.

1929-1935: Designed reinforced concrete structures, including major

building for Va. Poly. Institute. Designed and constructed small
rock fill dam and power plant; laid out and supervised construction
of numerous drives, walks, sewer and water lines; made feasibility
studies and preliminary design of water supply and treatment works.

1937: Carried out numerous small consulting assignments in the field of

sanitary engineering, including water supply, waste water treatment,
stream and ground water pollution, and refuse disposal.

19U6-'i8: Served as General ISngineer on design and construction of sewage
disposal plant, pumping station, and outfall sewer for Va. Poly.
Inst. and Town of BlackiVburg, Va.

1951: Sanitary engineer for various local groups developing a recreational
state park on Claytor Reservoir in Virginia.

1958: Special Consultant to Kuwait Oil Company in Arabia on public health
engineering problems.

1957: Special Consultant to U.S. Public Health Service on studies of
failure of septic tank percolation systems,

1959: Special Consultant to Building Research Advisory Board, Nat.
Science Foundation.

1960-date: Special Consultant, U.S. Public Health Service and Bureau of
Solid Waste Management.

1960-date: Chairman, Board of Coneultantn, Lake Tahoe Area Council.

196?: Special Consultant, Bechtel Corp. on groundwater recharge.

1962: Special Consultant, Ford Foundation on engineering education In Chile.

1963,1965: Sanitary engineering consultant on water reclamation, AID, Israel.

Consultant, Sanitary Engineering Education, AID, India.
1965: Consultant, Calif. State Water Quality Control Board.
1966,1970: Consultant on solid vaster,, Calif. State Dept. Public Health.
1965-66: Consultant, Utah State University, Water Resources Institute
1967: Consultant on storm runoff damage, County Court, Contra Costa Co.

1968 : Consultant;

Walt E. Disney Enterprises (wastes management at Disney World Fla.)
District of Columbia (waste water treatment)
Nat. Acad. of Science, NRS-NAE, (solid waste policy planning)
New Mexico State University (water resources institute)

1969.1971: Consultant (.project by project basis)

Engineer ing -Science Inc. (various assignments)

TRW Systems (solid wastes management)

Aerojet-General Corp. (solid wastes management)

City of Escondido, Calif, (wastewater reclamation and disposal)

City of San Francisco, Calif, (wastewater treatment and disposal)

Boyle Engineers (wastewater disposal)

State Dept. Public Health (solid wastes planning)

Calif. Water Resources Center (research program planning)

Consoer-Bechtel (water quality studies of South S.F. Bay)

Brown and Caldwell (water reclamation, Contra Costa Co.)

Consoer and Townsend (waste water treatment)

Environmental Engineers (project development)

Utah State University (wuter resources research development)

Loyola University (educational program development)

Uniconsult Inc. (sludge disposal and water pollution)

University of Hawaii (research project development)

1971 - 1972 Consultant (project by project basis)

Utah State Univ. (water resources research development)
University of Hawaii (30% time, consultant on Sea Grant Program)
State of Wisconsin (Chairman, Bd. Engr. Consultants (solid waste))
G.E. Tempo (consultant on groundwater quality and monitoring)
Brown & Caldwell (consultant, state water resource studies)
CH2M-Hill (Metro Seattle solid waste management program)
Kennedy Engineers (Corps of Engrs. Spokane River Basin studies)
PBQ & D (land disposal of reclaimed water, Corps of Engrs.)
City of San Francisco (Chairman, technical Advisory Board
Lake Tahoe Area Council ( Ch. Bd. of Consult., & project director)
Bechtel Corp. (South Bay wastewater disposal studies)
Carollo Engineers (Waste water disposal, Orange County)
City of Escondido (wastewater disposal and groundwater recharge)
Campbell Estates (Hawaii) (solid waste disposal project)
City of Santa Barbara (review of water reclamation planning)
Colorado State University (consultant on engineering research)

I CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND THE FIRST CAREER

Chall: You've been sitting at the top of an Important
Institution for many years. How did you arrive
where you are?

MoGauhey: I am certain that the route one follows to get from
where he starts to where he finishes depends a
great deal on probability or ohanoe. But one of
the principal factors in my case, I would say, is
that I was fortunate to have parents who wanted
their children to get an education, and were deter
mined to give them such an opportunity if they
showed interest and capacity In learning. Thus the
ohanoe which brought me to Berkeley began with the
chance to set out on the type of road which might
lead in such a direction.

Family Background - Grandparents and Parents

MoGauhey: I was born on January 20, 1904 on my mother's homestead
in the community of Ritter Hot Springs, Oregon.
Hitter is in the dry cattle ranch country some seventy
miles south of Pendleton; between Pendleton and John
Day. This country In the early 1900s was still in
a pioneer state, even though much of the world at
that time had entered the age of the railroad. Our
ranch was fifty-five miles from the railroad and the
"wagon roads" which connected the two were spectacular
for other reasons than ease of transportation. So
we had to raise stock for a cash crop. Anything that
couldn't walk to market was not going to get there
in any worth while quantity on any predictable
schedule. This meant that we had to do general farming

MoGauhey: In order to grow feed for the stock, and to raise
stock In order to make a living. The combination
of stock raising and farming, I must say, Is a very
nagged operation requiring the full attention and
work effort of the entire family. But, then, my
parents came from an ancestry to which work was a
virtue rather than a stranger.

My mother was Swiss. She was born In the
State of Missouri but her parents both came from the
same village Just outside of Bern, Switzerland. They
met In Iowa at the age of fifteen. I never knew my
maternal grandparents. For one thing, they lived In
Santa Clara, California. In terms of time, the
distance from our ranch to Santa Clara was somewhat
greater than from the Earth to the Moon In 1972.

Chall: What were the name of your grandparents?

McGauhey: Grandfather's name was John Senn, and grandmother's
-maiden name was Anna Blooh. John Senn died from
Injuries resulting from a runaway team of horses he
had hitched to a hay wagon. This may have been before
I was born, as grandmother survived him for several
years and I can only dimly remember when mother
learned of her passing. I was probably about three
years old at the time.

My father was of Scotch-Irish and English
extraction. His ancestors were adventurers who came
to North America about as soon as the continent was
opened. My paternal grandfather grew up in the
vicinity of St. Joseph, Missouri — Agency, Missouri
may have been his birthplace. Prom there he drove
ox teams down the Old Oregon Trail, hauling freight
to the Pacific Coast. He met and married my grand
mother, Eliza Simmons, in St. Joseph. She had gone
there to live with a married sister after the Civil
War disrupted their established home in Mount Airy,
North Carolina. Thereafter, she lived always at or
beyond the frontier until it reached the Pacific;
always on the move until the final years when she and
grandfather lived with us. Grandfather was a restless
man. My father always said that if anyone lived
within sixty miles of grandfather, he felt the country
was getting too settled up, and moved on — a rather
interesting commentary on today's environmental
attitudes.

MoGauheyi As a result of grandfather's migratory Instincts
the family headed by David Sidney McGauhey, my grand
father, moved often and my father grew up in an
impressive sequence of places. He was born in
Hiawatha, Kansas and several of his early homes were
in western Kansas where ill-timed hot winds, hail
storms, "cyclones, M and prairie fires had a way of
freeing the settler from his commitment to the land.
Charles Sidney McGauhey, my father, was the youngest
of four children. He had vivid memories of the
family's move to Colorado when he was a small child,
probably because the wagon in which he was riding
upset in a spectacular fashion. That was In Indian
days when Colorado was essentially beyond the
frontier. There roving bands of Indians were
constantly present Intent upon stealing the livestock.
Often they killed a family of settlers even though
the tribes themselves might not be generally on the
"warpath. " Grandmother told me in later years that
day after day when grandfather was away from home
she did not dare build a fire in the oookstove lest
Indians know they were there and possibly come to do
them harm.

Prom Colorado the family moved to North Platte,
Nebraska. There grandfather stayed longer than
usual and my father got a few years of elementary
schooling. They lived across the road from Bill
Cody, the famous Buffalo Bill. Father loved to ride
horses, especially bucking horses which to him was
like sitting in a rooking chair. He really loved
horses. So as a teen-ager he broke a good many
saddle horses for Bill Cody. When Cody took his
Wild West Show to England he wanted father to go
along. My father declined the opportunity because,
as he told me later, he was afraid to cross the ocean.
He had, of course, never seen the ocean and, I
suppose, shared with other humans some fear of the
unknown. However, he left home to work as a cowboy
In Nebraska and Wyoming, and within two years he
came to California and Joined the marines. He then
went down to Central America and saw a good deal of
the ocean before he got back and left the Marine
Corps Just prior to the Spanish American War.

My mother, Mary Ann Senn, was born in Tipton,
Missouri in 18?0. When she was six years old the
Senn family moved to California and mother started

MoGauhey: her schooling here in the town of Cottonwool. Later
the family moved to the Santa Clara Valley where
most of its members stayed the remainder of their
lives. It was a large family; four sons and eight
daughters. Mother was one of the two who eventually
moved to Oregon. Her oldest brother, Fred Senn,
went there first and bought a cattle ranch. He
homesteaded some land and bought up a lot of adjacent
land as homesteaders got title to their homesteads;
then sold them and moved on in search of a better
life. Thus my uncle acquired a fairly large cattle
ranch in eastern Oregon. My mother was unmarried
when she went to visit her brother in Oregon. He
persuaded her to homestead land next to his ranch.

At about that time my father was working in the
Sacramento Valley for Walter Pierce, who in later
years became Governor of Oregon and went on to the
U.S. Congress. Pierce was one of a group of men
from eastern Oregon who were trying to extend their
wheat growing activities into the dry areas of
California. My father was operating a harvest crew
for Pierce and had no particular reason to stay in
California; so he went along with his employer to
continue the harvest in eastern Oregon. There he
worked for a series of ranchers, gravitating to my
uncle's ranch, I suspect, because he had more wild
horses than anybody in the West. Anyway, if there
were any wild horses to ride it was inevitable that
my father would get into the act. When the Boer War
came along, horse buyers seeking mounts for the
British calvary appeared in eastern Oregon. The only
requirement for a horse to be acceptable was that It
had been ridden at least once for a distance of about
one hundred yards. My father rode some 1500 horses
through this yardage, and enjoyed every minute of it.
In later years he often wondered how the British
cavalry faired on such mounts, and what the effect
might have been on the outcome of the war.

While working for my uncle, my father met my
mother. They were married on Christmas Day in 1900
and settled on mother's homestead, although father
continued to work for other ranchers and other
employers to make their livelihood. When I was four
years old and mother had title to her land, father
took up a homestead and we moved into a new house he

MoGauhey: built on the site. Subsequently, my paternal grand
parents came to live with us. After grandfather
died, in 1913* grandmother homesteaded land adjoining
father's and lived alone in a small house a few
hundred yards from ours.

There was quite a lot of open range in those
days. So with a few hundred acres and an open
range, you could handle stock in scale with your
ability to raise feed for them. Therefore, we stayed
on there farming and ranching until the time had come
when my sister and I were ready for high school. But
in this kind of environment you couldn't make enough
money to send children away to high school; and grand
mother had two years yet to live on her land before
she could "prove up" on it and acquire title to it.

Early Life in Eastern Oregon

Elementary School in One-Room Schoolhouses

Challs You had to go away to high school; but what about
the elementary education?

MoGauhey » We owned land in two separate school districts — the
Hitter and the Three-Mile District. When I entered
elementary school each of these districts had a one-
room sohoolhouse and about thirty to forty children
in attendance, although by the time I reaolWthe
eighth grade the numbers had dwindled to about a
dozen each. At first my sister and I rode four miles
to the Hitter school during the fall months. Then
when the snow and cold of winter came, mother lived
with us at the Hitter Hot Springs and we walked with
other children a mile or so, vertically, to the school
house. Meanwhile, my father and grandmother looked
after the ranch. We did this for only two years.

After that, when I was eight years old, we
transferred to the Three-Mile school which was nearer
to our house. We then had only three miles to ride.
I might explain that these two three-mile figures
were unrelated. The school district was named for its

MoGauhey: location on the headwaters of Three-Mile Creek.
The name of the oreek, and of several others,
designated its approximate distance upstream from
the Junction of the Middle Pork and the North Pork
of the John Day River. Our three miles were a
matter of geography, but I may say they were country
miles, and country miles bear somewhat the same
relation to a statute mile as a British Imperial
gallon does to our gallon.

Challr When you said ride, you meant ride on horses?

McGauhey: Yes. We rode horses to school because in those time
no rancher with any self respect walked farther than
necessary to catch a horse. But there was also the
matter of severe weather. Small children make
limited progress through knee-deep unbroken snow.
There was also real danger from rabid coyotes and
dogs, as well as from bulls and a considerable variety
of wild animals capable of generating considerable
anxiety in children traveling on foot.

As to the weather, it was often colder than a
witch's heart when we set off for school. Our route
was up dark canyons where the sun reached only at
mid-day. We always beat the sun anyway. My mother
being Swiss and very energetic was up early, living
up to all the traditions of the Swiss, including
their consciousness of time. She was fearful that
we would be late for school — a crime you can't explain
to people in 1972 — so we got off early. The result
was that we got to school always before the teacher,
who was like as not to be late. There we would have
to build a fire in the stove and try to get thawed
out before school started.

But I started out to speak to the point of my
elementary education rather than of the rigors of
pioneer life. As I reflect upon the teachers in
those old one-room schools I must conclude that they
did a pretty good Job. I think they did surprisingly
well in handling eight grades in one group. It
wasn't all bad because in a one-room school you learn
a lot by osmosis during the recitation period of the
higher grades. The level of education of our teachers
was not high; eighth grade, or occasionally one or
two years of high school. I often wonder, however,
how many courses in education would be required today

MoGauhey: to qualify a teacher to do as well as my mentors
in the one-room school.

In ours there were a lot of children — I
shouldn't say a lot — but some, at least, that were
not notably endowed and did not learn much. Part
of this was the result of family attitudes, hence
the kids from many of the farms and ranches would
come to school only when there wasn't anything else
to do. Come spring plowing time they would drop
out of school and perhaps not appear again until
the fall harvest was over. Thus they might be
nineteen years old and still in the eighth grade.
Some quit by the time they were twenty and never
finished the eighth. They simply grew big enough
that the biggest seat in the school room was too
small for them. They they gave up and spent all
their time at farming.

I was at the other extreme because in our home
schooling came first. At least it was sandwiched
in between the morning and the evening chores. I
finished the eighth grade when I was twelve years
old. I learned to read when I was four because my
sister started school then. She was less than
two years older than I and in the Isolation of ranch
life we grew up quite close to each other. So when
she started to school, setting off with a new primer,
I was anxious to have a primer also. My brother was
still a baby Just about learning to walk, and so I
was pretty lonesome. The folks got me a primer and
a slate, and being both unlettered and lonely, I
followed mother about as she worked, making the
inquiries necessary to learn to read.

Chall: There were Just three of you then.

MoGauhey t Yes, Just three. My sister, Dorothy, and my brother,
David, and myself.

By the time I was six years old I could read the
newspaper although I didn't know what It meant; I
don't yet, but nevertheless, I could read the words.
I learned to write on my slate, which was a standard,
if noisy, appurtenance to schooling in my day. In
arithmetic I did all the routines they taught through
the third grade before I went to school. Later when
I was in the sixth grade I worked the arithmetic
problems for the eighth graders, but I was no

McGauhey: mathematical genius. In between I recall many
evenings fighting both sleepiness and such
problems as the number of tons of hay in an oval-
topped haystack.

The result of my "thirst for knowledge" was
that when I started to school there wasn't anything
for me to do in the first or second grades. The
teacher tried for a while to find something to get
me occupied. Finally, he decided upon the third
grade and I found something challenging to do. Thus
by the time I was twelve years old I had finished
the eighth grade.

As I mentioned before, my sister and I had two
years to wait before high school was possible because
of the residence problem Involved with grandmother's
homestead. The first year we went to the school
regularly as before, and the teacher, who had a good
high school education, taught us algebra, physical
geography, and English. The next year we didn't go
to school at all. World War I was at its height and
ranch help was scarce. I took on a full load of
ranch activities, and did some riding to look after
range stock belonging to a neighbor who had bought
my uncle's ranch. Then in 1918, before World War I
came to an end, my father leased his ranch and we
moved to La Grande, Oregon. There my sister and I
entered high school and father went to work for the
railroad; and later for a bridge company, as a
carpenter. Grandfather had been a carpenter and
cabinet maker, and father was likewise an excellent
carpenter and violin maker. He could make almost
anything with hand tools in metal, or wood, or
leather. He had a good mathematical mind, although
he did not have a lot of formal schooling by the
standards of today.

High School in La Grande

Chall: The family moved so that you could go to high school?
The three of you?

MoGauheyi Only my sister and I were ready for high school in
1918. We moved on to Gorvallls to go to college by

MoGauheyr the time my brother was ready for high school.

When we moved to La Grande it was a railroad
division point and a sawmill town. Its population
was 60 percent Mormon and 30 percent Catholic. The
other 10 percent each had its own church, it seems.
Public schools were supported by the Mormons; the
private schools by the Catholics. There was con
siderable rivalry between the two. Moreover, the
town was not poor in those days because of the big
sawmills, the railroad payroll, and a prosperous
farming country as well. The result of all these
factors was that La Grande had excellent schools.
Looking back, I think that the only Instance of a
less than competent teacher in all my high school
classes was that of a young woman whose specialty
was typing and shorthand, but who was required to
teach plane geometry one semester. I later studied
typing under her guidance, by the way, and learned
a skill that has been invaluable to me throughout
the years.

She learned some geometry before the semester
was over from a combination of my sister and me and
one of my boyhood pals in high school. For the
first month the three of us were totally puzzled.
We didn't have the slightest idea what plane geometry
was all about, and neither did the teacher. But
suddenly it dawned on us. Thereafter, plane geometry
seemed too obvious to require more than a single
perusal. When this happy day arrived, the teacher
would send one of the three of us to the blackboard
to explain whatever proposition was assigned for the
day. This helped us a great deal in our later
teaching careers — and it got the teacher through the
semester.

High school filled in a deficiency carried over
from our elementary school days — a deficiency in
knowledge of the structure of the language. Grammar
was a subject assigned in the sixth or eighth grades.
I was about to say that it was taught in those
grades, but that would be an exaggeration of fact.
Our one-room school teachers were, as I previously
noted, not highly educated and as the gap between
my ignorance and the teacher's ignorance narrowed,
as it did in the upper grades, the feedback was
minimal. For example, the teacher would tell us by

MoGauheyt rote that an adjective modifies a noun, but "modify"
didn't mean anything to either the teaoher or pupil.
So we did a certain amount of parroting and passed
the grammar course, our errors probably undetected.
This does not mean that we did not use correct
English. Reading had taught us to use language but
we didn't know the rules.

However, the high school requirement that we
study a foreign language for two years was Just what
we needed. My sister and I elected Spanish because
we were oriented to the language by what my father
had learned in Central America. In those days you
began language study with an in-depth examination
of its grammar. So we learned grammar in Spanish
and translated it back from Spanish to English.

All the time I was in high school I kept my
horses but had little time for riding as I worked
every evening on a popcorn stand and every night in
a movie house. In summers I worked. In the sawmills
or in the fruit orchards to make the money for
clothing and books. But as the time approached for
going off to college both my father and I sold our
horses and never owned one again, although we rode
from time to time throughout the years.

College in Corvallis

McGauhey: I decided that I wanted to be a civil engineer so

early in life that I cannot trace the origin of the
idea. I doubt that I had much idea what a civil
engineer does, but I had one time been in contact
with a surveyor. The persistent rumor that a county
road was to be built brought a survey party through
our ranch and the men stayed at our house for a while.
The road never materialized, partly because the
county surveyor contracted Rooky Mountain spotted
fever and died and the whole project fell through.
Anyway, I came along with the notion that I wanted
to study civil engineering. I was offered a
scholarship to attend Whitman College in Walla Walla,
Washington where I might study music or possibly
science. But I didn't get started in music early

McGauheyr enough and I felt I would never make It in that
area.

Challt What music were you interested in?

MoGauhey: The violin. I took violin lessons throughout my

high school years and played in the school orchestra.
Then I had a small dance orchestra in college, and
a chamber music and beer-drinking society in later
years. I had a lot of fun and I still enjoy playing
music, but it was my Judgement that I didn't have
the fire-power to do it well enough. Besides, the
desire to be a civil engineer had been around a long
time before I thought of any alternative, so we
decided that I should go to what was then the Oregon
Agricultural College (now Oregon State University)
at Corvallis.

By that time my father had become the principal
partner in a leather shop in La Grande. He was an
excellent leather worker, among his many talents,
and he taught us a lot of the techniques. La Grande,
however, is not the warmest spot on earth In the
winter; thirty below zero was common in those years.
The houses were indifferently heated with stoves
and the wind scarcely slowed down as it passed through
the old house we had rented. Therefore, father and
mother decided the family might as well move to
Corvallis. "If you all are going to college, we might
as well too," he said. And so we moved to Corvallis.

My sister and I were ready for college at the
same time. We had been in the same grade since the
third grade and so continued until our senior year
in college when I began the summer with an appendectomy
and was unable to earn the money for the coming fall.

When we got to Corvallis, my father, who by that
time was sole owner of the leather shop, opened it
for a while; then closed it and went to work for the
county, again as a carpenter on bridge construction.
But after four or five years he opened the shop again
and kept it in operation until at the age of sixty-eight
he closed it and retired.

Challt What type of leather goods did he make?

McGauhey: Almost any kind that anyone wanted made or repaired.
He made boots and briefcases, and he braided leather
bridles and trappings for horses desired by the
horsey set. He repaired shoes and made special
shoes for those who required them. But his local
fame rested upon his ability to make or repair
anything that someone else said couldn't be made or
repaired.

I went to college at Oregon State when it had,
as it has today, some excellent professors. Originally
I was in the class of '26 but, as I have said, I
ran out of funds at the end of the 1925 session. I
came to California and stayed with an aunt of mine
for several months; then, my health improved, I went
back to Corvallis and went to work in a grocery
store to get money for my final year. With a little
borrowing at the last I finished my B.S. degree work
in June 192?.

In 1927, employers were not standing in line
to hire college graduates. I took civil service
examinations and shopped around for about a month,
finally getting a job with the U.S. Bureau of Public
Roads. The Bureau was constructing a new highway on
Mount Rainier from Narada Palls to Paradise Inn.
It was a very interesting summer. It ended in my
leaving the west to begin a teaching career, as I
shall soon relate. First, a little more of the
background that led me into teaching.

Decision to Teach

MoGauhey: I might say that although my father was anxious for
us to go to school, and made every sacrifice to make
it possible, we had to carry ourselves beyond the
contribution of food and lodging. I was small for
my age and never weighed 120 pounds until after I
went to college. The sawmill work in high school
years was hard so by the time fall came around I was
rich enough to pay expenses and beaten up enough to
be glad to get back to school and the night shift in
the movie house. In college, prior to my disastrous
summer of 1925, I worked on a forest fire patrol on
a lookout station during the summers and on the

MoGauhey: Janitorial force in the winters. I have estimated
that I swept an area roughly equal to that of the
state of Texas, but that may be an over-estimate.
I supplemented my three hours per day on the broom
gang with the orchestra and odd Jobs. The summertime
was somewhat lonely as for more than six weeks I
saw no humans, although I reported in each day via
telephone. I did observe a lot of detail of nature.

Chall: That was in Oregon?

MoGauhey: Yes, in the magnificent forest area of western Oregon
later destroyed by the infamous Tillamook Burn.

Chall: With so strenuous a work program, how did you manage
to study?

MoGauhey: It has taken me overlong to get around to that

matter. It was the work program that oriented me
to the idea that I was better suited to live by
my brain than by brawn, which I did not have. I
studied with the same intensity that I worked, but
part of my learning technique led on in the direction
of teaching. Both in high school and in college I
always had a satellite group of fellow students who
were concerned to pass their courses and to say in
school. They seemed to rely on me to explain to
them what they didn't understand — which in some oases
was considerable. My father often told me that if
I charged my hangers-on I wouldn't have to work so
hard. But as I told him, I came to understand the
subject matter of my courses by trying to tell my
satellites something that I didn't know too well
myself. By experimenting with ways to penetrate
their darkness I came to see the light myself. I
presume I saw it more clearly, as I got better grades
than my students without withholding from them any
key information.

In high school during my freshman year I assisted
my fellows by doing it for them — a practice which I
soon dropped for lack of time. I wrote themes for
other students and collected fifteen cents per theme.
Themes were usually required to be 150 words in
length, which seemed to many students to be about a
book-length novel. Despite my deficiency in the rules
of grammar I could write "by ear," so to speak, on a

McGauheyx variety of topics. One thing about ranoh life and
hard work, you see enough action for a good many
150-word reports. It didn't occur to me then that
writing themes might not be quite cricket, but the
teachers never complained, the students passed,
and I got the fifteen cents.

Chall: A pretty cheap rate per word.

MoGauhey: Yes, although I think I am still writing for about
that rate. I didn't gain much; Just got so I could
write faster and so generate the longer themes
required in today's world.

Well, out of this background I began to think
that perhaps I would like to teach. The idea
developed near the end of my college days when it
occurred to me that I really enjoyed matching my
ignorance against that of another, working with
people, and exploring the depths of natural phenomena.

Virginia Polytechnic Institute. 1927

MoGauhey x While casting about for employment prior to going to
work for the Bureau of Public Roads, in 192?» I had
answered an advertisement in Civil Engineering
magazine for an instructor in an unidentified college
in the East. As the summer progressed it developed
that the opening was at the Virginia Polytechnic
Institute (VPI) — Virginia's land grant college — in
Blaoksburg, Virginia. The need was for someone to
teach in the field of surveying and water power
engineering. I had taken all the courses offered
at Oregon State that dealt with water and water
engineering. I am fascinated by water, probably
because there wasn't any where I grew up. I neglected
to say before that the Middle Pork of the John Day
River ran through our ranoh, about a quarter of a
mile straight down below our ranoh house. But we
were too busy to go near it and livestock patently
preferred the water my sister and I had to wrench
from the earth by means of a pitcher pump located in
our well.

MoGauhey: VPI was beginning a campaign to diversify its
staff and I guess my background was about as
diverse as one could ask. At any rate I accepted
the offered instruotorship and moved to Virginia.
In those days we got $1500 for nine months. I
believe it was actually $1560, the difference being
far greater than the affluent instructor of today
might think.

During my senior year I had been working in
college at surveying and drafting, having graduated
from the "broom gang" with the disaster of 1925.
At VPI my new boss and Head of the Department of
Civil Engineering, was Colonel R.B.H. Begg. Colonel
Begg was a lineal descendant of Robert Burns, a
delightful gentleman, a good civil engineer, and
perhaps the most highly and broadly educated man I
have ever known. He put me to work the first day on
some surveying and drafting for the college, Inasmuch
as school had not started, and finding that I was a
skilled draftsman he never let me off the hook from
then on.

The Department of Civil Engineering was
responsible for all the engineering work for the
college: mapping, grading, constructing drives
and walks, refurbishing buildings, developing and
operating the water supply and sewerage systems,
and supervising general construction. Thus I had
the opportunity to do engineering work right from
the beginning, even though I was not in a location
where there was outside engineering that the young
man could get involved in. In those days, 192?,
and the years that followed, fifteen credit hours
was a normal teaching load, although few faculty
members ever got through the year without at least
one quarter with eighteen credit hours of teaching.
I often contrast this with the one or two courses
we hear about today and through the years have
found it hard, to shed a tear for the poor overworked
professor. But in any event those were pretty heavy
loads, especially when doing engineering work along
with it. I recall one year in which I put in six
hundred hours at drafting besides carrying the
fifteen-elghteen hour teaching schedule.

Challr What subjects were you teaching?

McGauhey* In that first year I taught three or four varieties
of surveying and water power engineering. But that
was only the beginning. The variety oame later, as
I shall describe in due course.

At the end of the first year I invested in a
secondhand oar and drove out to Oregon to marry
Marguerite Gerow, whom I had met in college. We
sold the oar and bought passage on a ship bound for
New York via the Panama Canal and Cuba. Back in
Blaoksburg we didn't have any money and we didn't
have a oar. We had to walk all winter but felt it
worth the price. Our salary was $1800 that year;
and we stayed on at VPI because it soon became
apparent that the college was going my way in my
time. I had begun to do graduate study in what
turned out to be sanitary engineering, chemistry,
and microbiology. A minor area of study was required
as well as a major area, so I selected mining
engineering because it was one of the Important
activities in the coal mining country. I learned
a great deal about coal mining which I never
practiced, although on one occasion I did teach all
the courses offered in mining that quarter because
the professor was taken ill. For this presumption
I offered no apologies because the professor was a
miserable teacher, although a fine engineer, and the
likelihood of my doing worse was remote.

Challi You were teaching the second year as well as taking
all these courses; you were still an instructor
with that heavy load?

McGauhey: Oh, yes. Loads never seemed to be any great problem.
I didn't know there was any other way of life and it
never occurred to me that work could be overdone.
It is largely a matter of organization and speed of
reaction.

In 1929 I received the Civil Engineering degree
from VPI — the equivalent of a Master's degree — and
was promoted to Assistant Professor at a salary of
$2^00 per year. I worked that summer on construction
and the following summer for the shipyard in Newport
News, Virginia. Then I decided to go to the
University of Wisconsin to work for the PhD. In
those days we had to pay our own way in graduate

MoGauhey: school so much of it was done in the summers at
Wisconsin. By that time I was teaching water
supply and sewerage, microscopy of water, chemistry
and biology for sanitary engineers, water power,
surveying design, and a few optional courses in
applied hydraulics and public health engineering.
I also was teaching two courses in photography,
mostly at night; and doing a considerable amount
of professional photography and writing. By 193**-
I had everything done for the PhD except writing
the dissertation, for which the research was
finished, and completing the language and residence
requirements. Then I broke down with tuberculosis.

Chall: You were living in Wisconsin?
MoGauhey: No, I was still living in Virginia.
Chall: And studying for the PhD at Wisconsin?

MoGauhey: Through summertime classes in Madison and off -campus
research during the winter.

Sanatorium Years

MoGauhey t My physical breakdown was, perhaps, no surprise to
others who have greater respect for the limitations
of the human body. But be that as it may, I went
into drydook with a 5 percent chance of ever getting
out; and, in fact, with scarcely more than a 5 percent
chance of living for six months.

Chall: You must have been walking around for some time with
tuberculosis.

McGauhey: Of that there can now be little doubt, although I

was examined from time to time by the normal routines
of that day. Evidently, I came from tough stock
and it took a lot of beating to knock me out. And
by then the hour was late.

I went to the state sanatorium and as time went
by I began to gain in weight and strength. But
there was a small cavity high up in the left lung

MoGauhey: and neither the pneumothorax nor the phrenectomy
procedures oould close It up.

Ghall: Did you then stay home and rest?

MoGauhey: No; I spent more than two years In the sanatorium
and in the hospital. My wife stayed on and worked
at VPI. Eventually I went to the University of
Virginia hospital in which we had a health membership
and risked the surgical routines. In those days
they were Just starting to collapse lungs by
thoracoplasty and the percentage of survival was
about 10 percent. I elected to take that chance
rather than to drag on to eventual certain disaster.
The surgery was done In three operations. The first
two were done two weeks apart in the summertime when
It was as hot as few places can match. There was no
air conditioning at that time, so both the surgery
and the weather sweat me out but I held on.
Eventually a head nurse with a bad cold came in and
sneezed in my face and the results were as bad as
you might suggest. Again my ancestors pulled me
through and the surgery cleared up the TB. So after
the drydock years I went back to teaching at VPI.
Of course, I rested some in the afternoons for
several years, but I had no more trouble with the
"bug" and lived on to become somewhat of a medical
miracle and as active as ever in all aspects except
"ground speed" and the strenuous types of physical
labor.

During the two years I spent in bed I had
plenty of time to read; and I did read and write a
lot and do some study of cartooning.

Chall: What did you read?

McGauhey: I read all manner of things. I had every magazine
you can imagine. I subscribed to the weekly
newspaper from Mexico City and got so I could read
even the Indian dialects. And I read classics, I
read history, I read economics. Sometimes I got
tired of reading, but I did a lot of it, and thought
a great deal about what I had read and experienced.

When I got out of drydook I went back to
Wisconsin, did a new round of research, and wrote

MoGauhey: a new thesis. But World War II caught me without

the required residence and the language requirements.
I had either to settle for a Master's degree in the
hydraulic and sanitary engineering field or leave
VPI and stay around Wisconsin while, as it turned
out, I would have been left to do most of the
teaching. So I settled for the M.S. and went back
to my position at VPI where I became full professor
of Sanitary Engineering.

Chall: You never did get your PhD?

MoGauhey i No, but that was not a oatastrophy. By the time the

war was ended it was no longer of any great importance.
Of course, If the degree had been the all-consuming
goal of my life it could have been achieved. But
there comes a time when a man has shown whether he
can grow scholastioally and professionally. At
that time the degree that suggests that the young
man has such a potential is no longer critical.
Either you have achieved some measure of growth or
you are not going to. So in my case and at my age
it was more appropriate to look to new goals rather
than to achieve the goals of yesterday.

In 1936, when I was back from the hospitals,
our sanitary engineer departed from VPI for a
government post and I inherited the Division of
Sanitary Engineering. I continued to teach under
graduate courses and graduate courses in both
sanitary and hydraulic engineering and to keep up
the photography courses. I worked one summer for
the state on its marine biology boat engaged in
shellfish sanitation work on Chesapeake Bay. I
designed and built a sewage treatment plant for the
town and the college and built several smaller
treatment works. I built a small power plant and
dam, drilled water wells, and conducted team research
on stream pollution by cities and industry. I
served for five years as the Civil Engineer member
of the State Board of Engineer Examiners, and came
to know most of the engineering profession in the
state.

In 19^8, when I had been professor for some ten
years an opportunity arose to move to California.

The Move to California.

McGauhey: My wife and I had always told ourselves that someday
we would like to move to California and eventually
retire there. We had visited there often through
the years and were inclined to the idea that if you
have the opportunity you have talked about for
years, you ought to take it. The opening was for
a professorship at the University of Southern
California. After considerable hesitation we accepted.

Uprooting was even harder than we had expected.
Our entire married life of twenty years had been
spent in Virginia and we were not thinking of any
going home in returning West. We loved Virginia and
I was at the top of the profession there. So many
students had gone through my classes that I felt
that we knew everyone in the state. However, there
was one deciding factor of which I have not spoken.
That was a matter of ragweed hay fever. It had
long given me trouble but after the pulmonary episode
it moved in in earnest. Thus I was in misery or in
the hospital every summer, and the irritation
softened me up for another two months of misery when
the furnace dried out the house dust in the winter.
It was becoming obvious to me that Virginia was not
the ideal climate for me much longer with my history
of problems and the severity of the allergy.

Once the move was made we enjoyed life at the
University of Southern California. We bought a
house and settled down with the intention of staying.
However after two years, and through no particular
fault of the university, it became evident that it
could not go my way in my time, so I went back to
VPI as head of the Department of Civil Engineering,
replacing Colonel Begg who had retired. But an era
at VPI had come to an end. All the people who had
led the college in my years were soon to be replaced.
Dean Earl Norris was about to retire; a new president
had been appointed; and a new direction of growth was
in order. It struck me that one ought not to linger
on as the bridge between the past and the future.
So in this mood, and with ragweed season soon to come
around, I was receptive to events that were to bring
me back to California.

Chall: When did this return to Virginia and California
take place?

MoGauheyt I went back to Virginia in 1950 and left there at
the end of the 1950-51 academic year. A new era
was beginning at the University of California under
the guidance of Professor Harold B. Gotaas; the
Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory was Just
emerging, and Professor Harvey F. Ludwig, whom I
had known in Southern California, suggested to Dr.
Gotaas that he should have an assistant in the
Laboratory and that MoGauhey should be the one.
But that is a story we are scheduled to discuss in
a later interview.

Chall: Yes. Let us discuss today more of the background
and personal factors which may have influenced
your contributions in what you have called a "new
era at California.'1 You came to Berkeley in 1951?

McGauhey: We arrived here on July 4, 1951. I think that was
the coldest summer Berkeley ever had. I do not
recall that the fog lifted during the period July
to September that year and, being somewhat of a sun
worshiper, I wondered what sort of a place we had
gotten into. Either we became acclimated or that
was one of the worst years; anyway we have lived
here and enjoyed it.

Chall: You seem to have crossed the United States many
times during your career.

McGauhey: Yes, we did most of the traveling for the family.
We had no children and so we came West to visit
relatives a number of times before we made the two
moves I have described. My wife had one sister and
her parents living in the Vancouver, Washington area.
My father and mother lived with my sister in
Vancouver, Washington and subsequently in Eugene,
Oregon after my father retired. My father lived
until five days before his ninetieth birthday. He
Just finally wore out with age, although he did
suffer some in final years from deterioration of
the vertebrae injured sometime in his horse breaking
days or from accidents on bridge construction. My
mother died in 1971* six months past the age of 101
years, as a result of a fall which broke her hip.
Her mind was clear until the end. Most of her sisters

MoGauheyt lived into their nineties, the last one passing

away in the spring of 19 ?2 at the age of ninety-six.

An Attitude Toward Life and Work

Chall: You certainly came from good stock.

MoGauhey: I credit my ancestors for the inheritance that made
possible my survival. In 1934 I thought I had about
used up my credit in that department, but in 1966
I borrowed on It again. No one expected the survivor
of a thoraooplasty to carry on for thirty years so
we were not surprised when I eventually had some
trouble with staphylooooous lingering on after the
annual or biennial flu that we all seem heir to.
Soar tissue Is a good place for such organisms
because although they can't immediately get into the
blood stream to harm you, you can't get at them
either with antibiotics. Thus eventually they caused
some small breakthroughs which showed blood.

I took the matter up with Dr. Paul Samson,
Oakland's famous chest surgeon who explained the
matter to me and suggested that there was no way of
telling whether one might live until ninety and die
of some other ailment, or experience a catastrophic
break in an arterial wall. The alternative was to
remove the old lung. Well, even after time had
erased many of the memories of the three previous
operations, I did not know whether I wanted any more
surgery. After considering the matter for some days
I said "Let's take it out." So Dr. Samson did Just
that.

Chall j That's done satisfactorily these days.

McGauhey: Yes they have made real advances in chest surgery.

Back in the mid-thirties the survival rate was about
10 percent. Today it is 90 percent. It took me a
little longer this time to get back into full stride
but I'm better off than ever for having taken the
hard road.

MoGauhey: I suppose my decision in this matter reflects
an attitude toward life that dates back over many
years. While I was lying in the sanatorium reading,
I had time to reflect on many things. I developed
a philosophy of life that leads me to believe that
a lot of things that worry many people shouldn't
be taken too seriously. I have often said that
everyone ought to be required to attend a performance
of Gilbert and Sullivan every six months until he
learns to recognize opera bouffe when he sees it.
This routine would be especially useful to university
employees — professors and. administrators — who get
ulcers or come apart at the mental seams at the
things that go on around universities. Misfortune
and good fortune left me glad enough to be alive,
so that I don't take the comic opera of university
life too seriously. After the drydock experience I
approached my work with accustomed energy and
seriousness of purpose, but when night comes I've
been able to go to sleep without danger of ending
up with ulcers.

Chall: It's a point of view, then.

McGauhey: It's a point of view, and it was a hard way to learn,
but nevertheless, having learned, it becomes mighty
useful.

Chall: You were able to use it effectively for quite a
number of years; and I should think it would be
better to work with a person like you who doesn't
tend to take everything as if the next day was
doomsday.

McGauhey: Obviously I would hope that such might be the case.
One cannot know what other people think about him
except if he is universally disliked. I only know
that I have a multitude of friends all over the
world and that I appreciate them. Instinctively,
I like people. In that respect, as in many others,
I am very much like my mother. I like people without
having first to decide whether the way they behave
is the way I want to behave myself.

Chall: You accept them.

MoGauhey: Yes. Occasionally the payoff leaves something to be
desired, but it strengthens one's character.

Avocations: Photography and Writing

Chall: You seem to have been dedicated to your work and

to have developed a philosophy of life which makes
your work satisfying to you. Can you suggest what
inner goals have led you on?

McGauhey: I have spoken of my abiding interest in water; but
I think that the answer to your question is that
I have always been interested in anything that is
going on. They said of Caesar, you know, "Because he
was ambitious, we slew him." I have been to some
degree slaughtered at times, probably because my
ambitions were to satisfy my interests, rather than
to dominate other people. I had ambition to do a
lot of things. In fact, there wasn't much of any
thing I didn't want to do. I wanted to be a
photographer; I wanted to be a writer; I wanted to
be a musician; I wanted to learn how nature and man
had put things together. So I hacked away a little
at all of them and had a lot of fun, but was never
willing to put all my energies into one of them with
the intent of becoming world renowned in that area.

During the years that I taught photography,
which I had studied in college, I did some pictorial
work. There are some examples of it here on my
office wall. I did an endless amount of commercial
photography; pictures of machinery, laboratory setups,
stock shows, and conference groups. I did some
portrait work, especially of children, but didn't
like this type of photography. People are no Judge
of their own portrait and so if you don't charge
them an outlandish price they are dissatisfied.
Children are fun to photograph but before the photog
rapher can set up his equipment the parents begin
poking at them until they get so confused and
nervous that good pictures are quite impossible to
achieve.

Chall: Where did you do this work?

McGauhey: At VPI. There I had a large darkroom and equipment
setup in my home. But after I came to California I
did not have any darkroom; and I did not have time
to do more than make color slides of our travels.

McGauhey: I have also done an awful lot of writing, and

perhaps a lot of awful writing, during the years.

Ghall: Oh, you did that too?

MoGauhey: Yes, I had to have something to do in my spare time.

Challi You had some?

MoGauhey: Probably it was more energy, or enterprise, than

time that I had to spare. Anyway, I filled up most
of the wastebaskets in the U.S. over a period of
years, writing short stories and essays. I
occasionally got one published.

Ghall: Under your own name?

MoGauhey i Yes, but they mainly served to teach me how to write.
I did actually sell a poem; which Isn't too common
In the world of engineering.

Challi No, it certainly isn't.

McGauhey: In college I found time to take courses in Journalism
and in short story writing. This latter course I
took with a class of English majors and was one of
the two members of the class that got an A grade.
I suppose they were thinking about how to apply rules
while I was writing "by ear" as usual and from
better observation of human beings.

While at VPI I completed a book manuscript but
did not work too hard to get it published after an
initial rejection slip. I was moving to California
at that time and so went on with other things. I
came across the manuscript the other day and in
reading it over, I now see what it needs. Half of
it is salvageable, I think. In fact it is not too
bad and I have in mind tidying it up when I can get
through with the endless technical writing I have
gotten into since my retirement in 19&9«

Chall: Oh, that's a book that you haven't published. I've
read the one that you did have published — your
engineering book.* It reads well.

*P.H. McGauhey, Engineering Management of Water Quality,
McGraw-Hill, N.Y. 1968.

MoGauhey: I wrote that in one summer to meet my lecture

schedule for an Institute on Water Resources at
the Utah State University. However, It Is more
fun to write with less discipline about subjects
that give freedom to the imagination. In that
category I wrote a book of poems, which I had
published privately. I shouldn't say poems — it is
really verse dealing mostly with ranch life. People
that understand what I am writing about better than
they do poetry seem to enjoy it, and I am giving
some thought to including it with other material I
hope to publish professionally.* But that doesn't
matter here.

The point is that being interested in writing
all those years, and working at it, has been a
great help to me because in the countless reports,
technical papers, and research proposals I have had
to turn out I have generally been able to produce
final copies without first drafting them. That
doesn't mean that I do not do a lot of erasing and
foul up the desk around me, but nevertheless it
has been easy and I have enjoyed it. I have no idea
how many things I have written.

Chall: Reports and papers?

McGauhey: Reports and papers, chapters for various books,

editorial comments, essays, and Journal articles.
I like to get up in the morning and dash off such
good-natured cynicism as this one which I call "To
Raise a Cat."*

Chall s May I take this and read it?
McGauhey: You may, indeed.

Chall: What about your stories? Were they all on your
background?

MoGauhey: Actually not, except that they dealt with people
such as wandered through my background years.
Principally I am concerned with situations, people
caught in situations they don't understand. I
prefer to write non-fiction, and my book is of that
nature and intended to be humorous.

*See Appendix.

Chall: Does it concern things that went on at VPI?

MoGauhey: No, that would be a task for a novelist. It is

rich in material. I am concerned at present with
an earlier period. You may understand that on a
cattle ranch there's a lot going on. Prospectors
spent the winter with us feeding cattle, sheep
herders were everywhere, and interesting characters
came and went. There is a lot of material in my
memories of the one-room sohoolhouse. There you
don't do the kind of things you do when sitting
with your peer group today. In one of my little
essays, I reflect on what It would have been like
to have turned up as a boy in our school carrying
his doll to show to other kids.

Chall: Oh, yes. Show and Tell.

MoGauhey: In a school room with merciless characters ranging
up to eighteen years of age, life was traumatic
enough Just having to wear knee pants — but carrying
a doll. God forbid!

The kind of things that children do today as
children would have required a stouter heart in
my school days than is given to man. But these
are some of the kinds of things I find interesting.

The MoGauhey Family and the Homestead Ranch

Chall: Well, they're lost, you know, if you don't get them
down. The kind of society you knew is not with us
anymore, and these things are useful to have in our
collective memories, I think.

What happened to your sister and brother along
the line?

MoGauhey: My sister studied home economics when we were in

college together. Later she went back and got her
Master's Degree in Spanish. She taught in high
schools all over the West, beginning, as I recall,
in Nevada; then in Arizona, Washington, and Oregon.
She retired, in 1968 from Willamette High in Eugene,

MoGauhey: Oregon, where she had been for some years. Her

husband was a forester In the Oregon state department
of forestry. He was injured in the woods and died
some ten years ago. So she stayed on in the
teaching in which she spent most of her active life.
She also worked for a while for the federal govern
ment back in the Depression days, when they were
doing a lot of rural rehabilitation.

My brother studied mechanical engineering but
he was graduated in the Depression years. He was
inclined to go into farming and ranching, and after
some months working at whatever he could find to do
he bought some land at Junction City, Oregon. His
energy and enterprise Impressed the owner of the
land who let him have it without any down payment.
There he operated a general farm mostly producing
seed grain and hay. He also owned enough sheep and
cows to make some profit from wool and milk sales.

When his daughter and son went away to college,
married, and started teaching careers of their own,
he leased most of his land and went to work as night
superintendent of a large pre-stressed concrete
plant. His area of interest while in college
included heat engineering and his responsibility in
the plant was the proper steam curing of large beams
and structural members such as those used in bridges
and modern buildings. There is enough money tied
up in a few of these units to bankrupt a company if
the curing operation fails. At this time my brother
and his wife continue to live on their land, although
the crop land is leased to others.

Chall: So he got back into engineering after all. And your
family didn't keep any of that land they had acquired
in eastern Oregon?

MoGauhey: No. They sold It while I was in college. People

could make a living on that land only when a pioneer-
type of life prevailed. We depended upon horses
for power, and pumped water and sawed wood by hand.
The time came when people Just couldn't make enough
by hand labor to support a family. The work on a
ranch such as ours was about 75 percent overhead,
maintenance, and repairs; only about 25 percent was
productive. As you know, in any kind of activity
today, if you can't do it with machinery you are not

MoGauhey: going to make any kind of a profit. The margin is
Just too small. So homesteaders acquired ownership
to the land by living on it and improving it for
five years. Then when they had a clear title,
they sold it and moved away. This phenomenon was
already apparent in the decline in pupils in our
school districts while I was in elementary school.

Land ownership went into bigger and bigger
units until now, in 2500 square miles of the area
we knew, there are only six ranches. These six
do not own the entire 2500 square miles. Most of
the land belongs to the Georgia Pacific Company.
Our old ranch belongs to a man and his wife who,
incidentally, was the eldest daughter of our nearest
neighbor. She was a schoolmate of mine when we were
children. Her mother was trained as a nurse In the
area near Blaoksburg, Virginia where I later went.
She served as midwife at my birth and was, I believe,
pregnant with the daughter at that time. Today the
daughter and her husband own her parent's land as
well as ours and that of other settlers. They manage
8000 acres and a lot of stock.

Challi So itfs basically still cattle country?

MoGauhey: It's still cattle and cattle feed. They do little
gardening now because the highways have made the
towns accessible. Rural electrification has reached
the area which helps to increase productivity. U.S.
,395" Highway £05 crosses the Middle Pork twelve miles

east of our ranch, and quite a good gravel road runs
along the river to the ranches, so the area is not
Isolated although it has few people.

The old house that my father built when I was
four years old is still in use. The owners have
put siding on the outer walls but otherwise it is
little changed. In 1968 when I last visited there
they had the same old screen door frame on the
kitchen that was there when we left in 1918, and it
was old then. I think it was secondhand when we
got it. An old woodshed that my grandfather built
in about 1911 is still in use. The roof Is made of
shakes which he rived out of yellow pine at the time.
These shakes are still in good sound condition,
probably because of the dryness of the climate.

t3. *1

McGauhey: I have been overlong in answering the question
concerning the road that led me to Berkeley and the
background against which my activities at the
University of California might be understood or
rationalized. Fundamentally, my summation is that
I have always been Interested In everything that
is going on and have tried to bring that same kind
of interest into research. Whatever comes along
Intrigues me, and in my ignorance I become curious
about how it works. As I will explain later, if
anything seemed to me to be worth doing, of if our
Laboratory ought to be concerned with it, or if
anybody was interested enough to work on it, I was
interested enough to try to generate a project in
that area. That it might entail work, was no
consideration.

II BACKGROUND OP SANITARY ENGINEERING EDUCATION
AT THE UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Evolution of Sanitary Education Curriculum
In the United States

Chall: In our previous conversations you said that a new
era at the University was beginning, under the
guidance of Professor Harold B. Gotaas, at the
time you came to Berkeley.

McGauhey: I am sorry that I used the word "new," because it
implies that what went before was "old." And to
many people anything old is per se worthless, or
at least is valuable only as a memento of antiquity.
Nothing could be further from the truth about the
sanitary engineering program at the University of
California at Berkeley. What I should have said
was that, in 1951 » one of those periods when
university programs experience rapid growth and
expansion had set in and its eventual horizons were
unknown. Thus from my viewpoint there was an
opportunity to help build the future without the
handicap of my own institutionalized commitment
to the past.

Chall: Then the University of California has a long
history of Interest and education in sanitary
engineering.

McGauhey: It dates back over nearly two-thirds of a century.
But to do it Justice and to show how its strength
Influenced the expansion that began immediately
after World War II — and at the same time to get
on with the story of the Sanitary Engineering
Research Laboratory — requires me to tell three
stories simultaneously.

Chall:

Not an easy task. What are the three stories?

McGauhey: The first story is about the changes in engineering
curricula which affected the emergence of sanitary
engineering as a specialty area of civil engineering.
It concerns the background against which to describe
and evaluate the program at U.C., Berkeley.

The second story specifically concerns the U.C.
program. And the third outlines the situation
which I referred to as a "new era." It also described
the development of the Laboratory as an organized
research unit.

To avoid the utter chaos, which I am capable
of generating as a story teller, I think I should
tell these three stories sequentially. In so doing
I may have to use the familiar "meanwhile, back at
the ranch" technique.

Chall: I am sure you can organize the material.

McGauhey: I shall certainly try. First let me outline the

evolution of engineering education as it relates to
sanitary engineering. The interpretations will
have to be my own and the detail sketchy because It
is not our purpose here to develop a complete
history of sanitation. This may leave me open to
criticism for omitting many important events, but
it will advance our story.

Chall: Undoubtedly there are some significant highlights
which are worth recalling.

McGauhey: There are several. First, I would say, is the
famous Broad Street well case in London in 18*4-8
when Dr. John Snow proved conclusively that there
was something in water which caused the great
plagues that had swept Europe for decades. Next
was the verification by Koch and Pasteur that the
something was the microbe. This was only one hundred
years ago; in the I8?0s. In those same seventies,
also, European engineers learned again what the
Roman's once knew about the hydraulics of pipes and
aqueducts. In the 1890s the famous Laurence
Experiment Station in Massachusetts revived,
codified, and expanded what the ancient Chinese
and Egyptians knew about water clarification. And

McGauhey: In 1910 , disinfection of water by chlorine was
begun In the United States. These and related
events made public water supply an early factor
in civil engineering education.

By the time I entered college in the early
1920s every student in civil engineering was
required to study some basic hydraulics. He then
took a course in water supply engineering. This
involved finding and developing a source of water,
transporting water to the community, treating it
to some degree and distributing it to the house
holder. The course also involved the design of
necessary pipes and structures.

Initially there was no special course in what
we now call wastewater engineering. Hydraulic
courses included the Information necessary to
design pipes and channels for drainage, or sewerage.
The problem was to collect sewage or storm water in
pipes and escort it out of town. This Job was
relegated to the street department because there
was a certain degree of holiness associated with
the clean water engineers. They didn't want to get
Involved with the dirty water boys.

Chall: Is that why the same pipes are used for sewage and
surface runoff in many older cities?

McGauhey: Yes. Sewage treatment is a relatively recent

development. It began in earnest in the 1930s.
In San Francisco, for example, the most capable
engineers in the U.S. in the 1920s recommended
combined sewers; and they were built. It is easy
to forget that our concept of the ocean as the
cradle of life rather than a sink hole is of quite
recent origin.

Once a safe water supply was achieved there
was a loss of public interest in water quality until
sewage pollution of streams and beaches brought the
health department back into the act. So late in
the 1920s we had to introduce a course in sewerage
into all civil engineering curricula. This word
"sewerage," incidentally, means the whole science
and act of collecting, transporting, treating, and
discharging of wastewater. The first course dealt

McGauhey: mostly with collection and transport but it wasn't
long before it also included some degree of treat
ment. Thereupon, water supply and sewerage, along
with hydraulics, or fluid mechanics, became standard
courses required of all civil engineers.

The civil engineering curriculum had other
standard requirements also. The goal was to make
all civil engineering graduates equally prepared
to go into structures, highways, hydraulic engineering,
or general practice. There were a few elective
courses, but for the most part engineering had to
go through the first of two traumatic experiences
before they became especially significant in terms
of sanitary engineering.

Chall: What was the nature of these "traumatic experiences"?

McGauhey: The first was what I call becoming holy in the

sight of the humanists. The second was a rush to
become scientists.

I had better consider these one at a time,
beginning with our efforts to make engineers human.
As engineering emerged from its more respectable
ancestor — natural philosophy — the concept that
engineers were an uncultured lot was echoed by
various disciplines which considered themselves to
be culturally superior. This routine, you know, is
one way to put down those whom you cannot get at in
any other fashion — the assumption of cultural
superiority. As far back as I can remember, and
until World War II, the French used this technique
effectively on Americans. But that is another story.
Engineering curricula were in need of a reexamination
anyway. They were top heavy with "how- to-do-it"
courses based on current technology which was no
longer current by the time the graduate was
responsible for the doing. There was a certain
amount of loss of self-confidence and a rush to
confess our scholastic sins. But I think we in
engineering education generally agreed that we had
to make room in the curriculum for enough of the
so-called "humanities" and general subjects to give
engineers a greater area of common knowledge shared
with other humans. At least, that was the theory,
and we proceeded to institutionalize it in our
accreditation criteria.

Chall: About when did this occur?

McGauhey: Generally In the early 1930s, although it was

advocated and accomplished in different universities
at different dates. So we stripped out part of
the required courses dear to the hearts of some
professors In order to make room for the humanities.

Chall: What did you strip out?

McGauhey: Railroad engineering, is a good example. The rail
roads were all built before we abandoned our courses
in how to build one. And we dropped about five
courses In surveying. We used to teach lots of
courses in surveying, not Just control surveys and
mapping. We had courses in land surveying, city
surveying, railway and highway curves and earth
work. And we had courses in precise surveying and
in astronomical surveying. All these were required
In civil engineering. Drafting and descriptive
geometry were also required.

When I left college, back in what Is now the
Late Stone Age, every civil engineer was expected
to do time on the drawing board and in driving
some stakes and doing surveying work.

Chall: Doesn't he anymore?

McGauhey: No. But the reason is not that at one time men did
senseless things which were abandoned later when
they regained their senses. It is that as knowledge
and technology advanced so did the spectrum of skills
needed to do the work of society. In engineering
education the choice was between lengthening the
period of formal education to something like the
life expectancy of man, or increasing the variety
of specialists required to carry out an engineering
project.

Chall: You followed the latter course.

MoGauhey: Yes. Especially after the second trauma which I
shall soon discuss, surveying and drafting became
classified as sub-professional activities. By
"sub- prof essional" I don't mean beneath the dignity
of man, but specialty areas which can be mastered

McGauhey: short of education as a professional engineer.
Surveying and drafting are Important work that
technology cannot do without, but there is no need
to waste the time of people in preparing them for
their careers. I once observed the supreme example
of over-education — a chap with three degrees beyond
the master's, who was peeling potatoes for his wife
who cooked in a logging camp.

However, as I have implied, most of this
shortening followed Trauma No. 2, but we did some
of it in making room for the humanities. We
eliminated design of wooden structures but we
continued to make every student of civil engineering
take courses in steel design and concrete design.
Design by that time depended less on drafting than
before, especially in skill of drawing rivet heads.
In my college days they used rivets in steel
structures; so we drew thousands of rivet heads in
our design courses. And after you've drawn a few
thousand little circles, there isn't much you can
learn by drawing ten thousand more.

With the decline in drafting as a requirement
we discontinued our course in descriptive geometry.
If you can't express yourself in graphic language
there isn't much use in being able to visualize the
conjunction of physical forms In space. It is
analogous to being a poet without being able to
speak or to write. I might say, that as it turned
out later, one man with the ability to visualize
can arrange for the computer to draw the intersections
of forms needed for constructing what engineers
design.

But I am letting my interests lead me astray.
The point here is that we eliminated from civil
engineering requirements some courses in "how-to-do-
it" and how to do sub-professional tasks. This
made room for our beginning, however grudgingly it
may have been, to get in at least some of the things
that have since been called "humanities."

Chall: Those were what?

McGauhey: Courses which deal generally with Information you
can't possibly sell to anybody. My criterion for

MoGauhey: identifying one of the humanities is simple; If
the knowledge gained is of any use as far as
peddling it off for sale, the course doesn't
qualify. But if it stretches the human imagina
tion, or broadens his concept of life and his
understanding of people, or acquaints him with
what philosophers have thought and said — and what
good came of the saying; or if it introduces him
to the accumulated wisdom of mankind, acquaints
him with history, and makes him think about its
lessons; it is, in my opinion a "humanity" at its
best.

Chall: That's an interesting definition.

McGauhey: I trust that it reveals my respect for the

humanities in engineering education. Unfortunately,
the question of their true worth has not been asked
by the engineering educator. Once room was provided
in the engineering curriculum for the "humanities,"
nobody bothered to inqure whether a course was
taught by a competent or incompetent individual.
Too often, in my experience, the assumption of
cultural superiority has generated the assumption
that engineering students are unteachable and hence
should be confined to special sections assigned to
disinterested teaching assistants or to tenured
deadheads who might dull the enthusiasm of majors
in the humanities. The record here has been spotty —
ranging from excellent courses to those which should
not be tolerated by either the engineering or the
humanities departments.

But quite aside from the merits of the package
of humanities, is the effect on sanitary engineering
education. This is what our discussion is concerned
with this morning.

Accommodating the humanities had several funda
mental effects. It caused us to start recognizing
that we were not simply minting pennies — that all
civil engineering graduates need not have exactly
the same exposure to engineering subject matter.
Obvious as this may seem on a rational basis, it
was not accomplished without academic travail.
Professors do not readily agree on anything, especially
if it endangers their favorite courses. But we managed

McGauhey: to get more of our courses into the elective

category. These courses we packaged into options;
one of which was sanitary engineering. Thus during
the 1920s and 1930s we moved in education in the
direction of specialty areas at the undergraduate
level. By offering courses beyond those normally
required of civil engineering students we turned
out graduates at the B.S. level who were pretty
well specialized in the sanitary engineering area.

Chall: What were some of these courses?

McGauhey: First in the package were the traditional courses
in water supply and sewerage. Relevant courses
such as hydrology and hydraulic engineering were
also available. To these we added courses in the
principles of treatment processes, and in functional
design of both water works and sewage treatment
plants. We added a course in sanitary engineering
laboratory. In this the student learned to perform
the tests necessary to the operation of treatment
works and to an evaluation of their performance.
We also offered in civil engineering a course in
public health engineering. It involved several
kinds of information; rural water supply — wells
and springs; devices for dealing with human wastes
in the country — the septic tank and even the old
pit privy. It Included dairy sanitation, milk
sanitation, restaurant sanitation, rodent and
mosquito control. These things are done today
largely through sanitarians and health inspectors.
But there was a time when engineers in the health
department were responsible for most of these rural
and specialized problems as well as for the public
water supply and wastewater systems. Some of us
offered a course in something we called hydroblology.

Chall: I don't know what that is.

McGauhey: It is a term we no longer use, but the course

concerned what is going on in the way of life in
waters; how it affects water quality; how an
examination of it may be used to detect pollution;
and the effects of wastes from human or other sources-
In those days we were more concerned with sewage than
with industrial wastes, but we were concerned with
things the eoologist is excited about today. You
see, some of us went to a great deal of effort to

McGauhey: prepare ourselves In this area a generation ago

because few biologists of the day were interested.

Pioneers in the Profession

MoGauhey: Here I think I ought to do a bit of explaining. I
have talked of how we developed a whole profession
of sanitary engineering by providing courses in
our colleges and. universities. But it is the role
of the engineer to make use of the findings of many
disciplines, including his own, In producing the
systems, hardware, and structures needed or wanted
by man. In engineering, educators cannot simply
manufacture courses out of their own imaginations.
There has to be some body of pertinent knowledge
before there can be a profession. And that knowledge
need not have been generated specifically for the
purpose of engineered systems. In designing our
courses we had a considerable body of knowledge
upon which to draw.

I cannot possibly in the time available today
give credit to all the pioneers who were responsible
for this knowledge. I have already mentioned the
Lawrence Experiment Station in Massachusetts as a
major example. Allen Hazen had developed and
demonstrated his theory of sedimentation. The U.S.
Public Health Service assembled in its Cincinnati
laboraties such men as H.W. Streeter, C.T. Butterfield,
W.C. Purdy, and James B. Lackey. Earl B. Phelps of
public health fame at Columbia University Joined
with the PHS group in pioneer studies of the Ohio
and Illinois Rivers. The work of this group helped
establish a basis for drinking water standards;
clarified the interrelationships between organic
wastes and aquatic life, as well as water quality;
and generally evolved the objectives of engineered
systems for pollution control and the principles
which should go Into designs intended to protect the
public health.

Meanwhile at California, W.P. Langelier was
developing the theory and process applications
needed in water purification, and Charles Gilman Hyde

MoGauhey: was teaching oivil engineers how to utilize all
this knowledge in engineered systems. We drew
heavily upon the work of these men, and others who
I shall be flayed for not naming, in designing our
oourses in sanitary engineering.

Simultaneously, for less direct engineering
purposes men like E.A. Blrge (Wisconsin!, M.C.
Whipple (Harvard), H.B. Ward (Illinois), J.G.
Needham (California), R.K. Kudo (Illinois), G.M.
Smith (Stanford), G.E. Hutohinson (Yale); and others
who I shall again be flayed for not citing, were
actively generating scientific data which we found
applicable in sanitary engineering. Without
identifying the scope of the Interest of each of
these individuals, I may say that sanitary engineering
drew upon their discoveries in fields which we today
call limnology, algology, protozoology, aquatic
biology, ecology, and so on. It was from their work
that we put together our initial courses in hydro-
biology.

But I have left until last the two greatest
deficiencies in courses required in any sanitary
engineering specialty — sanitary chemistry and
sanitary microbiology, called simply bacteriology
in those days. Engineers generally took one year
of inorganic chemistry in the areas of qualitative
and quantitative analysis. What the sanitary
engineer needed beyond that was a combination of
organic and physical chemistry scaled down to his
available time, tangential to his background in
chemistry, and interpreted in terms of water
quality. In microbiology, his need was even more
desperate, because he had no elementary course in
the area.

It is interesting and distressing to note
that engineering has long defined science as
chemistry, physios, and mathematics and persists
even in 1972 in Ignoring biology as a basic
requisite course.

Solving this question of sanitary chemistry
and microbiology course needs was not readily
accomplished. There were seldom enough students
to Justify special oourses within the chemistry

McGauheyz and biology departments; there were few professors
who knew enough about water to develop one; and
the engineer could not ooncelveably follow the
route of students majoring In chemistry and In
bacteriology to achieve his goals. In many
Institutions this problem continues unsatisfactorily
resolved.

Chall: What has been the situation at the University of
California?

McGauhey: I purposely delayed mentioning chemistry and

microbiology until the end of my first story in
order to sharpen the contrast between the general
situation and the situation at Berkeley. Here the
story is gratlfylngly different. Here the problem
was solved at the very start by employing a
competent chemist, Professor W.P. Langeller, directly
in the engineering department. Thus the sanitary
engineering program at the University of California
began with a man who had both scientific knowledge
and an understanding of how it related to sanitary
engineering.

Evolution of Sanitary Engineering Curriculum
at Berkeley, 1905-194-5

McGauhey: The story of sanitary engineering as an identifiable
area of civil engineering at the University of
California began in 1905 when Professor Charles
Gilman Hyde Joined the U.C. staff. Hyde was an
engineer's engineer — a designer, a builder, and
an Innovator. His interests were outstandingly
broad. He was a highly organized individual and his
files are a storehouse of knowledge on every aspect
of what is now sanitary and public health engineering.
His lecture notes on refuse management, for example,
show that he was twenty-five years ahead of the rest
of us in understanding of the problem and of its
possible solutions. I do not know precisely what
problems he encountered at Berkeley but I do know
that the problem of chemistry and microbiology for
engineers was solved in 1911 when Professor Wilfred
P. Langeller Joined the civil engineering staff also.

McGauhey: Professor Langelier was educated as a chemist
but came to Berkeley by way of the Illinois Water
Survey. I might note that the survey has for
three-quarters of a century been an outstanding
agency. It was a good place for a young man to
start a career in water quality control. Professor
Langelier brought to the University a rare
combination of the pure scientist and the practical
innovative engineer. At a time when most men dealt
with isolated phenomena, he unlocked the secrets of
the equilibria on which they depend. And he
designed the processes by which to harness them
in practical treatment plants. Consequently, his
influence on both the science and the art of water
quality control will not soon be forgotten. He is
among the giants from which sanitary engineering
drew its substance. And the program at California
had the benefit of his guidance. Thus it was well
established long before the years I described in my
first story.

Both Hyde and Langelier were enthusiastic and
dedicated teachers. They were also among the finest
members of the human race. I can understand why
they attracted top quality students.

During the period from 1911 to World War II
the team of Hyde and Langelier turned out an out
standing group of sanitary engineers. Essentially
all of the leading sanitary engineers in public
service and in consulting engineering In California
were students of Hyde and Langelier. Professor
Harold Gray was also a member of the team who should
not be overlooked. He taught the courses in public
health. In those days there was no school of public
health. Langelier taught the chemistry and micro
biology. Hyde taught the engineering.

Related course available to the student
concerned with the water supply and water quality
aspects of sanitary engineering were available.
You will recall from Professor Sidney T. Harding *s
memoirs that he and Professor Bernard A. Etcheverry
had a very strong program in irrigation engineering.*

*3idney T. Harding, "A Life in Western Water Develop
ment," 196?; Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California at Berkeley.

McGauhey: So the student who wanted to go beyond the
required courses in water supply and sewerage
then took courses in sanitary chemistry and micro
biology, design, hydrology, Irrigation, refuse
disposal, public health, and similar subjects as
he had time. Those who followed that route at
California came out well prepared for advancing
the level of sophistication of sanitary engineering
systems of their time. Details of the program, I
think, are best presented by Professor Langelier
himself.*

This went on until World War II. During
World War II, we ran out of students in most of
our schools. We always enrolled a few, and we also
had some Army personnel. The Army Specialized
Training program sent men for short term training
in the field of sanitation. But during the war
years the program at Berkeley, as elsewhere, lagged
for want of students.

Developments After World War II

McGauhey: In the interval Just before the close of the war —
in 19*44 — Professor Hyde retired. But when the war
was over there came a big flood of young men back
to college under the G.I. Bill. There was a demand
for expansion of every institution; and scarcely a
one that didn't tool up a great deal to do something
about it.

Chall: And the University of California was no exception.

McGauhey: Indeed not. But to describe what occurred at

Berkeley beyond expanding its staff to accommodate
numbers, I will have to go back and introduce my
third story; the one I have been calling "trauma
number two." It parallels trauma number one; only
this time it was science rather than humanities
that shook up our program.

*Langelier, Wilfred P. Oral history in process

McGauhey: During the war the physicists worked under

a protective cloak of secrecy in developing atomic
weapons. There they closed very rapidly the time
gap between discovery of a principle and its
application in hardware. This was in contrast with
the long lag period normally found in public works.
Most everything we were doing in pipe lines in the
twentieth century was known by the Romans. Basic
scientists have generally prided themselves in pure
discovery. Engineers have later — sometimes centuries
later — put it to practical use.

Shortening the lag period meant that the
discoverer and the user were often the same man,
as in this case the physicist. This frightened the
bejabbers out of the engineering profession.
Scientists, particularly physicists, were now about
to inherit the earth and there would no longer be
used for engineers. So now we had to get holy with
the scientists. But having traded in our how-to-
do-it courses for humanities we were about out of
trading stock in our undergraduate curricula. At
least, until we could go through a lot more soul
searching.

We began at once to re-examine the undergraduate
courses but we guessed correctly that it would take
several years, and the effect would be minimal. By
that time it would be too late. We had to act
quickly to become scientific enough to meet the
threat on its own grounds. That meant graduate
work, Including a PhD program. Physicists have PhD
degrees, you know, and to compete with them as
scientists called for more than our customary under
graduate knowledge of physics and chemistry.

As it turned out the PhD was a good thing for
engineering; not because it enabled engineers to
protect their field from physicists, but because it
enabled them to utilize science in the far more
sophisticated systems needed to solve the engineering
problems of today.

Chall: Was the PhD program in sanitary engineering something
entirely new?

MoGauhey: No but it was uncommon, and it had not been initiated

MoGauhey: at Berkeley. If I recall correctly, the first PhD
specifically in sanitary engineering was granted
by Harvard University in 1925 in a program initiated
and led by Professor Gordon M. Pair. In the years
that followed, his graduates Initiated programs in
other universities. But for the most part these
were the master's programs; the ones that offered
in the fifth year most everything that constitutes
a technical specialty. As I have said, curriculum
changes growing out of the humanities trauma
generally brought the student to the fifth year
before he was free to take specialty courses. This
enabled us to increase the degree of sophistication
of the courses because the students were more mature.
And we Increased the variety of courses as well.

But I must not imply that Harvard was the only
university that offered the PhD in the sanitary
engineering field. Several did so with different
areas of emphasis. Johns Hopkins, MIT, North
Carolina, and Wisconsin were among the early group.
I do not have in mind the entire list nor when they
first entered their PhD programs. VPI Joined the
group after the war. I would say that there were
perhaps twelve or fifteen such programs in the U.S.
by 19^-6 when Professor Harold B. Gotaas came to
Berkeley.

Chall: Dr. Gotaas took Professor Hyde's place?

MoGauhey: No, you could hardly say that he took Professor
Hyde's place. The world had so changed, with the
war that there was a whole new set of conditions
to be met. The PhD program was only a part of it.
We were at the threshhold of an era of expansion
of programs, a proliferation of sanitary engineering
curricula throughout the U.S., government sponsored
research and. training grants, and a new consciousness
of environmental pollution which required attention.

So Professor Gotaas took over a part of the
position formerly assigned to Professor Hyde in
the College of Engineering. With that he became
responsible for the engineering aspects of sanitary
engineering. The other part of his position was
vested in the newly created School of Public Health.

McGauhey: Principally he was to develop the area of
environmental health sciences and to coordinate
the program In sanitary engineering and the
environmental health sciences so as to exploit the
strength of each to the benefit of the University.

Chall: Was Professor Gotaas a public health engineer also?

McGauhey: In the United States It Is difficult to distinguish
between the sanitary and the public health engineer.
For the most part the public health engineers In
health departments have been educated In engineering
In the sanitary engineering programs. Thus they
work with people educated In other aspects of
health for regulatory purposes but they are still
sanitary engineers. In fact, the Bureau of Sanitary
Engineering Is a common section of a state health
department.

In Professor Gotaas1 case he was experienced
with all aspects of the task before him. He got his
doctorate at Harvard and was teaching at North
Carolina when the war broke out. However he had
prior experience In public health programs and in
consulting engineering. He went on active duty
during the war and worked on health problems of
the Americas. When he came to Berkeley he had Just
been president of the Office of Inter-American
Affairs. So he had plenty of public health experience
as well as sanitary engineering experience, both in
teaching and in design. He was well prepared to
start the new program.

The least well known of the tasks ahead was
that associated with the School of Public Health.
Schools of public health were a relatively new
phenomenon. Perhaps we had best talk first about
that aspect of the situation before we get on with
our story.

The School of Public Health

McGauhey: The School of Public Health is somewhat different
than the College of Engineering from an academic
viewpoint. A college, I am sure you understand,
is an administrative unit led by a dean, and which
has structured departments within it. Specifically, a
college has undergraduate students; that is, lower
division students in the several departments — civil
engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. Such
was the traditional structure of the College of
Engineering.

The School of Public Health, on the other
hand was a professional school. This resulted in
the greatest assortment of academic dilemmas I have
ever seen. To begin with it had some eighteen
diverse specialty areas- -administration, epidemiology
biostatistics, public health engineering, health
education, material and child care, sanitation, and
so on — all representing appropriate activities of a
large organized department of health. However, It
had no departments. Each specialty area was a one-
man department anxious to accept and further the
education of students interested in that area.

But the degree structure of the school was the
Master of Public Health, and the Doctor of Public
Health. The objective of these professional degrees
was to broaden the background of the specialist and
so to prepare him for administering a public health
unit or a department of health. To qualify for the
program the individual was required to have at least
two years of experience, and already hold a degree.
Here dilemma piled upon dilemma. Each professor,
and in fact each student, wanted to work in his own
specialty area. Yet everyone from the M.D. , with
eight years of advanced study, to the sanitarian
with a B.S. degree were to prepare themselves in
the same courses to administer a health department.
Everyone knew that no one but the M.D. will ever
become director of a local department of health.
And even in a large department the sanitarian will
not be in a large enough section to require the MPH
for his administrative duties. Public health
engineering was an engineering college function,
except for preparation for health administration.

McGauhey: The question then was how to advance students
in eighteen specialty areas under a degree umbrella
that had only a single purpose built around a set
of required core subjects. To make chaos certain,
the school began with the admission of a number of
undergraduate students. And to make the dilemma
complete--a dean is an academic anomaly unless he
has departments. Therefore, It was necessary to
appoint one individual as head of the Department
of Public Health, than give him also the title of
Dean so that he might supervise himself, yet have
the appropriate hierarchical title to sit with deans
when the affairs of the school were considered.

Chall: It sounds like an all but hopeless task.

McGauhey: Well not all of these incongruities had surfaced
at the time Professor Gotaas came. And they were
not all resolved when he left. It was known,
however, that the student should become professionally
oriented in his particular specialty area to some
extent, but broadly oriented to the whole field of
public health. This took a lot of doing and it
wasn't easy to resolve. But nevertheless, creation
of the School of Public Health at the very time
they were ready to refurbish the program in sanitary
engineering was part of the picture when they brought
in Professor Gotaas.

Chall: How was the problem ever solved?

McGauhey: In the academic world one learns to live with

problems, hence a total resolution is not always
possible. But I may say now, and explain later,
that we did three things to resolve the problem —
after a few years of trying to identify the problem.
First we discontinued the undergraduate program.
Then we shrunk the required core course material
to the extent that each student had some time to
study in his professional specialty area. Finally
we added the M.S. and PhD degrees to accommodate
the student who wanted to apply his knowledge of any
science or other field of learning to the area of
public health. But much of that came along later.

To begin solving the problem, Professor Gotaas
took stock of what we had left after the war.

McGauhey: Professor Langeller was still with us at the time
and teaching the chemistry. In the PhD program to
come it was recognized that chemistry would be one
of its strongest areas in and beyond the M.S. level.
Thus more of Professor Langelier*s time would be
needed in guiding research. Therefore it was
decided that microbiology should be vested in a
professional microbiologist. Since he might have
a strange professional home in the School of Public
Health, where there was other activity of a
biological nature, Professor Gotaas proposed to
place him there. The idea was that although his
professional home and payroll status was in the
school, he would in fact be the microbiologist
for sanitary engineering.

Re-evaluation of the Curriculum

McGauhey: Engineering curricula are always under constant
scrutiny. The humanities experience did not for
long suppress the idea inside engineering that the
engineer should become what I call a "specialist in
generalities." Prom the outside, the blame for
failure of the non-technical specialties to solve
economic or social problems for which they were
educated, is normally placed upon the engineer.
This current pastime was abroad in 19^6 as usual.
Therefore, one of the early problems in establishing
the graduate program was what changes should be
made in engineering course context and requirements.

W.C. Pardy, in the Public Health Service, had
a sign on his wall dealing with how to write a
technical paper. It said, "Revise, rewrite, delete,
deplete, de-gas, de-water, and de-bunk." Step one
was to apply that criterion to existing courses.
This began in 19^6 and continues in 1972. Looking
back I see that in sanitary engineering the principal
task was to de-gas courses without depleting them
too much, and to resist the perennial desire of
structures-oriented civil engineers to de-water the
curriculum entirely.

McGauhey: At the undergraduate level there was competition
between the various areas of interest in civil
engineering for currlcular time. We were slow to
recognize that the total of human knowledge had
overrun our concepts of what a four- year curriculum
should contain. The truth was that sanitary
engineering as a field was by 19^6 already more
diverse than was the whole field of civil engineering
prior to 1920. The same was true of the structural
engineering area. It had long since forgotten about
drawing rivet heads and was eager to get room for
such engineering sciences as elasticity, plasticity,
computer science and so on. Transportation was no
longer a course in pavement design. Traffic, vehicle
safety, freeway "spaghetti," and numerous other
environmental aspects were important.

In 19^6 professors were all eager to get a
foundation established in the undergraduate years
on which to build both their scientific and
engineering graduate programs. But there were still
several types of resistance. We were not ready to
abandon the historic concept that every civil
engineer should take a course in electrical
engineering, and another in mechanical engineering
for the good of his soul. We did recognize that
these courses had been generally useless for at
least a generation. But we still hoped this could
be corrected by correcting the course content — one
of the most persistent of all the futile notions I
have experienced as an educator.

Within the department we also behaved in
predictable fashion. It was a rare professor Indeed
who could entertain the possibility that society
could survive a generation of civil engineers who
had not taken his favorite course. This applied
both to his existing course and to the scientific
dream course he proposed to generate. I think civil
engineering in 19*4-6 had reached the situation of
"three little bugs in a basket, with hardly room
for two. " The reasons were the rapid proliferation
of knowledge and the glacier-like rate of change in
educational viewpoints.

Chall: This was going on when Dr. Gotaas came in?

McGauhey: It was going on in the academic world, at least.
And it was certainly waiting in the wings at
California. At the time Dr. Gotaas came it was
evident that we must go for higher degrees. But
some of the most difficult problems confronting
him were: What are we going to leave in the
curriculum? Where, in the hierarchy of degrees is
it to be located.

Chall: This was evident because the college had to provide
more sophisticated scientific knowledge, or because
it seemed that you had to do it in order to make
yourself scientific, whether it was needed or not?

MoGauhey: I think that the initial shock wave generated by the
physicists in wartime hastened our inevitable
re-evaluation of engineering by the profession.
It did not take long for us to see that the engineer
in the years ahead could not fulfill his role as
a synthesizer of knowledge so as to provide the
structures and hardware and the systems needed in
environmental control unless he had enough education
to understand the knowledge to be synthesized. It
was obvious that civilization was going to demand
technology and that education must produce somebody
to fulfill the role long assigned to the engineer.
As I look back, the problem was the ancient one of
changing institutionalized concepts rather than of
self preservation against the cannibalism of science.

Professor Gotaas was never impressed by the
physicist as a bogeyman. His attitude on this point
is best illustrated by his reaction to a report
that another Individual was invading his particular
area of research interest. He said, "There's enough
work in the world for everybody. " I think that was
his attitude toward, the engineer versus physicist
scare.

Chall: How was the problem of courses approached?

McGauhey: Action was begun on several fronts. One was the
development of graduate courses. In sanitary
engineering Professor Gotaas developed a central
graduate course for sanitary engineering which ran
through the academic year. It concentrated on the
theory and principles of treatment of water and

MoGauhey: wastewater. At first he shared with the rest of
the profession the concept that functional design
should be a part of this course. But it soon
became evident that process design was all that
could be expected. A separate course in the
principles of functional design would have to fill
that need for those who were interested.

At the undergraduate level in civil engineering
the courses in mathematics, chemistry, and physics
were expanded. The basic engineering sciences were
identified. And the perennial "curriculum committee"
of the department was directed to the task of
recommending which courses should be made elective,
which required, and which discontinued.

Chall: While these deletions, de-gassing, and other things
were taking place, the humanities being brought in,
and graduate studies set up, there must have been
some professors with some specialties who couldn't
have helped but be upset. Did they see themselves
going out, being phased out, diminished in importance
or what?

McGauhey: Well, I don't think that anyone was actually
quarantined, but professors were upset at the
prospect of students not electing their courses.
I think Just the normal rate of attrition took care
of course elimination. For example, when we quit
teaching railroad engineering the people who taught
it were tired of teaching it and they were getting
on toward retirement. And so it sort of went by
the board. Nevertheless, as changes came on more
rapidly in more recent years, there have been
traumatic experiences of individuals. But, in
general, the change was not too abrupt. The cultural
change or the social change was not so abrupt that
it suddenly Just chopped off any need for doing
some things at all. Irrigation engineering, for
example, was a very highly respected department here
at Berkeley. But when Professors Bernard A.
Etoheverry and Sidney T. Harding retired, there
wasn't anyone particularly competent to carry on
their specific work at the same level. And so the
department disappeared from the Berkeley scene.

Chall:

Then it went to Davis.

McGauhey: The name and some aspects of the work were continued
at Davis. But at Berkeley the emphasis shifted in
new directions over a period of a few years.
Irrigation engineering was discontinued as a separate
department, but courses in this area were continued
in the Department of Civil Engineering by Professors
Russell Simpson and Fred Hotes. Professor Prank
Clendenen came along with an interest in water
resources management; and Professor David K. Todd
began developing the area of surface and ground water
hydrology. With the retirement and departure of
Simpson, Hotes, and Clendenen, irrigation engineering
entered a new phase.

So our interest turned to resource development.
It was one of those situations where sometimes a Job
is finished and you get on to another Job. Professors
went on to other Jobs or, having retired, It was not
necessary for anyone else to start doing again the
Job they had already done. That part of the problem
which dealt with how physically to get water on the
land had been pretty well solved. Now the questions
were: How much water do we put on? When do you put
it on? What are the relationships between water,
soil, and crop yield? And where in California are
we to get the necessary water? And where do we keep
it before we bring it out for use? The first three
of these questions were left largely to our Davis
campus. At Berkeley, attention was directed to the
last two.

It isn't always that tidy, but a university can
be great only in those areas where its young men lead
it. We cannot simply achieve greatness in one area
and then maintain that greatness by going out and
hiring a great man to carry on in the same field.
In engineering, especially — in environmental control —
the task changes from time to time. Otherwise our
greatness would gather dust and engineering would be
a failure.

Challenges of Developing Problems of Air,
Land, and Water Pollution

Chall:

McGauhey:

The war itself then was the break.
a cultural break in every way.

Well, it was

It brought on the discontinuity that made opportunity.
But there was one other factor that the war brought
into sharper focus — the matter of industrial wastes.
That had to be considered in our educational package
in 19^6. In early years our concern in sanitary
engineering had first been in water supply; getting
safe water, and engineering the systems necessary to
keep it safe and distribute it to people. Then we
became concerned to re-collect it and to do whatever
necessary, albeit the minimum necessary, to permit
it release back into the environment.

But during the war Industries sprung up in
great profusion here on the Pacific Coast. This
meant that we now had more concern for water quality
than Just what happens to water when it passes
through the human being or through animals. This
is pretty easily understood, although it is sometimes
difficult to engineer a system to overcome its
effects. But at least it was Just part of the normal
natural cycle of organic growth and decay that we
knew how to cope with. We may have been reluctant
to spend the money to treat sewage and counted on
dilution where it wasn't necessarily urgent to build
treatment works.

But as industries sprang up we were confronted
with a whole new spectrum of wastes. And not all of
that went into the water. I think 19*^8 was the first
year that drastic action was taken in Los Angeles to
control air pollution. At that time they thought
it was sulfur dioxide. But in any event we recognized
that we had a big air pollution problem. The war
brought on atomic energy, and afterwards we wanted
to see what we were going to be able to do with this
technology. What were the dangers of continuing to
test nuclear weapons; and the dangers of trying to
use radioisotopes in peace time? So air pollution
control and the whole area that we thought of as
radiological health sprang up. Chemical pesticides
and synthetic detergents were coming into widespread

McGauhey: use. They were being manufactured and used in
California, along with numerous other chemicals
of unknown environmental effects. Thus industrial
wastes in California became more than a question of
wastes from oil extraction and refineries.

The effect of some types of Industrial wastes
and vast amounts of agricultural return waters was
to make it pretty clear to engineers — sanitary
engineers at least — that public health was not the
whole story of water quality anymore; that there
were other beneficial uses, such as irrigation,
industrial use, recreation and protection of aquatic
life — all matters of concern that had little direct
bearing on public health.

At that point in time, a study known as the
Dickey Report on water pollution was made by the
19^9 assembly.* Out of it grew California's Water
Pollution Control Law which split the responsibility
for water quality between the State Health Department
and an agency initially called the State Water
Pollution Control Board.

Chall: Are you familiar with the battle that went on over
that?

MoGauhey: Yes. I was at the University of Southern California
when that went on. I was new here though and so
probably missed some of the finer points.

Chall: Heal political...

MoGauhey: There were some who said (and I wouldn't want to

have to document its accuracy) that the legislature
never really intended to set up a Water Pollution
Control Board. They Just Intended to scare the
stuffing out of the State Health Department over
some problems of Los Angeles discharging wastewater
to the ocean. But whether this is true or not, I
don't know.

* "Report of the Interim Pact-Finding Committee on
Water Pollution," published by the Assembly of the
State of California,

MoGauhey: In any event they did set up the board. Then
they had to make a differentiation between con
tamination and pollution to decide whether a health
problem exists. If it's contamination, it's a
health problem, and the health department can move
in, and was required to move in at once with a
cease and desist order. If it's pollution, then
the Water Pollution Control Board had authority.
With pollution we could afford to temporize; not
that anyone was encouraged to do so, but it wasn't
critical. It wasn't immediately that anybody was
going to die from it, it was Just gradually going
to get worse and worse. And how do we say when it
is bad enough?

Chall: What did all this mean to the sanitary engineering
program at Berkeley?

McGauhey: It meant that we now had to expand the scope of the
sanitary engineering program to include courses and
research in a whole new aspect of water quality —
industrial waste pollution. It meant also that a
further expansion in scope was necessary to cope
with both the health and environmental problems of
air pollution and radioactive wastes. And it meant,
further, that we could not expect to educate any
single specialty — sanitary engineer, chemical engineer,
or anyone else — to deal with this whole spectrum of
concern single handed. Instead, we should have to
organize our program in such a fashion that people
in a greater range of specialties can work as a team
on environmental problems.

All of these added factors were recognized as
the University of California set out to revitalize
and reorganize its program in sanitary engineering.

Reorganizing the Curriculum:
Academic Flexibility

Advanced Degrees,

McGauhey: Reorganizing the curriculum to generate a strong M.S.
and PhD program in sanitary engineering and in
developing the strength of the School of Public Health
was accomplished over a period of time. I will not

McGauhey: undertake a chronological listing of events.

Instead I will try to outline the rationale and
how it was implemented.

To serve the needs of engineers in the M.S.
and PhD programs in the College of Engineering,
and of the MPH and Dr. PH programs in the School
of Public Health, courses were developed to avoid
duplication. Their location in the system depended
upon the location of the instructional competence
and the general utility of the subject. Thus the
School of Public Health was responsible for courses
in administration, epidemiology, biostatistics,
environmental sanitation, industrial hygiene, and
our specialized courses In microbiology, and water
biology, and also radiological health. Air
pollution control was an engineering course taught
in the school.

In the engineering college were located our
courses in water supply, wastewater management,
industrial wastes, engineering design, chemistry,
and instrumentation, as well as various other
specialty courses not strictly of a sanitary
engineering context. This was so organized that a
student without advanced degrees but interested In
sanitary engineering could enter at the master's
level. However he did not have to come from a
background of civil engineering. He could be a
chemical engineer or any other type of engineer
having engineering, mathematics, and the fundamental
engineering sciences. His program would Include our
hard core of water quality and water management,
but it would be possible for him to specialize, to
do some degree, in Industrial wastes, air pollution,
or radiological health. And I neglected to say
that in subsequent years solid wastes was added as
a research emphasis. Solid waste was a strong area
at Berkeley from the beginning, Professor Hyde having
offered a course in waste management.

In the revised situation, the engineer got his
administration, his epidemiology, his biology, and
his statistics in the School of Public Health.

Chall: These were required courses for the masters?

McGauhey: Generally, yes. However, If he had taken a course
In statistics elsewhere it was not necessary to
study biostatistlcs for the M.S. degree in sanitary
engineering. The sanitary engineer might occasionally
avoid the course in administration although normally
the course served twin purposes — to acquaint the
engineer with the principles of administration, and
to bring him in contact with a totally different
point of view than he experienced in technical
subjects. Pew students in the early years of the
post-war program avoided the course in epidemiology.
Not that they were inclined to resist it — it was
well taught and logical. Dr. Gotaas1 logic was
that if you are preparing yourself to protect the
public health by changing the quality of water, you
should have some idea of the route by which the
health is injured if you don't protect it — if your
engineered system breaks down.

All this applies to students in sanitary
engineering. If the MPH degree was the educational
goal, then statistics, administration, and epidemiology
were among the required courses.

I neglected to note that in those years the
Public Health Service made grants for study in
sanitary engineering and included epidemiology as
one bit of evidence that the student had some
orientation to the health field. In any event, the
student had to know something about epidemiology if
the purpose of his work was to protect the public
health. However, at the master's level the engineer
could emphasize the field of water, air, or
radiological health.

Chall: As a specialty?

McGauhey: As a specialty — or more accurately, as his special

area of Interest in his sanitary engineering program.

Chall: Was the sanitary engineering program limited strictly
to engineers, once the field was open to others
than engineers?

McGauhey: It was not limited solely to engineers but the

problem was not fully resolved until we developed
the Environmental Health Sciences with M.S. and
PhD degrees in the School of Public Health.

MoGauhey: Our degree designation was in engineering.
Therefore we had to stay holy with our own
profession. This meant that the M.S. or PhD student
in sanitary engineering had to have the basic
mathematics, fluid mechanics, and mechanics of
materials minlmals for engineers. He also had to
have some design. This was not too much of a problem
for the graduate chemist who wanted to enter the
program. Chemists generally have the same mathematics
background as engineers. Chemistry also is one of
the strong areas of study for sanitary engineers.
Thus the chemist has some trading stock — some courses
he can trade off against graduate requirements.
So with some Judicious auditing and makeup course
work, the chemist was not too much delayed.

But suppose a biologist came along saying, "I
want to put my knowledge of biology to work in
environmental control. M The biologist normally
takes very little mathematics, hence he doesn't
generally know enough mathematics to get into
engineering. Therefore he has less to trade off
against engineering courses because engineering
curricula generally are devoid of biology require
ments. What route is open to this chap? Lord knows
we need, his talents in environmental control. Yet
he cannot generally get all he needs from the
biology department. If a man studies biology in
the biology department he generally wants to do
those things which will enhance his stature among
biologists, Just as engineers might wish to do in
engineering.

So here we have a student whose educational
objectives make him somewhat of a hybrid. His
educational goals are not quite holy enough for the
biology department. He is definitely unholy from
the engineering department's viewpoint because of
weakness in mathematics. And yet he has something
to offer that mankind, badly needs. For this student
the Environmental Health Sciences of the School of
Public Health is a natural home.

Challt Was all this arranged for by Dr. Gotaas?

McGauhey: The degree structure that made this possible was
arranged after Dr. Gotaas left the University of
California, but nevertheless, he laid the groundwork

McGauhey: for it and it was a natural outgrowth of what he
had organized.

Ghall: Were the M.S. and PhD programs in Environmental

Health Sciences developed, especially for biologists
and other scientists who were in some way unqualified
to undertake an engineering degree?

McGauhey: No. The opportunity these degrees afforded the
scientist was a valuable spin-off. The degree
structure of the School of Public Health was
initiated to solve some problems within the school
and two years of experience in a health department
was prerequisite to enrollment. We did get quite
a few such people in engineering in the late 19^0s.
They enrolled in the school and took courses in both
the school and the College of Engineering. They
could emphasize water, air, radiological health,
or other specialty area Just as could the student
enrolled in sanitary engineering. His degree,
however, had to be the MPH.

Challr Was the MPH an academically unacceptable degree?

McGauhey: Not at all. It was unsatisfactory to some students

because its experience requirements were oonstrlctive
and its intent was to accomplish a different goal
than the M.S. It was unsatisfactory to the faculty
who guided, students desiring a depth of study in
their specialty areas rather than broad study in
public health. However, we did not let this prevent
us from meeting the needs of students in the environ
mental field. We simply used the degree somewhat
as an M.S. for some students and as an MPH for others.
The dichotomy was more of a strain on the faculty
than on the student. Until the M.S. and. PhD degrees
were approved, for the School of Public Health
specialties, it was beyond the resolving power of
the faculty mind to understand, how the school was
to give the same administrative orientation to all
students while simultaneously pursuing in fact the
M.S. objectives in eighteen or more specialty areas.
Before the worst of this dilemma was resolved by
the introduction of the M.S. and PhD degrees, a
vast amount of faculty energy was futilely directed
to the question. In retrospect I liken our efforts
to that of trying to convert the family auto into
a Cadillac by adjusting the carburetor.

Chall: The problem was solved, though.

McGauhey: Yes; certainly as far as the student is concerned.
Once we got the matter of degrees straightened
out we had at Berkeley a program quite unique in
the annals of environmental control. The student
having an engineering background and an engineering
objective could take advanced degrees in sanitary
engineering, with emphasis in any of a wide spectrum
of subjects; or he could obtain the degrees in
environmental health sciences, with emphasis on any
branch of science; or he could go the MPH/DrPH route
for an administrative degree in public health.
Similarly, the scientist from any of a great variety
of backgrounds could enroll in the School of Public
Health, taking his degrees in environmental health
sciences, with emphasis on any of a variety of
fields ( including engineering) ; or prepare himself
to be an administrator in health departments.
Moreover, in this arrangement, engineering, public
health, and science departments had no need to
generate overlapping courses — or, at least, to
proliferate courses.

Chall: It sounds like an ideal arrangement.

McGauhey: It made academic sense, but I am not certain of its
life expectancy. In recent years, as the University
has approached physical maturity and competition
for positions has become a feature of departmental
woes, an unhealthy situation has arisen.

Chall: What is its nature?

McGauhey: Well, to accomplish the ideal arrangement required
a split appointment arrangement between engineering
and public health, and the locating of courses in
whichever division of the two was appropriate in
terms of staff competence. Thus some courses required
of engineering graduate students were under Public
Health numbers and some required of public health
students were listed under engineering or science.
Administrative evaluation of staff needs based on
student loads puts a premium on courses taught by
an Individual department. The tendency therefore
must certainly be to keep all students enrolled in
a department in courses taught by that department.

McGauhey:

Chall :

McGauhey:

Chall :

McGauhey :

It is easier to violate the non-proliferation of
courses policy (via elective courses which obscure
the proliferation) than it is to disguise the fact
that X number of students were taught by Y number
of professors in a given quarter. The alternative
is to become, in some cases, second rate by requiring
two or three professors to teach all about everything,
because everything multiplied by the number of
students equals only the prescribed load for two
or three professors. But this is a whole area of
discussion in itself. The point here is that the
impetus for some very important developments
involving the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory
came from Dr. Gotaas' serving half time in the
School of Public Health and half time in Engineering,
and from his adding more people (some of these with
split appointments) as the program progressed.

Why was Dr. Gotaas given this latitude? How was
that he was responsible for so muoh hiring, and
structuring of the program?

Part of what I have described developed over the
years. In fact, I, myself, played a major role in
getting the degree structure for the School of
Public Health. But the route was charted and the
program initiated by Professor Gotaas. I should not
imply that he was responsible for the hiring in the
sense that authority to hire and fire was delegated
to him. He made recommendations and they were
approved. But Gotaas is a man with lots of
imagination, and lots of ability to organize things
and get tuned up to do a Job. There was a Job to
be done and he was employed to evaluate it and to
take action.

But he was really Just one of the faculty members
in the Department of Civil Engineering.

True, but he was responsible for the area of
sanitary engineering. Soon after his arrival in
Berkeley he became Chairman of the Department of
Civil Engineering and, later, Chairman of the Division
of Hydraulic and Sanitary Engineering. And although
the School of Public Health was not structured to
have chairmen, Dr. Gotaas was the leader of the
group responsible for public health engineering.

McGauhey: In the role of chairman of C.E. it was his responsi
bility to build up the department in line with the
wishes of the faculty and the objectives of the
college. I do not mean to imply that Dr. Gotaas
came in and held back the ocean single-handed, but
the climate was right for a major development in
engineering education. He came with the imagination
to set the system in motion, and he had the support
of Dean M.P. O'Brien and Dean Charles E. Smith in
getting things done.

In the immediate postwar period a major
expansion was needed to accommodate the student
population. I don't think Dr. Gotaas or anyone else
had a preconceived plan which he set out to implement.
Positions were available for expansion of the
department of C.E. These were filled only after the
faculty has undergone its traditional travail and
soul searching; its internal political maneuvering;
and its Gilbert & Sullivan routines. Dr. Gotaas
had ideas and he tried them out and evaluated them
in discussions with other faculty members and
administrators. They were by no means all accepted
by faculty or administration.

Chall: Why did he have these ideas?

McGauhey: He was born on a South Dakota Farm and quite as poor
as the rest of us. He learned early to scuffle
hard to accomplish things. The war had delayed
many of the things that ought to be done in the
fields of health and sanitation. Moreover, Dr. Gotaas
had been operating in a system where you get things
done.

Chall: And had money.

McGauhey: Yes, the State Department and the Rockefeller

Foundation had money and they were getting Important
things done with it in the programs Dr. Gotaas had
been associated with. He was aware of what needed
to be done. He was also aware of the sources of
funds that were becoming available for research and
study in the sanitary and public health field, and
in civil engineering in general.

Chall:

McGauhey :

Chall :
McGauhey!

Chall:
MoGauhey :

So Dr. Gotaas set out to get money to do the things
which needed to be done in the sanitary engineering
field.

Yes; both inside the University and outside of it
money was becoming available. Many of the faculty
who had been working for years with an annual
budget of some $600 to buy glassware were somewhat
shocked at the amounts of funds Dr. Gotaas began
to bring in.

They didn't know the money was out there?

Many didn't know it was out there because there had
been an interruption of departmental activities
during the war and most university people did not
yet realize in 19^5 what the war and technology had
done to the costs of operating a department. What
had happened was that the war had changed both the
necessity for getting at things and the ways of
getting at things. Electronic equipment had replaced
glassware. Research as a fountain of information
for instruction had come to the forefront. And the
need for higher degrees, which I have discussed,
further compounded costs. All this was ready for
discovery.

But academic arrangements were not there for
simple discovery. They required imagination. In
any event, what came out of the situation was the
organization of something new and unique in the
field of sanitary engineering education.

And it was new right here in Berkeley,
been tried before?

It hadn't

It had been invented right here. And we became
the envy of a good many Institutions because we had
the School of Public Health. At that time there
were only eleven schools of public health. This
was not a thing that each institution could decide
by simply saying "Now I'm going to have a school
of public health." There was the American Public
Health Association and, of course, the medical
profession and limits set by federal legislation
involved in setting up schools of public health and
In preventing their proliferation so that available

McGauhey: funds might become too dispersed to be effective.

By organizing and by keeping the number of
eligible participants small a few schools of
public health got the Congress, under the Rhodes-
Hill Act, to establish a formula grant under which
each would receive money each year for operation.
This formula, incidentally, had a basic minimum
amount which could be parlayed upward if you knew
how and had the energy to work hard at research.
The significant fact was that the schools of public
health had a source of funds that others could not
get at. It was not these funds, however, that put
Berkeley in a good position. It was the spectrum
of competence, the combination that the College
and the School could offer, and the range of student
background it could accept in environmental and
health oriented programs that made Berkeley unique.
It remained for the Sanitary Engineering Research
Laboratory to round out the facilities needed to
complete the program.

III THE SANITARY ENGINEERING RESEARCH LABORATORY,
1950-1970

Chall: What factors led to the creation of the Laboratory?

MoGauhey: In addition to the research needed to support the
graudate programs I have been describing there are
two factors of especial importance. The first was
the rise of environmental problems to the crisis
status required to generate research support. The
other was the establishment of the Richmond Field
Station by the University. One crisis led to the
establishment of the Laboratory, although various
others nurtured its growth. Several needs, as I
shall summarize, led to the purchase of the Richmond
facility.

Crisis in Solid Waste Management

McGauheyt The wartime growth of urban California is responsible
for the crisis that led directly to the emergence
of the Laboratory. It caused the whole string of
discrete and separate towns that ran from San Francisco
to San Jose to expand until they impinged upon each
other. This created a crisis in solid wastes.

The crisis was an interesting development in two
ways. First, the towns and cities had been small
prior to the war — some in the three thousand population
class. I am sure you know, as I do, something of
the mentality of people who habitually or traditionally
live In a town of three thousand people. I have used
the wrong word here. It is the reaction rather than
the mentality to which I refer. The mayor and the

McGauhey: council are attuned to the tiny budget and the quiet
streets. So, when, as happened in wartime, the
population booms to say 25,000 overnight, life in
the town is disrupted. The majority of people then
are newcomers — people who can't vote in the
community. The political power, therefore, remains
in the hands of the small town politician. People
can't vote but they are there physically. They are
driving in the streets. They are doing things
which result in generation of tax monies. But it is
awfully hard for a public official mentally scaled
to the small community to realize what it means
suddenly to have 30,000 people about. Even if the
tax base Is expanded the old-timers continue to
think small and to maintain their political hold
upon the community.

One difficulty that arose when this situation
developed in California was the result of the way
the towns had traditionally handled solid wastes.
The procedure was to transport refuse beyond the
edge of town and dump it along the working face of
a fill, starting at one end of the site in the
morning and spreading waste along the face as the
day progressed. Pigs were allowed to come in and
salvage whatever they desired. Then after the pigs
had gone to rest for the night, men would set fire
to the dump and burn off such things as were burnable.
This facilitated the salvage of metal. In the
morning the metal was cool and salvagers came along.
Then the residue was pushed over the edge of the
fill, the pigs arose, and the trucks arrived with
another day's contribution of refuse. Having been
burned, the residue did not need much cover and the
cost of waste disposal was low.

But as the towns grew and Impinged on one
another there was no place to dump the garbage
except in the other chap's city. This meant that
there was no place for hog farms anymore; so the
hog farm had to go.

And about that same time vesicular exanthema —
which is a disease of swine that causes blisters
in their mouths so they can't eat very well — suddenly
blossomed out in epidemic proportions across the
United States. The disease had been endemic in

4*.

McGauhey: California for years and years but was never

eradicated. It Is spread by meat scraps, and meat
scraps In garbage from the Union Pacific Railway
began to Infect hogs In the big hog-growing states
like Nebraska and Kansas. This, of course, created
a crisis and meant that men had to cook garbage
before feeding It to swine. So most states passed
laws against feeding raw garbage to swine. Cooking
Just added another cost so swine growers, who had
been feeding with garbage, went out of business.

Impinged Jurisdictions, plus the decline In
hog farms using municipal garbage, generated a crisis
in refuse disposal which reached the California
Legislature in 19*4-9. Assembly Bill 2033, statutes
of 19^9. appropriated special funds to the University
of California for research relating to technical
problems of disposal of sewage, garbage, refuse and
industrial wastes, and for disseminating such
information to people.

""T/ OO ! lS~ O O

The appropriation was $50 $000 tout the Governor
cut this in half when the bill reached his desk.
Of course, $25T000 sounded like a lot when measured
against the pre-war academic department yardsticks
that I mentioned previously.

* .5r<2 , o oo

Chall: To get $£5rOOO to begin a new type of research at
the University must have taken quite a bit of
lobbying and pressure within the University itself
and In Sacramento.

McGauhey » I do not know much of the politics of it. I do

know that at that time the University had a strong
president. And it had a strong lobbyist in
Sacramento. I know that Professor Gotaas was
articulate and that he was called to explain the
problem to legislative committees at the time. I
know also that the League of California Cities was
deeply concerned with the question of how Its members
were going to solve the solid waste problem and was
anxious to get support of how the crisis could be
dealt with.

As to internal pressure within the University,
I can only guess that it was not much debated on
the campus. Those who dwell in Ivory towers do not

McGauhey: concern themselves much with the rubbish at the
base of the tower. I expect that it was not
until the refuse research became institutionalized
in an organized unit that the question of academic
integrity came up. Let us come back to that aspect
in the broader context of the entire program, after
we get the Richmond Field Station and the SERL on
stage.

The Richmond Field Stati on

McGauhey: No amount of money makes research on "sewage,

garbage, and refuse" an activity suited to ivied
halls or marble towers. But there were other
developments in the making.

Dean O'Brien, among others, was getting badly
crowded for space on the campus. Our hydraulic
engineering group for one, in which the dean was
active, had an old wooden structure where hydraulic
engineering studies were conducted. They called It
the "towing tank" because of the facility It housed.
We had some top flight men like Professor Joe W.
Johnson who was interested in hydraulic engineering
and heavy ocean engineering, Hans Einstein who was a
world expert in sediment transport, and Professor
R.L. Wiegel who is one of the men who developed
methods of anchoring ships and drilling rigs off
shore. You know, during the war we sent ships into
places that had no docking facilities, and there
were some considerable problems of anchoring.

At any rate we had assembled at Berkeley a
number of people that were of outstanding competence,
but whose research was ill-suited to desk top
experiments. Besides, the old towing tank was
getting In the way of other progress.

Chall: Towing tank?

McGauhey: A towing tank Is a tank of still water in which you
calibrate flow measuring Instruments. There is a
little oar that runs on a track over the tank at a
controlled velocity. You can hang a meter from the
oar and snll along to relate Its rotation to the

McGauhey: car's velocity. Or you can use ship models or
various shapes of this sort to study friction,
etc. There are a lot of things you can do with
a towing tank, but ours wasn't much of a structure
and space on the campus was becoming too valuable
for this one to survive.

Acquiring the Station

Chall: You certainly need something else for solid waste
research anyway.

McGauhey: Yes, and there were several other activities of the
engineering college that needed space — aerospace
research, highway lighting, wind tunnel investigations,
beach erosion models — to name but a few. These were
unsuited to teaching laboratories. Most needed space,
some made noise, some required sewage or sea water.
So in 1950 the University bought, with the encourage
ment and certainly the enthusiasm of Dean O'Brien,
these grounds here at the Richmond Field Station for
use as a research station by the whole College of
Engineering. This was an old blasting cap works
which had furnished explosives for the mining industry
and, I guess, later for the Civil War. It managed
to carry on through World War II. By that time the
facilities were obsolete, so the Richmond Cap Works,
as it was called, was going out of business and the
property was for sale.

This area Is zoned for heavy industry. Therefore,
it was felt that we could do things here on a scale
that you couldn't do in a teaching laboratory. I
used to say we could bore holes in the walls and put
up pipes and pilot plants without cracking any marble
or tearing down any ivy. Presumably, we could make
noise and odors and generally carry on activities
that couldn't very well be done on the campus.

Heavy industry in the area was a little fearful
of this development, lest the University move In
right next door and plant a big lawn and make it
another campus, and they say, "You fellows are
creating a nuisance. We'll have to get rid of you."

MoGauhey: I don't blame them too much for their fears but
we ourselves needed something different than a
campus environment.

There were a lot of old wooden buildings on
the property which we overhauled a little and
used. Sanitary engineering was one of the first
tenants on the Field Station. We got the old
building 102 which had been a laboratory building
for the Richmond Cap Works, and previously a grain
warehouse for the Vallejo Ranch before the University
was in Berkeley. There was presumably plenty of
fulminate of mercury in the ground. Workmen were
afraid to strike the ground too violently for fear
the whole thing would explode. We simply covered
over some old concrete footings instead of trying
to knock them out — I don't know that they would have
exploded, but since explosives had been handled
there, people proceeded pretty gingerly when breaking
any concrete with a Jackhammer around that old
laboratory building.

Utilizing the Station

McGauhey: Several problems attended the utilization of the
RPS facility. Refurbishing the old buildings to
meet the research facility needs of academic
departments was necessary and, of course, expensive.
To meet the needs of projects for services it was
necessary to establish shops on the Station grounds —
a computer shop, a machine shop, a photographic
and duplicating shop were among the services set up
in refurbished buildings. Small stores, a receiving
facility, and mail service were provided to expedite
the research work. Then too, transportation had
to be arranged to transfer faculty and students the
seven miles between the campus and the field station.
Reluctance of some faculty members to undertake such
a long Journey was one of the problems of utilizing
the facility. I once explained this phenomenon on
the rationale that the RPS was located on the wrong
side of the campus. Thus it was not on the way to
Europe and hence geographically inconvenient. But
this may have been an exaggeration. More likely the
situation simply varied too far from the ideal.

Chall: What would be the Ideal situation?

McGauhey: I think it includes a reserved parking space on one
side of one's office and one's laboratory and a
library on the other.

Chall: How Utopian.

MoGauhey: We never quite achieved the ideal, but the College
of Engineering did provide free hourly bus service
and it worked out rather well for some professors.
The route along the bay shore was always interesting
and the traveler might reflect upon the flocks of
shore birds or the phenomena which placed so many
old auto tires upright in the mud flats north of
the "Albany Hill." Besides, the atmosphere of the
RPS was more conducive to thinking about research
than was the bedlam in a campus office.

Chall: I am interested in the phenomenon of the old tires.
I have seen them standing there by the dozens when
the tide is out.

McGauhey: They floated in from an old refuse dump off the

point at Golden Gate Fields race track. Air trapped
in the old tire as it is lifted by tidal waters
cause it to tilt. Sand Is deposited in the water-
filled side and after a few cycles the tire is
standing erect, firmly anchored in the mud.

Chall: Now I understand.

McGauhey: To provide the services needed by EPS-based research
projects, and to assign space, and oversee and
maintain the facility required some administrative
structure. For this the College of Engineering set
up what is now the Office of Research Services. It
was something else then — the IER, or Institute of
Engineering Research. That was the arm of the
College responsible for physically managing the
grounds. But IER had also a more difficult task —
that of dealing with the proposals for research
funds that professors in the College might develop;
and of maintaining liaison between the University's
Accounting Department and the faculty investigator
during the life of a project.

MoGauhey: In the first of these two functions the IER
insured that the proposal met the requirements of
University policy, both fiscal and educational. In
setting up the RPS neither Dean O'Brien nor the
University administration wanted it to develop into
a research institute that didn't educate anybody.
IER was the first in a series of filters intended
to make certain that projects served some educational
purpose. Specifically, that it enhanced the teaching
competence of the faculty investigator and provided
opportunity for graduate students in research.

The second function of IER — financial
accountability — was a must. Professors are
notoriously "drunken sailor" economists when it
comes to operating a budget. So the IER played a
watch dog role, not only to oversee the physical
facilities but to insure the educational objective
as well. It served as a go-between the professor
and the administration, looking after personnel
policy when staff was employed and taking the load
of paper work off the professor.

Chall: This was the IER?

McGauhey: The Institute, yes, in the first years of RPS. Its
duties were later split so that physical management
of the RPS is separate from the Office of Research
Services which handles the other functions of IER. .
Both are assigned, to an assistant dean in the College
of Engineering.

With the developments in the academic program
and the establishment of the Richmond Field Station,
the stage is set for a discussion of the Sanitary
Engineering Research Laboratory (SERL). As I
previously noted, SERL was the first tenant of the
RSP. Some 6.6 acres of the station, plus several
of the old buildings were somewhat informally
dedicated to sanitary engineering activities, subject
to approval of the manager of the RPS facility.

Organizing the Sanitary Engineering Research
Laboratory (SERL)

McGauhey: SERL was not conceived in Its final form in any

single spasm of planning. Neither was the concept
nor the administrative structure of organized
research units into which it fits within the
University. Instead it evolved over a period of
time with a considerable — probably a normal —
amount of faculty turbulence. As a matter of fact,

' t>o, ooc> the initial $25,000 project was called the Sanitary
Engineering Research Project. So we carried on
under the banner of SERF until we had so many
projects in being that the word "Project" no longer
described us.

Chall: What was the nature of this turbulence?

MoGauhey: To answer that question challenges my ability as a
story teller. Some of the turbulence was generated
within the University structure; and some of it
related to the participants In the program. You
will recall that Dr. Gotaas held a Joint appointment
in the College of Engineering and the School of
Public Health and that it was his task to integrate
the two so that the School could maintain its proper
interest in public health engineering without being
devoured by sanitary engineering. This posed a
considerable task because, as I previously noted,
the public health engineers in health departments
were traditionally graduates of colleges of
engineering; yet there had to be room for public
health engineering in the MPH program of the School.
It did, however, lay the cornerstone for a subsequent
research unit to serve as the graduate research arm
of both sanitary engineering and the environmental
health sciences, as I shall later explain.

Chall: Concerning the University Itself, how did It go

with the hierarchy — setting up the School of Public
Health and the new laboratory? Were they, at the
administrative level willing to accept these kinds
of changes and innovations? Was that a problem?

McGauhey t I don't think the administration was any problem.
But there is nothing quite as conservative as a

r<H, ho c

McGauhey: professor per se. I couldn't document this, but

Judging from all of the years I've gone to faculty
meetings, I'm quite certain that had the entire
faculty been aware of what was developing it would
have viewed it with considerable alarm as the close
of one of the greater ages of culture. This would
be my guess. But people were busy with their own
aspirations and, besides, there is a great deal of
insulation between sectors of a university as a
result of both poor inter-disciplinary communications
and mutual disrespect between disciplines.

Some of the older professors of engineering
shook their heads and wondered what all this might
come to. Universitywise there was a good deal of
discussion as to whether a School of Public Health
belongs in a university or not. That went on for
several years and hasn't died out yet. But, at
least, it is, shall we say, no longer topical.

Concerning emerging organized research units,
one of the questions was "Where does this type of
activity fit in?" Another was "How are we going to
make sure that this does not become an empire-
building research operation?"

Chall: Or a trade school.

MoGauhey: Trade school, yes. But what they were really afraid

of was an empire. This happened at another university,
not in California, where it hired a lot of good
researchers on soft money. It gave them professorial
titles, but didn't promise to pay them when they ran
out of money. These fellows were energetic and
concerned for their Jobs. They put all their time
on research and publishing papers. They hustled up
funds and paid themselves better salaries than the
tenured professors who had to teach and research at
the same time. Pretty soon they had built up a
monster that it took the university a long time to
overcome.

Insuring Academic Integrity

Chall: Was the University of California aware of this
danger? How did it insure academic integrity?

McGauhey: Yes, the University was well aware of the pitfalls
of research units unresponsive to the faculty. It,
like other universities, had solved the question
in relation to the Agricultural Experiment Station
by giving academic positions for part-time service
to the scientists involved. It was also pondering
how to deal with the Radiation Laboratory which had
numbers of good scientists eager to acquire academic
status. It was uneasy about the number of lecturers
engaged in the School of Public Health on a part-
time basis through the Hill-Rhodes monies.

These problems, however, were peripheral to that
of the SERL and similar units, but they must certainly
have been considered in establishing the policy which
made SERL a healthy facility.

Chall: What is the nature of that policy?

McGauhey: Its over all feature is that all authorized faculty
positions must be backed by hard honey — i.e. money
in the state budget. Next, that every research
project must be headed by a member of the faculty.
More precisely, that anyone to be a faculty
investigator on a research project must be a member
of the faculty senate. His project will have to be
approved by the department head, dean, and Research
Office for relevance to its educational value, and
by the budget and policy authorities of the University
for conformance to fiscal policy. If a project is
Just a matter of testing it is not acceptable. We
would not, for example, be permitted to break ten
thousand concrete cylinders Just because we can hire
four students to do it.

So a project must be the responsibility of a
professor and it must be passed upon by the
administration. If the grant is approved by the
University it is accepted in the name of the
professor and he is expected to Justify such
confidence in him. He is expected not to go off

MoGauhey: half-cocked and publish trash that won't stand up
under scientific review. Of course, it is to the
professor's advantage not to do so.

By avoiding soft money professorships, by
requiring that the chap who runs the project must
be a faculty member, the University has held the
line. This prevents the use of research money as
a device to magnify the number of professors without
authorization from the administration. That, I
think, is the key to success of research units. It
is a good policy.

Chall: How did the faculty of the sanitary engineering and
environmental health programs react to the concept
of the laboratory?

McGauhey: This brings me finally to the point in our discussion
where I should leave off setting the stage and get
on with the subject of SERL, which I set out to
explain some two hours ago. Besides, I want to get
on to the turbulence which surrounded the birth of
SERL and which "enriched" my later experience as
its director.

At the time the Richmond Field Station site
was acquired in 1950 , research on solid waste
disposal initiated by the $25f^00 appropriation was
already under way in campus laboratories and in the
field. Professor Gotaas was faculty investigator
of this project and he had several studies under way.
Professor Erman A. Pearson, who Joined the sanitary
engineering faculty in 19^9* was in charge of a
very significant study of the economics and technology
of refuse collection and landfill disposal. Professor
Harvey P. Ludwig, who came to Berkeley at about the
same time, was leading a group concerned with
incineration of refuse. Gotaas himself was interested
in composting and had made a tour of Europe to learn
of the production and use of compost there. The
question had. arisen within the University of whether
the $25,000 appropriation was exclusively intended
for Berkeley or whether it was a statewide fund
which UCLA should share in. That is, should the
emerging research unit be statewide in its organiza
tion or confined to the Berkeley campus. Some funds
had been sent to UCLA for field studies of incinerator
performance, and a project there was in progress.

McGauhey: Several staff members had been recruited to
carry on the solid waste work. Dr. Jerome P.
Thomas was employed in February 1950 to serve as
sanitary chemist of the laboratory. Vlnton W.
Bacon was employed to serve as assistant director
of the laboratory. But he stayed only a few months;
then went on to become the executive officer of the
newly organized State Water Pollution Control Board.
His place was taken by Mr. Raymond V. Stone who had
previous experience with health department employ
ment and had Just got his M.S. degree from Harvard.
Ray B. Krone who had Just finished his first degree
in soil science Joined the staff, as did Gerhard
Klein.

Up to this point there was only one project,
and it was under the leadership of Professor Gotaas.
But by March 1950 a new study was begun with money
from the State Department of Health. This project
was intended to determine to what extent bacteria
and other pollutants travel through soil with
infiltering and percolating water. You see it had
long been said that sewage, or wastewater, or
polluted water must not be discharged upon the land
lest bacteria travel through the soil and get into
the public water supply.

As an aside, I must say that this fear, which
had been codified in state laws is one of the least
intelligent pieces of man's reasoning. Rain had
been falling on a biologically active soil mantle
since the beginning of time. Both song and story
attested to the clarity and purity of spring water,
so that one might have concluded that bacteria will
not travel at all. Instead, the conclusion was
that they might move freely and the State of
California led the way in testing this hypothesis.
The project was conducted in a field study at Lodi,
California. It, too, was the responsibility of
Professor Gotaas and so raised the question as to
the limitations which might accrue to other faculty
members under a laboratory led by a director.

Soon thereafter, Professor Ludwig got funds
from the Public Health Service to study the role of
algae in wastewater treatment, and brought William
J. Oswald on to the staff to pursue his PhD research.

McGauhey: This, then, further raised the question of the
relationship of the individual faculty member
to the director of emerging Laboratory. MHe*s my
boss academically as chairman of the department,
but is he also my research boss?" was the question
that was asked and not yet answered. Before it
was answered, the State Water Pollution Control
Board provided funds to study the underground
movement of pollution when reclaimed wastewater is
used for ground water recharge. This further
brought the question into focus because the funds
were assigned to the Laboratory under Professor
Gotaas. It also raised the question of the appro
priateness of the title Sanitary Engineering Research
Project to describe the activities of the Laboratory.

Well this situation went on for a few months
without anybody swallowing anybody else. In early
1951 the activities began to coalesce into one
major enterprise as these research projects were
centered at the Richmond Field Station.

With all of the organizational activity I have
described, plus academic courses to develop and
research to direct, Professor Gotaas became a very
busy man. He was persuaded, partly by his recognition
of the need and partly by Professor Ludwig, that he
needed someone with experience to serve in the
capacity of assistant director at the field station.
I presume Professor Pearson was also in the act
which went on to further persuade Professor Gotaas
that MoGauhey was the man he ought to get.

P. H. McGauhey Joins an Enlarging Staff, 1951

Chall: Did Mr. Ludwig know you?

McGauhey: Yes. I knew him from 19^8 onward. He was a

consulting engineer in Southern California during
the two years I was at USC before he came to
Berkeley. I had met Pearson only once, I think,
before I came to UC.

Chall: You didn't know Professor Gotaas?

McGauhey: I had met him a time or two. But I didn't know
him personally. He had established a reputation
of which I was aware. The sanitary engineering
fraternity was not a large one. But I can't say
that I really knew Dr. Gotaas at the time.

Chall: So it was really Mr. Ludwig that...

McGauhey: Ludwig, I think, was the salesman there. But anyway,
after some negotiating and a personal interview,
I agreed to join the staff as a full-time research
engineer. I had been teaching for a long time and
was chairman of a division, so I decided that I did
not have to be a professor — at least the lower grade
academic title didn't bother me.

I neglected to say that by that time the
emerging Laboratory was fairly well structured in
the University budget and provided four hard money
positions in what was to be SERL: Two sanitary
engineers, a chief chemist, and a chief biologist.
I was one of the engineers. As it turned out, the
program at Berkeley was expanding faster than
personnel could be reouited, so immediately I was
put to teaching as a lecturer because I had been in
the business a long time and had, I trust, established
a modest talent for that sort of thing.

Chall: This was what year?

McGauhey: 1951. I was on the payroll as of July 1, 1951- When
I arrived at Berkeley I was confronted by the
situation I have described briefly. That is, a
Laboratory being established at the RPS, ongoing
projects of major importance and plenty of challenge,
some unanswered questions, and the program growing
at an exciting pace. I also found the operation
running on a real "drunken sailor" economy. There
were thirty thousand dollars more In people employed
than they had money in the budget. Of course, part
of the work had to be done by an intensive summer
study of land fill as well as in the field — at Lodi,
you recall, where we were measuring the movement of
bacteria in the ground. The refuse incineration
work going on down at UCLA, was asking for more funds.
We Just didn't have the money. Fortunately, the
budget year for some of our funds was Just beginning.

McGauhey: Being a natural born Scotsman, I had to begin
to consider how we were going to keep anybody alive
till the end of the year with these kinds of
expenses. So I wrecked two or three gravy trains
along the way, but the anguish was temporary and
no permanent hard feelings were generated.

We got the budget back on a more hopeful
course. Then, that fall Professor Ludwlg went back
to the Public Health Service. Professor Gotaas
then inherited the algae project by default and
transferred much of his interest to that study,
trusting the other of his projects to my care in
their day-to-day operation.

That first fall, in September of '51, he
brought in Dr. W.J. Kaufman to head a radiological
health research unit with some AEG money. Within
a very brief period Dr. Kaufman was appointed to a
teaching post in both the School of Public Health
and In engineering. But he first came as a full-
time researcher. Meantime, Dr. J.P. Thomas was
made chief chemist in one of the hard money positions.
W.J. Oswald was the project engineer on the algae
project. Ray Stone had a similar post on the ground-
water recharge project, and the Lodi study, assisted
by Ray Krane. Gerhard Klein served as project
engineer for Dr. Kaufman's AEC Study.

The boys that were working on composting were
Just getting started with experimental work. At
that time the subject of composting, I must say,
was veiled in a shroud of mysticism throughout the
world. The most vocal of its advocates were peddlers
of one or another brand of witchcraft upon which the
process was alleged to depend. We needed a sound
biologist to sort out the fundamentals of the process
and to lay to rest much that was reported concerning
its parameters. Therefore Dr. Clarence G. Golueke,
who was Just finishing his doctorate after a good
many years of experience elsewhere, was employed to
be our chief biologist and to lead the composting
study. Dr. Golueke and I went ahead on composting
and Professor Gotaas and W.J. Oswald carried on the
algae experiments.

McGauhey: At this point In time, the concern over the
relationship between the professor's freedom to
carry on research In his own right and the role
of the director of Laboratory reached Its greatest
Intensity. By circumstance much of the research
In sanitary engineering was In the Laboratory and
under the faculty investlgatorship of Professor
Gotaas. Professor Langeller was going about his
usual profound experiments In the campus laboratories
and elsewhere In the community. But younger men on
the faculty had not yet got started on research In
their own right and were somewhat fearful lest the
road by which each faculty member must prove his
own merit might be blocked. Happily, this situation
began quickly to clear up in the fall of 1951* Dr.
Kaufman, having acquired faculty status, became the
faculty investigator of the AEG project. Professor
B.D. Tebbens got some funds to begin research in
air pollution. Professor Tebbens, by the way, had
known Dr. Gotaas in South America and had been
recruited by him to Join the academic staff of the
School of Public Health and the College of Englnering.
Dr. Thomas, the chief chemist of the Laboratory,
then divided his time between the duties of the
Laboratory and research as a teammate of Dr. Tebbens.
To look after office affairs Dr. Gotaas sent Mrs.
Raab from the campus...! don't know if you've ever
met Jeanette Raab?

Chall: No, but I noticed in your reports that she worked
up from secretary to administrative assistant in
her years of service to SERL.

McGauhey: True. She began as secretary the first fall I came.
There were one or two periods when she was away,
but she stayed until the end of my tenure in 1969.

This is very much the way SERL began: First
the renewed vigor of the program in sanitary
engineering program following World War II as
education at higher degree levels became necessary
and expansion of the engineering program and develop
ment of the School of Public Health afforded a
unique opportunity; second, the critical problems
of environmental control came to transcend water
resources and to Include air and land resources as
well; third, funds for research made it possible to

MoGauhey: seek solutions to critical environmental problems

and acquiring of the Richmond Field Station provided
a place for appropriate research to be conducted;
and fourth, the individual faculty member learned
that the Laboratory offered him opportunity rather
than threatening to devour him.

I should like to come back to this matter of
organization of the Laboratory after I Introduce
some more of a historical nature and bring a few
more characters on stage.

In 1956 Professor Gotaas decided to accept the
post of dean of the Technological Institute at
Northwestern University. The challenge appealed
to him. I think Professor Gotaas enjoys building
an organization more than he does the hammer,
hammer, hammer of production. And I don't blame
him. Having got the SERL going the next thing to
do was to wait around for someone to grind out
results. Dr. Gotaas got various unsolicited offers
but the Northwestern one was too attractive to
refuse. Nevertheless he took it only after a good
deal of soul-searching. He was happy here and
wasn't looking around for any place to go. He
asked me one time, "Mack, what do we want anyway?"
I said, "We want really to be left alone. We
don't want anybody coming around offering us Jobs;
Just leave us alone when we're happy." He said,
"I think you're right."

But in the end he decided to move on. That
meant that now we were in a situation where we
were headless. Whoever was director of the Laboratory
had to be on the faculty. And I was not on the
faculty. So, decisions were made which transferred
the challenge of SERL to me. I had come with no
promise of being on the faculty, with no expectations
of being on it, and with no intent to shed any tears
if I didn't get on It.

P.H. MoGauhey Appointed Direotor. 1956

Chall: No particular desire either.

MoGauhey: Obviously I didn't want to get off Into an eddy

current. But I had attended enough faculty- senate
meetings for one life time, but not, as It turned
out, all that I was destined to attend. By 1956
Dr. Gotaas and I had been working closely together
for five years and knew each other well In an
atmosphere of mutual respect. I may say that
although I have called him Dr. Gotaas or Professor
Gotaas throughout our discussions here, he was HBenH
to everyone who knew him Just as I have been "Mack."
At any rate, when we faced the problem of management
of SERL upon his departure he had sufficient
confidence In my ability to work as a member of a
team that he went down the line for me.

Wisely or unwisely I was appointed half-time
to the academic faculty of engineering and public
health. The other half remained In SERL In the
role of Research Engineer and Director. My academic
duties Involved 40 percent service In the College of
Engineering and 10 percent in the School of Public
Health. So I got split into several pieces. I was
appointed chairman of the Hydraulic and Sanitary
Division, director of the SERL, and general leader
of the environmental health sciences of the School
of Public Health with the duty of keeping that part
of our program energized. I have neglected to say
that by 1956 SERL had been formally recognized as
an interdisciplinary organized research unit in the
University serving as the graduate research arm of
both the sanitary engineering program and the
environmental health sciences.

As a member of the faculty I could now serve
as faculty investigator of projects so I began to
go after funds to support our graduate program as
well as to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity.

Reorganizing Staffing Patterns and Administration

Chall: You also had to teach.

MoGauheyi Yes. The first year I taught, as Professor Gotaas
had done, the three major courses in sanitary
engineering. By this time, of course, we had
around us a strong group of young men. We had
Professor Pearson, Professor Kaufman, Professor
Orlab, who was a good sanitary engineer with a lot
of research and water resource interests similar to
some of my own. Those three were all full-time
faculty in the College of Engineering. Professor
Tebbens was part-time engineering, with 90 percent
of his time in the School of Public Health; Professor
B.C. Cooper was our micro-biologist In the School
of Public Health; and as Professor Langelier had
retired, we had put Thomas half-time teaching in
the college and half-time in the professional staff
of the Laboratory. W.J. Oswald, having reached his
doctorate, was put in a half-time teaching position
and half-time here at the field station. We had
Ray Krone full-time in one of our SERL staff Jobs.
Dr. Golueke continued full-time in the other SERL
staff position.

For the young men I don't think this was too
good a deal. I was accustomed to working seven
days a week — had been doing It for most of my life,
so I didn't feel a strain. But the young men who
had to make their way up the ladder, having to teach
half-time, having to work on committees, it was
almost impossible for them to really do research
on a half-time basis. I felt that they weren't
getting much more research done than they'd do if
they were nine months professors. This weakness
was not any fault of the men. It is Just the
scrambling is too hard that way. The part-time
faculty are called upon to serve on committees and
do academic chores without regard to their percentage
appointment.

So as it became possible I changed my mind
about whether they ought to be half and half, and
ultimately got Professor Thomas full-time on the

McGauhey: campus nine months. And we got another young man
out here in a professional capacity to serve as
chief chemist in the Laboratory. Pretty soon I
got Oswald switched over, too. So for several
years I was the only one with an appointment
divided between SERL and the faculty. However,
Kaufman and Tebbens, and Oswald and I continued
with Joint appointments in engineering and public
health.

I think this worked out rather well. By this
time these people were maturing and they were
beginning to quit asking the question: "How is it
that we have a director? What can he tell me that
I can't tell him?"

It became amply evident that it was unnecessary
to ask this question because I was not trying, as
director, to make any encroachment on the prerogatives
of professors. They did not have to work in SERL
at the RFS if they elected not to do so. Their
project could be elsewhere.

However, they all found it to their advantage
to work in SERL because of the facilities that we
had put together and the housekeeping funds that
the University funneled through the engineering
college took part of the load off professors. The
research energy of the chief chemist and biologist,
and of the assistant director was an asset to the
faculty and its graduate students, so they found it
to their advantage mostly to work in the SERL
facilities. And pretty soon they quit trying to
solve this "angels on the point of a needle" type
of question.

One of the things though that caused this
question to be asked was that the director of the
Laboratory was responsible directly to the deans,
of engineering and public health for research, and
responsible to the chairman of the academic division
for academic work. However, the duties imposed by
the deans and by the system — and properly so — was
to keep the SERL operation educationally oriented,
and to see that what it did was educational in
purpose rather than for any other personal objectives.
I think the question died because there seemed no

McGauhey:

Chall:

McGauhey:

Chall :

MoGauhey :

longer any reason to keep asking it. To help
alleviate the situation the University itself
began to get a little more highly structured. The
administration decided that all organized
laboratories should have an advisory committee and
so appointed one. I began immediately to request
that they put on this committee all members of our
participating faculty because there were only ten
or eleven of us.

Just ten or twelve,
been thirty.

I thought there might have

If it were thirty, the board would certainly have
had to be selective. But since there were only a
few it didn't seem to me to make much sense to
have six on the board and four or five that were
not. After one year the Chancellor agreed with me.

I noticed from your early reports that you met
approximately once a week with this board. And I
couldn't imagine what you would be doing once a
week.

The principal thing that happened was that the work
of the board was combined with that of a faculty
meeting. The entire participating faculty from
sanitary engineering and environmental health
sciences was on the board. This same group had the
task of dealing with course content, academic
program planning, and the adherence of SERL to
policies which furthered this educational program.
As Director, of course, I was not the chairman of
the board; however, as chairman of the Hydraulic
and Sanitary Engineering Division I could introduce
matters which did not concern the hydraulic engineering
staff into these meetings. I would say that three
or four times per year we were concerned strictly
with the Laboratory. So it was mostly academic
business, and mostly a waste of time. It did serve
to keep us all informed and so keep at a minimum
the academic doubts that always attend ignorance of
what the other fellow is doing.

Some Philosophy About Administration

Chall: I noticed, too, that you as director had the

authority to act or overrule the recommendations
of the faculty board on any or all matters. So
that gave you quite a bit of authority.

McGauhey: As a matter of fact the authority was more apparent
than real. The truth is that the faculty board
was advisory to the Chancellor and its task was to
report to the Chancellor each year on the activities
v of the SERL. That is, on its adherence to University
educational policy and purpose. The board's function
In advising the director was largely of our own
agreement and the board. Itself wrote the stipulation
regarding the director itself. Therefore the authority
was probably meaningless. If it was not I would
certainly have moved with caution. When one has the
authority to do this kind of thing it must be used
sparingly. You can wreck an organization pretty
quick by over use of authority.

But for example, suppose I had in the approved
SERL budget a small sum of money for maintaining
equipment and to keep it running. The board might
say to me, "We have decided that you should take
that money and buy a special piece of equipment that
we agree professor X should have." In such a
situation I would probably have recommended that
they forget it because I would myself have to get
permission for the dean to spend money for a purpose
other than that for which I had requested and defended
it. And so, nothing of that sort ever came up. I
did get occasional suggestions from faculty members
that the entire SERL budget should be divided among
the faculty members participating In the Laboratory,
but no such recommendation was ever made by the
board .

I might say In passing that the existence of a
board can be an Insulator as well as an isolator
of the administrator. Both of these phemomena arise
from the same penchant of professors to disagree.
Sometimes I have said in various degrees of facetious-
ness that if two professors ever agree on anything,
each would entertain the possibility that his
Judgment had erred. Professors will combine against

MoGauheyr the common enemy, leaving off their disagreements
until the enemy disappears. These disagreements,
incidentally, are not often personal matters. They
may go on for years between the fastest of friends
and are based on lofty principles rather than bad
feeling. As for me, I never had much talent for
appearing as the common enemy, hence whatever my
associates may have thought of the idea of having
SERL at all, they gave me support when it was
needed.

But some of my group were quite literal minded;
they wanted things all spelled out in great detail.
I, in turn, contended many times that no matter in
what detail you have it spelled out, if people
don't do it, you're out of luck. If it's as slap
happy as a hoot owl and yet works, why worry about
its administrative structural weaknesses. [Laughter]

But younger men are quite often that way. They
want everything all spelled out. And they quite
often want things spelled out that you don't dare
spell out. As an example, the University says
wisely, I think, that if the engineer doesn't take
some part in engineering practice or have some
contact with it, his teaching is going to be pretty
sterile. The next obvious question then is, how
much contact? Well, you can't put on paper how
much. Some people have a greater capacity than
others to do their Job. One might be capable of
putting one day a week into outside work where one
day a month might strain another.

Imagine what would happen to the University
budget if .it decided that professors could work one
day a week in professional development, and put this
decision into a rigid policy statement. Imagine
further that our enemy of the University went to
the Legislature with the story that professors get
paid fifteen or twenty thousand a year, only work
nine months, and only four days a week at that.
We'd be down the tube quick. And it wouldn't be
true, but once you write a lot of stuff on paper,
then you're not given the chance to put in all the
and's, but' s, and if's, and so on. This was the
kind of thing I'd run up against in the Laboratory;
a desire to have everything in great detail; and yet
there are certain kinds of things that you can't detail.

McGauhey: One of the things that the faculty would often
say to me, "We ought to have a budget right at the
beginning of the year stating Just how we're going
to spend every dollar. Then we'll all adopt this
budget and we'll spend the money that way." All I
could give them by way of such a budget was what it
cost us the year before. For example, if I were to
decide, and to write into the budget that we'd
spend only $1000 for maintenance of equipment even
though five or six faculty projects depended upon
the pumping station working continuously, the next
week the whole thing collapsed, what good would be
the budget if it cost me $3000 to get the pump going.
So the best we could do was to put some funds into
various categories and take precautions to stay within
the overall budget, even if categorical changes had
to be requested.

For the most part, the professors got their
own grants and they didn't bother too much with the
central SEHL fund. It furnished supporting services
and assistance which was of obvious service to the
faculty and students. Of course they took such
advantage of the central fund as was feasible under
the elasticity of its director.

In my first years, I had plenty to do in the
School of Public Health to help keep our program
there alive. To this end I put my energies in
getting the degree structure approved for the M.S.
and PhD degrees in the Environmental Health Sciences.
Thus we overcame the problem there.

I stayed on five years as the chairman of
Hydraulic and Sanitary. I was then carrying about
five to seven research projects in my own name.
This kept me moderately active.

Chall: To say the least.

McGauhey: Then there came a time when we were preparing to

change chairmen. Now the question arose again about
the Laboratory. "What is the relationship between
the director of the Laboratory and the chairman of
the department, when he's no longer the same person?"
This contingency had never arisen as both Gotaas and
I served in the dual role of director and chairman.

Chall: Why were you not going to be the chairman of the
department any more?

McGauhey: Because chairmen are appointed on a three-years-
minimum, five-years-and-out schedule. This is a
good thing, because there's only so much that you
can do, in five years, if you* re not good, to
destroy something that's already rolling. And
there's only so much good you can do to accelerate
it if you're a good chairman. A bad chairman can't
ruin anything completely in three to five years.
Whereas, if he were there for life he might drag
down the whole thing.

Once relieved of the duties of chairman of the
Hydraulic and Sanitary Division, and largely as an
act of self defense because I felt it was to the
interest of our group, I took the post of chairman
of civil engineering. At the end of two years, I
asked to be relieved of being chairman and to confine
my task to that of director. The dean agreed that
the two were Just too much load on one man. Never
theless, it was an interesting and challenging
experience and quite an active one.

Directing Research

McGauhey: In my research I operated on a little different base

than some other people. As director of the Laboratory
I was under pressure to be faculty investigator on
projects that no one else wanted but were of importance
to students and faculty. Happily I was interested In
anything that came along. I don't mean in terms of
Just dollars. I mean there was hardly any subject you
can think of that I wasn't Interested in. This
didn't mean that I knew much about some of the things
I undertook. But if I could get the outside funds
to support students on studies related to environmental
control, I did not hesitate to take responsibility
for a project outside my field of major competence.

As we discussed on a previous occasion, there
are problems involved In environmental management
which require teamwork between engineers and numerous

McGauhey: other professionals from a variety of disciplines.
My rationale was that it was important that SERL
take part in preparing suoh students even though
their degree work was outside sanitary engineering
and environmental health sciences. On one project,
I once had students in twelve different disciplines
working on various aspects of solid waste management.

The key to success, or even survival, in suoh
an enterprise was, of course, the willingness of
professors in appropriate disciplines to guide the
thesis work of their own students. I generally
served on the thesis committee to evaluate their
performance as researchers, while their major
professor made certain that they did not violate
the principles of their special discipline. So the
professors worked with me; the student was on my
payroll and I knew what I wanted to get out of the
project; and all concerned met from time to time to
keep the activity coordinated. I am happy to say
this boldness in research responsibility never let
me down, although there were occasions when time
might have been spent more efficiently had I possessed
the depth of knowledge in the student's field that
his major professor brought to the study. Obviously,
such a situation has not been possible since Leonardo
Da Vinci.

This undertaking of projects without the
competence to critically evaluate every aspect of
the student's work is all right for the professor
who is already mature. For the young man who has to
develop his own depth of knowledge in a specialty
area and to work his way up the academic ladder, it
is unsuitable. He cannot get anywhere by continually
working at things he doesn't know how to do. But
later, when he has established himself in his
profession, he can begin to grow laterally instead
of vertically.

In my opinion this branching out on an informal
basis provided an opportunity for the Laboratory to
make a great deal of contribution to education in
more ways than Just teaching our own students.

Financing Research

Chall: Now over the years various little changes seemed
to come about in the way this Lab was, not
necessarily organized, but watched by the University.

McGauhey: The principal reason for this is that when the

post-war years began nobody knew exactly which way
we were headed. Neither the University administration
nor the faculty knew what the future was to be. We
didn't draw a blueprint for the future and then try
to follow it. And I doubt very seriously that Dr.
Gotaas himself knew exactly what he was going to
make of this Laboratory thing. Although I will say
that I had not been there very long before he was
able to tell me the visions that he had for the
future — what he had in mind, the kind of thing he
was thinking about. Thus, while nothing was completely
planned the direction the Laboratory was eventually
to follow and the purposes it was to serve were not
accidental.

At that time, the University itself had no
policy about organized research units, and as far
as I know, no good experience with organized
laboratories. There 'd been one situation in which
an institute had been set up on the campus by outside
money. The donor specified the well-known scientist
who was to head it. Thus he became its director
for life. He was a strong and able man, so the
institute grew in reputation and stature until an
academic program in this particular field was needed.
By this time the director was a permanent giant who
owned the tower and the transient state of academic
chairmen made them unwelcome little men. Their
presence in the tower was scarcely tolerated and
they never could get enough strength at the academic
level to overcome the top heavy organization of
this particular institute.

Having suffered with this problem the University
didn't want this kind of thing to happen again.
And I don't blame it.

How do we prevent it happening? This question
is still being debated, although, I think, it is now
clearly understood what an organized laboratory should

McGauhey: be like. I believe that part of this understanding
came from Just watching the way in which SERL and
one or two other organized units developed. To a
gratifying degree the University's description of
an organized research laboratory came to read like
the early reports on the nature and organization
of SERL.

Another thing that worried the University was
that anything the legislature sets up, as it did
some money for SERL, or as it did in a bigger way
for the Institute of Traffic and Transportation, comes
with certain problems attached. The legislature
says, "Here's something that ought to be done. The
University ought to do it. We'll give the University
some money to do it.H Thus a one-time special
appropriation creates a continuing program. However,
when the second year comes round and money is needed
to continue the program, the legislature says, "We
got you started, don't fool around with any more special
appropriation bills. Just include the funds in your
regular budget." Well, the regular budget is never
approved at this expanded level and so, if the
University is not careful more and more of its
budget is tied up in things that the legislature
passed on as institutes, centers, and laboratories.

This impoverishes the instructional aspect of
the University which, after all, is its primary
function. The problem therefore becomes one of
preventing legislature-generated services to the
state, however important they may be, from establishing
a prior lien that petrifies an Increasing fraction of
the University's budget.

Chall: Does the legislature now simply give money to
specific research projects?

McGauhey: Not always. You see the state-established institute
like ITTE appears as a line item in the state budget.
But this laboratory is only one sector of the state-
supported research included in the University's
budget.

That is to say that if the University is asked
"What did you do with the money we approved for
research?" the answer would be that part of it went
to support SERL via an allocation to the College of

McGauhey: Engineering at Berkeley, which administers the
SERL funds. There Is no line Item In the state
budget for SERL.

Ghall: That clarifies that situation.

MoGauhey: Yes, except that as budgets became more lean
research is increasingly unidentified as an
instructional element of the program, hence is
downgraded at the state level.

The Value of SERL in Research and Training

Ghall: I have a quote here from your 1961 report that I'm
sure you wrote.

MoGauhey: Yes, I wrote the report.

Chall: "Whether by design or by historic accident, the
program of the SERL as envisioned by Dr. Gotaas
and Dean O'Brien established a thoroughly new and
unique pattern of sanitary engineering research.1*
Do you think that it was by design as much as by
historic accident that this came about as it did?

McGauhey: That is a fascinating question — the type one answers
by talking all around it until the questioner is
sorry the subject was ever brought up. I would say
that the conditions which brought us to the end of
World War II with a whole new concept of matter and
energy was a result of the design made necessary by
the accidents of history. Perhaps it should be said
that the needs confronting the University, and the
opportunities confronting It, were generated by
history.

Considering your question in terms of our
responses to those needs, I would say that in setting
up the Laboratory, the Idea of an area such as the
RPS, where you can carry on activities on a scale
greater than that feasible in a teaching laboratory —
that was definitely by design. Whether it was
historic accident that brought together the School
of Public Health and the College of Engineering and
the staff and the stuff from which SERL was made — and

McGauhey: the program in which it serves — depends upon one's
point of view. I would presume that the faculty
decisions which divided Dr. Gotaas' time between
the two schools was historic accident. What alter
natives there were to the employment of Dr. Gotaas
at the time I do not know. My guess would be that had
someone else been chosen the whole story would have
been different. That makes it historic accident.
But after these accidents had occurred, some of the
elements of design are detectable. Perhaps I should
avoid the question and say that we were Just lucky.

Chall: But then Dr. Gotaas told you some years later what
he had in mind.

McGauhey: It was evolving in his mind as we talked it over.
That is, how it came out is the way, very much the
way, it was developing in his mind. Of course,
there was a lot of feedback from the many people
concerned. Because of what I have previously labeled
the penchant of professors to disagree — often as a
reflex action — much of the feedback was negative. It
served, however, to refine the concept of SERL. I
might say that in this refining process, and at the
time the name Sanitary Engineering Research Project
became incongrous, there was considerable debate as
to whether the word "research" should be left in
the title. I think at the time the designation of
a unit as a "laboratory" seemed a little more holy,
although to those of us who opposed the change it
sounded a bit more pharmaceutical without the
research designation. I Judge now that the logic on
both sides stemmed from the "penchant" I have noted.

Regardless of the threads that went into the
fabric of SERL, the refining process resulted in a
situation in which we have a place where people can
work in a work atmosphere — where we can put up
pilot plants and build things of different size or
scale than you can have on a teaching laboratory.

I say a "work atmosphere" because one of the
problems with graduate students around a professor's
office is that if they were to chart what they think
the professor does, they would say he arrives one
minute before class and promptly goes off to coffee
as soon as it's over. So he never sees the professor

McGauhey: doing anything but talking. Students fall into
that same habit pattern. They don't realize how
much oil the professor is burning when the student
isn't there to take his time; or that some freedom
to rearrange your time is important to a professor;
or that he ends up breaking his own neck if he
doesn't hit the ball and do what's necessary for
promotion. It is easy for the graduate student to
fall into the habits he thinks characterize the
professor; i.e. endless talking and coffee breaks
for even more talking. This is not the way research
work progresses.

When I first Joined the SERL staff one of my
difficult tasks was to deal with graduate students
in the Laboratory who were working under individual
scholarships in relation to those who were employed
half-time on a project. The difference here is that
one was not paid by SERL or any project. His source
of support was really none of our business. We
simply provided him with the space and the facilities
to do his dissertation research and if he didn't do
it he never attained the degree. In contrast, the
doctoral student supported by us was paid half-time
for full time attention to his thesis. In this
fashion he supported himself and his thesis could go
beyond the objectives of the research for which the
project was funded.

One example will illustrate. We once had a
self-supported graduate student that arrived at the
Laboratory when it suited his convenience and
thereafter sat reading the morning newspaper. Not
appreciating his situation the employed students
took the attitude that if this bird doesn't work on
the Job why should I have to. I had repeatedly to
explain that nobody is paying him. If he wants to
lie there, as long as he doesn't get in your way,
forget it.

Ghall: But you do have to show a little for the money that's
gone into the project at the end of a period of time,
don't you?

McGauhey: Indeed yes. But graduate students are good producers.
The particular case I noted was unique, but it does
underscore the value of separating a work atmosphere
from the campus routines. As an interesting aside,

McGauhey: I may say that In the particular case I cited,
when the student finally laid his paper down
and thought for two minutes, he accomplished more
than most people do In a half a day. He was one
of the sheerly brilliant people. He appeared to be
doing nothing, and all at once he'd have more done
than the rest of them get done In the entire day.

So at the field station there Is more of a
work atmosphere than In an academic building, with
people running In and out, and people going across
the street to coffee and the "why don't you come
along with us" type of thing. There's less time
lost by Inertia of the system than there Is on
campus. It has some disadvantage being a little
further away. And yet It has some advantage, too.
The distance never bothered me. I didn't mind. I'd
go to the campus early In the morning and stay until
noon; then go to the RPS. It wasn't hard to arrange
the situation.

Chall: Well, you're a disciplined person. And, I suppose,
not all people are as self -disciplined as you are.

McGauhey: One has to be either disciplined or fairly highly
organized, as you have to organize each day pretty
well In order to expand your capacity to do things.
At least, as time goes on one's capacity to accomplish
things does Increase. You work Just as hard. No
harder than you did before. You Just get a little
more done.

Chall: You must have done a good Job or you wouldn't have
been here all these years.

McGauhey: Well, It's been really sheer fun. But It would have
been an awful haul, if a person didn't enjoy It.

Chall: Mrs. Langeller said that she was a laboratory widow.
Is that what your wife says about herself?

McGauhey: Well, she often says that she's long since learned

to live alone. We never had any children, but since
the HPS Is only two miles away, I go home for lunch.
We go out to eat at night a good deal. And she has
gone with me all over the world.

McGauhey: Through the years we had what I called the
McGauhey Foundation, an unlikely and Impecunious
organization and a figment of the imagination in
which I put the money that I made consulting, which
wasn't much. But any that I got, I put In the
foundation. The purpose of this was to pay for my
wife's travel when we went overseas. And my
rationale, which she laughs about, Is that it's far
simpler to take her there to see for herself than
it is to try to tell her about it.

100

IV RESEARCH AT THE SANITARY ENGINEERING
RESEARCH LABORATORY

Obtaining the Research Grant

Chall: I suppose that we ought to talk about financing
the research and this Laboratory before we get
Into the projects themselves.

McGauhey: As far as the budget's concerned, It hasn't grown
any.

Chall: Your own budget at the Lab.

McGauhey: The University's budget, yes. In dollar amounts It
went up for several years as salary Increases
occurred; then It went down as people left and
positions reverted to lower grades, and as funds
for equipment were out. Finally it decreased
significantly as vacant positions or authorized
positions were taken away.

Chall: So how do you manage?

MoGauhey: The principal thing is by fast thinking and horse-
trading where you can, and by getting assistance
from more projects — getting more of the budget
load onto research projects. I don't mean
transferring the load that normally is the respon
sibility of the University in the way of housekeeping
activities. But we furnish fewer services in the
answering of phones and xeroxing and kinds of things
that clerical help might do. There is no choice but
to reduce that part of the staff and let the people
from the projects use the equipment themselves and
pay for the cost of doing it.

101

Chall: How do you apply for a grant that Includes that
kind of overhead?

MoGauhey: Well, this Is really not overhead. This Is direct
cost, and we get at It this way: We ask for a
certain amount of clerical and stenographic assis
tance, for which we can demonstrate a need. But
it isn't at all impossible for the granting agency
to understand that if you have four or five men
working in the Laboratory, half-time of a secretary
or half-time of someone of the clerical and steno
graphic level is necessary, Just to keep the letters
answered, the literature in order, and the files
usable.

In addition we include, generally, a separate
item for preparation of the report. This doesn't
necessarily mean only the typing of it. There's
a lot to be done in the way of drafting and in
xeroxing and in general legwork that goes into
preparing and, ultimately, in publishing, the report
itself. This is included in the budget and is clearly
identified. SERL is in no position to ask for any
overhead, but on the other hand, it isn't necessary
or required that the University furnish a great deal
of the staff assistance and financial assistance
beyond that which is written into the proposal itself.

The proposal Itself shows that the University
is making contributions in terms of time of people
and that is part of what is reviewed for approval.
But on the other hand, if someone on the SERL
payroll isn't busy, we'd rather have them doing
productive work than sitting around Just because
there is no project work to be done at that moment.

Chall: I see. But you do assign to the project everything

that has to do with getting it organized, accomplished,
and then actually published, which is the end result
of a project anyway.

McGauhey: That is true. However, we have an editor who is
paid half-time by the University, and it's always
difficult to say that 50 percent of one's effort
went into doing those things which the Laboratory
would be doing if it didn't have any projects. It
wouldn't be doing much if it didn't have any projects.
Therefore we wouldn't need all the SERL personnel.

102

MoGauhey: So the editor does a good deal of work for the

projects — advice and counsel, all of which takes
time. But this, by the way, is also listed as
part of the University's contribution, because
it has to make some contribution in order to get
these projects. There are hardly any granting
agencies that simply say, "Here's the money, do
something with it, do what you said you were going
to with it. n You have to show that you have some
thing invested in it. The percentage of project
costs required of the applicant differs from one
agency to another. At least 5 percent is required
by the Environmental Protection Agency, for example.

Chall: Doesn't the University take a certain amount off
the top of the grants that come in?

McGauhey: The University's overhead has to go over and above
the amount of funds that are asked for operating
the project. It is generally determined by the
University, but in some cases negotiated with the
agency Itself. It is largely applied to manpower,
and not to other costs. The percentage at the
time of my retirement was 44 or ^5 percent. This
applied to that part of the budget which is manpower
and general assistance, and not to the equipment and
laboratory supplies and that sort of thing. So It
actually isn't ^5 percent, or whatever the figure
may be, on top of the whole budget request.

Chall: You have to figure what it Is that you basically
need and then add a certain percentage that you
know the University's going to take.

McGauhey: Yes, but the University, the Office of Research

Services, is maintained for the purpose of developing
that part of the budget for us. We take to the ORS
the amount of money that we are asking for. They
verify it — go over it carefully to see that, at the
classifications of people we are asking for, the
money is In line with the University scale for that
classification. The faculty Investigator can't
simply put in "full-time assistant, $5*000," you
know; you have to identify what sort of assistance
this is, and that $5»000 would be the normal pay
scale.

103

McGauhey: Of course, the Office of Research Services
itself supplies a considerable service to the
projects, such as getting the proposal itself
prepared, or at least typed, and through the mills
of the University, and making a monthly accounting
to the faculty investigator, or his designated
project leader, on the status of the budget.
Accounting sends this to the OHS, for transmittal
in summary form to the projects; otherwise the
University would be in an Impossible situation.
Professors being what they are — with other things
on their minds, and what I have called a drunken
sailor sense of economics — would spend all of the
money and the University would be the loser if it
didn't watch finances pretty carefully. In all
fairness to the faculty investigator I should say
that the strange ways of accounting, and the funds
that are in the pipeline of expenditure at the time
the accounting is made, insures that the professor
can not find out the status of his budget unless he
keeps books himself. Only bills paid are charged
against the budget. Fringe benefits are set aside
at the outset. And other obscure factors are
introduced into the accounting process. Thus the
project may be in the red as a result of careless
expenditures not yet in the paid category; or it
may be well in the black as a result of employment
of personnel not eligible for fringe benefits.

Nevertheless, it is a part of the terms of the
grant that the University's accounting will look
after this money in appropriate fashion. If
accounting sent out this material to each faculty
man, it would get lost. We need an organization to
look after all of this sort of thing. That is what
ORS does, and we put in our budgets some money to
cover such service. Charges by ORS are therefore
based on actual service performed. It is not an
overhead cost.

It was one of my perennial tasks through all
the years to try to make faculty investigators
understand that they're not paying an overhead to
ORS. They said, "Why can't we do that ourselves?"
My answer was that we could hire somebody for a few
thousand dollars, but why pay a few thousand when
we can get it done by ORS fox $200. It doesn't make

McGauhey: any sense to try to handle all of this through the
faculty Investigator.

Although University accounting and OHS services
may serve to protect the University from faculty
economics, it does nothing to make the life of the
director of SEEL less complicated. Funds included
in the budget for clerical and stenographic assistance,
and for preparation of the report, were almost always
grudgingly spent — if at all — for the purpose cited
in the proposal. It is a rare faculty investigator
who ever reads the objectives and methodology
proposed originally, once his project is financed.
Generally he immediately sets out to do something
else at twice the cost. Or he becomes intrigued by
the research paths that open up as the project
progresses and attempts to follow them all. The
result, in my experience, was that with but few
exceptions the project came to the hour of report
preparation with no funds left in the project. At
that point the investigator is caught between the
University, which may not get its money if the report
is not submitted, and the alternative of trying to
find some way to unload the cost on the basic SERL
budget. For me it was easier to find a way to bail
them out than it was to change the ways of professors,
so I considered it a part of the game and managed
always to meet the challenge.

I believe I have already noted that OHS serves
as the first filter to see that the proposals them
selves are in line with University policy, and that
they serve an educational purpose; that graduate
students are involved, and education is a goal of
the activity; it isn't Just a trivial repetition of
routine things for the purpose of getting a few
dollars to support a student.

Some Criteria for Determining Grants

Chall: Are they at all interested in kinds of research, or
is that left up to you — to determine what kind of
research is needed, and where you take your proposal?

105

McGauhey: That's pretty much left up to the professor.
Generally the way a proposal is developed Is
through the professor's own contacts with agencies
that are authorized to provide funds for certain
kinds of activities. That is, if one is in the
field of sanitary engineering, he knows pretty well
that the Public Health Service, and the federal
water quality administration (now the EPA) and
various other agencies, are funded for certain kinds
of purposes. If those purposes happen to be some
thing that the professor is interested in pursuing
in research, he then makes unofficial inquiry from
his own friends in the agency. "Here's what I have
in mind. Is this anything you might be interested
in supporting?"

Such contacts are all strictly informal and
are not binding on anyone, nor are they part of any
formal negotiations. So this is done largely by
the faculty member himself, although the University
does have an office in Washington which keeps track
of the availability of funds, and periodically
inquires into the status of project proposals when
requested to do so by ORS or the faculty investigator.
So generally, before anyone from ORS goes to Washington,
as they do every month or so, they inquire of the
various professors whether they have any projects
in Washington which ought to be looked into. Prom
time to time, upon return of this individual, usually
an assistant dean, we get a summary from ORS of the
status of various projects at any moment.

But what kind of problem is to be worked upon
is pretty much determined by the chap who wants to
do it. The University's interest then is to see
that this serves an educational purpose and that it
is something a university ought to be doing.

There are some things that one might propose
to do which are in direct competition with our own
graduates that are in the business of consulting
engineering. And these are things that are not
really as appropriate to a university as they would
be to some private research agency. An example of
that is something that requires a considerable
installation at a long distance from the campus, and
the hiring and firing of people.

106

McGauhey: Suppose for example that I were to get a

demonstration grant to work with a city 150 miles
away, and It Involves the employment of people
to do certain kinds of tasks. Suppose It Involves
laborers who are here today and absent tomorrow,
and stay drunk for two weeks. In private business
you could fire them. In a university, however, we
hire everybody as though they were going to be
permanent staff members, and we Just don't have
the flexibility for dealing with the labor situation
I have cited. Moreover, Just maintaining supervision
of the distant project is extremely difficult, and
wasteful of the professor's time in running back
and forth. So this is one of the kinds of things
that the University is not really set up to do
well without interfering with its normal function.
Then I suppose there are other kinds of things
that are politically sensitive or Involve discussion
between two groups of taxpayers.

One other kind of thing that is not considered,
and should not be considered appropriate for the
professor to be involved in is something that is
so secret that it doesn't become public knowledge.
Everything we do as a public Institution must be
public information, except in oases where the
University itself has entered Into contracts with
agencies like AEG, where restriction of information
is part of the agreement. But the University Is
not going to let me, and I say it shouldn't let me,
take money to do a development task or a research
task from which the findings go into the file of a
business that doesn't want to reveal them.

The reason behind this limitation is certainly
a valid one. That is, that the advancement of the
professor is based partly upon his scholastic attain
ment; and scholastic attainment Is partly measured
by publications In referred Journals. It doesn't
do much good to say, "I wrote a really good report,
but I can't possibly show it to you." This would
not help a committee Judge the fitness of the
researcher for promotion, so the University Just
should not allow a man to paint himself into that
kind of a corner.

Challj It would happen that sometimes these kinds of
proposals are made, and ORS would catch it?

10?

MoGauhey: I don't think the faculty would ever make that kind
of a proposal.

Chall: They know better?

McGauhey: Yes. They know it is not in their own best interest.
They are more likely to do that sort of work on a
consulting basis, where it's only a small under
taking. If it involves a large project they would
recommend a consulting engineer. The consulting
engineer might retain them, if they're particularly
expert, for an occasional consulting day. But we
don't get much of that — certainly not out of SERL
because most of its Interests and activities lead
to public works. In fact, nearly all of the
applications of sanitary engineering, and of any
environmental control engineering, is public works.
So we're really in the field that the public
finances, rather than the field that is financed by
private Industry.

Chall: Yes. I've noticed that almost all of your grants
are public agency grants. And the ones that are
private are so important to the public — like the
soap Industry — that it is in the public interest to
get the work done.

MoGauhey: Yes. That such research support comes from an

association of manufacturers rather than from an
individual manufacturer. That is, the Soap and
Detergent Association has, as its members, most
everybody of any important size that makes anything —
raw materials or detergent products — for cleansing.
Therefore, what the association does is public
information as far as Its own membership is concerned.

Chall: In your little story here, "To Raise a Cat," you
indicate at one point that the limit of most
granting agencies is elastic — that's the word you
use, "the elastic limit of most granting agencies."

McGauhey: There isn't much use to ask for more money than
the federal government has appropriated to an
agency, nor to ask for all of it from one agency.
[Laughter] So you have to get some kind of a feel
for whether your proposal makes economic sense or
not, In terms of the available funds. It has been

108

McGauhey: estimated that we need to put in about two billion

dollars a year for the next five years into research
on solid wastes. Well the EPA may get fourteen
million or eighteen million, or something of this
sort for solid waste. It has to be spread around.
For political reasons, they can't put it all in
one region of the country. For reasons of produc
tivity, It is unlikely that it will all be invested
in one or two chaps' ideas, because in the academic
world there are a lot of people with ideas, and some
of them may turn out to be good ones. And so as
a researcher you have to get some kind of a feel
for whether you are working within the constraints
of any feasible funding. This is what I think of
as "the elastic limit" beyond which you can't go.
[Laughter]

Chall: However at any given time there is apparently a

certain political or social climate — and it changes
rapidly — that determines what you can do.

McGauhey: It changes quite rapidly. It changed rapidly in
the last five years. I believe I mentioned this
in one of our previous discussions. The interpre
tation placed by the HEW on what it meant by
environment was the effect of environment on man,
matters of crime and housing and things of this
sort, as opposed to what man himself is doing to
the e co-system, or to his own chances of survival
in the long-run. Not that these are things of
total unconcern, but at the moment they say the time
has come to build things, and to come up with systems,
and to move things around. So they are de -emphasizing
research, in terms of dollars.

The time may change again when the emphasis
will shift back to very basic research.

Chall: What happens to an organization like SERL, then,
when research is out. Or is it out, really, this
much, in your field?

McGauhey: It's cut. It means that we Just come up with fewer
projects and this means that we can support fewer
graduate students. However, this is one of the
good things about a policy that says don't load up
a research laboratory with too many professionals.

109

MoGauhey: We have to have some professionals around for

assistance, particularly on long-term grants, but
the elasticity comes without having to discharge
any employees. When a graduate student ultimately
gets his degree — most people do live long enough
to get their PhD in the United States, though it's
getting near the life-erpeotancy of man — by that
time the project is over. The graduate departs
and if there isn*t any other project, we have
retrenched without dismissing any employee.

What we have lost is the ability to support
another graduate student. And of course the number
of graduate students that can be maintained in a
university is partly dependent upon support that
if can offer them. The amount of support is about
the same everywhere, so it isn't that we can offer
more at the University than they can offer some
other place. If the other place is not out of
money, the student may say, "Well, I would like
to go there," and it doesn't give us the choice
that we like to have in selecting students for our
own program.

If we get down to where we have more professors
than we have students, then we're below some kind
of a critical mass. If a low graduate student to
faculty ratio is a result of obsolescence of our
whole program, then we ought to begin thinking
about phasing it out and bringing into the University
some other viable program. But if it is the result
of over support of universities in a particular
field that has diluted down the number of people
that field can attract, then it becomes a somewhat
critical thing.

This occurred in sanitary engineering during
the early years after the war. The federal govern
ment, for good reason, supported the development
of sanitary engineering programs in many universities,
The number of programs then was sixty- three or more,
whereas there were previously maybe fifteen that
were doing most of the teaching.

Now the support enables the people there to
pay graduate students, and some of them had policies
permitting them to hire a professor on soft money,

110

McGauhey: as we call It. Having nobody in a program, they
would hire one of our PhDs as an associate
professor, where we would consider him as a Step I
or maybe Step II Assistant Professor, and give him
a chance to develop a program.

Pretty soon we Just had more programs in the
United States than we had students that we could
attract to the field. Even though the need is
there, the competition for the human mind is pretty
great these days, and this is reflected back in the
problem of getting research contracts.

But to further answer the question, once the
money gets tight, the number of projects that a
faculty or laboratory can obtain shrinks. Then
it becomes a little difficult to develop programs
for support of graduate students.

Chall: And is SERL feeling this kind of a money pinch now?
Everything today is pointed toward water pollution
control and environmental pollution control because
of chemical or industrial pollution. All of the
aspects of your Laboratory's work would seem to be
very important today.

McGauheyt We are definitely feeling a pinch, although we are
beginning to get out of it. The pinch came here in
two different ways. One is, as I've said previously,
is that what a professor does, is largely his own
area of interest. Now to maintain a varied faculty,
we don't want seven chaps with all exactly the same
interest. We have a lot of areas to cover. So
when any one of them retires, as I did, part of the
program that he was supporting goes with him.

Some of the areas that I was working in, notably
the economics of water, we didn't have anyone to
carry on, because everyone else had his time committed
to his own areas of interest. Although another person
might have had an interest, he could generate Just
so much financial support at one time and so stayed
in his own area.

Some projects, a large number of which I carried,
died, or came to an end, anyway, and we didn't renew
them. As the new director came on it took him a
little while to begin to generate a greater load of

Ill

MoGauhey: projects than he was carrying as a professor before,
and he is doing that quite successfully. He got
some work on the pollution of San Francisco Bay
from the state, and it will build up again, but
more people have to souffle a little harder.

Another thing that happens is that, as a
faculty member grows older, he gets more adminis
trative duties and you can't get him to put the
same hustle into research as he did when he was an
assistant professor and trying to make a reputation.
It Isn't that he's grown particularly lazy, but
it's that the onset of responsibilities take part
of his time, and public service takes more of it,
and University committees take more, and he leads
more graduate students at levels of research that
cause him to have to put time into keeping his
lecture notes current. And so you get the energy
die-away curve appearing in research Just as it
does with aging of people.

Our group expanded rather quickly after World
War II as I mentioned on a previous occasion. That
meant that we had quite a number of people that
were nearly the same age. The tendency of all
university professors, I think, whenever a vacancy
occurs, Is to think we must hire someone now who's
already got a big reputation In this field. And
this has to be resisted by the administration on
two grounds: The most important one is if we have
everybody retire at once, and get a big flame-out,
we have lost all our stature in the field at one
blast. So when a position opens we'd better get
another young man who has potential and let him
begin to demonstrate that potential and support
his research. It's a little harder for the
young man to get money that it is for the well-
known one.

We have dealt with this sometimes by Joint
investlgatorships, in which a more seasoned
individual appears as a Joint investigator. He
assists the younger one In developing and pretty soon
drops out and lets the other man write the papers.
When you get old enough, it doesn't matter whether
you write any more papers or not.

112

Chall: Just as soon not, too? [Laughter]

MoGauhey: Even though most of us keep doing it, It's not as
critical a factor in our career as it is with the
younger men. [Laughter]

Chall: I see. It's Just a momentum you've built up.
McGauhey: Yes.

Chall: Is it also true that these changes might be forced
upon you by other institutions competing? I mean,
you're talking about your work on the economics of
water, coming to an end, and I noticed that Resources
for the Future has funded studies of water economics
in other institutions.

McGauhey: They funded us here at the very start. In fact, I
think our first project In economics of water was
funded by RFP.

Chall: So they could be funding other institutions who
could be also carrying on similar research.

McGauhey: Yes. And they funded one of our graduate students,
Dr. Richard Frankel, currently over in Bangkok, who
has gone on to a considerable reputation in the
field of water economics. His initial funding was
from the Resources for the Future, although they do
some of it themselves.

Chall: Is there a great deal of competition among institutions,
so that there is a duplication of effort? Or are
granting agencies careful about duplicating effort?

McGauhey: They're pretty careful about duplicating effort in
this fashion: They're not unwilling to have people
in different Institutions working on the same subject.
The reason is that one man has a different idea
than the other, and his approach is different, and
you can't tell which one is going to pay off. But
they are very careful not to fund an organization
for doing the same thing that has already been done.

Some of our early research here is a good
example — the algal systems started by Ludwig and
taken over by Professor Gotaas, from which Professor
Oswald has made a world-wide reputation.

113

Challr What systems? Algal?

McGauheyt Yes. The use of algae In systems for wastewater
treatment and in life-support systems. As soon
as these pioneers had published something that
looked good, the agency began to get proposals
to do the same thing. The attitude of the agency
then was: "Well, look, somebody's already published
that. What new idea do you have here?" If they
can't show some new idea, they are filtered out,
at least until a new generation takes over the
agency and has not heard of the past.

But as to the competition, it is healthy
rather than awkward as far as our Laboratory's
concerned, because it makes us scuffle to stay in
the front rank, and this is what we expect the
University of California to do — to stay out front.
There are only a few competitors for the front
rank. There's lots of competitors for money, and
I don't mean that these are inconsequential programs;
but it's easy to understand that a university which
has only a sanitary engineer, a chemist, and a
biologist teamed together, and not much other support
in the university structure, can't do the kind of
thing that we can.

When I say, "other support in the university
structure" I am referring to the people we can go
to on soil systems, in soil sciences, in metallurgy,
and epidemiology, and entomology — anything you can
name you can find in our system somebody who has
a pretty considerable reputation In that field.
There's never been any problem getting them to sit
with us and put us on the right track. But if one
gets into an institution where these are limited In
number, then he can move only so fast because he
Just doesn't have the support, either in human
resources that might assist him or, perhaps, in
facilities as well.

The competition never seemed to be a critical
factor, although we have lost some graduate students
that we'd like to have to other institutions for,
probably, reasons of the length of time that it
took to get through our admissions mill. They got
frightened that they were not going to be accepted,
and when somebody elsewhere said, "We need you here
right now," they went. But that is part of the game,

MoGauhey: and it's not anything that one can deplore in very
tear- Jerking terms, anyway. [Laughter]

Chall: You manage to get over it. What if somebody says,
"I have some money to have you do some research on
a project," might you decide that it isn't worth
taking or going into that facet of research?

McGauhey: Well, after you recover from fainting...

Chall: I guess nobody really ever comes to you with money.
[Laughter]

McGauhey: In one case they did; and I turned it down.
Chall: Oh, you have done this?

McGauhey: Yes. It was some money — of course we didn't get
as far as discussing how much, but it wouldn't
have been a lot — from the construction industry
that wanted to resolve the problem of disposal of
demolition debris. I told them I couldn't take the
money because I didn't have any idea of what to do.
Unless I have some hopeful research ideas, Just
having money isn't going to solve the problem.
There may be other people with ideas, I said, but
I don't know a confounded thing to spend your
money on that would make any sense.

You see one of the troubles with getting into
research or accepting research money is, you are
committed to producing some results. At least
you've got to make some progress along the road
toward solving a problem; so Just money without an
idea doesn't help you any. That does not mean that
there are not people In the world with Ideas, but
it means if you don't have it you're a poor one for
them to invest their money in.

Chall: Yes. But there must be some projects on which you
don't really have ideas, but you feel that somebody
else in your general area here might have an idea,
or it might at least be worth exploring.

McGauhey: The Laboratory has never said no to any suggested
study which was appropriate to our educational
purpose and our commitment to public service. We

115

McGauhey i always oheok to see if there's anyone around either
in the Laboratory or elsewhere in the University
that is interested. This is not an arbitrary
decision by the director of the Laboratory. If
there's any money around we find out whether anyone
has an interest or an idea.

Challt I see. Or any desire to take it on.

McGauhey* Desire — particularly if it's money that leads to

the support of graduate students and our educational
purpose.

Techniques of Writing Grant Proposals

Challt Some people, I think at your level, have criticized
granting agencies because it takes so long to write
a proposal properly. Apparently there are certain
rigid systems to follow, every granting agency has
its own forms, and so much money seems to be taken
off of the top for whatever reasons there are, that
it's hardly worth the effort. There must be some
other way to finance the programs that we want.

McGauhey: Well, people have talked of doing that by getting
a big institutional grant. This is somewhat the
way NSF [National Science Foundation] is worked.
Get an institutional grant and then the institution
Itself, by internal scuffling, decides who's going
to be supported in what research effort. After a
few years this becomes a comfortable sort of a
vested interest, you know, and doesn't, in my
opinion, fire up the imagination of the professor
to the extent comparable to that of the project he
has to go after for himself*

But to the point that you made, one has to
learn how to write proposals; that is, if he's
going to get money.

ChallJ Do you charge the time that goes into writing that
proposal against the cost of the proposal when you
finally get the money?

116

MoGauhey: No, you cannot. No agency will permit you to put
In any oost of going after the money. This comes
out of your own energies. If you want support,
then it's up to you to get busy and put together
a proposal.

Chall: But It must come out, not only of your own energy,
It has to come out of your pocket, someplace. Is
that a personal pocket?

MoGauhey: No. Getting the thing ready and sending It off Is
part of the service of the University through our
Office of Research Services. It sends away many
proposals and a good percentage of them come back
without any olive branch, you know. [Laughter]

Chall: Then what about all the time It takes you and a

half-a-dozen other professors, let's say, to work
out a proposal first, before you get It to the
Office of Research Services? The secretary has to
type it up.

MoGauhey: Typing is only a minor aspect. The main task is
getting something worth typing in a form that the
secretary can read. That comes out of the seven-
day-week that we put in on it. That's part of our
responsibility, I think, to the University. The
University, while it doesn't actually say, "X
number of hours you should spend In teaching,"
generally implies that if you are not doing research
your teaching load ought to be bigger than if you
are. Some fraction of our effort is supposed to be
dedicated to research. And while no one has ever
codified that, and pity the one who tries it, it
is rationally a sound approach.

If we have people with energy and curiosity
and Interest, they'll generate the proposals. I
have written proposals that turned out to be a
waste of time, except as they may have educated me.
But not too many, not too many. The plain fact
with proposal writing is that if you can't tell the
granting agency what it is that you want to do,
why it makes any difference to anybody in the world
whether it's done or not, and what kind of an idea
you have about how you're going to do it, then you
shouldn't expect and can't expect it to get any

117

McGauhey: serious attention. As in my "To Raise a Cat,"
there must be presented some idea of how the
professor is going to do this, how he's going to
get started, and what wonders will accrue if it
works out.

This is the difficult part with many people
and their proposals — I've read lots of them and
have been on countless review committees — they
Just either oanft tell you what it is they want
to do, or really don't know what it is they want
to do. Or why anyone cares.

Chall: Or should care.

McGauhey: Yes. Once you can tell what it is you want to do
and show that you have an idea of how to go about
it — an idea that has not already been mined out
and reported in the literature — then you can get
a proposal seriously considered.

The ORS helps, of course, with the budget
considerations, but writing the proposal is Just
part of the chance you take. It's part of the
cross you bear if you want to get research support
for your students.

Chall i Isn't there some way that you can obtain, in

advance of writing a proposal, whether the granting
agency might be interested in supporting your
research?

McGauhey: Theoretically there is, but it doesn't work out in
practice. Of course, the granting agency lets it
be known what areas of research it is interested in
supporting. Thus if we are interested in study of
air pollution control, water quality, solid waste
management, or other subjects we can decide who to
approach with a proposal. In many oases the agency
also suggests that a brief letter be sent in advance
of any formal proposal in order to determine the
agency's interest in the project the researcher has
in mind. "Don't bother writing a complete proposal,'
they say. "Just tell us in a brief summary what
you want to do. Write us a letter saying 'This is
the area in which I would develop a proposal if
you have an interest.'" To follow this course is
to be assured of disaster.

118

McGauheyt Let me cite an example.

Recently I was called in to consult with a
water resources center in another university to
assist in preparing some new proposals. My role
was that of an expert in grantsmanshlp rather than
in the particular subject of the proposed research.
The institution had employed two people (who were
getting ready to leave) when I arrived, but they
weren't getting any research money the way their
program and manpower justified. I found out at
once that they were following the rules, or following
the suggestions, of granting agencies; and they
were exciting no interest.

Challt How do you explain that?

McGauhey: To answer the question one must inquire: who gets
such letters as the agency suggests? No one knows.
In a large agency, somebody presumably reads it; it
isn't in enough detail to tell anybody what the
professor is going to do and the message Just doesn't
come through. So the reader advises his agency to
say "We are not interested. "

My advice was, "Write a proposal as though you
meant it, even though this takes a lot of effort.
Send this proposal informally to your contact In
the agency, and make it clear that the document is
unofficial and subject to refinement to fit the
objectives of the agency as long as they are
compatible with the university's policy.11

Then somebody will read it. Quite commonly
the Judgment will be either, "This is good, but the
budget's far too big," or "This aspect of It we
are already supporting elsewhere," or "We don't
want to support some phase of It. " After this
initial evaluation you can rewrite the proposal on
the agency's standard form — it doesn't have to go
out on the forms to begin with — and submit it
through proper university channels. Prom my
experience the flow in university channels is like
cold molasses. Therefore, I advise that the
university be badgered into sending out an advance
copy which Is official except for some signatures
required by the university process. Most agencies

119

MoGauhey: will let the applicant meet deadlines with this
kind of proposal.

But you simply can't get money by Just
skeletonizing what It Is you want to do. Because
the chap who reads It will say, "There's not enough
detail here to tell how he's going to do lt.H Even
though the policy of the agency may be that the
skeleton proposal Is adequate, It won't work. Not
with me, anyway.

Chall: Did It help when you changed their methods?

MoGauhey: Yes. They quickly got two more projects supported,
and have continued to be successful In obtaining
research grants.

Chall: There's a system then that you should be following.

MoGauhey t You have to follow a system, such as I have noted.
But first you must have an Idea, preferably, an
Idea about new subjects that are emerging, and be
able to state clearly what It Is you want to do about
that Idea. We at the University of California
normally search for the new idea. We expect to
attack these Impossible problems that are coming on
fast, or that we can foresee. It Is possible
sometimes to see so far down the road that there
isn't enough interest yet on the part of the granting
agency. I believe I mentioned on another occasion
that this is one of the pitfalls of research, that
you have to shout that the sky is falling In order
to get anybody excited enough to take an Interest In
financing a project. Only If you can make the
world believe that the sky Is falling can you get
enough lead time In research to come up with the
measures needed when the falling begins. [Laughter]

If It is, indeed, already falling, as in the
case of air pollution in urban centers, something
has to be done, and will be done politically, before
research can possibly produce results. Then we
hear again the familiar refrain: What good did
research ever do? They research, and research, and
nothing ever comes of it. This Is the major cross
the researcher must bear; that in order to obtain
research funds the problem has to be so immediate

120

MoGauhey: that it Is difficult to get lead time enough to

oome up with results that can be put into hardware.

Along with that is the danger that the
researcher will become so intrigued by what he
finds, that he thinks it necessary to attack
smaller and smaller pieces of the problem he set
out to work on before any conclusion can be reached.
This is what I call receding into the background,
Instead of moving along in the direction of the
horizon. Fragmentation of a problem is unavoidable
because as you crack it you see that it wasn't one
problem at all. It was ten thousand problems
locked up in one nutshell. Following his instincts,
the researcher feels he must get at each of the ten
thousand little problems before he reaches a con
clusion befitting a scientist. Thus cracking the
big problem may never have any effect in the real
world as the reseaoher follows the intrique of
interesting pathways and forgets his original purpose,

Determining Contemporary Environmental Research
Goals

Chall: That has to be watched, then, I suppose, by somebody
who* s giving the money.

MoGauhey: It isn't so much that the granting agency serves as
a watchdog to insure that its money is well spent.
The phenomenon that leads to research support only
when crisis is upon us has yet another facet. This
is that the granting agency itself, particularly
the federal agency, gets its funds from the Congress
only when the Congress believes that the sky is
falling. In the matter of environmental control
most of the research funds come from federal agencies.
Five or six years is about the length of the attention
span of people to any particular crisis. After that
the excitement is gone and we need a new crisis to
make life exciting — or to keep up our accustomed
level of sensitivity to impending doom. So interest
shifts periodically to some new threat. This doesn't
mean that the old crisis is resolved. Water pollution,
for example, goes on and on but a new buzzword
replaces the one of the moment in an endless sequence.

121

MoGauhey: Thus every five or six years the granting agency

will say "Look, we've been supporting your project
for X years and are now shifting our research
emphasis to another subject." In such a changing
world the professor should not expect a single
research Idea to last him all his lifetime. He
ought to have another occasionally.

The trick In good grant smanshlp, beyond writing
a proposal that does not boggle the human mind, Is
to foresee the crises ahead with enough clarity to
Judge when the lead time Is down to about five
years. At that time his cry that the sky Is falling
seems plausible to some granting agencies. With
good luck, the researcher may get funds and be in
a position to provide some of the answers when the
critical questions are finally asked. In that case
he becomes the established authority on the subject
and the reputation of the university for leadership
in the overall field is enhanced. If the coming
crisis is too far down the road, the researcher will
merely become a Jackass braying in the wilderness,
and will have to compete for support with a host of
unimaginative researchers for funding when the crisis
is finally upon us.

In one of the many forgotten papers I have
written I call attention to the reasons why research
of a very subtle and multi-disciplinary nature is
required in today's environmental climate. Of
course, we in SERL have made it our business to
look for the coming problem and to be prepared to
attack it at the earliest moment we can excite some
support. The overall situation, as I see it, is that
we are now entering an era when reconquering the
environment is our major problem. Incidentally, I
did not invent this particular Idea. I got it from
some long forgotten writer who failed to elaborate
upon it. Nevertheless, In pioneer days the first
task of the engineer and nearly everyone else was
that of conquering the wilderness — Just overcoming
gross environmental problems. Much of this was done
with well known hardware — the plow, the pick and
shovel, the mule drawn scraper, and a little dynamite.

Then came the second era in our national develop
ment. This is the one in which most of us have spent
our lives. Now, having conquered the wilderness to

122

MoGauhey: a vast degree, we set about exploiting the resources
that we found In the wilderness developing technology
and science and all manner of Industrial enterprise —
chemical and metallurgical, and so on. That we did
this with considerable abandon as far as residues
and environmental Impacts were concerned gave birth
to the third era — the era of reconquering the
environment. Only this time, Instead of having
gross wilderness or obvious environmental problems
to deal with, we have subtle ones and long-term ones.
When conquering the wilderness was a matter of
chopping down trees, we could eventually see the
sky and the ashes and know that we had them chopped.
The Immediate objective of creating a field for our
crops was achieved by relatively simple, If
strenuous, means. But what we did not know, or
care much about, was the long-term effects of our
gaining a field. These effects have now become our
environmental concern. So It's this area of "don't
know" In which we need research far more than we
need hardware, because we don't know what kind of
hardware to make.

Chall: And a whole new attack on values, too.

MoGauhey : Yes. A whole new attack with a different kind of a
team, too, because there's no individual discipline
so uniquely prepared that it can attack a major
environmental problem with all its implications and
come up with a solution. What happens is what has
happened often in the past: we may come up with a
simplistic solution, and all that solution does — or
at least one of the things it does — is to create
unforeseen dislocations in equilibria in the environ
ment.

As a result we are now confronted with a
situation where multi-discipline research is far
more Important than it was in the past. I use
this term multi-discipline, rather than inter
disciplinary.

Chall: Oh, that's something else?

MoGauhey: Yes. Because the way the system works. If it's
multi-disciplinary it means you have assembled
together a group of appropriate disciplines that
understand the problem and are working together on it;

123

MoGauhey: but when you get into interdisciplinary ones, this
means — or has meant, at least — that each discipline
will take what money it can get and go off and do
what it pleases with it, and in the end, as I have
said on another occasion, you never can put all of
this product together and get any observable gain
toward the original objective. [Laughter]

Chall: Heally? So if you start out with the phrase, "It's
going to be multi-disciplinary, H then they know
what you mean, and what your final objective Is.

MoGauhey: The definition, or distinction, is not well established
yet, so one had best erplaln what he means. On my
multi-disciplinary team I propose to assemble a proper
crew of carpenters, and plumbers and electricians to
do a Job on this site, rather than to encourage each
to go off and do what he thinks is a good idea and
send me a bill at the end of the month.

Chall: Each in his own lights.

McGauhey: There's plenty of room for the individual to purstie
his own area of interests. But let him do that
when he goes for his own grant. [Laughter]

Some Noteworthy Research at SERL

Chall: Tell me, now that you have somehow managed to get the

money, with all the painstaking effort that it requires,
from the foundations and the funding agencies, what
kinds of research projects have you done here which
you think are most Important.

McGauhey: In listing tha ones where this Laboratory has led
the field, particularly those that have made a
considerable impact, I will not try to put them in
any order of importance. In the field of solid
waste management, for which the Laboratory was
initially created, we have made a major and continuing
impact. I will say a bit more about this later, as
it concerns multi-disciplinary research as well as
technological and scientific discovery. One area
that has attracted world-wide attention is our work
in algal systems for waste management and life

MoGauhey: support. Another is the area of kinetics of waste
treatment processes.

I might explain briefly what this is all
about. When we are disposing of organic matter
such as human wastes or dead vegetation, or any
natural organic matter, by biological means, the
rate at which bacteria will break the material down
and carry out their biochemical processes is not
particularly different from one city to another,
or from one situation to another, at the temperatures
that prevail outdoors. So we have been able to get
along pretty well in designing treatment plants
with a rather home-grown, roughly determined, value
of what we call "rate constant" for the way the
thing progresses. But as soon as treatment of
organic industrial wastes is the problem and the
rate constant is unknown, then the whole set of
parameters we have used for designing a system are
inapplicable. Sometimes, the practice has been to
Just go on and use the same old rate constant that
applies to something else. The results have not
been spectacularly successful. So at SEHL we have
done a lot of work in the field of reaction kinetics
which has been quite significant.

We also did significant work In detergents.
The fate of detergents in waste treatment systems,
and out In the environment — we did very significant
work on that and then followed it through with
checking out the new detergents In the same kind of
systems.

On groundwater recharge, and with it the
movement of travel of pollution in soil systems —
we've done pioneer work, and have stayed pretty
well at the forefront of that field, although the
field has expanded, and of course we're no longer
the only ones in it. But we led in it.

And in the whole matter of things as presumably
simple as septic tanks, we clarified the situation
of percolation system failure for the Federal Housing
Administration — the result of our work pretty well
leading the PHA to abandon septic tanks In urban
situations. Most significantly we revealed the
misconceptions on which septic systems were predicated
and generated a new concept of systems design.

125

MoGauhey: Presently (1972) as revived interest in land

disposal of wastes has come to be the buzz word,
a considerable amount of research is emerging
from our findings, often rediscovering what we
have long had in the literature.

We also did significant early work in the
area of radioactive wastes in the environment,
particularly in the wastewater system.

Recently and currently, I would say, we are
doing pioneering work on the processes for waste-
water treatment. Professor W.J. Kaufman is
particularly at the forefront in that area, and I
think the system that he now has in the pilot-plant
stage and which the University has patented, is
very likely to be the direction that wastewater
treatment takes in the immediate future.

Chall: You mean it's different from what we have had for
the last fifty or sixty years?

MoGauhey: Yes. Of course, It uses biological and chemical
systems, but in a different combination, on a
different rationale, and in producing better results.

Chall: I see. Are you getting at the chemicals in the
water now — is that part of it?

MoGauhey: We're using chemical treatment, but the University's
big contribution in the matter of removal of minerals
has been through its saline water laboratory, the
seawater conversion laboratory here under Professor
Everett D. Howe, now under Professor Alan Laird.

One other area where we have gained an appreciable
reputation is the principles and engineering, including
design, of ocean outfalls — dispersion of waste waters
into receiving waters. In this area, Professor
Erman Pearson and Professor Robert Sellek have been
most active. Professor Pearson is Mr. Kinetics as
far as our shop is concerned, too. [Laughter]

We did some exceptionally significant work in
the economic evaluation of water during the 1960s.
The detergents, the solid wastes, the septic tanks,
the economic evaluation, and the soil systems, and

126

MoGauhey: water reclamation were all areas in which I

personally participated in research, and with
some very able men. Dr. Krone, who now heads
civil engineering at Davis, and Dr. Golueke, who
is our chief biologist at SERL, were among the ones
who did much of the work here.

Solid Waste Management

McGauhey: We've done enough work in the field of solid wastes
that I think we are, if I may say it modestly,
probably the leaders in that particular field. You
see those big red volumes on the bookshelf; the
Public Health Service has Just published two of
our major reports. The Bureau of Solid Waste
Management--it used to be the Public Health Service —
has published them. Of them they said to us, "Well,
this establishes you chaps as the center for solid
waste for the whole United States I"

Chall: You've been working on it for fifteen years.

MoGauheyt Yes. The first significant thing that has been
accomplished here was Dr. Golueke1 s work on
composting. At the time when people thought it
involved witchcraft and specially-trained bacteria
and all other kinds of mystical rituals, the
University and this Laboratory sorted out what
was the truth of the situation and established the
criteria and the parameters for composting. They
have stood up through the years.

So in the area of solid waste management we
have been running in the lead position for a long
time, and were pointing out the problems and some
of the solutions long before the public got much
excited about wastes.

Chall » I believe you referred to solid waste management

as a field where you have utilized multi-disciplinary
research.

MoGauhey i Yes. Through the years I gave a great deal of

thought to how a multi-discipline research project

12?

McGauhey: oould be suooessfully organized. I am sure you
have been around the University and professors
long enough to know that, as I mentioned the oth«r
day, they have to swim by their own energy If they
wish to advance. Moreover they are Inclined to
work only on things In which they have an Individual
Interest. How oould you bring such a group of
Individualistic people to direct their combined
fire power on any one Individual field?

With the rise of concern for the total environ
ment, social sciences discovering the earth, and
a whole new spectrum of saviors concerned with the
environment, there arose a great deal of Interest
In the federal government and other agencies In
products which Involved Interdisciplinary or multl-
dlsclpllne research. The concept also had a good
deal of appeal to universities on the rationale
that you can't do anything with resources without
Involving administration, and economics, and
sociology, as well as engineering, public health,
science, etc.; in fact you can hardly find any
field that doesn't have some relevance to environ
ment. There ought, therefore, to be some way the
University can bring all this to bear on the overall
problem.

The formula that Dr. Golueke and I ultimately
came up with In solid waste management was one in
which, on the basis of our presumed competence, or
at least our stature in the field, we would seek to
get support for a project which would be multi-
disciplinary. In It we would bring interested
individuals from other disciplines as participating
faculty people. We would support graduate students
in the particular areas of the cooperating or
participating professors; we would have this group
of professors constitute a project control committee
that met every week, or at least every month, to
review the progress and the relevance of our work
and to fit together what we were finding in the
various activities of the project. We would manage
the budget in SERL, but the fraction to be allocated
to each activity would be determined by the group In
developing the project. Money would be allocated
for the several purposes, but the funds remained In
SERL. Thus, If the participating faculty member
failed to work on his agreed area, I oould shut off

128

MoGauhey: the money. This Is the secret of multi -disciplinary
research: central responsibility for budget. In
my opinion you cannot invest money In a whole series
of projects fitted together with any hope of holding
them together. They Just go off in any direction
and the result is choas.

We started our multi-disciplinary project by
going In the field the first summer and learning
what the problem was all about; the entire group of
participating professors taking part at once.

Chall: What were the disciplines Involved here?

McGauhey: There was sanitary engineering, agricultural

engineering (Davis); chemical engineering, mechanical
engineering, forestry, planning and economics, and
operations research, and public health. Thus in the
waste disposal group we had a good spectrum of
technology in agricultural waste, disposal, landfilling,
incineration, and composting* The economics and
planning group worked closely with operations
research to set up first a waste-generating model,
and then an overall management model. Then we carved
out for research teams the areas where we needed
information to fit Into these models; and it worked
well. I think ours is about the only way that you
can get multi-discipline effectively to attack a
problem.

In each of the several disciplines where
graduate students were working they were guided In
their thesis activities by an expert in their own
field, and this made it possible for us to get quite
a variety of points of view developed and quite a
variety of technology analyzed, and Interrelated.

After about three years some of the technology
became more advanced than others. That is, some
aspects of the project were ready for pilot plant
experiments. Some were obviously of a long-term
basis nature. Some were brought to a satisfactory
conclusion. Thus when I retired in 1969 the time
had come for some aspects of the project to go on
as separate projects. You can carry multi -disciplinary
research only so far. By and by you get into the
niceties of the technology, or the details of a

129

McGauhey: technology and we must then expose that aspect to
the granting agency to see whether they want to
support It or not. At that point the multi-
disciplinary phase will concern largely the
economics, planning, overall engineering, and
operations research aspects In one package, the
various technologies and long-term scientific
studies being packaged otherwise.

Solid Waste Defined

Challr What is solid waste as you study it?

McGauhey: Most of the attention has been directed to those

wastes that are generated in a city and are handled
as solids. Of course, air pollutants are largely
partioulate matter which are solids. So are the
things that go into water and pollute it. These are
solids which are dissolved or floating. Thus, in
general, most of the pollutants which give us
concern are solids.

But what we are talking about In solid waste
management are those resource residues that we have
to handle as solids anywhere in the community.
Solids which if not remaned by man are going to
stay right there and impoverish our environment.

Most of the attention has been directed to
what we would call municipal refuse. This is more
than garbage. Garbage per se is Just vegetable
scraps, from food and the preparation of food, and
is increasingly handled by grinding into the sewer.
Thus, more and more In our domestic refuse Is paper,
plastic containers of all kinds, metal containers,
non-returnable bottles — lots of glass, and paper,
and combinations of plastic and paper, such as they
use in milk cartons. This is an ever increasing
load. In the Bay Area it's between six and eight
pounds per person per day.

Besides municipal refuse there's a lot of other
things that we haven't paid much attention to on a
utility basis. For example, there is the debris from

130

MoGauhey: demolition, redevelopment of housing, and building

of freeways. We didn't give that a lot of attention
because we left disposal to the people who were
generating it. They commonly have hauled it off
to a private dump. Then ^there are agricultural
wastes generated in the vicinities of cities, and
the debris that comes from the commerce and Industry.
A lot of that the producer used to haul away to a
dump.

As we begin to occupy more and more the land
with people, and begin to say we must manage the
land in some fashion by zoning, we tend to zone out
the dump. Eventually there is no place where the
individual can discard wastes himself, because the
public is governing land use. Thus eventually the
demolition debris and other solid wastes once hauled
by Individual arrangements becomes a public problem.
In California, this total of wastes generated in the
community approaches nineteen pounds per person per
day. All of this then becomes a problem of the
community.

Historically the way a city got rid of its
solid waste was to export it. But now it can't
find any place to export it to. At the same time it
can't burn it Inside its own Jurisdiction because
of air pollution, and it can't bury it inside because
of lack of land.

Chall: It can't dump it in the Bay because nobody is allowed
to fill it anymore. What do you do with it?

MoGauhey: Certainly it won't go away. If you burn it, you

still have 50 percent of the mass that's left. It
has to go on the land someplace, whether people like
it or not. The appropriate rationale for land
disposal depends upon how one looks upon the material.
First, is it a resource material, or is it a waste?
And second, what is it feasible to do with it?

If we consider unwanted materials as residues
of resource use, and resource exploitation, rather
than wastes that we don't know what to do with,
then the question is, if they're resources, what
are we going to do with them? How are we going to
reclaim these resources?

131

McGauhey: There are two things we could do. One, we
could take the attitude that this is a mixture
of bits and pieces of all kinds of resource
materials, and because it's extremely expensive
to sort them all out we will look upon it as cheap
fill material. Then if we could find a place where
we could make a fill, the resource that we could
reclaim would be a land resource. This is what is
going on in Mountain View and in the Los Angeles
area. Thus we are salvaging a land resource rather
than trying to reclaim individual resource values
that are in the mixture.

Chall: How did you test out that theory?

MoGauheyt It evolved in my own thinking of what indeed are we
doing in the Los Angeles area, where we are putting
it on the land. My questions were: on what
rationale do you say let us put this material in a
landfill where it is lost to us forever, if it's
a resource? What is the rationale for not reclaiming
it as a resource? The obvious answer is that the
resource we are gaining is land.

On the other hand If we say we don't really
want land resource, or we have no place that we
can generate a land resource with refuse, then we
may consider it as resource material. Either one
of two things can be done with resource material.
Part of — say 50 percent — can be destroyed by
burning. All of it might be destroyed as a resource
by making a deep water ocean fill somewhere. But if
we are not inclined to destroy it, then the rationale
would have to be that either we must stockpile it,
and keep it till we need it, or we have to recycle it
Immediately.

Problems of Disposal

McGauhey: Historically and traditionally when people speak of
recycle they have been Impatient and want to recycle
the whole works at once. This Is the attitude of
the present cult of environmentalists. Realistically,
however, we know full well that we don't know what to

132

McGauhey: do with some of it. Paper, and aluminum cans, and
certain other major components, such as the non-
ferrous metals and, in a few cases, rags could be
salvaged now.

But it certainly wouldn't make any sense,
either economically or logistlcally, to take all
the solid wastes and make one pile of cans, and a
pile of aluminum, a pile of plastic, and a pile of
this, and a pile of that, and a pile of brick, and
a pile of broken concrete, and then find out you
can only use two of the piles — you Just wasted your
time and money and still don't know what to do with
them. So under this kind of a concept, storage on
the land, as a resource that we don't know what to
do with yet, is the answer.

Personally I think this is the answer, in
California at least. Transport it over as long
a distance as necessary, to land that is not in
competition for subdivisions and other things —
desert land that is government-owned or state-owned,
which we don't have to buy in competition with sub
divisions, and make a proper landfill. And by proper
landfill I mean one that permits nothing to blow
about, where things are properly covered, and properly
drained so it doesn't endanger any ground water.
Such a fill would serve the needs of communities
in every direction which may find it a feasible
solution to their local problem of disposal. Under
this rationale, the landfill becomes a big stockpile
of resources that we don't know what to do with at
the present time. Maybe we'll never need them. But
if we ever need the organic matter that's in there
it will be partly composted. We can go in with
industrial machinery, because by that time the pile
will be a whopping big one which can be worked over
economically. We can sort out resource values when
we need them.

An example of this concept can be drawn from
the mining industry. When we first mined iron, no
one knew what to do with vanadium and tungsten;
they Just threw it in the tailings. And so by
inadvertence rather than by Intent we came up with
a big stockpile of vanadium and tungsten when,
forty years later, we knew what to do with it. When

133

MoGauhey: we wanted it, we went and took out more wealth than
they ever did in the form of iron.

To say in regard to solid wastes that if we're
going to reclaim it we've got to reclaim everything
now, would be equivalent to saying in the age of
iron, you've got to figure out what to do with
tungsten and vanadium or you can't mine any iron.
We'd have never gotten out of the stone age, if
we'd had to take that attitude.

So you see what I'm saying is that in solid
wastes we're going to have to put some of it on
the land. If we put it in one big, well-managed
pile we'll have sequestered there resources values
that someday we'll want, and some that we know we
never will want. We're never going to go and get
old, broken concrete in competition with other earth
materials for making cement. And there 're more
brickbats than people can throw through windows.
Stockpiling of wastes as resource materials is one
emerging rationale.

Some cities, of course, do not have the prospect
of long distance transport to some stockpile. It
has been noted that on Manhattan Island it would be
impossible to park enough railroad oars to haul
away the day's wastes even if every inch not occupied
by buildings could be covered with oars. Obviously,
the alternative here is to destroy as much of it as
possible on the site, although there is no reason
why heat should not be salvaged as a byproduct of
waste destruction.

But as I have noted, incineration gets rid of
only about half the total of solid wastes of a
municipality. The remainder must go into the sea
or onto the land. The choice here is a matter of
local geography and land availability. The choice
may lie between hauling the residue a long distance
for deposit on cheaper land; reclaiming land as a
resource} or dedicating land as a matter of public
policy and public necessity to waste disposal.

Chall: So a general conclusion of the economists is that

it would pay to haul this stuff aw&y let's say even
a thousand or two thousand miles to a desert, if
possible, or necessary?

McGauhey: Well, I think that we could calculate quite simply
how far you should go. Here in the Bay Area we
could probably talk in terms of 100 or 150 miles,
before we came to land that is not in competition.
But if we go to the heartland of the U.S., say
Iowa, or of Illinois, or other Midwestern states,
there isn't any land beyond the immediate vicinity
that isn't Just as good as the land right there.
So they either have to dedicate, as a matter of
public policy, some land, somewhere, as a receiver
for wastes, or they would have to go to very long
distance haul which wouldn't be too feasible.

It wouldn't be too feasible because in hauling
refuse we're not going to clean it up so there isn't
some degradable organic matter in it. Therefore it
has to be transported from the point of origin to
the discharge point in a relatively short period of
time. We can't have a railroad oar sitting for a
week on a siding while somebody wonders where it is.
Local residents will find it quickly enough by their
sense of smell.

Where refuse is to be exported the community
must accomplish export in an acceptable fashion from
the standpoint of sanitation, and it will have to go
fairly rapidly. So there are going to be places
where land will be valuable as a waste receptacle or
else we'll have to produce a smaller amount of solid
wastes. Most likely we shall have to do both.

The fill can be used to develop a recreational
resource. One example is Mt. Trashmore at Virginia
Beach. It has 700,000 cubic yards of refuse in it
already mixed with dirt obtained from an old fill
made by the Corps of Engineers. As a result they
have a mountain sixty-five feet high where the
highest elevation above sea level is about twelve
feet. This makes quite an impressive mound. They
are building on it a soapbox derby run. Also it
overlooks a pond where people can fish, and an
adjacent picnic area. I think it would be a good
place to fly a kite because rising up as high as it
does the wind comes up the face of it and makes your
hair stand on end. Michigan, and Oregon, and
Illinois are also building recreational mounds from
refuse.

135

MoGauheyt A few moments ago I spoke of one oonoept of
solid waste as that of resource materials which
might be recycled. Although the true believer
often applies this oonoept to the entire waste
mass, recycling is one method of reducing the
total amount which must go upon the land, while
at the same time conserving certain non-renewable
resources. In the household waste stream packaging
wastes and paper are the predominant components.

Packaging and Recycling

MoGauhey: What some of us are advocating as a result of our
research and our thinking about the solid waste
problem is that industry, particularly the packaging
industry, should embrace the notion that one of the
objectives of design of a package or of any kind of
packaging material Is its degradabllity. At least
one of the things that a designer will have to bear
In mind is where is this thing going to come to
rest in the environment after people no longer want
it.

It Isn't realistic simply to say, "Let's don't
exploit the resources," because our whole economy
depends on exploitation of resources. Nevertheless
in the case of a good many materials, we can't keep
throwing away the residues and not end up with most
of our resources in the Junk heap.

I have what I call the tidal theory of resources.
We have resources here In a stockpile, and we exploit
them and throw them over there in a refuse pile.
Eventually we have to take the refuse pile apart
and move resources back the other way. There is
some loss In the process, so we have a pendulum
action In which our resources get smaller and smaller.
[Laughter]

Chall: Do you think that it's possible to halt In some way —
this Is all a matter of public policy however — the
use of the basic original resource first? That is,
what if you didn't have bottles that were non-returnable?

136

Chall: If a law were passed to make this impossible, or
impracticable, then you would probably be reusing
your bottles.

McGauhey: I think if you passed a law saying that bottles
have to be returnable, you would see some new
faces in the law-making bodies pretty soon, and
they'd pass another law. [Laughter] That is, even
the legislators can't run against the tide of a
civilization or a culture, if you want to call it
that. And you couldn't get one of them right now
to talk about making the householder separate refuse
into its components.

There are problems with the returnable bottle.
If you say let's make people return them, some
things become evident. First, there's always a
tremendous stockpile of them in the system. Take
Coca-Cola, for example, with returnables right In
this area. I think they have to have more than
ten thousand bottles before they get one back, Just
in this one little distribution area. Until every
body's garage is full of Coca-Cola bottles they
don't start coming back. And then they're heavy.
Going from non-returnable to returnable bottles
involves passing back to the retailer the costly
task of dealing with them. The entire system seeks
to pass the buck to the retailer for handling these
things, and he doesn't want to fool with them. And,
at the present state of affluence, a lot of people
Just won't take bottles back, at any price.

And there's another factor. Some bottles —
especially those used for alcoholic beverages — are
not coming back even if they were returnable because
the law against having an open bottle of spirits
in your car is a great deal more ferocious than the
law against littering. So whether one would rather
take the risk of having a bottle of wine in his
oar or pour it all down and throw the bottle out
real quick — you know what's going to happen. No
matter what the reward for return is. So you've
got a lot of bottles that end up as litter. This is
not perhaps the biggest concern. If the law permitted
re-use of liquor bottles I shudder to think of the
material that would be purveyed as I.W. Harper.

137

McGauhey: By the way, we are talking about twenty-nine

billion glass containers in the U.S. this year, and
forty billion other containers — other than glass.
So we are talking of a vast amount of waste which
comes from earth materials that are by no means in
short supply. Thus the rationale for the returnable
bottle is based on reducing the volume of refuse
rather than on any resource conservation need.

What I think we need to do is to say maybe it
isn't necessary to make the container of glass;
make it of some other material. Or if you make it
of glass, make it of glass that can be recycled as
a resource material, not as a bottle. Instead of
saying let us take it back and we'll use It again
as a bottle, let's be a little more sophisticated
and break it all up into sand and use it for ballast
on the highways or aggregate of concrete or making
glass wallboard. You can't make glass wallboard
out of colored glass readily because of a problem
of lubricating the dyes, but if one designed the
glass — if it's Just for ordinary purposes — so that
it could be used for some of these other things,
then I think recycle through re-processing rather
than recycling directly is where we will go.

And it might be well to say that you can't
make certain kinds of containers. It isn't
necessary, really, to have so many — seventy, eighty,
ninety — alloys of aluminum In order to use aluminum.
And it isn't necessary to have so-called tin cans —
the iron cans — made by four different alloys Just
because it's made by a different manufacturer.

So one thing society could do, or that the
whole technology could do, is to give some thought
to what is to be the end of this particular item.
Simply to require that we Just use an item over
again, until it's worn out, is a naive and simplistic
remedy for a dimly understood problem.

Chall: I see — which is what the recycling people are now
advocating?

MoGauheyi That's the simplistic one. I don't think we'll go
back to it on bottles. We're not going back to
bottles on milk; I don't think we ever will. In fact

138

McGauhey: I doubt that man ever goes back to anything

effectively. He does go forward though, and I
think we are going to have to go forward in solid
waste management. Containers now are often a
combination of paper and plastic that's laminated,
and you can't reclaim the paper because of the
plastic laminates. It isn't physically impossible,
but it would be economically catastrophic to try
to go to that — waste that much of our wealth on
trying to unravel some of those little bits of
residues.

Chall: A milk carton can be burned.

MoGauhey: Yes, you can burn a milk carton. You can burn them
in a high-temperature furnace. You can't burn them
in your fireplaces anymore, because they're made of
plastic. They used to be parafln and were good for
starting a fire. Now they won't burn readily because
they've got plastic on the outside. They're laminated
plastic, you see. You can burn them in an incinerator-
that kind of plastic will burn. There are some
plastics, the ones with chlorine in them — the polyvlnyl
ohorldes, like the pvo pipe and those things, which
burn only at a high temperature. The chlorine then
comes out as hydrochloric acid. Then we have a
problem of keeping the chimney from falling down as
well as the gas attacking the neighbors, and so forth.
So there's not a very simple answer there, but we
might make a plastic that could be burned. All this
is part of the design, I think, so that more material
is going around the cycle, albeit only maybe two or
three times.

Newspaper, for example. If we pulp newspaper,
about the third to tenth time you pulp it, the
fibers begin to get broken up, and by and by we have
Just a soup, like a slurry of clay, so finely divided
that it won't hold together as paper anymore. Part
of this can be used in a new stock, but it isn't
that we can Just take it round and round forever.
Eventually it wears out. But three or four passes
before It wears out would reduce the solid waste load
to be managed.

What they have made from all the wonderful paper
generated in the Pentagon is these paper egg orates.

139

McGauhey: You don't get to read all the secrets that the

Russians already know, unless you can see through
those egg orates.

Challi Is it Just In the East they make the egg orates
from Pentagon paper?

MoGauhey: No, they're doing it a good many places, but you
can take the egg orate and pulp it up and make
another egg orate from it. But by and by it becomes
difficult to do much with it because it's such a
soup. That's not true of this brown paper, Kraft
paper. You can keep recycling these old cardboard
boxes with a little more Kraft material.

Of course everybody is excited about recycling
and as many of these environmental ideas come along
they get carried away with simplistic and naive
concepts, either for forbidding somebody to use
something, or to pick it up and use it in too simple
a manner. What I am saying is that recycling
of solid wastes will have to be done and will be
done eventually as an industrial-type undertaking
and will probably have to be subsidized, partly by
the public because there isn't enough material in
there — the value of the material isn't enough to
pay for its reclamation. But it will be cheaper
than doing what we are doing with it and in the long
run, a better use of resources.

Chall: The recycling that was begun by volunteer groups who
agreed to take the tin cans and all of that — has this
pushed industry in any way to reuse material that
they wouldn't have done otherwise?

MoGauhey: Oh, no, it has done this: It has given people who
were extremely interested in environment something
to do that gave them a sense of achievement. It
is not particularly different than the World War I
routine, which I perhaps told you about, where they
had a barrel of buttons which they took to the
basement of the church and they had the ladies
gather and they persuaded them that success in
sorting out all these sizes and shapes and cards of
buttons was what the war depended upon. So the ladles
would gather at tables and sort out the buttons. At
the end of the week the army would mix them all back
together again and they'd start over the next week!

Chall :

McGauhey:

Chall:
McGauhey:

Chall :

[Laughing] Are you saying that all the work I do
in flattening out my cat's and dog's tin cans
every day is a useless effort?

Not necessarily,
part i ci pat ion.

It gives you some sense of
But it isn't helping?

It helps in the fact that it reduces the volume in
your garbage can, but that's about all.

To get back to your original question, the first
thing that happened was that it was possible to get
quite a lot of publicity and good public relations
out of accepting cans. It also meant you had children
and housewives and everybody working for nothing.
This is a good enough deal as long as you can get
work done for nothing. But the attention span being
what it is, it is not going to continue forever or
at least they'll get smart enough to say, "We're not
going to do this Job for you for nothing! H By that
time the company will have achieved, through its
advertising, enough publicity and good will for being
good Joes that things cool off. You don't pay too
much attention to it.

But what happened to those who really knocked
themselves out to try to do it? Well, they set up
bins for collecting cans and within a very few weeks
they Just become receptacles for the swinish part of
the community who Just throw anything in them. They
throw garbage and old newspapers or any kind of thing
in it — grass clippings, rubbish, all sorts of things.
So the poor ecology groups had to go out of business
when they couldn't sort out this stuff. The same
things happened on the big boxes that they put in
the supermarkets. They said, "Well, we'll put a box
here and you can throw bottles and cans in." Very
soon it was Just a receptacle for all kinds of
debris.

That's Interesting, because in South County area
where we live it was very well organized and nothing
goes into the barrels in the wrong way and volunteers
are there full-time. I don't think they've had this
kind of thing happen.

MoGauhey: Well, the Boys Scouts In Kensington collected

newspapers for years, till all this came along,
and they began to catch the same kind of rubbish.
Now the newspaper drive ended up by filling all
the warehouses from Los Angeles to San Francisco
with paper. Well, they've got no place to store It
any more. It starts out with a simplistic approach
and it takes quite a long time for industry, for
the whole equilibrium, to readjust.

Challi But will paper be recycled by industry?

MoGauhey: Yes, but that isn't the motivating factor. Twenty-
one percent of it has been recycled right along.
The motivating factor is economics. If we went up
to ^5 percent recovery of newsprint, this would be
the equivalent of ninety million acres of forestland.

Now this sounds like something very urgent and
would save a lot of forest if we were to do this.
Well, much of this land Is trees that are planted
and grown Just like cornfields and it is quite as
easy to keep cropping that indefinitely as it is to
sort out paper. So you are not really saving a
resource, as a matter of fact you might be destroying
a resource because if the big paper companies quit
planting the land, who takes charge of it and
maintains it, and for what purpose and for whom?
The ramifications of the thing are complex. The
packaging people will tell you — have told me — "Don't
get too excited about building a big, expensive
system for reclaiming metal cans or aluminum cans
because probably within a year we will be able to
put beer in aluminum headed cans with a combination
of plastic and paper like we put frozen orange Juice
in. So the technology of packaging is not frozen
either.

In an article In Waste Age which I have written
which will come out soon, I postulate that it is
absurd to think that the ingenuity of American
industry is so lacking that It can't use a bottle
with an aluminum ring around its neck. Before this
was ready for publication, before it is published,
one of the companies, Sohweppes, has come out with
a aluminum twist top that cracks the ring and it
comes off In one piece. I brought a sample of it

MoGauhey: with me, I have it out at the house. You see, we
can't reclaim them because of the aluminum in the
middle of the glass. Well I have faith enough in
American industry to think they can lick that one.
If you can make a bottle you can take that off.
Already it has been done without having the ring
stay on the bottle.

So that to avoid getting Involved in simplistic
things and naive approaches is something that all
of us want to do. We don't want to be suckers —
nobody does. But on the other hand, the fact of
participation, if a lot of people are doing it, may
inspire a whole lot of changes to come along a
little faster. We've got a society in which a great
number of people have no sense of participation.
This is one of the problems of youth. There is
nothing to do that seems to have any meaning. Stay
off the labor market, stay on the streets, stay out
of the way, stay out of trouble and stay out of
everything, you know? They get, understandably,
restless and with energy to burn; if you can pick
up cans and feel that you are doing something useful,
that you are doing something that society wants done,
then good I

I have an article coming in Waste Age also on —
since I have to write for it every month under
pressure, under duress [chuckles] — in which I
postulate that the way to solve the problem of
collection is to applaud people for being refuse
collectors. If we have them doing things society
doesn't think worth doing and, if we associate human
worth on the same scale that we measure the value
of refuse, we are not going to get many people
volunteering to take that kind of Job.

Furthermore, I predict that in the short run
at least, we are not going to be able to solve this
aspect of the solid waste problem by any sophisticated
equipment. Equipment may take part of the physical
load off people but in refuse collection we may be
up against something we have not accepted previously
in our society. This is that we may have to pay a
man a living wage, whatever that means, for the
amount of production he can do with his hands. You
see, in industry, his pay is Justified on the

McGauhey: production he oan achieve with all kinds of equip
ment. But when It comes to collecting refuse there
Is no mechanical system that as yet they have found
which Is going to work. We may Just socially have to
accept the fact that If this man does all he oan by
hand — produce all he can do by hand — he may well
have to be paid for that, even though It represents
a high cost per unit of product.

Ghall: That's the ordinary garbage man you are talking about?

MoGauhey: Yes, what they call the tipper. The one who picks
up the can. In the trade they call him the tipper.
Generally, the pay scale — traditionally — In labor
are related In some fashion to the productivity of
the Individual and productivity Is Increased by
reducing the number of people and putting In
machinery, the number of horsepower each man Is
manipulating. But when you are collecting a whole
lot of miscellaneous things at an Infinite number of
points In the community, I don't foresee any great
monster that will come down the street and seize a
oan without a man who sets It out there and runs to
get out of the way! [Laughs]

But back to the question, I don't think that
we are going to sort out refuse by hand in any
home — with but few exceptions — possibly newspapers
and maybe glass bottles. Generally it is going to
have to be picked up mixed because it is going to
have to be hauled as a mixture. I think we will
set up an industrial-type operation to take refuse
apart again, remove whatever we want and recycle It.
What we don't want to remove at any point in time
will be the material we don't know what to do with
at that point in time. Therefore In many communities
this residue will very likely have to go into a
landfill.

Ghall: Then the waste disposal activity could very well be
another municipal activity or community activity
like waste water or the reclamation of sewage?

MoGauhey: I don't think it will be. When we go to reclamation
I think then is when private industry comes in.
The city will do the collecting, undoubtedly, and
the transferring and delivering it to industry. It
will probably have to pay industry for some appreciable

144

McGauhey: time to take refuse, and it may well have to be the
one to pick up the residue again and haul it to the
fill. The municipality will have to decide where
in this community can we put a fill, and very likely
operate the fill. But the stripping off or pulling
out of the stream that material which is to be
recycled, I think is most certainly to be a private
industrial operation, albeit under contract with
the city and under appropriate terms so that it can
be done at a profit Just like any other utility.
You see, our waste water treatment utility — some of
them are private, some of them are public. The East
Bay Municipal Utility District is a private utility
but of course it can only do what the utilities
commission will let it do in terms of rates and
activities.

Chall: Oh, I thought it was a public utility.

McGauhey: It is a private utility under public control Just as
the telephone company is really a private utility
but its rates are established by public control.

Chall: So you think that is the way it will go.

MoGauhey: I think so because no city charter permits a city
to go into a commercial business or mercantile
business. It can't manufacture products for sale.
That doesn't mean the charters can't be changed if
this is the way society wants to go. But it means
changing them is a stumbling block and marketing
is pretty hard to set up in a community. The
companies who know paper markets and glass markets,
the markets for metals and this kind of thing — it
used to be called the Junk business now it Is the
reclamation business — these people know markets and
are sharp traders and are the kind of people who
could do it. I think they are the ones who properly
should do it because it would be pretty hard to have
a civil service alert enough to market, to figure
out when and how to sell waste paper, aluminum and
all those kinds of things.

1*5

A Look at the Future

Chall: Does your positive attitude toward life give you
a feeling that some of these problems will be
solved before it's too late?

McGauhey: I have no fear that solid wastes are going to
overwhelm man. He may Impoverish his life by
piling them in the wrong place. He may get so
many people that it's inconvenient to get around,
and therefore there's less room for the results of
his activities. But I don't think he's going to
make the environment so unllvable that either by a
catastrophic event on himself or by inadvertently
disrupting all of the eoo-system he's going to
disappear.

I would expect that eventually the part of
the earth that we are populating now will be
populated by people that are considerably less
affluent than we are. The next civilization that
occupies this part of the earth, may be living
farther back toward the beginning than we are, but
I think this environmental problem is a problem of
cities rather than of the whole environment. And
of course cities is where people are and their
problems can't be totally resolved inside the limit
of cities. Just overload the environment with people
and you're going to overload it with the results of
their activities too.

But I think it's something we've got to be
about, because cities are filling up with people
that have nothing to do in the city, and filling
up with so many layers of people that there isn't
standing room, so life is further impoverished, and
the problem of hauling the residues — Just logistically
moving them around in the community — is an unsatis
factorily solved one.

Chall: There's such a time-lag. At the time you began to
study solid waste it was an obvious problem, or
you wouldn't have been granted the money, but it's
more obvious today, and still the cities are
struggling to come up with some — not answers, there
are probably none but...

146

McGauhey: Resolution.

Chall: Yes, a certain resolution to get something done.

MoGauhey: And a realization of what it's going to cost to

do it. And a real attack by technology. In solid
wastes we have never really asked technology to do
more than three simple things: pick it up, haul
it — that is, transport it somewhere and unload it.

Chall z And that's not hard.

McGauhey: That's all we've asked technology to do, although

we invented more sophisticated equipment for picking
it up, but we've never said to technology, "Our
objective is to have this material recycled as a
resource material and we're going to insist that
this be done to the extent that it is at all
feasible. Find out what we can do.M

And yet in other cases we have said to technology,
"Find out a way that you can make a motor with X
number of horsepower per pound so that we can get it
off the ground and fly a plane." You see, we're
Just really in a very primitive condition in solid
waste. We've always picked It up and we've hauled
It somewhere, and unloaded it. Now we've decided
that nowhere in our environment are we willing for
it to be unloaded. We don't like all the traffic
of hauling it.

But, given enough pressure from the citizenry,
and from our own aesthetic sense, we can come up
with money and men. With money we can hire men and
can also buy trucks. We can load refuse onto a truck.
We can find some time of the day when we can work
our way through the streets and haul it somewhere,
even though it's awkward, and generally unsatisfactory.
But now, where do we unload it? Nowhere in the
community will they let you unload it. It used to
be we went outside the community to unload it. But
now out there is another community and it won't let
us unload our trucks in its Jurisdiction. So we
are only Just at the point where we are going to have
to ask technology to make some relatively sophisticated
solutions.

Chall :

MoGauhey:

Chall :

MoGauhey:

Who asks these questions of technology today? Or
does it Just suddenly occur that it's got to be
done?

I would say that our Laboratory has asked it as
many times as anybody in the world, in literature
at least. We have posed these questions. But the
people that are asking It largely today are, I
think, the Bureau of Solid Waste Management in the
government. They're beginning to say, and I»ve
been saying, "Let us put up some money for demonstra
tion grants to try to solve the waste management
and recycling problem."

Unfortunately it hasn't been working very well,
not because of any fault of the government, but
because the demonstration grant is looked upon
largely by the city as a way to get some money from
the government to build something conventional. So
if we get the money to do here something that's
unsatisfactory everywhere else, we Just end up with
another unsatisfactory solution.

I have long been saying to the Bureau of Solid
Waste Management, "What you should do is to set up
a demonstration plant in some real situation in
which the endpolnt is not a piece of hardware that
some individual city can use to deal with waste, but
is, instead, designed to establish engineering
parameters and economic parameters. With such
parameters engineers can then design with confidence
a waste management suited to the needs of any
particular city. In addition, you should work with
industry that produces the hardware so that they
can say, with confidence, what the necessary hardware
will cost."

And where would something like this be built?
you do It on a small scale?

Could

No, it would have to be done on a full-scale, I
would think probably at least 100 ton per day
capacity plant; possibly 50 tons, but a big scale
unit. To get at the economics, we're probably going
to need 100 or 200 tons per day plant. But when
they have found out all those things the demonstration
plant is capable of revealing, the installation doesn't

McGauhey: become a unit that the city takes over and operates.
It becomes a facility, Just like any other research
facility, which is redeveloped and put to work on
some other experiment.

Ghall: So something like that could even be built out here?

McGauhey: That is true. It would be a demonstration facility
rather than a production unit. It would, however,
be more likely built in a big city where it could
be adjacent to a sewage treatment plant, or in an
industrial section, or something of that sort, and
where the city itself would participate in the study.
But what the city would get out of it through
participation would be know-how on the part of its
engineers, plus proper financial compensation for
its participation in the demonstration.

Chall: We haven't much experimentation like that yet?

McGauhey: Not on any big scale. There have been efforts to

get at this with recycling, but the plant operators
have Just got poorer and poorer and are finally
closing down for lack of economic feasibility of
the project. They don't come up with any great
resolution of the problem.

Stating the Assumptions

Chall: It seems that what you do first — those of you who've
made this experimentation on solid wastes — it's
mainly a thinking operation to begin with, and then
you get a place where you need to go out and test.

MoGauhey: One has to get some kind of a rationale that opens
up possibilities for research or for study. As
long as one believes that the earth is flat, and
he's going to fall off the edge of it, there isn't
much use going out there and taking a chance of
falling off the edge. Before men could circumnavigate
the world, they first had to develop a rationale that
the thing is round. The first step in launching a
successful experiment is that of getting the mind
open and the possibility open.

MoGauhey: Question the assumptions. If ire start with
the assumption that there's no place in the world
where we can put solid wastes — we can't put it in
the land, we can't put it in the Bay, we can't burn
it in the air — if we start with that assumption,
it isn't a very big problem to figure out what lies
ahead. But if we start with the assumption that
we're going to k«ep exploit ing resources, we have
to maintain our standard of living, we have to look
to the future of these resources — then in a little
longer time, are we going to have to become
imperialistic and go and take resources away from
somebody else when ours are short, or are we going
to begin to recycle our own resource materials.

Chall: I should think that with this multi-discipline

approach you might find that you don't all agree
on some of the assumptions.

MoGauhey: The first point where the disagreement comes quickly
is between those who deal with people and those who
deal with mathematics, as I mentioned the other day.
You can set up a system where you should most
advantageously put X number of transfer stations
and route your collection trucks. This you can do
without questioning anybody, other than about the
physical geography of the area. But, when you come
up against the hard-nosed fact that people won't
let you put a facility there — you want five transfer
stations and you can only find one place people will
let you build, then is where one researcher's
knowledge of people keeps another member of the
research team from building up a big network of
dreams that can't possibly come true.

Chall: This is a good reason for your approach because he
could really be way off on the wrong track.

McGauhey: Yes. I have a saying — reversing an old adage,

maybe I mentioned it the other day — that anything
not worth doing is not worth doing well. [Laughter]
Some research gets us into that situation. If it's
infeasible in this century or in this particular
cultural climate, then maybe it isn't the thing that
we ought really to be putting our energy into first.
It may not be the critical point in environmental
management. There are probably better ways to spend X

150

MoGauhey: number of dollars and X number of man-years of

energy in attempts to resolve these environmental
problems.

Economic Evaluation of Water

McGauhey: Another field in which we built up a reputation so
big we couldn't keep it, because we couldn't get
enough money to support us, was this matter of water
economics, and particularly the application of the
input-output methodology. [Laughter] That project
area produced four PhDs, two of them in water
resources, two in economics, and a master's degree
in public administration. We got a lot of mileage
out of that project, and we generated a national
reputation in it. The research participants are
now out working elsewhere, but at least, it is an
area in which this Laboratory pioneered in the
application.

Ghall: What were you indicating in this study?

MoGauhey » An approach to an evaluation of both water quality
and of the water resource management. That is,
management of quality and of quantity on a regional
basis.

Chall: Did you come out with results in terms of how much
water can be taken from one end of California to
the other, and from the Colorado River and where it
can best be used?

McGauhey: We came out with a model that could show the economic
effect, in a whole region, of dedicating any given
amount of a scarce water supply to any of the major
areas that are used In calculating our gross national
product. It can tell you when you begin putting In
more money than you're getting out, and what would
be the economic effect of dedicating any given amount
of water to any set of uses. We constructed a model
for the eleven western states, although it still
needs some refinement.

We also made one study in which we determined,
by setting up a mathematical model using the Bay here

151

McGauhey: as an example, what would be the minimum cost of
achieving any particular water quality that might
be specified in the Bay. What would be the
distribution of the cost? It turned out that, if
least cost to the whole system was the objective,
one little industry shouldn't have to treat its
waste at all, and another one might have to treat
it to a much higher degree, but the combination
of the total cost — the overall cost of doing it —
is quite different than making everybody do the
same thing — the popular national way of pollution
control. For example, if reducing phenol discharge
by 99 percent is the objective of control of phenol
pollution, requiring everyone who discharges phenol
to make a 99 percent reduction isn't the cheapest
way to do it. It would take a different political
organization of course to get the cost properly
adjudicated but these are the kinds of things that
our models lead to. There's still obviously work
to be done in those areas.

Challt Who's taking over?

MoGauhey: In the area of the systems, our Operations Research
Center, Dr. [Charles Roger] Glassey, I think very
likely. He is the man in the Operations Research
Center who is most interested in It. He worked on
the multi-disciplinary solid wastes study as the
systems man, and he is very interested in continuing
in applying systems engineering to water quality.
But as to the economic end of the thing, there are
various other agencies and universities working on
it now, and we are not.

Chall: What becomes of this kind of study, which points
out — even though you say it may be primitive in
some stages — a problem that's got political
implications? What happens to a report of this kind?

McGauhey i The reports are fairly widely distributed. We see
that they get into the hands of the legislators
that are interested. But the effect will be felt
only in the long term, and I think the long-term
effect will be a much more sophisticated basis for
making decisions. That is, in the end, decisions
about what to do with resources are political. But
with the kind of tools which research can provide

152

McGauhey: we can test very quickly on a computer the probable
consequences of any one of a number of different
political decisions, and so come up with a better
basis for political decision than existed before.
And also, with a basis for new legislation that
makes management possible,

Chall: The output depends so much on who's setting up the
input. Does this have to become, in a multi-
discipline approach, something that you can all
agree on?

McGauhey: No. We have to agree on the objectives that our
program is going to try to achieve, and, when
reports are made, review the progress of the whole
group of disciplines toward those objectives. We
have to do some interpretation. We may find that
one discipline hasn't gained much, because the kind
of problems that it has to deal with are long-term
in nature. Another may have produced a whole lot.
But nevertheless, we can still interpret the best
information we have at the time of decision. We can
then suggest: "Here's what you ought to do.H

Value Judgments Other than Dollars

Chall: In terms of the use of water: you mentioned that
the input had dealt with all the aspects that go
into the gross national product. Does recreation,
as such, and open space, go into the gross national
product?

McGauhey: No, but it goes into our model in two fashions: One
way that it can go in is by an arbitrary evaluation,
but the other is by a system of evaluation better
than dollars. This one is as yet quite primitive.
So we need an evaluation system for the environment
that Isn't strictly cost-benefit in terms of dollars
of investment versus dollars of profit resulting
from that investment.

This is one of the areas of research that has
been opened up, and we've attempted to put it in the
model as qualitative factors, and this is what sends
the mathematicians reeling. In this field of sanitary

153

McGauhey: engineering, and In agricultural economics,

particularly, we have both quantitative Inputs
and qualitative Inputs.

And when you start linear programming
mathematically on non-linear systems to begin
with, and have to put In some qualitative value
Judgments, then the hard-core mathematicians who
like to deal with quantitlve material don't want
much to do with It. But nevertheless, a good deal
of progress Is being made, particularly In agricul
tural economics, with this kind of thing, where a
value Judgment is made and put into the model —
albeit recorded, so that the next chap who thinks
he has better value Judgment can put in his value
Judgment and run it out on the machine, too.

There is no way, unfortunately, yet, to say
what is the value, compared to dollars, of having
a man be able to see a long distance Instead of a
short distance, or of being able to contemplate
the forests or the ocean — how many more dollars we'd
have to spend keeping him in a nut-house if we
didn't have these things is Just unknown.

But I don't think we have to get at it that
way. I think we can get at it the other way
around, by saying that here is the kind of environ
ment we want. Technology, we ask of you to provide
that, or at least to show us that it's going to
cost so much that we're unwilling to provide It.
Bring the findings back to us for a decision whether
we can afford it or not.

We have never asked technology to do that in
years past. We've asked them to do simple things:
figure out ways to separate this ore from that one,
and do it economically; or a cheaper way to do It,
and so on. But we haven't asked them to figure out
a way to do that, and at the same time maintain
certain environmental objectives. This Is what we're
beginning to ask now. And if we start from that
point of view, then technology and research can
continuously feed back either the systems to do it
with or, at this point in time, an estimate of the
money that it's going to take to do it. Then if
the public says, "We're Just not going to put that

McGauhey: much money In It, because we have other things

more urgent," at least the decision is back on the
public, rather than letting him become the victim
of his own request of technology.

This is where the whole picture has to change
in our research as related to environment, and
why we need a value scale other than dollars. But
even putting it in dollars, we can set the values
that we want first and cut them into slices
according to level of environmental quality achieved,

By the way, Prank Stead and I did this once,
and published an article that got us quite a lot
of mileage.* It was our first attempt to establish
different levels of environmental quality for land,
and for water, and for air pollution, and to say
what the effects are on man of having this or that
level of reaction — whether an aesthetic effect,
total enjoyment, or general feeling of depression,
or the actuality of disease. We arbitrarily
established the various levels and then estimated
what it would cost to achieve that level. We got
a pretty good response from that article and It has
generated, I think, a considerable Interest around
the United States. At least it caused people to
think about reasons why we might be naive and
thereby we caused them to think about the problem
a littler harder! [Laughter]

Chall: It's certainly one of the great problems facing us
today.

MoGauhey: This, I think, is the real challenge, and where I
think this Laboratory will head in its research
projects. It's already doing that in Its new work
on toxlclty of wastes in water.

*P.M. Stead and P.H. McGauhey, "Air, Water, Land,
and People," Journal of Water Pollution Control
Federation, *K)-2, February, 1968, pp. 233-2*K).

155

Chall: There Is a question about whether placing agriculture
on the west side of the San Joaquin valley is a
wise idea. It seems to be loaded with economic,
political, and water quality problems. Could this —
the economic evaluation model — be used to determine
whether or not it's a good idea to put agriculture
there? Is there some system for determining this?

McGauhey: There's no system for doing it. The University's
Water Resources Center has a very considerable
project aimed at trying to answer some of those
kinds of questions for that west side. But one
has to assume a static future. It might well be
that when we get the west side planted it will
change the whole crop situation.

I recall when they were building Bonneville Dam
the opponents of it said, "Here we're going to
produce a whole lot of power. The Northwest is a
land of sheepherders , and they don't need all this
kind of power. What In the world are we ever going
to do with it? It's Just a big boondoggle and a
waste of money." Well, perhaps by good fortune, or
blundering along, the war came and here a whole
aluminum Industry was invented and saved by the
power that we had available. Now we're short of
power.

The same thing might be true of agriculture.
Maybe we don't have to grow the things that are now
profitable to agriculture. Maybe we don't have to
grow cotton for the Surplus Commodities Corporation.
Maybe that isn't what we should be doing with our
water.

So, while it may be strictly true, and I have
no way of knowing, that this kind of sheer eventuality
would occur, I'm quite certain that a new equilibrium
would build up in which something different prevails.
In the long run we're probably not going to have
more cropland than we need. If we're going to take
what we have and put it in cities, we're going to
have to develop some more somewhere, maybe the west
side is the place to do it. [Laughter]

Chall: Those are important questions in terms of what

we're going to do with our water and our land, and

156

Chall: whether or not, at some time, we'll have to look
at these farmers who are making so much at the
public expense, and consider whether they have to
pay a little more for this subsidized water that
they're getting.

McGauhey: I think that that has to come, yes. But to the
researcher it's a great challenge, and to the
researcher in the field of sanitary engineering,
it imposes the necessity for teaming up with
economists, and agriculturists, and others involved
to do research that is going to be interpretable.

Chall: And have meaning for man.
McGauhey: Yes.

Developing the Criteria

Chall: How did you get into this economic study of water?

McGauhey: Several years ago there was a conference on Man in
California in the 1980s. It was held on the Davis
campus, as I recall. But anyway the intent was that
the conference would be a real blue-sky brains terming
event. I turned up as a member of the program
committee that was to figure out Just how blue the
sky should be. One of the questions that came up
was, why don't we have a paper on the economic value
of water. What is water worth? Not Just, what can
you sell it for, but what is water worth in a
society or civilization that uses water? All of us
thought this was a good idea and Prank M. Stead,
of course, was one of those advocating the blue-sky
concept. We all agreed that this would be a good
paper if somebody would write it. So someone said,
"Well, McGauhey, you write it."

I agreed reluctantly that I would do it, under
two conditions. One of them was that I would say
whatever I darned please without trying to document
it. The other was that other members of the committee
would review it in advance and decide whether it
was worth presenting, and make suggestions and
corrections. So I wrote this paper and nobody changed

157

McGauhey: it much. I presented it at the conference and it
didn't change the course of history perceptively;
but nevertheless it did come and go. Time passed
and some money became available in the Water
Resources Center and one of the subjects that was
of most concern was this matter of how do you
evaluate water economically? But who might do
some research on it? Well, McGauhey is the only
one who has written anything on it. So he is
obviously the one who should do it.

I now had funds available and I recruited Mr.
Harry Erlich to lead the project. Harry Erlich was
an excellent writer. He had been a newspaper
reporter and at the time was working for his degree
in public administration. He also had a degree in
economics, as I recall, and Harry and I went to
work on this. He was extremely good at finding
material in the library and learning what was going
on, and he amassed a tremendous amount of Information.
We came up with a report on the "Economic Evaluation
of Water," Part I, "A Search for Criteria" on the
rationale that if there was some unallocated water
that was available and was to be allocated, how
would one decide into what beneficial uses it should
be directed or what combination of beneficial uses
should receive it?* How do you make that decision?

We came up, after studying the things that
had been written on the subject, with the idea that
an appropriate criterion would be to divide the
water between the various competing beneficial uses
in such a way that it would generate a maximum or
optimum growth of the economy. That seemed sensible.
But after it was all written and published and we
were no longer considered heretics, it became
obvious to everyone that we had sort of documented
the obvious.

Initially, though, our report had a considerable
impact. Some people thought we were saying that
agriculture shouldn't have water. In fact, it said

*P.H. McGauhey and Harry Erlich, "Economic Evaluation
of Water," Part I, "A Search for Criteria," Water
Resources Center, University of California, December

1957-

158

MoGauhey: In the newspaper one time, on the back page albeit,
that McGauhey says that California can't have both
agriculture and industry. Someone called me up
to see what I thought about this article. I said
it was totally irrelevant; don't even bother to
think about it. But if it caused any great problem
anywhere in the University or in the state I presumed
that I would hear about it. If it didn't there was
no use to poke at it, because to try to correct what
it was you'd said wouldn't be news. If it got in
the paper it would be on the back page and nobody
would read it anyway, so forget it. I didn't get
alarmed about this kind of baloney.

But the concept was soon well accepted and
the rationale of our group was that if we accept
this criteria and say, "Now we shall divide water
on that kind of a basis," what kind of Jurisdiotional
arrangement will it take to do this? So Harry Erlich
and I started with the idea that a democratic society
could certainly find some way to change the regula
tions and laws if they prevented society from doing
what it wanted to do. What kind of a Jurisdiction:
should it be a public Jurisdiction, what should be
its objective? We intended to make a book of Volume
II but it got so far out of scale. In fact, Harry
Erlich Just got so much material together that it
finally overwhelmed him. He decided to leave before
he would get it totally written and I had to finish
it. But it had the makings of a good book, I think,
at the time.

We took three particular cases. One in which
water was taken by a highly developed economic
community, from an area in the Owens Valley that
had not yet developed economically. Here we wanted
to see what effect this had on the economy of the
undeveloped region. Our second case was that of
the East Bay Municipal Utility District, where we
had a highly organized, well-organized, well-run
utility but having a relatively limited objective
in water resource development. That is, it
couldn't bring in water for irrigation. Under its
charter of getting water for the community, it had
a constrained objective. We took as our third case
the city of Stockton where an attempt was made
before there was economic strength in the community

159

McGauhey: to do what ultimately made sense and what was

ultimately done. It was seen and planned fifty
years before there was enough economic base in
the community to handle a multi-purpose water
project.

On the basis of our three case studies we
decided that to apply our criterion we had to have
a broader type of Jurisdiction, which certainly
could be set up by government, to provide a basis
for policy by which our criterion could be applied.
At this point we had about reached the end of the
road of public policy considerations as far as our
study was concerned. But that was not the end.

People who were interested now said, "Very
well, we buy your criterion. We accept the fact
that we could set up a Jurisdiction to carry out
the criterion. But, how do we decide what is the
optimum economic good? At this point it was
necessary to turn to systems analysis and computer
technology, about which I made no pretense of
knowing anything, but I couldn't back out. I had
to go forward with further work in the area, but I
needed some help. I felt reasonably comfortable
in searching for criteria and exploring public
policy, but this kind of thing was something else.
Fortunately, I got E.M. Lofting and later Craig
Davis. Craig was working for his doctorate in
economics. Lofting, who had some ten years of
experience in the industrial world, was also
working for a doctorate in economics, but after
working on my project for awhile, and before he had
finished the work in economics, he decided that he
wanted to get into the water resources, so he
transferred to water resources and got his doctorate
in that area. But he was a good and experienced
economist, and both men knew how to deal with the
computer. We hired a programmer.

So we made the third volume, Part III, of our
report, and went on to Part IV, and various other
parts, which dealt with how one might go about
dividing water among its many users, so that it
would achieve an optimum growth of the economy.

160

McGauhey: This launched us then into an area of input-
output studies, the interrelationships of water
and economics and the economic growth of the
community. Many agencies became interested and
we got money from other sources to supplement our
studies and so continued until Lofting, and a
group around him, had developed a considerable
reputation in this field. At that point we neared
the time when I was proposing to retire and we Just
didn't have anyone in SEHL or in engineering with
sufficient interest in this kind of area to carry
it on. The young men working on the project were
eager to get into positions where their futures
were assured, rather than working here in the
Laboratory forever, on uncertain support. So Dr.
Davis went to the University of British Columbia,
and Dr. Lofting went with the Corps of Engineers in
San Francisco, and later to the U.C. Radiation
Laboratory.

This is the story of my entrapment and my
exciting years in study of the economic evaluation
of water. We did get a lot of mileage out of this
study. Unfortunately Volume II is no longer in
print. We have loan copies here at SERL. With a
bit more time it might have sold well in book form.

Water Quality

McGauhey: We worked at the time I have noted on the method of
input-output analysis as a device for policy
decisions. That objective was furthered in two
ways — part of it as a supplement to the Water
Resources Center, and some as additional funds from
the Corps of Engineers, from the State of California
Water Resources Planning group, and from the
Department of Agriculture. We had five small grants
to extend the scope of the mathematical model that
had been made, to include material areas in which
they were particularly interested. So there are
some other reports on these phases sponsored by
groups which had an interest in both water resources
and water quality. On the economic evaluation of
water quality, we were originally supported by the

161

McGauhey: Public Health Service, which finally became what
Is now the EPA. This project was started by a
young man named Richard Prank el, who got his
doctorate here and who is now out at the SEATO
Graduate School at the moment, but who has been
with Resources for the Future in the interval.

Prankel began his study under Professor Orlob,
who left us and went to consulting engineering,
but who is now back quarter-time, I believe, on
our Davis campus as a professor. Orlob and I
teamed up on the Prankel project, with Orlob being
the one interested in the systems end. Prankel
got some support from Resources for the Puture--
$5»000 — which helped him get started and. it looked
like he was going well on a thesis. So to keep
him alive, I applied for funds from the then Public
Health Service. We got a three year grant. When
Prankel finished his thesis and left here, I had
two more years to go and I didn't know exactly what
to do about it! I have a talent for getting into
that kind of trap.

So we changed the direction of the project a
bit and got some economists on the program to do two
studies. The first of these was done with the
assistance of the Department of Economics, serving
as principal adviser to the man — Mr. John Carew —
working for me. He eventually got his doctorate
by evaluating some quality aspects of San Francisco
Bay within an economic framework. Then we went a
bit into the technology of Bay water quality control
as well as the economics of that technology. Mr.
S. Mukherjee got his doctorate in systems analysis
and operations research. Thus Mukherjee finished
out the project at the time I was ready to retire.
I didn't try to carry it any further. But the
project served to educate some very good students.
Dr. Mukherjee is with Bechtel now as a systems man
on water quality control. Dr. Carew is engaged in
University teaching.

162

Reaction to the First Reports

McGauhey:

Chall:
McGauhey :

Chall: When your first report came out in 195? I would
think it would have had some rather serious
political implications from the standpoint of
people who want to do things as usual. The
criterion of stimulating an optimum growth of the
economy by water allocation might have been con
sidered highly critical of the proposals in the
state water plan. I am not sure whether the
proposals made in 1957 were substantially different
from what they were in I960 when the ballot measure
was put before the voters.

The engineering plan was not changed in that
interval.

The policies on which it was based were changed.

The policies yes. But the engineering plan, you
see, only said what could be done and what kind of
a schedule could be followed to do it to reach
certain ends. Our report was considered a useful
contribution at that time, I believe, because it
dealt with the kind of things which hadn't been
settled as to what criteria you should use in making
political decisions, and we spoke to that point.

Chall: Was there any flak from the governor or the Farm
Bureau Federation?

McGauhey: No, nobody fears that a university professor is

going to cause any serious political ripples. He
simply doesn't have the influence. We got only
one or two squawks that agriculture was being short
changed, but we had not said that no water should
go to agriculture or anything of the sort! We did
get calls from a great number of citizen groups.
The League of Women Voters, for example, had Erlich
and me to several of their meetings to discuss this
problem. And I don't recall how many others called
on us; but we did write quite a number of papers
and attended probably twenty public meetings at
which we were invited to talk about this, and where
discussion of this matter took place. There were
people trying to make up their minds and they were

163

McGauhey: not asking us how the water plan ought to be run,
whether it was immoral to live in Southern
California or this kind of question. [Laughs]

I felt our study had a considerable impact
at the time. The second one did too. It documented
things that were obvious once you had documented
them. Quite often it is necessary to do that kind
of thing because if one Just makes a statement and
someone else says, "Well, I think this is how it
is — fn you may nave a ciozen different ideas, and
unless somebody documents them, they are Just in
the realm of opinion. While we didn't set out with
the criterion in mind, we did ultimately come to
the conclusion that these were appropriate criteria,
on the basis of the material we had studied and
reviewed, and we didn't hesitate to say what we
thought this added up to.

The 160-Acre Limit

Chall: Well, it was interesting to me because it gave some
new insights into studies I've been doing on the
California water history. Just now I am concerned
with the controversies over the 160-acre limitation
and all that this has meant from the year 1902 to
the present time.

McGauhey: If you have time for a little interesting reading —
for a lot of reading, [chuckling] a little of which
is interesting, shall I say — borrow Part II and Just
read to see if you enjoy it. But the narrative
concerning the three cases, as I read it over, seems
to me to flow along nicely and it has a lot of
interesting information in it, which includes this
160-acre question. As I recall we quoted Paul Taylor
on that and we had given some consideration to the
kind of Implications involved in the limitation.
There are those who say with some certainty, some
conviction on their own part, that this 160-acre
business was a deeply political thing.

We point out in our writing that the objectives
of society have changed a great deal. At the time
the 160-acre went in the objective was to keep

164

McGauhey: Individual families on farms, self-supporting,

because agriculture was the economic base of life.
When it became no longer feasible for people to
live on 160 acres without a pretty intensive type
of crop, we then had to go to industrial type
farming. Now this meant that either we have very
large holdings with smaller increment of profit
per unit, or we have to have extremely high prices
to pay for the chap working with his hands. You
can't use very high priced machinery on a small
acreage. So now here we were caught with our
whole cultural pattern changed. The basis of our
economic system had changed from agriculture to a
combination of industry and agriculture, and the
commercial activities of urban communities, and
yet we had a water policy based on the earlier
pattern.

So with all the agriculturists growing cotton
in the Central Valley for the Surplus Commodities
Corporation and pumping water out of the ground,
the time came when they were running out of water
in the ground. Then there was only one or two
things that anybody could do. One was to try to
crack the 160-acre limit and failing that, to try
to get the state to develop its own water, in the
hope that it would be easier to manipulate the
political scene in the state than it is in the
nation. There are those who say that this was the
politics that led to the whole water plan of
California, but nevertheless, whether it was or
not, these forces were at work.

Chall: Many young people, and others today, are urging

the return to the land. Can they make a living on
160 acres?

McGauhey: They could make it as social drop-outs or queer-balls,
but they couldn't make it as viable members of
society.

Chall: Is the large acreage necessary for the fruits, and
nuts, and vegetables that are really consumer
products?

McGauhey: It is not necessary for certain types of vegetables,
berries, and a few other high value crops. But the

165

McGauhey: location of such enterprise is critical. You have
to be near a market. You can't be a long distance
away. You have to have good land, too, as in some
areas of Pennsylvania and Westchester County in
New York. In such circumstances it is possible to
make money on a small operation. With 160 acres of
irrigated land — if you irrigate that much of your
land — you run into the question of what it is you
are going to grow and how you are going to tend it.
If it has to be done by machinery then you must
have a very high value crop. Most of agriculture
is extractive industry. The value added by labor
is relatively small. In terms of water, if you can
get l.?5 to 1 return on your investment, you are
doing pretty well. In industry if you don't get
a 1,000 to 1 in terms of water costs you don't have
a really flourishing type of Industry.

The extractive nature of agriculture is one
of the reasons why if one must work by hand he
can't make a living, and if he has to do it by
machinery, the machinery costs make a bigger area
necessary. So one might become a recluse or a
hermit and manage to stay alive on a small piece of
land. But at the time we wrote Part II, there were
5,000 farms in California that grossed less than
|5»000 a year and some of them were up in the 5»000-
acre size. They were big-sized pieces of land but
they weren't, of course, all irrigated land.

Chall: If there hadn't been subsidies for water, that

brought water from the Central Valley Project into
that San Joaquin area, for example, do you think
that the land would have been used as it has been
for cotton, and rice and things of this kind which
opened up these vast acreages?

McGauhey: They might have as long as they had ground water.

Chall : But they are ruining the land.

McGauhey: It's falling in in some places! [Laughs]

A few years ago one cotton farmer in the Fresno
area told me with a laugh, "I didn't make a quarter
of a million dollars this year. I can't even buy
a new Cadillac! " But it is a complex situation and

166

McGauhey: I feel that subsidy of agriculture, by subsidy of
the water for agriculture, was probably necessary
originally and probably still is necessary. It
was certainly necessary to open up the western
country and so tie the United States together.
Because as soon as man got west of the adequate
rainfall belt — into most of the seventeen western
states — he Just couldn't occupy the land. We
probably wouldn't have unified our land into a
nation if we hadn't gone for governmental aid to
water development.

In Part II of our report we trace the attempts
of men with their own hands or a limited economic
base to irrigate western land. They simply could
not finance the necessary works by mortgaging the
long term potential of land to pay the cost.
Government had to step in; and it did so with
limitations such as the 160-aore provision so that
families could live by agriculture and huge land
holdings were discouraged. If we didn't subsidize
agriculture but simply let it seek its own market,
western agriculture couldn't possibly have developed.

We can grow enough corn in Iowa and Illinois
to feed the United States. But there is a lot of
difference between a dry corn economy and an
economy that lets us have lettuce everyday in the
wintertime. So I hold with those who say that with
a climate and soil such as we have here in California,
it would be a pity not to use it for agriculture if
we can find the water. There may be other possible
policies than those we have adopted, but we'd have
a pretty poorly balanced state economy if we Just
depended upon retired people that liked the climate
in Southern California. I was somewhat surprised
to find out how much of the value of our state
economy actually did come from agriculture; a lot
of it from the processing of agricultural materials
and processing, rather than from Just the production
of agricultural products.

16?

Assumptions

Ghall: Today the economic and population statistics are
quite different from what they were, and what
they were expected to be when you began your
study. What do the programmers do about these
changes?

McGauhey: We know what to do about it. We don't know how
to do it I To get at the economic interrelation
ships between water use and product we had to
take the statistics that we have in California on
the amount of water used and the product produced
in the whole economy. First we started with eighty-
six sectors of the economy and set up a program
which would show what would happen if we put X
number of acre feet of water into a particular
industry. What would be the pattern of increase
in product in each of the others? Some of them
in fact were very low. This approach involves the
assumption that we are not putting in more water
and producing more products than anyone can use.
So what this revealed was the marginal value. What
would water have to cost, or be sold for, before
this industry can no longer function? Thus the
start was with a static assumption. When one tries
to program this dynamically, to say that, suppose
now, this industry dries up and that one booms,
then we get deeper and deeper into a morass of
assumptions. In the simplest mode we also have to
assume that the interchange of goods between
California and adjacent states remains the same.
However, suppose Washington decides not to grow
apples but wants to chop down its orchards and make
high-rise houses like we do. Then there is a whole
shift in the interchange between California and
the other states.

We started and did complete an eleven-state
model of the interchange. But again it had to be,
first a static model and then a dynamic program.
A dynamic program can evaluate the effect of changes
but it certainly never could answer the whole
question. We have to go as far as we can, then make
a value Judgment and go on again with the computer.
The model can't be made into a fixed thing to be
used for all time to come.

168

Ghall: I was interested that in his oral history Harvey
Banks said that it would have been extremely
helpful if he'd had some of the economic studies,
like the McGauhey-Erlich study in the water-pricing
before letting the contracts.*

McGauhey: Yes. Well, you see, he had to write that plan and
it was pretty well done by 1956.

Chall: Yes, the plan was done and I suppose the assumptions
of pricing were already based upon it.

McGauhey: Yes, they had to do it on the best information or
whatever information they had at the time. This
is one of the problems — the difference say between
the true researcher and the practicing engineer.
There comes a time when we have to pour some concrete
and we have to do it on the basis of what knowledge
we have at this point in time. Then, when we get
a little farther along, we can look back and say if
I had just had that tool in time I could have done
differently and presumably better.

Chall: Now they have the tools and I wonder how you expect
this tool to be used in terms of balancing the
resources at the present time, let's say between
agriculture and the building of homes. Who's to
make the decision that this land has to be saved
for agriculture instead of homes?

McGauhey: The people in the legislature that I've talked to

through the years have always said, and I agree with
them, "Bear in mind that these policy decision are
political decisions and will be made by the people
whose responsibility it is to make the political
decisions. What we would like you as researchers
to do is to develop a system, or a procedure, by
which we could predict the consequences of alternate
decisions. Then, having that capacity, we will make
wiser decisions. We might make the one that helps
us to get reeleoted, but nevertheless this is politics.

*Harvey 0. Banks, "California Water Project, 1955-
1961," 1967; Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

169

McGauhey: I personally think it Is quite likely that

wiser public decisions would accrue if there were
some way to take a dozen different proposals that
people — apparently in their right minds — are making,
and run them through the computer to see what are
the probable consequences to the economy, or on
the pattern of distribution of people, in doing
this as opposed to that. If we had that kind of
capability, then for example, water might be used
as a policy instrument to direct population or city
growth to more appropriate places, and to guide
agricultural development in, say, the west side.

But we don't have any way, that I can see, to
say to one farmer, "You can subdivide your farm,"
and to the adjacent owner, "You can't subdivide.
You have to keep your land for a greenbelt so that
the people who live in the high-rise buildings can
look out and see an open space." You can't do this
unless society wants to pay him the profit that he
would make otherwise. This is where the greenbelt
both foundered and floundered, because there is no
way. society could make that decision. There is no
way yet that you can keep the community from moving
the city limits out and then suddenly putting the
farmer out of business by taxing him at city rates.

So I don't foresee any way that this is going
to be done, although I do see emerging, I think
quite clearly, a temper in the state and in the
nation that we have to do something about land use
management, about controls for it.

The first signs we see in California are those
of interpreting the Porter-Cologne Act as giving
the Water Resources Control Board, authority to do
some land use controlling in the interest of water
quality or of water resources. So I think it has
started. We hear it more at the national level
although it is going to take a lot of courage to
make an effective law so that the effect is useful
to us in time. It won't save the Tahoe Basin; but
someday I think there will be a great deal of
constraint on what one can do with his land. He
will be subject to a requirement that his activities
fit in with a plan that some organization set up by
society, has come up with and that society has,
in some proper fashion, approved.

170

Chall: Then you think that having made the start on
economic evaluation studies that this kind of
thing will be used as a tool?

McGauhey: It will be used as a tool if only for determining
what the consequences of alternative actions would
be. Decision makers will be able to choose between
alternatives. This, I think, is already being done
in a good many contexts. Not in the context of
agriculture vs. other kinds of land development,
but it is being done in a great many of the decisions
that involve strictly engineering projects.

What the outcome may be, I donft know, but
nevertheless this kind of approach is being used
to study the alternatives of waste disposal in the
San Francisco Bay Area. Several models of the Bay
made for that purpose are being used. Whether what
the model shows ought to be done in what finally
is done, may depend on other factors, and those
other factors may well be environmental objectives
that emerge from considerations other than water
quality.

Chall: That's interesting to speculate on, but I suppose
that you feel a sense of personal gratification
that you were in on the beginning of some kind of
important study.

McGauhey: Oh, I don't look back with any feeling that I made

any particular contribution. But it has been exciting
to be in the mainstream. One of the advantages of
having been with the University here, with the
Laboratory, was that we operated in the mainstream.
It is more fun to play in the deep water than in
the shallows, as any child who goes in a swimming
pool will demonstrate I [Laughter]

So it is that kind of thing that I think one
finds gratifying, rather than what value there was
to have been in the pool.

171

San Francisco Bay Studies

McGauhey: I have been talking at great length about some of

the studies which have attracted favorable attention
to the University and to the SEHL participating
faculty. Another area of especial significance
has been studies of San Francisco Bay. Bisecting
as it does, a community of some four million people,
being the outlet for and draining the great Central
Valley of California, the Bay is very much a part
of the life and interest of people. Conversion of
the Peninsula and the Santa Clara Valley from
villages and agriculture to high density urban
development has intensified concern for the effects
of domestic waste water on the ecology and the
environmental quality of bay waters. Moreover, the
upper reaches of the Bay, although known under
assorted names, are bordered by industry, much of
it of the chemical or petro- chemical type. This
lengthens the spectrum of wastes which may be of
significance to water quality in the Bay. In this
circumstance it was only natural that the SERL group
should be active in studies of San Francisco Bay.

The most extensive of these were conducted
for the State of California under the leadership
of Professors E.A. Pearson, and R.E. Selleck.
Their extensive and intensive study of the Bay over
a period of some ten years has revealed the residence
time of water in the South Bay; characterized the
water of the entire area as to chemical, physical,
and biological characteristics; evaluated the
productivity of Bay waters; and estimated the
toxlcity resulting from waste water discharges.
The results contained in some eight volumes is the
major source of information of the problem of water
quality control in San Francisco Bay.

Other studies of the Bay have been made through
SERL. Professor H.A. Einstein and Dr. Ray B. Krone
traced the movement of sediments in the Bay by the
use of radioactive gold. More recently, Dr. W.J.
Kaufman is leading a series of studies of toxicity
in Bay waters, again as a service to the State of
California.

172

McGauhey: Although I am not prepared to describe In
detail the findings of this research, it is one
of the major accomplishments of the Laboratory,
and the Bay will continue to provide opportunity
for the Laboratory to serve the State.

Algal Systems

Chall: Now, what about the whole problem of algal systems?
That's clearly important research.

McGauhey: There are a good many aspects to it. The problem
Itself is that in highly industrialized countries
where labor is expensive — Western Europe and the
United States, particularly — waste treatment went
in the direction of mechanized systems. There was
nothing to sell in the way of equipment in a pond,
and anybody could build a pond and dump wastes In
it. Nobody knew what happened. The poor, undeveloped
countries had to use that kind of a pond or else
dump wastes into the water supply. They began early
to use ponds. As their students came to this
country to study they learned how to build
sophisticated plants, and they'd go back home but
nobody had the money to build a sophisticated plant.

So it was a long time before people began to
ask, "Could we put organic matter into a pond, let
bacteria break it down and release nutrients that
algae want; and then grow all these algae and
harvest algae the way we do grass on the ground?
Then we would be able to remove from the water the
nutrients that were put in with the original organic
matter; or at least a fraction of them.

It was that concept that we started out with
here at SERL. First, we asked what do we have to
do to grow algae? How do we produce a maximum crop
and under what circumstances? How much can we grow
in waste water, and is it a matter of light,
temperature, and other factors we have perhaps not
Identified? What kind of controls do we have to
have? And then, how can we get the algae out? And
also, what good are they after we get them out? That

173

MoGauhey: was the thrust of the first work.

It became apparent rather quickly that we
could grow more photosynthate on a one-acre pond
than we can on an acre of land, no matter what
crop we plant on the land; and. we can grow it
quicker. Algal cells are 55 percent or so protein,
and so it would compete well with fish meal or
cottonseed, meal for animal feed supplement.
Animals can eat it, if you mix it in the right
proportions to bring the protein down to the proper
level. All of these things required research,
here at SERL and with animal feeding at Davis.

When we knew how to grow algae Dr. Oswald and
Dr. Golueke had the idea that maybe we might use
an algal system as a life-support system in space.
They started out first with supporting some mice
in a completely closed gas and liquid chamber
system in which all that was put in was some food
for the mice, because they can't eat straight algae.
Some of the algae were removed from the system to
compensate for the added food. But the gas system
was completely closed and all the oxygen that the
mice got came from the algae growing on the products
of bio-degradation of the bodily wastes of mice and
the CC>2 from their breathing. Condensate from the
coils used in keeping the chamber cool was the water
supply for the mice. The Air Corps supported this
study and we got lots of publicity out of it as
well as inspiring dozens of children to undertake
related studies for their science projects and fairs.

Chall: Did the mice live?

McGauhey: Oh, yes. We ran the experiment as long as forty- two
days on one occasion. This is equivalent to six
years of the life of a man, and the mice were doing
all right. We terminated the experiment because
there was no object in carrying it further, but we
kept the system going for several years because of
public Interest in seeing it. Later we built a
big unit — a two-man system — but the war reduced the
Air Corps' money, and the project is moving a little
slowly.

MoGauhey: Dr. Oswald's group has Just completed a study

of the possibility of using algal system for getting
rid of chioken manure. This is a big problem in
egg and poultry production business because egg
production, and poultry production too, is done in
a factory now. We don't have chickens running
around on the ground kicking up the dust. They
stay in cages. Egg and poultry plants could be
built right in the city if we had some way of
handling the wastes. We've Just finished a study
that shows, on a hundred-hen basis, that you can,
without any difficulty, convert all these wastes to
algal cells, and harvest the cells. The cells can
be fed back to animals but the harvesting is still
expensive. Nevertheless the results of this project
represent a major step forward in waste management.

Along the way we've considered how algal systems
might be used now that one of the objectives of
wastewater treatment is the removal of nutrients.
This is an emerging objective, being imposed at
Tahoe and Washington, D. C. , and various other places.
So if we could incorporate these nutrients into
algal cells and then harvest them, this might be a
good way of stripping out the nutrients. So we're
doing a good deal of research on that and the
problems associated with it.

Chall: Some of the results of the pond approach with algae,

has any of that been converted into on-going projects?

MoGauheyi Yes, Indeed. Many communities are using ponds, and
Dr. Oswald has served as consultant to many people
in building and operating them. St. Helena has one
pond system that is working very well, Concord has
one. There are about one hundred of them in California.

Chall: Is this part of the sewage treatment plant?

McGauhey: Yes. It can be used either Just for raw sewage or
for secondary treatment, or for final treatment
after the waste water has gone through an ordinary
treatment plant. We're using it here on sewage from
which the solids have been settled, which is called
a primary treated sewage — that is our principal
source. But at St. Helena they use one pond for the
anaerobic digestion of material and other ponds for

175

McGauhey: treating it more highly. At Santee they're using
ponds to produce an effluent highly enough treated
for recreational use.

Chall: I see. That means that you're actually allowing
algae to be growing in there, purifying the water
up to a point. ..

MoGauhey: In these particular ones, algal ponds precede the

ones that are actually used for fishing and swimming.

Chall: That's the end result, the water that is used, then.
And what becomes of the algae?

McGauhey: They're not operating the pond at Santee so as to
grow the maximum number of algae. They operate so
that the minimum number of algae are grown. To do
this the waste water is first run through a treatment
plant that removes much of the nutrients to begin
with so that they don't get such great growths as
we do in our high- rate ponds. Algae die and are
decomposed by bacteria in the bottom sediments Just
as they do in natural lakes and ponds.

Chall: In Europe — I think during the thirties the Soil
Conservation Service adapted them here — they
developed fishponds, which operated somewhat on the
same principle, where you put the big pond out in
a field and let fish live for several years, then
drain the pond and grow grains in the soil which
had been fertilized by the fish.

McGauhey: The principle is the same. The thing is, the

efficiency is less, as the algae convert nutrients
to cells very quickly and with high efficiency.
If has to go through organism after organism, and
ultimately to fish, much efficiency is lost. That
Is, if we feed high protein food to a steer, we
get about 16 percent conversion of protein. Somewhere
between 6 and 16 percent conversion is typical of
animal efficiency, the rest goes out as waste. With
algae you can get a much higher conversion in the
60-?0 percent range. In the fish pond they are trying
to keep an entire eoo-system in the natural state.
Ycu put in the organic matter that is unstable, and
end up with a crop that's easier to harvest than
is algae.

176

Chall: Yes. And I guess these are used In areas where

fish, rather than something else, is a prime source
of the diet.

MoGauhey: Or you can use the fish for fishmeal — Just to make
fertilizer, you see. This could be done if we are
growing rough fish. Generally these fish ponds have
harbored edible fish but there's no reason why it
has to be so. As long as we oan get them out cheaply,
it's no problem to convert fish to dog food or cat
food or fertilizer.

Chall: I think they would, take the fish out at the end of
three years; I don't know what they used them for,
but I think in Prance they ate them. All of the
fish droppings made fine fertilizer; they'd dry
out the pool and then plant wheat the following year,
so that it kept the eoo-system in balance.

MoGauhey: Yes. If you don't do that, the system may run out
of carbon. A growing plant in soil In shallow
water has its roots in the fertilized soil but its
leaves are up in the atmosphere and hence it oan
get a lot of carbon dioxide. We oan grow such plants
by supplying Just nitrogen and phosphorous and minor
elements, whereas in a pond we have to have a source
of carbon. This is the real difficulty In using
algae to take the nitrates out of the water that
they propose to send down the San Luis Drain. There
is enough nitrogen to cause worry lest the drain
water over-fertilize the Bay. But to take out the
nitrogen with algae, some source of carbon will have
to be added. To supply a carbon source to agricultural
drain water Is part of the expense of getting out
the nutrients by biological means.

Chall: Could you develop and harvest algae in such a way

as to feed people in areas where there Is widespread
malnutrition now or famine foreseeable in the future?

McGauhey: Basically, the answer is no. Unfortunately "true

believers" have spread the impression that the high
yield and growth rate of unicellular algae is a
hopeful prospect for assuaging human hunger. The
truth is that algal cells are low in carbohydrates.
The protein content is high but the material is not
readily dlgestable by human beings, causing a great

177

MoGauhey: deal of bloating of the body. The algal cell

material could best be fed to chickens or pigs or
goats and so increase the supply of food from such
sources. It might also be used as a fertilizer
in the manner you described in relation to the fish
ponds. To grow algae in a pond, however, nutrients
must be made available. Thus human wastes, animal
manures, and other organic debris would have to be
placed in the pond. Then there is the task of
harvesting the algae. I doubt that such a prospect
offers much hope for alleviating malnutrition or
famine in the undeveloped countries. The best bet
it seems to me is to use wastes to fertilize fish
ponds and then to eat the fish. The method is
inefficient and marginal but not impossible for the
technology of non- industrialized societies. So I
must conclude that the algal pond is not much of a
hope in the situation you suggest.

Chall: It's Interesting with all this experimentation with
algae, that on one side you develop it, almost grow
it, for some beneficial purpose, and on the other
hand, in some of the big lakes and other areas, ).t's
a serious problem, and it has to come out.

McGauhey: The serious problem, the one that they call

eutrophlcation, is characterized by an excess of
algae at certain times. An aquatic eco-system
generally has some species of algae in it at all
times. But algal blooms come in waves. When
available nutrients are introduced the first response
of the system is a crop of algae. Then come the
grazers — water fleas and tiny orustaoae, and so on
to harvest the algae. These grazers are microscopic
in size but you can see many of them with the naked
eye. They move in and the algae crop disappears.
Then, of course, having exhausted their food supply,
they die, and become organic matter to be re-oyoled
by bacterial decomposition.

And so we get these pulses of living things.
But a llmnologioal situation isn't that simple.
There is also a sequence of algal species that will
predominate. Some of them will depend on temperature,
time of year, so one of them will wipe the other out
in competition for nutrients. With lots of nutrients
present a tremendous growth of algae will suddenly

178

McGauhey: appear. Then the growth will die and decay, and

in the decaying process require so much oxygen that
the lake becomes an anaerobic, stinking mess.

Chall: That's the concern for man.

McGauhey: That's man's concern, yes. It changes the eco
system some, but at least it doesn't interrupt it
completely. So what we want to do is keep the limit
of nutrients down to the point that we still grow
fish and have water that's nice for swimming, and
boating, and suitable for drinking after proper
treatment, yet not so enriched that we get a sudden
overwhelming bloom of algae that causes difficulty.

Eutrophicatlon can led to very unpleasant
conditions. A biologist named Thomas described
rather graphically in the literature what happened
in a Swiss lake at Zurich, in which the rushes
growing in the edge of the water, fertilizing the
lake, caused so much material to grow on the bottom
that it gave off gas and the gas rose up to the top
carrying a carpet of ugly sludge to the top. This
carpet drifted toward shore by the wind and the
reeds then were physically constrained at the water
surface. Then when the wind blew the reeds couldn't
sway and they broke off and fell down in a big mish
mash of dead, decaying organic matter. They had a
wonderful promenade alongside the lake that people
didn't care much about using while this was going
on.

Chall: Is much of the problem with the growth of algae in
the lakes caused by industrial pollution, by
phosphates in the soap for example?

McGauhey: About half of the phosphates, in waste water come
from products that we use; but there's enough
phosphates in human wastes or in animal manures — If
we Just consider the milk we drink and the food we
eat — to go with all the nitrogen that's available.
The problem with the phosphates is that if we put
in a tremendous lot of phosphates into water and
there isn't enough nitrogen to go with it, the
water becomes nitrogen sensitive. If the material
carrying the phosphate is degradable organic matter
in a quantity sufficient to exhaust the oxygen

179

McGauheyr resources of the receiving water, the system
became anaerobic. Then we get a growth of
organisms which can get nitrogen from the
atmosphere. With plenty of phosphorus the
population of organisms will tend to equal Its
food supply, Increasing to the extent
phosphorus will permit.

Even In a normal system an anaerobic situation
is going to smell bad anyway. But in this new
situation we're confronted with now, the problem is
compounded. This is why there has been so much
worrying about phosphates in waste water. But no
one has shown yet that taking out phosphorus as
a part of sewage treatment is going to do much
good, except in isolated instances.

We are going to have to out down the nitrogen
concentration, too. One source of nitrogen Is
human sewage, so if a great amount of the water is
used repeatedly we get a build-up in nitrogen.
Excess nitrogen comes also from some poor waste
management practices. In parts of the Midwest,
when the farmer runs out of anything else to do in
wintertime, he hauls all the annual manure out and
throws it on the frozen ground, and then when the
snow melts it flows into the lakes Instead of into
his field, and initiates a problem with algal
growth.

In dairies the practice is to wash out the
stables with water, and the holding-pen area is
washed down, either by man or by nature. Dairies
and feed lots where animals are fattened contribute
a tremendous lot of organic matter which nobody
knows what to do with. At present it is often held
in a pond, and this pond become pretty odorous.
Nitrites may be present in the pond and will kill
a cow if it drinks from the pond. So we have all
manner of problems we haven't resolved yet.

In fertilizing there is a problem of when to
put the fertilizer on, and how much to put on in
order to produce a crop, yet minimize washoff to
surface or ground waters. In the case of corn, for
example, we have to put on more fertilizer at the
time when the plant stalk isn't growing, but the

180

MoGauhey: ears are setting. The rest of the time we oan put
on fertilizer and It's used by the plant just about
at the rate that it is put on in growing cornstalks.
But at the time when the ears are forming, when
the salable crop Is about to materialize, we must
then really pour on the fertilizer in order to get
anything to sell. So excess nitrogen is on the
ground or in the ground near the end of the growing
season. Presumably, this is leaohable and some of
it can get off into the ground water or surface
water. Although we haven't identified that as an
extremely serious problem, in the irrigated country
we know, for example, that the San Luis Drain will
have nitrogen In it from agricultural sources.

So there is a lot of serious problems that are
associated with how to get the nutrients out of
water. Part of our algal study is in that direction.

Chall: I see. In the meantime, I guess the San Luis Drain
may be built before we've solved the problem. Does
that kind of thing bother you? Do you ever think of
this in the political sphere?

MoGauhey: Yes, we think a great deal about it — about the
problem of how to come up with answers that are
clearly enough defined and certain enough In their
proof to Justify drastic political action. Some
say that the whole ecology of the Bay will change
when we start exporting water, and others say, yes,
it will change but not all changes are bad; maybe
the new ecosystem will be Just as happy as the
old one, even though It's different. Some people
don't want any change at all. Others are fearful
that somebody either doesn't know or is obscuring
what will be the real nature of this water in the
Bay once the drain Is built. And so we make models
of the Bay — those have been made — and attempt to
run them out to determine what the situation will
be like.

But we really don't know enough about it to
answer this primary question and this does worry
me. On the other hand, I don't think we should
take such drastic action as to say, well let's Just
don't go on with any more development of water
resources, because we don't know what kind of trouble
we're going to get in.

181

Chall: In the case, let's say, of the San Luis Drain,

which is an immediate problem, and the Peripheral
Canal, would it be possible to say, "Wait until
we've done some more research." Is more research
Justified?

McGauhey: It would be possible. There are those who feel

and document their feelings, how well I don't know,
that putting all that land into production on the
western side [of the San Joaquln Valley] may well
be catastrophic to agriculture because of over
production of things that are marketable at the
margin level only now.

Chall: I thought that perhaps your input-output system
could be used to answer that kind of question by
this time.

McGauhey: The reason that it can't answer it is that we

can't get the information necessary to put in it.
You can make a model all right, but one doesn't
know how the wastes, say from industry, move out
of this Bay and in what concentration. Do they go
out streaming with the tide or do they disperse?
We have a good deal of information but when you
make a model of it some assumptions must be made.
Either we get a one-dimensional model so that the
water is being distributed longitudinally, or we
make it two dimensions, a model in which wastes
are dispersing laterally as well as longitudinally
with the flow.

At best these involve vast over-simplioations
of what happens in nature, and it isn't that we
can't find out what happens in nature, it's that
what happens in nature here may not be happening
at all over there. That is, the same forces are
at work, but they're not working in the same
combinations, the same ways. In one case we might
end up with a great eddy-current of wastes. In
another the flow might sweep it right on out and
cause no trouble. So there isn't any easy way to
translate from one particular situation to the
other, and it's infeasible and essentially
impossible at the moment to get all of the kind
of Information we need, particularly when we begin
to ask what is going to be the effect on the eco
system.

182

New Directions in Public Policy

McGauhey: We're not going to get the answer, I fear, before
the answer become evident. [Laughter] Because
we are not going to be able to predict what
happens. I do think, though, that one thing is
certain to happen. This is that the Environmental
Protection Agency will consider grants-in-aid for
sewage treatment plants only if certain federal
water quality standards are met both in the discharge
stream and in the receiving water. The grant-in-
aid is a big percentage of the cost of building a
plant acceptable to the EPA. Even if it should
continue to be so that a community could theoretically
avoid certain restrictions by going it alone, no
such decision is likely to occur. As long as the
major portion of taxes go through Washington the
taxpayer will take the attitude "Why shouldn't some
of it come back here? Why should I now have also
to pay all the cost of these bonds to build a
treatment plant?" And even though there's a lot
of fallacies in this method of financing, nevertheless
it's effective.

The next step is going to be that if a city
or a municipal utility wants federal money for
building a plant, It will have to adopt first some
policy on industrial wastes. I'm certain that that's
the way it's going to be done In the Bay Area. The
kind of things that are going into the Bay as toxic
materials can't be taken out in an ordinary sewage
treatment plant. So we are just going to have to
go back to industry and say, "Look, you can't put
this pollutant in the sewer in more than this
amount." Or, "You can't put it in at all."

For example, the paint industry here may well
be responsible for the kind of an oil slick you
can see if you go out in a boat to look for it and
know what you're looking for, over the sewer outfalls
in the Bay. It may be that the sewage treatment
plant can never take it out and the utilities
district will have to say to this Industry, Just
for an example, "It's up to you to take it out.
The goal of your technology must be not to put it
in our drains. "

183

McGauhey :
Chall i

McGauhey :
Chall :
MoGauhey:

This Is how I think the toxiolty question is
going to be answered.

This article here, "One Strategy for Pollution
Control," approaches it in a somewhat different
way, if I can get the sense of it.*

One is that you treat the water as a natural
resource like land. If you're going to use it,
you pay rent on it.

That has been proposed.

An "effluent charges" system to pay for using it.

This emerges from a reversal — or discussion, at
least, of a reversal — of our age-old idea that
air and water are free and belong to everybody.
And that if we now say that the water resource
belongs to the public — it is a public resource and
freedom to use it by any individual or any company
is granted only subject to these particular
constraints — then, we could make a considerable
change in the whole Jurisdiotional approach to
quality management.

One of the limitations is that much of what
happens to water is a result of what we do on land,
and we haven't yet got to where we say the land is
a national resource and you have to husband it in
this fashion in order to have permission to use it.
Although, I think, legislation on land-use, or
maybe I*d better say "environmental quality as
related to land," or perhaps even a "land-use
system" is going to be proposed pretty soon.

We have simple things like zoning ordinances
which say you can't build it here, you can build it
somewhere else, or art commissions that say you can
only built it this high, or it's got to look like
this or that, but that doesn't prevent the over-crowding
of our environment with buildings and people, or solve

*"0ne Strategy for Pollution Control," Resources
(Resources for the Future), June 1970, pp. 5-7«

184

MoGauheyz many of our land-use problems. So if we go to the
kind of rationale the artlole suggests we may
well have to Include the land as a resource on
which we're also going to place some quality
standards. Not arbitrary, that all land's got to
be alike, but that to carry on this kind of an
activity you shall have to maintain this level of
environmental quality in this individual circumstance.

Challi I see. The author is under the impression that the
present subsidy system — we grant an industry a
certain subsidy, or the federal government gives
money to communities to build treatment plants—
doesn't properly answer the question, because some
of the plants are not really efficient or they're
not really the very best kind of plant, and then
after they're built nobody's really paying very
much attention to what happens. And the same is
true of industry's pollution — sometimes they Just
let a treatment plant in the community take care of
it, and then they don't bother with the pollution
at its origin.

MoGauhey: Well, he has a good point there in saying that the
government tends to give money for the purpose of
assisting a locality to provide adequate facilities
that are currently not adequate.

But this other thing of saying what constitutes
adequacy. We have to recognize the Inadequacy of
the plants to treat many industrial wastes and to
force the development of a plant that will handle
these problems rather than Just relying on the
same old treatment system. And the granting or
withholding of money also forces the people who ere
responsible for treatment — local water quality
boards — to go upstream, and say, "Look, we have r.o
technological way of taking this out, therefore you
can't put it in." Then, it's up to Industry.

Now, it wouldn't make much difference to most
industry or to a city if water cost two or three or
four or five times as much as it does today. Of
course we'd complain at the end of the first month,
but the cost isn't great in comparison with the
whole expense involved in manufacture. In most
industry the value added by manufacture is great

185

McGauhey: enough to deal with greatly Increased water costs.
It's not strictly true of big water users like
pulp and paper, but they're solving that—those
industries are doing pretty well.

But where stringent water quality objectives
hurts is in water for agriculture. Here's where the
big amount of water is, and, as a matter of public
policy, we have an arrangement whereby we provide
water for agriculture. This policy has been upheld
by the Supreme Court various times, and I'm not
arguing that subsidies to agricultural water is
evil. But as I mentioned before the multiplying
factor on water used in agriculture is probably
at best not over l.?5 to 1.

If we put upon agriculture what it costs to
get the water on land — actual cost to go buy it
and deliver it — we'd be out of business in irrigated
agriculture. Or we'd have to let the price of food
go very high, which would be politically untenable.
Or we would have to say we won't grow food in the
arid country. We can all live out there and drink
the water, but we must eat the dried corn from
Iowa of which I previously spoke. Dropping agri
cultural water subsidies would damage the economies,
and make such lopsided economies, that this is not
a reasonable or feasible alternative.

The endpolnt then is, if we're going to put
water on at public expense, who but the public is
responsible for taking the salts out of return
waters from agriculture. We can go to industry and
say, "Look, you can't put that salt in there; you
either locate where it doesn't matter, or you can
get busy with your Inventiveness and figure out a
way to take it out, or change the process." They've
got lots of ways they can go, and, except for
marginal industries, that's probably the way to do
it. Industry also has the ability to pass the cost
on to the public in the price of its product.

So we can get as tough as we want to with
industry, we're paying the bill; although, I must
say at this moment, we don't seem to know It. The
warm glow that comes with standing unmovable on
high principles of environmental quality has not
yet felt the cool breeze that comes with the bill.

186

MoGauheyt But if we went to a farmer, and said, "Look,
you're discharging out here so many acre-feet of
water that's got nitrogen in it. You can't do
that." We've really said, "You're out of business."
There's no way he can get it out. We don't know
how to get it out, or at least we don't know how
to get it out economically, so how the dickens can
a farmer get it out?

I conclude then that if the public says,
"We'll put water on land at our expense," then I
think the public is still responsible for what
happens to that water. I believe that the first
step in recognizing such public responsibility is
the idea that the public will build a drain, like
the San Luis Drain, possibly taking it off to the
ocean, quarantining it and taking it away. But
someday they may have to say, "We can't afford
that — to throw that water away — we've got to find
a way to recapture the water. " But this will have
to come from something other than Just regulating
the agriculturist's use of water.

Chall: I would like to have you interpret a little

quotation that I took from your book.* You said,
"Engineers should become more innovative, but this
is difficult because municipal officials are
concerned with costs and don't like to risk untried
systems. Sometimes, therefore, they continue to
accept systems customarily used even if it is poor.
This, together with the Innate conservatism of
public works engineers accounts In part for a
dismaying lack of progress in water treatment in
more than a generation. " Has that changed? Are
you finding a different type of engineer around
lately?

McGauhey: It's changing, not because these engineers were

stone-age chaps who didn't see what was going on,
but because when they are spending the public's
money, they are in a conservative system. The
engineer can't Just say, "I'll build a full-scale

*P.H. MoGauhey, Engineering Management of Water
Quality (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1968),
P. 171.

18?

McGauhey: experimental plant here, and my oity will be a

big test tube for the world to see." He wouldn't
last long In the business. [Laughter] The public
Just wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing. So
there Is no oholoe but to use proven systems.
This Is what I mean by the Innate conservatism of
public works. It's Just frozen In there.

The way it's being overcome Is one I spoke of
a few moments ago In which Increasingly government
takes over the matter of specifying quality standards
for resources — water, air and land — and then offers
the financial assistance to build plants that meet
the standards. This, then, forces Innovation, and
it takes the onus off the city, and It puts up to
the consulting engineer to design a better system.

Chall: And then the consulting engineer has to come to
fellows like you.

MoGauhey: He often has to go back to those who've been in
research to ask, "What can you tell us that can
improve existing systems?" This Is going on right
today.

Chall: It would have to be, because otherwise the whole
consulting business would be frozen, too. They
make their standard plans, and they can sell them
all over the world.

McGauhey: Pulling Dlans out of the drawer and changing the
scale on them. There has been a lot of that done
in the world — but this is by no means as common
as popularly believed. It has been most often done
by the marginal engineer preying upon the belief
of the small town official that money spent on
engineering is wasted. It is not a practice of the
type of engineer that Is likely to do the work
calling for innovation or up-to-the-minute knowledge.
I don't think we will see much of that sort of thing
as engineers respond to the assumption of responsi
bility by government for the quality that it is
going to demand for the air, water and land resources.
But technology Is not automatically advanced by a
quantum increase in the holiness of a Washington
bureaucrat. Municipal authorities are screaming
right now in many areas because the standards have

188

MoGauheyt been raised and the time limits for conforming so
tightened that the olty oan not possibly meet them
on sohedule. I am consultant to one or two
consulting engineers who are working for western
cities, and I may say that the answers to the
problem of meeting federal requirements are far
from clear. It is quite clear that the city and
its engineers are going to have to find answers
one way or another, if they're going to get any
federal construction money. I do not mean to agree
here that cities have let pollution go on until
forced by government to depart from their evil ways
and follow the paths of virtue staked out by holy
men in government agencies. Much of what is
required by government oan be shown to be appropriate
in one situation and arbitrary and asinine in
another. The point is that government at all levels
has been increasingly setting objectives which may
not be achievable by conventional systems and hence
the findings of research are being more carefully
examined and more quickly incorporated into
engineering practice than in the past.

But I don't want to explore the wellsprings
of governmental ukases today, I believe we are
more concerned in our discussion with their impact
on research. Shall we pursue this question further?

The Results of Research

Chall: Pursue research, I think, as much as we oan.

McGauhey: I believe you asked a little while ago about the

fate of the product of research once the researcher
himself has written it up, and it has been published
in an obscure Journal or a technical Journal that
is not widely read.

Chall: Professor Pearson had a big press conference when
he finished his report on Bay pollution. That was
rather unique, I thought, in the annals of academic
research.

189

MoGauhey: Yes, although day before yesterday we had a big

press conference here at SERL on the life-support
system. It was on the television and there was
some good publicity in the metropolitan newspapers
of the Bay Area.

So we do get some momentary recognition on
occasion, but I think what becomes of research,
and the best thing that becomes of It, is that the
graduate students who worked on it, now go out into
the profession and make some impact with their
advanced knowledge.

Take, for example, the input-output studies of
economics: two of the people who worked on it
first are now involved in important follow-up
studies. Mr. Erlich, who was a public administration
and economics student, is with the Corps of Engineers
In San Francisco, working on a multiple system
approach to the effect of what the Corps of Engineers
do from an environmental point of view. Dr. Lofting
is with the Corps of Engineers, working out for them
an extension of the model that I talked about
previously — the model of California's economy, and
the economy of the eleven Western states. The Corps
of Engineers have some real money to put into such
work and the results of our research will not be
lost.

Mr. Craig Davis, the first one to get his PhD
on the SERL project, Is on the professorial staff
at the University of British Columbia, developing
for Western Canada an economic model of the kind
that was done here.

Richard Prankel, whom I mentioned a while ago,
went to the army and worked for them for awhile on
the same economic analysis. He was the one I cited
who was originally supported at SERL by Resources
for the Future. Later he went with Resources for
the Future for a two-year assignment. Now he Is
out teaching and is working on some similar approaches
for the less-developed parts of the world.

These men are all going to make major contri
butions to the resolution of some very complex
problems. They are among the ones who are out in

190

McGauhey: real life agencies bringing to them, now, the kind
of approach we developed here in research. And
here's where the hope lies. Even though the
professor and his report may be forgotten, the
students who worked on it, as we get enough of
them, begin to have some impact. This is, I would
say, a further Justification of the University's
policy of seeing that the research projects that
we undertake do involve graduate students, and serve
some educational purpose other than Just educating
or intriguing the professor.

TheProfeifor and the University Structure

Chall: I notice that Professor Pearson is the chairman of
a conference on water quality which will be meeting
for several days in San Francisco next week. Is it
typical in the University system that a professor
will teach, carry on research (I noticed, for
example, that Professor Pearson has projects going
on the Laboratory ) , can be chairman of a department
for awhile, and then also get himself involved as
an officer in a major organization in his field?
Sometimes all at the same time?

McGauhey i Not only is It typical, it is almost a necessity
for a professor in a great university. Perhaps I
should turn that statement around and say that if
a university is to be a great university it must
recruit men who have the energy and the competence
to teach, to lead research that both refines the
context of their courses and leads to experiments
in engineering practice, and to serve as leaders
in the profession. In the case of Professor
Pearson, along with all the things you point out
goes also membership in some of the state level
committees on ocean outfalls, because he has
established some considerable expertise in that
area. And as a result he's called upon to consult
with people — with agencies as well as with practicing
engineers. So, by the time all of these things get
put together, there isn't much time left.

191

MoGauhey: But he himself, like most Investigators

doesn't do a great deal of the detail of research.
The picture of the researcher in a white laboratory
coat behind a rack of intrl uing glassware is more
likely to fit the graduate student or a very basic
scientist than the faculty investigator of a major
environmental study. But Dr. Pearson does a great
deal of the review of the research. He's very
meticulous and when the report has been drafted,
he goes over it in great detail evaluating and
interpreting data. He is very careful to make
sure that a report is something that he can live
with. He insists that his graduate student on the
project extend himself intellectually to interpret
and evaluate the data. Such an approach is necessary
if the graduate is to have the impact I have cited.

Chall: Then it's a pretty strenuous life for some of these
people on the faculty? Pour or five years or more
at a time, particularly when they're department
chairmen. Is it all valuable? Is it all worthwhile
in your estimation — this kind of activity?

McGauheyi Obviously I must think it worthwhile or conclude
that my lifetime has been misspent. The question
raises the issue of whether or not one might have
been happier or more useful to mankind if he had
adhered to a narrower field and planned it deeper.
For my part I believe that one expands his capacity
to produce by working in a system that keeps him
always at full capacity. This is the basis of the
old adage "If you want something done, give it to
a busy man to do." Prom my observations of men I
would say that the capacity of a man who has too
little to do shrinks to the size of his productivity.
Thus the classic professor who spends two hours on
the campus three days per week (and there are still
some of these around) is more certain than the busy
man that he Is terribly overworked. Concerning some
I have worked with on committees at Berkeley and in
other universities I would revise the old adage to
say "If you have something you don't want done, give
it to Professor to do."

But this is a matter about which I hope to get
around to writing in another context. Concerning
your question I would say that those who perform
at the strenuous level could do even more if it

192

MoGauhey: were not for inescapable Ineffioiencies in the
system.

The tendency for the University, I'm afraid,
is to get over-organized. Just as the whole
profession of engineering is over-organized. I
belong to, at least, fifteen organizations each
one of which seems to be legitimate and to serve
a purpose. But these in themselves consume quite
a bit of time — Just being in them and participating
in the profession as a practitioner of the
profession.

Within the University, of course, we have a
tremendous number of committees. Everything is
done by committees. And committees move like
glaciers, you know, to begin with. Although in
the end I think the committee system comes up with
some very sound conclusions, it nevertheless takes
an awful lot of peoples' time.

The department chairman or the division chair
man is at the receiving end of paper chutes from a
considerable number of administrative sources. The
administrator spends his full time in generating
paper and has the prerogative of sending It along
down the line. However, It gets hung up on his
desk, so by the time it goes down to the department
It Is already due back in the chancellor's office.

The bigger the University gets, in my opinion,
the more administratively top heavy it gets. And
the more administration you have, the more people
who are employed to generate paper. And this paper
has to go somewhere. And a lot of it has to go
down to the level of departments. Then quite often
the paper demands, or at least requests that the
chairman come up with an opinion of the department.
The department chairman is expected to speak for
the department. And then when you try to speak for
sixty people, you have to get them together. This
is physically Impossible because of the percentage
who are presenting learned papers, or are In Europe,
at any given moment. Moreover, it Is intellectually
impossible as well because their capacity for
disagreement is expanded by Indignation over what
the paper requests of them. The best the chairman

193

McGauhey: can do Is to appoint some more committees at the
department level. And we end up with committees
dealing with curriculum, for example, at the
division level, at the department level, at the
college level, at the University, or at least at
the campus level, and the state-wide level. And
it takes a lot of time, consumes a lot of energy,
and its cost-effectiveness is too frightening to
compute.

Yet I don't see exactly how one might run a
teaching operation by Just going off in a vacuum
with students and teaching them, particularly in
this area of environmental control. What are we
going to teach them, particularly in, a graduate
school? We really don't have much to teach in
engineering unless we participate in research and
in the profession. The alternative is to do as
they do in some undeveloped countries: the
professor Just recites the notes which he took
when he was in college. What we know of environ
mental control becomes obsolete pretty fast. In
the fast-moving world we have today, scientific
and engineering as well as social, the cultural
changes are so rapid that it becomes absolutely
necessary that a professor be doing something in
research. Also he must be having some contact
with people because you can do only what people
will let you do. So, again there's no use for
research on things that have no relevance at all
to what humanity wants or will accept.

Therefore, Just to be sufficiently informed
to teach or lead a class at the graduate level
in a modern context makes it necessary that a man
be pretty active on all fronts in his field.

Chall: I would think there would be some way to cut some
place along the line. But I suppose only the people
in the field would be able to analyze this.

McGauhey: I don't know how to go about cutting it. I know
some people who say "Well, I Just can't do it.
You'll Just have to get somebody else." But much
of the reputation of the University depends upon a
man doing his Job. Sometimes he is motivated by
the old dog in the manger concept. Sometimes you
have to do something because the penalty for not

MoGauhey: doing it is for somebody else to do it. And that
somebody else isn't going to do it the way you
want it done. Or is going to do it and get the
rewards .

Then, this may be kind of a negative approach,
but nevertheless, if the University wants to have
a world-wide reputation or a national reputation
or any kind of a reputation for excellence, it has
to do two things. It has to do those things that
result in it getting credit and it has to surround
itself, or at least staff itself, with people who
do more than an ordinary amount of thinking and
turn out more than an ordinary amount of product 0
And this is one of the tasks that one comes up
against in administering at a departmental level,
or at least that the administration comes up
against when it is thinking about what is a proper
teaching load in view of the other activities that
go along with making teaching relevant.

One of the things they come up against is the
question of whether a man who's doing his Job and
doing it well is Justified in putting an appreciable
amount of energy into other activities outside the
University, if they don't directly contribute to the
stature of the University. This often comes up
in relation to consulting activities. One professor
Justifies his activities on the rationale, "Well,
I'm doing a good Job." But "good" isn't good enough
for an excellent university. We have to do a little
better than the ordinary good Job.

I've always contended that if we hire people
of greater than normal capacity, then the University
has a right to expect greater than normal production
from them, and in turn greater than normal, or
greater than average, at least, reputation as a
result of this. This is an area that is hard to
deal with, and yet it is something that we have to
think about.

Chall: It's a standard that you set, Isn't it?

McGauhey: Yes. You have to set the standards high, and then
get high-quality men to staff this kind of an
organization.

195

Teaching

Chall: I don't know about the students in the engineering
departments, but in other areas of the University
they've been upset with the faot that in their
undergraduate years, at least, they aren't dealing
with the major minds of the department, because
the professors are doing their research and working
with graduate students. Is this a problem that
you have had to contend with?

MoGauheyi I've not had to contend with it in the Department

of Civil Engineering and in the College of Engineering
where the classes are not so large. There 've been,
certainly, oases where individual professors were
hard to get to, but this I don't think is really a
bad situation. I don't think I know of any students
who've had difficulty getting to see the professor
if they really want to. The big problem is to get
them to come around, at least before they get into
so much trouble nobody can help them.

Chall: Get the students to come around, you mean?

MoGauhey: Yes. Before they're beyond help. I don't think we
have too much of a problem there. It is true that
the professors largely work with graduate students,
but on the other hand, half of our people are
graduate students, and a lot of that working with
them is in a research area.

The real problem with the undergraduate occurs
when classes are very large. I was Just talking
with Rolf Ellasson of Stanford a few moments ago.
He had a class, "Man in his Environment1* with four
hundred people in it. But he kept an open door,
and they came through that door, and he's taken all
summer to try to recover. Spring quarter was a
strenuous activity I [Laughter]

Where there are large classes there are often
numerous teaching assistants involved. The student
can't get past the TA to see the professor, or may
Justly feel that the professor is someone that
appears in the huge lecture hall beyond the resolving
power of the human eye. We don't have much teaching

196

McGauhey: done in engineering— in fact we don't have any

teaching done in civil engineering that I've ever
come across — that was done by teaching assistants.
Their task in our organization is to take the
problem sets and grade them, not necessarily to
put a final grade on them, Just criticize them,
and go into the detail of writing on the margins
what the student overlooked, or did wrong. In
my classes, at least, the TA used solutions that
I provided.

I used to tell them, "I only ask you the kind
of questions I can answer myself. I only give you
the kind of problems I can work. Therefore, it
shouldn't be too hard." Sometimes the student
found that I made an error. I always liked this to
happen because it made for good relations with
students when I came to class with the confession
that I had goofed, then distributed the correct
solution, and upped the grades of those who had it
right. I had the teaching assistants in my class
pass the student's problem solutions through my
office for final grading. In general these teaching
assistants hold office hours, and if the student
wants to know, what did you mean by this — what's
this you're criticizing here — then he goes first to
the teaching assistant. But the teaching assistant
then, if it's a matter of context, refers him to
the professor. This way you can get a lot of the
underbrush chopped, out, you might say, without
wasting manpower on the problems or detail that
isn't necessary.

But then where teaching assistants are leading
in laboratory experiments, the professor is on hand.
He may not be standing right there, but he's in the
vicinity, so that the teaching assistant is largely
manning the machines or saving the equipment.

We don't have any real cause for widespread
complaint of mishandling of teaching of our own
students. But it is different when these students
go to other departments, particularly engineers or
scientists going to a humanities department. The
people In the humanities are, understandably,
concerned to teach their graduate students. So if
they get five hundred in one class, of people from
a group like engineering, it is awfully easy to take

197

MoGauhey: the attitude: "Well, these fellows are unteachable
anyway or they wouldn't be taking engineering.
They'd be over here studying under us if they were
interested in this field." And so, they pass them
down the line to a teaching assistant. If they
didn't pass them down the line, they wouldn't have
manpower enough to teach them anyway.

In many classes the lectures have been given
by the professor to two or three or four or five
hundred students. Then to measure any of the impact
on the student, the professor simply cannot do it.
He has to have some subcontractors to work with
smaller groups to evaluate the impact. Sometimes
they call these quiz sections, or discussion sections,
or recitation sections — with years, the terminology
has changed. This approach brings the high-level
professor into view, but the students never get close
to him. Even at best — even if students would sit
in the front row, which they don't like to do — they
would not get very close to him.

And I don't think this is any reflection on
the integrity of the professor. -It's Just that if
the University is going to accept mass teaching,
this is one of the evils of it. If we're not going
to have mass teaching, then we have to make a far
greater investment in facilities and staff. Either
we have to go for greater Investment or limited
enrollment. We can't hire a Nobel Prize winner for
every twenty students. We get at Berkeley far more
prize winners than the normal university. But if
we had hired all the talent in the world Just to
teach five hundred students, it would take a lot of
money and a lot of recruiting to get these people
all to work on one group in one university.

Objectives of Education

Chall: Partly a problem of size then?

MoGauhey: It's partly a problem of size and, of course, an
objective. And I'm not, personally, too worried
about the fact that some of these people are working
in large classes as long as they're confronted with

198

MoGauhey: a professor that challenges them to think and get

interested in the subject. Certainly for engineers,
with the time they have to spend on it, are not
going to become economists, or philosphers, or
historians by attending undergraduate classes. The
need is to get them interested enough to study these
subjects in the years ahead.

There's some who say and I concur with them
that, "The educated man is an old man.11 So if we
are going to get them educated, the first thing is
to get them interested because no one is going to
sit and hold their hand all their lives. They've
got to become interested. And it's this challenge
that awakes an interest and opens an avenue. If the
student gets the feel of how to follow this avenue
he may go on to become educated in that area. If
he doesn't follow it, the impact of his attending
class — the half life of human knowledge being what
it is — is probably pretty small.

I feel that in engineering we've done a good
Job of teaching. It may have involved a lot of
unsolved problems. We've had to work at solving
them as we went along Just as the rest of the
educational world has.

One of those problems is the objectives of the
course or of the entire program. What do we erpect
to achieve if we are successful in our educational
effort? In engineering, I think, it would be almost
necessary to say that we expect a student to have
learned enough about the fundamentals that he can
go ahead and develop, as the knowledge of fundamentals
develops, without someone to guide him. And enough,
perhaps, guidance in those courses that you can't
learn Just by sitting down and reading.

In my lifetime I've only known one chap who
was born knowing differential equations. And he,
by the way, is one of the men who designed the
Feather River Dam. He was a classmate of mine who
never bothered to get a degree because he already
knew so much about it by the time he started that
it was hardly worthwhile waiting around.

Generally most of us need some guidance. But
in the case of some other fields or some other

199

MoGauhey: subject matter, a person by individual studies can
learn a great deal about it and become an expert
in it if he gets that first excitement of interest
in it. Excitement of interest is the reason for
some of our courses. Even though they may be
poorly taught, as long as that doesn't drive the
student away from it, it has served a purpose in
generating interest in some facet of our society.

When I was in high school it was, of course,
normal for everyone either to have to take Latin
or think pretty fast how to get out of it. But
there was no way to get out of reading Shakespeare.
I am persuaded that if any of the high school
students had the slightest idea what Shakespeare
was talking about, the authorities would have banned
it. This would have caused all students to read
Shakespeare and the lives of many more would have
been enriched. But high school English actually
did more to keep people from reading Shakespeare
than any other particular activity. And largely I
say because no one (well, perhaps I shouldn't say
no one), but in general, students didn't have the
slightest idea what was going on in Shakespeare's
plays .

Challt Bet the teachers didn't either.

MoGauhey: That I'd buy, too, in several instances I could cite.

200

V OUTSIDE CONSULTING

The Philosophy of Consultat ion

MoGauhey: We were talking the other day about this matter of
outside consulting.

Challt Yes. I did want to talk to you about your various
consultations because I know you've done a great
deal of it around the country and abroad even.

McGauhey: Perhaps we ought to begin with the matter of philosophy
of consulting. When I was starting out in teaching
there weren't many opportunities for consulting
and we had bigger teaching loads than now seem
feasible to professors. But even at that time the
philosophy pervaded the academic world that a professor
ought to do some outside work, whether during the
summer or on a consulting basis, so that he kept in
contact with the engineering profession. To this
end there were attempts from time to time to set up
financing so that one might take a leave to do some
outside work.

However, I was in a bit more fortunate situation.
When I started teaching at Virginia Tech, the civil
engineering department did all the engineering for
the campus. This included everything from roads,
and streets, and grading, and some building design,
to design, construction, and operation of the waste-
water treatment plant and the water supply. So I
had all of this kind of experience working with
contractors, and drilling wells, and doing a good
many things, aside from outside consulting. It was
thought at that time and I still hold to the notion,
that the young professor often tries to get into

201

MoGauhey: consulting too soon. He may have nothing to sell,
and he may dilute the efforts that would lead to
his advancement, or to his development as a
professional man and a teacher, and moreover, he
runs the risk of letting consulting fees get into
his standard of living and so eventually give too
much attention to consulting.

I started from the very beginning not letting
any money I got for consulting become Involved in
my standard of living. I put it in what I called
"The MoGauhey Foundation,11 which was generally broke
but mainly used for buying my wife's ticket when we
traveled. So it never got into a situation where
I had to keep up this kind of thing. I did some
consulting on several Jobs in my early years with
the mining industry and with the city of Chicago
in hydrology. At that time they were going to bxiild
a sunken freeway and didn't know whether it would
fill up with water or not during heavy rains. So
they had some of us in as hydrologlsts to deal with
that question.

Most of my consulting work I began after I
reached the full professor grade. I did some con
sulting when I was in Southern California. I did
a bit in Virginia. But most of it since I've been
at the University of California. The consulting
that I've done overseas was largely upon assignment
by the University itself.

Some of the Assignments

Kuwait

MoGauhey: The first trip I took overseas was to Kuwait with

the British Petroleum, the Kuwait Oil Company— half
British Petroleum and half an American company. In
this particular situation the British had set up a
city, ten years previously, in which they had built
all of the utilities and were responsible for their
management. They wanted to see, ten years later,
the outcome of their program of water distillation

202

MoGauhey: from the ocean, their solid waste disposal system,
the wastewater disposal system, some unique
problems they have there related to files, and
general public health engineering problems. So I
went over there with the consent of the University.
The University thought this was something that
one of Its staff might well be doing to the credit
of the University. So they let me go there for a
month and I had a rather interesting experience.

Chall: Just you?

MoGauhey » I went with Professor Bruce from Kings College in

London. But Professor Bruce had to leave before it
was over, due to some problems with his family,
and I ended up writing the report and taking all
the people who had been good to me out to dinner —
for which, incidentally, the oil company ultimately
paid I [Laughs]

Chall: Were you paid for this by the University?

MoGauhey: No, I was paid by the oil company but the University
let me keep that as extra pay because of the nature
of the request and nature of the assignment. They
felt that it was to the advantage of the University
for one of its staff to get this kind of experience.

Chall: How had the works shown up at the end of the ten
year period? Were they in pretty good shape?

MoGauhey: Well, some very interesting things happened. One

is, that Beohtel had built a whole new oil facility
at Mina Al Ahmad! and the old oil lines that were
submerged and went out to where the ships would
anchor, were still there. They used them for sewers
and dumped the sewage from the city of Ahmad! into
the Persian Gulf.

Chall: Untreated?

MoGauhey: Untreated. But big clams, six inches across, soon
moved Into these outfall lines and clogged them up.
When one would get clogged they'd out it off upstream
from the clams, then the clams would move in again.
By the time I got there they were dumping sewage
right at the tide line.

203

MoGauhey: Of course this was a pretty touchy political
situation because some of the sheiks had their
summer places along the head of the Persian Gulf,
Just a few hundred yards away. While they weren*t
particularly worried about the water quality there
was always the possibility, politically, that they
might say, "Ours may be a backward country but even
we want better standards than this. Obviously
you're Just here to exploit our oil." Such an
eventuality would mean trouble and the oil company
didn't want to be the cause of trouble.

We made a float right away to see where all
this waste water was going in the Gulf. We put
out some big oil drums as floats at the discharge
point of the sewer and followed them by boat. They
floated out into the Gulf and then turned around
and came right back into the boat harbor and up to
the intake of the pumps that pump water into the sea
water distillation plant. It did no harm. The
sheik himself had three yachts in the same harbor
and they dump all their wastes right into the basin.
But it was quite politically difficult and environ
mentally undesirable.

One of the most interesting things, if I may
Just digress to tell you this: We went out of town
to a place which was called Raudatain which was
sixty miles north of Ahmadi near the Shattal Arab
where the Tigris and Euphrates come together. They
were going to build a pumping station there to
deliver oil from a new oil field to the wharf at
Mina. The problem was to keep about two hundred men
housed for operating this pumping station way out
in the desert. Of course, the Arabs being family-
minded, this meant that there would be about 1200
people and no one knows how many goats and donkeys
at the site. But we could supply water for that.
The question of what to do with waste water was
simply answered in terms of our culture. Just pipe
it downwind out into the desert a mile and tell it
to get lost.

Well in Arabia this is no answer at all because
if we were to do this the Bedouins will spring up
overnight around it with their donkeys and goats.
In Islam all of the spiritual wastes as well as
the physiological ones are associated with sewage.

204

MoGauhey: Thus It is a somewhat more fearsome material than
even we think it is. So as soon as the Bedoua
found out that this was waste water, they would
consider it an indignity that the infidel would not
be permitted to impose upon the faithful and so
raise a lot of fuss. If we put a fence around the
wastewater pond then, these being unlettered people,
would take the attitude that here in this country
where there is no water, the confounded infidel
fences us away from the water. So the common
engineering answer was no answer at all. We Just
had to keep it under control and treat it and use it
for irrigating trees to make a windbreak because
there was no way to get rid of it. [Laughs]

This was some of the kind of things that I
learned there and which Americans haven't always
learned as soon as they should that things we do
have to be culturally acceptable and may have very
little to do with a simple engineering answer. It
may not be an answer at all.

Challt When were you in Kuwait?
McGauhey: That was in 1958* as I recall.

Chall: How were the problems of pollution in the Persian
Gulf resolved?

MoGauhey t I must admit that I really don't know. At the time
I left there were alternate plans. One was to
exclude from the sewer the sea water that was used
in Ahmad! for cooling air conditioning units. This
was to make the sewage low enough in chlorides to
respond to normal biological treatment. The treated
effluent was then to be used by the oil company to
irrigate tamarisk trees as windbreaks. Windbreaks
are quite useful there because during certain seasons
sandstorms may turn day into night, and both day
and night into nightmares.

The alternative was to settle the sewage to
remove solids and chlorinate the effluent, discharging
it further out into the gulf. These ideas were well
received by the oil company at the time. However,
the oil business being what it is, or was, oilmen
plunge from high optimism into darkest gloom if the

205

MoGauheyr

Chall :

MoGauhey

Chall :
MoGauhey :

price of oil drops one-tenth cent per barrel. Gloom
descended soon after I left and I later heard that
nothing was done. Then later again I heard that
ohlorlnatlon was being practiced. After that I lost
touch with the situation, hence I really don't know
the outcome.

The only thing I know of the consequences of
this venture Is that I was deeply Impressed, with
the need for understanding the social and cultural
aspects of the other country before attempting to
apply U.S. technology to Its problems. I attempted
to bring this fact home to students thereafter. If
I was successful it Justified, perhaps, the
University's judgment that some educational good
would come from letting me go.

With respect to the problem of treating waste water
at the pumping station at Raudataln, would we, today,
not look upon this as an impossible thing, now that
we are reclaiming waste water?

Well, the possibility exists. But it is still
difficult right here In California and in the West
where water is scarce — it is still difficult to
overcome the psychological association of water with
waste. I've often suggested that this won't last
forever and have pointed out in some of my writings
that one would hardly hesitate to eat oatmeal hauled
in a freight oar because the freight oar had once
hauled a load of fertilizer. I contend that water
is the same kind of thing. It is a transport system.
We don't have to throw away the freight car Just
because we hauled something in It. We unload it and
we have the water back again. This is what waste-
water treatment is all about. I think it will become
acceptable, but at the present it is, for reasons
of social and cultural attitudes, and also because
of some of our uncertainties about the virus problem,
not suited to direct reuse. We prefer to put it
underground and let it lose identity.

But they are using it in Santee now.
ground but also for recreation.

It is under-

That's true. It is put into the ground and brought
back out again for recreational use and Irrigation.

206

Israel

Chall: By the same token, It might make some of the desert
bloom in the Middle East.

MoGauhey: Well, they are doing a lot in Israel. I went, by
the way, to Israel on a consulting tour.

Ghalli You did? When was that?

McGauhey: That was — let me make sure what year it was because
the half-life of human memory being what it is
the past loses clarity. It was in the summer of
1963 that I went to Israel. By that time the
University had changed my payroll status and ruled
that I was on a nine months appointment. I was paid
a stipend for being director and I interpreted that,
personally, as being compensation for staying here
on the Job except for a month's vacation, although
that was not the strict interpretation of the
University.

So I went over on the Invitation of the AID —
the State Department — in response to a request from
the Israeli government for someone who knew something
about groundwater recharge or the use of reclaimed
water for groundwater recharge, and worked there
with the Tahal, which is the Israeli semi-government
organization for water resources.

This was also an interesting assignment and
I prepared a report for AID before I left. I found
there that they were using waste water everywhere
to great advantage. They were using it for irrigation,
particularly of crops that weren't to be eaten raw
or green. Their standards of sanitation were
inherited from us, I guess. Certainly they are the
equal of ours. But they were not letting any water
go to waste if they didn't have to and they were
really making orange groves, and alfalfa, all manner
of crops, bloom beautifully. So that was one of the
Interesting overseas assignments.

Chall: You found that they were doing a great deal with a
computer there, too, in terms of when the water was
going to be used?

20?

McGauhey: Oh yes.

Chall: I've heard that they were advancing their computer
technology for this purpose.

MoGauhey: They were certainly aware of it and alert and
using it.

India

McGauhey: In 1965, I went to India on an assignment for the
University. The University of California was one
of nine universities In a consortium to establish
an engineering school — the Indian Institute of
Technology at Kanpur. I went overseas again with
AID sponsorship through the University to look
over the programs in sanitary and public health
engineering in institutions in India and to discuss
with agencies that hire graduates from these schools,
what they would do with a graduate if they had one,
and ultimately to help decide whether it was
appropriate to establish a public health engineering
program at I.I.T. Kanpur.

I spent twenty-one days, flying by night and
working by day, in the monsoon season, visiting
institutions throughout India. Then the rest of
the seven week tour I spent In the institute itself
at Kanpur. I also looked at the sanitary installa
tions around the country and found again some
interesting and difficult cultural problems. One
of the situations with the difference in attitude
toward fresh water between myself and the villagers.
At one village the World Health Organization had
built a water well and put a pump on it. Nobody
objected to this. People who lived close to it
were perfectly happy to use It, but those who were
150 feet away would Just come out with a brass bowl
and dip water out of a mud hole a cow was standing
In. They didn't think it worthwhile to bother to go
to the well.

208

MoGauhey: It developed that the fresh water from the

pump ran out alongside a narrow road, and the head
master of the village finally demanded that the
WHO build a concrete channel about forty or fifty
feet long to carry this water away from the site
of the well to essentially nowhere; but this was
what he wanted. World Health was trying to show
how cheaply a village could build a well and this
ran up the cost.

However the rationale was interesting: it was
that before the well was built they only had a mud
hole in the street during the rainy season. But now
that they had a well, they had a mud hole all year
round I Well the road was only about eight feet wide
and right below the site was a grassy slope that
led into a pond. People were in the pond everyday
washing their water buffalo as we might wash an
automobile. The spillage at this well being fresh
water, I said, "Why don't we Just put a tube under
the road here and let this water run down into the
pond. "

The answer was, "Ah, but this was not permitted.11
I attempted to find out who would not permit it.
There was a vague notion that it was the Ministry
of Health. Going over India I never did get an
answer until finally I was talking with one of my
former students who was high up in the Indian govern
ment and a very fine and able engineer who had done
graduate study here in Berkeley. He said, "What
we're trying to tell you is that we never have done
it and by golly we are not going tol"

So working in that kind of circumstance, in
what I would call a culture-bound society, one has
to do things in a different fashion than an impatient
American might do in our particular cultural framework.

Chall: Is it possible to solve some of these problems in

health while using water in the old traditional ways?

McGauhey: I am worried about the possibility of doing anything
very rapidly in India. It is difficult to get
anyone to take responsibility. If one takes responsi
bility then someone has something on him. Because
there is lots of manpower in India, a great deal of
work involves Just passing papers from one person to

209

MoGauhey: another and it takes a long time to accomplish
anything. So I don't know about solving its
problem of basic sanitation.

In one village I visited World Health had built
a device for making an Eastern type toilet. It
was made of burlap and Portland cement in two
sections which could be put together and installed
with two pits in the ground. One pit was used for
about a year; then a curved clay pipe which drained
into it was Just flipped over to deliver wastes to
the other pit for another year or so. This whole
installation could be made for seven rupees, which
was about $!.**•? at that time. A village industry
had been established and was making these devices.
The problem was to get anyone to use them. To
Induce the people to use it WHO got the village
headmaster, who was comparable to our mayor, and
who was interested in this industry to install it.
They installed it out in the compound behind his
house. But people normally accustomed to seek the
fields, took the attitude, why go over to that
thing when I am right here. When I visited the
place the toilet obviously had never been used. It
could be flushed with Just a half gallon of water
poured from a can; but the can looked like red lace.
It had rusted out without ever having been used,
Just sitting there in the weather.

So WHO had some psychologists try to find out
why people didn't use the facility. Well, they
learned that the Hindu (or at least some branch of
that philosophy), if he went to the toilet under a
cover, that is with a roof over his head, must
immediately change all his garments. Having only
one garment, this was quite obviously an impractical
routine. So this precluded his use of it.

Then the clincher on the whole thing was that
the women seek the fields at night and it Is a
social occasion; and they weren't about to have
their social life disrupted because some boob in
the United States thought they ought to have this
kind of a facility. This is what the sociologists
reported to us; this Is the reason they couldn't
get the simplest sanitation program going. Well,
some 80 percent of India's vast number of people
live in 30,000 villages, and sanitation and the

210

MoGauheyz attitudes toward, it don't move out into these

villages as they do into the cities. One of the
reasons is that when the people that we educate
here go back home they want to live in the city.
They don't want to go out in the village. So the
brains are stacked up in the city and not out where
they are most needed.

Chall: Is the incidence of disease greater in the villages
under these conditions than it is in the cities?
Certainly it would be more dangerous in the cities
if you didn't have proper sanitary facilities?

McGauhey: Yes, a great deal more so, because waste water is

collected in the principal cities, albeit discharged
after some treatment which may break down or be
poorly operative but nevertheless it is concentrated
at some point of discharge rather than left where
one could come in contact with bare feet or where
it will go into a well. For example, in the country
one of the problems with the wells is that they are
open at the top. Initially the water in a dug well
may be clean. But poor people there live essentially
in two dimensions. They squat on the ground and
they have all their possessions there upon the
ground. Among these possessions is a rope and a
bucket for pulling up water. This rope is thrown
on the ground where animal manure and human wastes
abound. When water is needed they tie the rope to
the bucket, stand with their toes over the edge of
the well, and throw this bucket into the well and
pull it up again. It doesn't take many of these
trips to get water before the well is contaminated.

Such pollution is eliminated in the city by a
simple water treatment plant, albeit the same people
that run the treatment plant do not operate the
distribution system. So a city may be very proud
that its water is chlorinated and fit to drink at
the plant, but you may still have to boll it to drink
it downtown. For this the treatment people disclaim
responsibility. Their pride Is in producing the
water, not delivering it because that is somebody
else's responsibility. If it didn't get there fit
to drink, don't look at me. So there's some problems
of organization.

211

MoGauhey: But In the city the health is a whole lot

better among the people who are not extremely poor.
Of course in Calcutta, which is notoriously bad,
a lot of people are in what we would consider
pretty abject poverty. When the temperature drops
five degrees, thousands of people may die of
pneumonia. They are Just that close to the border
line. So what we can do over there is uncertain.
My hopes were, and they are partially being fulfilled
in the Institute, that we could get a graduate
school in which the problems of the East could be
dealt with by Easterners, or by people with their
education finished in the United States or Britain
or some other country. Then with the kind of
education and the qualifications necessary to be a
professor in one of our universities, they could
teach students the kind of thing that we can't
teach them here — how to achieve basic sanitation.
In the U.S. basic sanitation is taken for granted.
We have highly diversified engineering organizations,
and we have the possibility of a considerable
specialty area in engineering education. Being
highly mechanized we naturally teach our student
how to function in an industrialized society. In
the U.S. school neither we nor the foreign student
learns what the foreign student needs at home.

Chall: I suppose that in any country of this kind where
they have their own culture, it would be always
better if you could get well-trained people, and
let them handle the problems in terms of their
culture.

McGauhey: Well this is why I hold great store for IIT — at
least what its prospect is. There we could give
graduate courses dealing with the kind of things
that those countries need. They don't need experts
in activated sludge treatment. They don't need
to know how to build a South Tahoe plant — that
kind of thing — or a reclamation plant, because that
is not the problem. We can't do very much to meet
the needs of the student that comes here. He Just
has to fit in with ours and study the kinds of things
that our students, graduates, will be doing in the
United States.

212

McGauhey;

Chall :
McGauhey:

Chall :

MoGauhey:

I asked my former students in India about the
result of this useless educational experience.
They told me one of three things happens. The
student may go back, and when he can get no Job
doing the kind of thing that we have educated him
to do here, he is frustrated and unhappy. To avoid
this he may Just decide to forget it all, to go
back where he was and erase it out of his mind. Or
third., he may be so unwilling to recognize his own
shortcomings and like many humans try to pass the
buck to somebody else, and so end up with a lasting
hatred for the country that educated him.

And disoriented him to his own culture.

What we do so much, not by design but by inadvertence,
is to disorient students to their own culture and
so they either don't want to go back, or going back
are unhappy. If we could set up an institute — arid
this is what our dream was at Kanpur — if we could set
up an organization or an institute that would
educate people for their own culture or for the
culture of the Southwest, it would be a good thing.
Happily a good deal of that is going on in Bangkok
at SEATO's graduate school there.

3EATO Graduate School?
SEATO governments?

You mean it is run by the

Yes. We have one of our former professors of civil
engineering there, John Hugh Jones. He went to
Bangkok for a couple of years and has stayed on now
for more than ten years. He stayed, and I hear from
him occasionally through people who travel by. He
likes it very much.

We are achieving some of these more appropriate
goals out in Hawaii also at the East-West Center.
There we are educating people of a Polynesian back
ground to deal with the problems of the South Pacific,
You don't send a red-headed Irishman there to tell
the natives how to do their business. They have a
unique approach and they will use things they make
themselves and won't use things you make and give
to them. It is far better to have somebody who
looks more like them than my sending a red-headed
Irishman.

213

Chall: You're right. It has taken us about a quarter of
a century to arrive at this conclusion though,
hasn't It?

McGauheyr Yes. America's missionary spirit dies hard.
Chall: Your wife went with you to India?
McGauhey: Yes.

Chall: So you were able to travel as a tourist as well as
a visiting and working professor.

iYIcGauhey: My wife traveled with me as a tourist and I went on
a working assignment. We had with us a young man in
India. One of my assignments was to observe this
young man who they had in mind for an assistant
professorship at IIT, Kanpur, and decide whether
he was suitable for PhD work in the United States.
He was one of my traveling companions and was
extremely intelligent. On my favorable report AID
sent him to Berkeley. He got his doctorate with
us and went back to teach at IIT. His name is Guru
Dass Agrawal. He made straight A's in his work here
and managed to live through two years with us. How,
I do not know, because he insisted on walking right
up the middle of the street Just like he did in
India. Coming to my house he had several narrow
escapes, but [laughing] nevertheless lived. He got
back to India.

Chile

McGauhey: The other overseas work that I've done as a con
sultant was paid for by the Ford Foundation, but
here again the University was Involved. It sent
me and Dean Whinnery [John R. ] down to the Catholic
University of Chile in Santiago. I was there for
five weeks (and my wife was with me) to determine
whether that university had the potential to make
real educational use of funds they had applied for
from the foundation. It did, indeed, have the
potential and several of its staff came here to
Berkeley on an exchange basis and got their advanced

McGauhey: degrees. Unfortunately, under the present (Allende)
government things have happened. I don't know the
full story except that some of the professors I
knew left the country the day of the election.

Challi Is that right? Is this an on-going useful institution
for the country?

MoGauhey: Oh yes. It is a long established university with
a good engineering school and it got more money
after that original grant and developed very well.
Under the present political regime, I don't know
what the status of the university may be. But it
was a very pleasant assignment. Chile is a delightful
country. It was the one in South America that I
held a great deal of hope for. If they survive
this present regime my hope will be revived, I think,
because they are very fine people living in a fine
climate.

Santiago is in a valley Just about as far south
of the equator as Paso Robles is north. It is Peru,
and Ecuador, and Columbia, and Bolivia that you get
into the high country. In Chile there is some high
mountains in the south. I've been there in the lake
country. It is certainly beautiful and even I can
catch trout there.

Lake Tahoe

Chall: What about your consulting work at Lake Tahoe?

McGauhey: That is some of the kind of consulting I've gone
into since I retired. But along the way I did a
good many small, one-day Jobs. I did take on, in
1961, the Lake Tahoe Area Council task as chairman
of a board of consultants which set forth a rather
unique approach to an engineering study and helped
guide this study by a consulting engineer. Professor
Pearson and I, and Professor Rohlioh from Wisconsin
comprised the board through most of its tenure. At
the beginning Professor Eliasson from Stanford was
on it.

215

McGauhey :

Chall:
McGauhey :

Chall:
MoGauhey :

Ghall:
McGauhey :

Chall:
McGauhey :

Chall :
MoGauhey :

After the engineering study was completed in

we got some money from the then Water
Pollution Control Administration, now the Environ
mental Protection Agency, to continue some studies
of water quality. I did that as a part-time
consultant — a day or so a month, probably was about
what it amounted to. That was what I got paid for
anyway. But both Professor Pearson and I did a lot
of work at Tahoe as a public service.

This was federal?

Federal, yes. After a year or so the Peds decided
not to allow consultant fees in the council's
budget. That left me in the role of project
director. But I have sufficient interest to put
in quite a lot of public service work and get paid
for a few days a year.

Now you are project director of what?
Tahoe, right?

This is Lake

Project director on demonstration grants to the
Lake Tahoe Area Council which I help generate.

Demonstration?

Yes. The project was entitled "Eutrophioatlon of
Surface Waters, Lake Tahoe. " There we added a
parallel one which has the same title but involves
Indian Creek Reservoir. That is where the treated
waste water from South Tahoe is impounded for
recreational purposes and used for irrigation. The
prospect is that that project will continue this
coming year (1972); so 1*11 still be involved with
that for another year anyway.

You're not involved, in consultation and decision
about the so-called General Plan at Lake Tahoe?

I've had some Interviews with those people and have
written for the press on it and probably will go
Friday on to one of these TV shows to discuss it.

This Friday?

Yes. But it isn't a problem that can be solved by

216

McGauhey: the kind of thing we're doing in LTAC. The problem

there is one of what is done to the land. Ultimately
the damage that is done to the land is reflected
back in water quality. One can't stand down at the
water's edge and say, "Don't chop down that tree
because here comes the pollution. " It is a longer
term problem and there is no hope that by looking
at water quality we can control what's done to the
land. I have told the reporter for the Sacramento
Bee in an article they published the other day,
and I probably will, on Friday, say on television
that the way the land is being torn up it won't be
a suitable environment for a lake, regardless of
whether it is blue, green or brown by the time they
get through. The quality of the water will be a
secondary consideration if this becomes the high-rise
urbanized situation toward which it seems to be
heading.

Chall: But your Job as a consultant is, apparently, to
look at the water and see what is happening in
terms of eutrophioation. And the eutrophication,
as I understand it is based upon the silt. Is that
part of it?

McGauhey: Well mainly the fertilizers, the nitrogen and
phosphorus.

Chall: It comes from where?

MoGauhey: Some of it comes from rain and some of it comes
from disturbing the soil and from runoff washing
debris into the lake. These sources produce
nitrogen concentrations in water about double the
normal amount that would go in from a wilderness
area. We have turned out several reports on the
Lake Tahoe situation, but they are scientific
reports, rather than political policy statments.

Chall: You assume that from your scientific reports the
policy makers will get the message?

McGauhey: I assume that they'll pay no attention to them
whatever.

21?

McGauhey: The original study that the board of consultants
directed was made by the consulting engineering firm
of Engineering Science. Harvey Ludwlg, the president,
you know, was once an associate professor here and
one of our graduates from the University. This report
recommended removing waste from the basin as one of
the alternatives and. made other recommendations
concerning the collection, and these are being
carried out. The difficult problem is that there
are no laws in the United States that constrain
Americans from using the land largely as they see
fit. This, of course, is part of the heritage of
Americans: freeholding and free use of land. So
we have, as a pollution control measure, attempted to
overcome that limitation by looking harder and harder
at the water and putting tighter and tighter standards
upon its quality.

The economic pressures at Tahoe are Just the
same as they are at any other subdivision that's
part of the situation. The methods of construction
are essentially taken UP to Tahoe and used the same
as they would be In Fremont. So we have great
pressure for subdivisions and to develop the economy
of the region. The region is unique and it therefore
should require unique controls and unique construction
methods with unique planning. But we use the same
non-unique ones that we use elsewhere and so the
land is being torn up and it Is being torn ut> in
great haste now to beat the September 22nd creation
of a planning agency. This agency may or may not
prove to be effective but nevertheless, anything that
is torn up by the time the agency comes into being
will not be stopped. The result is that developers
have got everything moving that will move day and
night, tearing up the basin in a fashion that leads
me to believe that the loss of the basin will be on
the land and not in the water.

They're going to build a lot of marinas and
concentrate people on the waterfront, and going to get
a great deal of debris into the water, and the
impression Is going to be that the water is bad even
though it is going to take a long time out in the
middle of the lake before the whole thing Is destroyed.
By that time, I think or at least I fear, that nobody
will care much because, as I put it, the basin won't

218

McGauhey: be a suitable environment for a lake.

Chall: Have you any feelings about the regional planning
agency that was set up by the federal government?
How is that as a functioning organization?

MoGauheyi Well, it is not too effective. The principal
problem is that at the time it was set up the
County Board of Supervisors had already approved
all sorts of things and this regional agency then
elected to say that well, since these supervisors
approved it then we can't come in now and. disapprove.
This is the story that has gone on, agency after
agency. They dream up plans and then nobody pays
any attention, or immediately gets exceptions.

The Board of Supervisors of Douglas County
in Nevada, and Placer County (not quite as bad) in
California, have a great deal of difficulty in
bringing themselves to refuse construction that
broadens the tax base. There is a great deal of
noise made but when you look at the record you find
very few things that have ever been proposed that
haven't been ultimately approved.

Chall t Just within this last year or two, when they are
working on the general plan, apparently.

Do you know Stephen Brandt? Do you care to
comment on his activities with the League to Save
Lake Tahoe?

MoGauhey: I have met and talked with Mr. Brandt and am

certainly in agreement with the League's objectives.
I don't know that I am competent to evaluate Mr.
Brandt's efforts per se because I really do not
know their bounds. The League, however, has one
advantage: it can take a definite point of view
and persist in it. Not being, as I understand, a
tax-exempt organization, it cannot be intimidated
by the usual routines by which politicians quiet
down organizations. One drawback, however, is that
it is the voice of people who throughout the state
of California believe that Lake Tahoe should be
saved for man's esthetic, in contrast with his
economic, enjoyment. Thus its interests are more
objective than that of the developers who live in the

219

MoGauhey: basin. The Lake Tahoe Area Council oan, of course,
not entirely team up with the League because it is
a non-profit membership organization. Because its
members include people whose financial interests
are in the basin, it cannot fight its own members.
That is, its continuance depends upon the retention
of membership, hence it cannot take action of the
type that the League might take without merely
committing suicide.

The League is confronted by the same phenomena
that constrain others in the Lake Tahoe area. That
is, by the time any agency has accommodated two
states and several counties, its composition includes
the land developer, the banker who makes real estate
loans, the procurer for a big investment prospect,
etc. This insures that what it does may not be very
radical except that it helps compound the number of
approvals one has to get to do anything in the
basin. The individual is confounded by the system
but the big investor with a thirty billion dollar
project oan still make his voice heard.

Chall: Now there are two general plans, one that was laid

out by the consultants which, I guess, the landowners
and the South Lake Tahoe City have decided was
impossible.

McGauhey: Here is the most recent general plan.
Chall: Is that Mr. Richard Heikka's?

MoGauheyi Yes. Well, you see, you paint all the steep land
and all the tops of the mountains green and say
that represents recreation. So it makes it look
like the whole basin is recreational land.

Chall: I see. But it doesn't show that it might be houses?

McGauhey: Well, it does show — along here [showing the plan],
at the Incline, and over there the red lines which
mean high-density residential. They don*t look
quite as fearsome on this chart as they do if you
drive along the lake and take a look at it. Not
only is the lakefront obliterated by buildings, but
the appearance of these buildings is such an affront
to the human eye as to warrant redefining architecture
as the "cult of the ugly."

220

MoGauhey: The Lake Tahoe basin is an area where there
is a lot of work to be done and where a lot of
things have not been done. It's too bad, really,
that the federal government did not declare that
it had. authority there because the lake is inter
state water. Ten years ago they threatened to do
this. It's too bad that it did not. Development
of the land might have been planned so that the
housing was set baok from the lake and left the
trees and the waterfront more or less natural. But
the pressure right now is to build more marinas.
The pressure to get by the Corps of Engineers at
the north end of the lake is for the purpose of
making it possible to build a hundred more condominiums,
It is not public beach. It is to provide a private
marina for this many more people. So one can hardly
be less than somewhat cynical if you look at Tahoe
through the eyes of one who thinks of it as a national
asset that ought to be maintained as something of
national importance.

Wastewater Treatment

MoGauhey * Some of the other consulting work that I have done

has been less continuous than the Tahoe study. Some
of It extends over a year or two but may only
involve a day now and. then. At the present time,
since I've retired, I've taken on Jobs In the
District of Columbia.

Chall: What are you doing there?

MoGauhey: This was on wastewater treatment, as a special

consultant to the District, to review engineering
plans as they were developed. Right now I am doing
essentially the same thing on a somewhat smaller
scale for the City of San Francisco.

I am also consultant to the City of Esoondido
in San Diego on a similar project, and a number of
projects with a good many of our graduates over at
Bechtel Corporation, and Brown and Caldwell,
Consulting Engineers. These are specific projects
on the San Francisco Bay wastewater disposal.

221

Solid Waste Disposal

Challt This all has to do with the wastewater disposal
treatment done around the Bay Area here.

McGauheyt Yes, all these here are in wastewater reclamation
and disposal. I've done some on solid wastes with
Aerojet General and with the State Health Department
with their solid waste planning.

Chall: Are you getting anywhere there, with solid waste?

McGauheyt Gains are being made in the state. California is
by no means in danger of being overwhelmed by
solid wastes. The rhetoric is mostly political
and Jurisdiotional. The state already leads in
disposal technology. We can solve our problems
quickly when the need really arises.

Chall :• You've been working on that since 1956 or so, since
before this Laboratory was opened?

MoGauheyt Well, I've been working on it since 1951- Poking

at solid wastes is an activity in which I have done
a great deal of public service and research more
than consulting, because there hasn't been a great
deal of demand for consultants. When the demand
comes it is a demand for something that nobody knows
how to do [laughs] and I try to keep out of tasks I
don't have any idea how to taoklet

I do have a major consulting Job coming up
with the state of Wisconsin on solid waste recycling,
and another with a consulting firm engaged in studies
for the Seattle metropolitan area. The field is
beginning to open.

Hawaii

McGauhey: I am serving as consultant to the University of Hawaii
on its sea grant project for coastal water quality.
This, of course, may end at any time but I have been
there four and a half months of the last year already

222

MoGauhey :
Challi

McGauhey :

Chall:
MoGauhey :

working on that, and some four months of 1972.

That is the coastal water quality problem. Does
that have to do with sewage disposal?

Yes, the sewage, and raw industrial wastes, and
run-off from land—the whole activity of man that
ends up with increased or changed materials going
into the estuaries and into the coastal waters.

Is this for the entire island chain?

It is for the state, but most of the work is being
done on Oahu and Kauai. Although we may do some, if
we get enough money, on Maui. It isn't a task that
is intended to solve all the problem. It is intended
to find out how to solve some of the problem. So
we have taken a typical situation of the sugar
industry, one of mixed agriculture, one of urban
development and one of undeveloped land and made
detailed studies of the land use — water quality
relationships. We are measuring quality by the
well-being of aquatic organisms and societies,
rather than simply by laboratory analyses. We have
a great number of marine biologists and eoologists
involved in this project, because they abound in
Hawaii and they are very sensitive to the quality
of the water.

Has there been much degradation?

There is evidence of degradation, not all of it of
a permanent nature. Loss of coral, particularly in
Kaneohe Bay, which is probably the finest bay in
the islands, has been attributed to waste waters.
There is treated waste going into Kaneohe. Algae
are growing and killing coral. Nobody is too certain
what the cause is but they do know that chlorinated
wastes will kill coral. They are very concerned to
find out what the problem is and to solve it. They
are already designing a system to go to deep water,
to take the treated wastes out of Kaneohe Bay and
another one to clean up Pearl Harbor by going to
deep water with partially treated sewage.

There is a lot going on and they have Just as
many true-believers out there as anywhere. They

223

MoGauhey: have some—what I oall coo-maniacs, you know,

tunnel-visioned types— that see only one answer,
which would only cause another problem to come
into ascendancy.

Writing and Lecturing

Chall: How come you have to write articles for Waste Age?

MoGauhey: Well, I agreed to serve as an editorial writer for
them until they decide whether they go broke or
not. [Laughs] Maybe we won't know for a while,
but I'm having a lot of fun with it. It is one of
those things that I write for fun — except that
generally when the times comes to do it and they
name the subject— it is always something that I
don't know anything about so I have to think up a
whole new point of view in order to meet the dead
line, and to meet the objective of that particular
issue.

I have some other writing I wanted to do but I
get called to a lot of these places where they want
someone to give a talk, for an honorarium, and
suddenly find that they won't be happy unless they
have something that they can put in the proceedings.
I have to write some dad-blamed thing that I had no
Intention of writing.

I wrote one on solid wastes for the 1972 Yearbook
of Science on the Future of the Encyclopedia
Brltannioa.

One area of Interest that has carried over from
my pre-retirement days is that of presenting seminars
or special lectures to graduate students and faculty
members at other universities. This is a part of the
academic scene everywhere. It Is related to consulting
in that it pays a modest honorarium plus travel
expenses within the usual university's limits. It
is related to teaching in that it brings to the
audience a different point of view or some new informa
tion. The system works in academla in this fashion.
A university department sets up a seminar series for

224

McGauheyt its graduate students and faculty, with some general
theme. It then identifies people who might have
something to say on particular subjects. The next
step Is to write a letter inviting each individual,
Including the stock phrase, "I am sorry that we
cannot offer you a proper consulting fee for this,
but we can offer you a modest honorarium of X dollars
(usually $100 or $150) and reimburse you for out of
pocket travel expenses." Sometimes it is thought
well to add a few remarks about the glories of the
surrounding area in the spring or fall, or In
whatever season the talk is to take place. We do a
lot of this in the academic world} sometimes getting
off with Just buying the speaker's lunch if we are
smart enough to catch him in the area. I continue
to do a considerable amount of this although I have
no longer any way to return the compliment.

Challr On what topics do you lecture?

MoGauheyj I am not particular — I will talk about anything they
wish. Generally, however, they check to see what
Is on my mind that is pertinent to their program, and
we work out, by phone, which of several topics might
be of most concern to the group which Is to be
addressed. Sometimes I speak on such matters as
solid waste management, water reclamation, leaching
from dumps, engineered soil systems, or some other
topic of current engineering Interest. Sometimes,
I talk about man and his environment from one or
another point of view. Often it is about what we
should expect of education In the future; or on how
to bring numerous disciplines into environmental
design of public works. I enjoy most talking about
sujeots that force me to use my Imagination, to
generate a new idea and to apply what I know (or
believe at the moment) about the habits and foibles
of man to either the absurdities or the opportunities
that surround his quest for environmental quality,
Improvement or resource conservation. I prefer to
discuss ideas that as far as I know have not been
previously explored.

225

Curriculum. Research and Other Matters

Challi What about your work last year for the Chancellor?
[Roger Heyns].

McGauhey: To answer that question in a manner that has any
meaning to the person who might some day persist
to this point In the record of our discussions
during the past few days, I think I should state
briefly what this work was all about, especially the
need for it. I am sure you recall that about two
years ago environment suddenly came up as the buzzword
of the moment. At that time we had a considerable
peaking of the notion that the University should be
an action-oriented, or perhaps an activist camp.
Students were impatient with the task of learning.
They wanted to solve, within the University program,
the problems of the moment without going to all the
trouble of learning how to solve problems. I
contended In many of those public and university
lectures that I spoke about a few moments ago, that
should the University devote its attention to
solutions to the crisis problems evident at the
moment our programs would be futile.

My reasoning was that by the time the student
got out into the real world equipped to cope with
aluminum cans by the roadside, we would not be
utilizing aluminum cans. His how-to-do-it knowledge
would be useless. Meanwhile, back at the campus
another generation of students would be learning how
to attack the crisis of that moment. Furthermore,
the rate of onset of imagined crises was such that
no student could finish his program before the crisis
that he was learning to face had been replaced by a
succession of at least three others. In any event
our graduates would be in a how-to-do-it educational
effort far more visoious than the old how-to-do-it
courses we traded in for humanities and science,
because he would be forever obsolete at the moment
of his graduation.

Obviously, if a university program was to be
worth support by public funds it should teach students
the basic principles by which one attacks problems;
the reasons why people behave like they do — or at

226

MoGauhey: least how they behave; some economic, political,
and technological facts of life; and so on. In
this manner we would continue to turn out graduates
who could attack any crises that comes along and
so make some contribution to man's social and
cultural advancement. Although this might be
reactionary in the sight of students, I contended
it was the purpose of a university to provide such
an education. If the individual wanted at once to
pick up cans, let him apply to the highway department
for a Job, and not fool around marching up and down
demanding that the university initiate a curriculum
in can collecting.

So my contention was that the student who wanted
to be active in environmental studies would have to
acquire the discipline and the basic information
necessary for solving problems, most of which were
not at the moment identified. However, I contended
the student should have the opportunity to learn
from the very beginning of his program what relevance
the tools he was acquiring might have to environ
mental management. Moreover, he should have some
time to work in projects which kept his Interest in
environment alive. That Is, he should not be told,
"Just go ahead and learn the basic foundamentals of
problem solving, and then some day you can get at
some problems." Thus it was my belief that the
Interest of the individual student should be nurtured
by his program, thereby heightening his ability to
confront whatever succession of crises he might
encounter in the future. Further, I contended that
the opportunity for a student to apply his knowledge to
environmental problems should exist in every depart
ment, but it should not constrain another student
in the same department from pursuing a similar
interest in design, research, or pure self development.

Paralleling the student insanity to which I
refer, every department of the University suddenly
discovered that it was the true center of gravity of
environmental concern. Thus each wanted to Initiate
some kind of a program of environmental studies.
Some departments found this more appealing than others
because they had in fact outlived their usefulness,
were running out of students, and so were in need of
some gimmick to insure their continuity. These

22?

MoGauhey: departments were particularly anxious to get on with
environmental programs and to capitalize on the
wave of student desire to leave off learning for
participation in some mass project which I have
likened to can collecting.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the most
insistent of the departments desirous of taking
over environmental studies were those which had
the least context in terms of basic principles of
problem solving, and who dreamed that only by
destroying the structure of the University and
substituting some entirely new "innovative" approach
could man cope with problems of his environment.
The concept was that by creating "general is ts" In
environmental studies great leadership would accrue
to those who understood everything but could do
nothing.

With the financial constraints on the University
becoming increasingly damaging, and some student
Interest remaining in producing the systems and the
scientific know-how to achieve environmental goals,
the Chancellor's office thought it desirable to look
into the situation and to evaluate the role of the
University in environmental studies. Obviously, the
major objective of each department could not be its
own version of something called environmental studies.

It was in this situation that I spent six months
working half-time for the Chancellor to find out Just
what was going on within the Berkeley campus and
to report my findings to him. I did complete the
study and turned my report over to the Chancellor
with the recommendation that it be reviewed and
refined by the University. At that point we changed
chancellors. The new Chancellor, Albert Bowker, was,
of course, quite busy and as far as I know never got
around to looking at the report. But some copies
of it were distributed by his office to people on
the campus who were Interested in the program of
environmental studies. The report was intended to
show, and did show how the University could use the
strengths on which its reputation was built in
achieving the environmental education goals of any
student without encroaching on the educational goals
of any other student.

228

MoGauheyi I suppose it was disappointing to some in that
it didn't reoommend dismantling the University
summarily in order to cope with the first buzzword
in the sequence to oome. But what it proposed is
very muoh what has developed at Berkeley and in
other universities which went through the same soul
searching. Berkeley was by no means the only place
the student and departmental proposals to save the
environment documented the child-like naivete of
which we in universities are capable.

In the report I also spoke to the point of
research, first how we might get greater visibility
for the University for what we are already doing,
by interpreting it In an environmental context, and
how we might deliberately keep up a program of
information that would cause the public and the
legislature to realize the extent to which we are
Involved in environmental management. I suggested
that the results of our vast output of technical
reports might be interpreted in understandable
language and utilized to the benefit of the University
and the public.

So having finished my report I had completed
my agreed assignment. Possibly I could have stayed
on but I didn't want to take on the actual manage
ment of any program. It is a big enough Job to tell
people how to run their business, without having to
go in and run it I

Ghall: [Laughs] Leave it at that.

This wasn't a unique kind of assignment for you
because you had been working for a number of years
on a project like this.

MoGauheyr I had done that kind of thing before; analysis of an
overall situation. In fact I finished one a year
or so ago on evaluation of the policies and activities
of our Water Resources Center.

Chall: Yes, I've read that— at least the little brochure
that they put out about various types of research
that are now being recommended.

229

McGauhey: That was our committee report. I wrote a companion
report myself, which I believe really had more
en eot than the one our committee finally put out.
When committees start doing things the rhetoric
generally gets loftier and loftier as times goes on.
isventually it becomes so obscure that it doesn't
really say very much of anything to anyone who
doesn't already know what it is you are talking
about. I believe that the second version of our
report was far better than the final one as far as
telling anybody what was on our minds. You might be
interested in it. I'll give you a copy if you are.

Chall: I'd like that.

MoGauhey: Then I had done some work for Utah State University,
not as extensive as at Berkeley, but in advising
them on educational programs; on organizing programs
In the environmental area and in the water resources
area. They ended up by hiring two of our staff to
do some of these things and gave me an honorary
Doctor of Science [laughs]. It is about all the
reward you could possibly expect for that sort of
activity.

Chall: Saying, as you do now, that dealing with water

Just one facet of the problem and maybe the most
minor facet, because what happens on the land is
so very important, then I imagine that the thing
that you have to do is bring into the field people
In other disciplines — in agriculture, in geography
and forestry.

McGauhey: This was the case in preparing this proposal for the

University of Hawaii. Here we had fourteen professors
In ten disciplines involved and we met every week
for awhile there while preparing the proposal. To
get proposals out of a team of professors you must
write the proposal yourself. I did this, then I
sent it to each individual with a note: "Here's
what is going to appear in your name If you don't
correct it." Obviously I don't know all about
everything so I put the experts in a position of
having to produce or appear pretty ignorant to their
own peers. But by setting the framework it took a
load off the busy professor. He had only to correct
my version and the proposal was ready. It worked out

230

MoGauhey: very well. The result was an organized multl-

disolpline approach and, I think, a fairly unique
kind of a proposal. At least it was enough of a
tear-jerker to get us some money at a time when
prospects were far from hopeful.

Chall: You look back and it's all been exciting you've

told me. No one thing stands out as more exciting
than another?

MoGauhey: In considering that question I am reminded of Mr.
Smith, the gardener in charge of a rose garden of
some three thousand varieties at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute. When asked by a visitor which rose he
thought most beautiful, he replied, "The last one I
looked at." I think I can say in good conscience
that I have never had anything to do that I didn't
find interesting. The trouble was that there were
so many interesting things I didn't have time to get
around to exploring!

Transcribers:
Final Typist:

Helen Kratins, Arlene Weber
Keiko Suglmoto

231

APPENDIX

"To Raise a Cat," a short story by P.H. McGauhey 232

Concerning the Poems - a brief explanation by P.H.

McGauhey 235

"Pioneer" 236

"The Brave and Strong" 238

"On the Nature of Public Health: A Preview of

Literature" by P.H. McGauhey 239

Principal Publications and Papers, 1951-1973 245

TO RAISE A CAT 232

P.H. McGauhey

Dr. Bjerstein was on his way to the faculty club to play a few hands
of gin rummy and have his lunch before going home for the afternoon when the
idea first struck. Bjerstein was a behaviorial scientist whose flair for
inconsequential research had won for him considerable stature among his peers.
Thus it was not unprecedented that the vagaries of his mind should lead him
willy nilly into the realjn of scholarly creativity. If his memory was no more
imperfect than the professional norm, the article had appeared in College Humor
magazine about the middle of the nineteen twenties and was entitled "How To
Raise a Cat". With good economy of words, as the professor recalled, it
directed: "Go into the nearest alley and find a cat. Bend over. Grasp the
cat by the scruff of the neck with the left hand and by the tail with the
right hand. Straighten up."

Dr. Bjerstein brushed aside any residue of a sense of humor which he may
have had as a youth, or of the ridiculous which may have colored his mature
judgment, because he was interested in the cat rather than in the situation.
He postulated that the feeling of wellbeing lurking in the creature's
subconscious since the days when it was carried about by the scruff of the
neck by its mother would essentially offset the traumatic memories of being
hoist by the tail by a brat whose parents thought every child should have a
pet and so learn to be kind to dumb animals. If this surmise proved correct
the cat's legs would hang straight down and there would be no preceptible
change in the animal's heartbeat.

The consequence of incorrectness of such a postulate were not considered
by Professor Bjerstein because by that time he had reached the door of the
faculty club and had to consider where he might have left his keys.

Dr. Bjerstein did not immediately get on with a research proposal. He
was not a man easily deflected from his normal routines. Besides he had to
lead his graduate students in a, window- smashing assault on the President's
office; then participate in a long series of faculty senate meetings to consider
whether the administrative tongue clacking that followed the incident
constituted a violation of academic freedom. Consequently the deadline for
submitting proposals caught Dr. Bjerstein somewhat unawares and his request
had to be put together in a rather hasty fashion.

In order to tailor the project to the time scale of a doctoral disserta
tion, and to the elastic limit of most granting agencies, Dr. Bjerstein

233

requested support for a three-year period. His budgetary computations began
with a stipend for one graduate student. But then the Department was short
of stenographic assistance so he included a full time secretary. This made
necessary appropriate office furniture and, for some curious reason, two
electric typewriters. Computer time and programming services being necessary
to assure the grantor that the investigator is abreast of the times, Bjerstein
included these items also. When it came to "Travel" he remembered the
Society's January meeting in Majorca and so upped the cost of "attendance at
scholarly meetings" to three thousand dollars. By this time the first year's
budget totalled some $108,000, plus appropriate overhead to the University to
cover the confusion in accounting generated by scholars such as Bjerstein.

After a period of bureaucratic gestation during which one typewriter was
deleted and travel funds were reduced to one thousand dollars per year, the
granting agency approved Dr. Bjerstein's project. However, there was some
disagreement in the reviewing committee which was compromised by allowing only
two years of support. As often in the case of academic research these two
years passed unveventf ully . Bjerstein attended several scholarly meetings;
the secretary tidied up his normally chaotic desk and looked after his personal
correspondence; and the graduate student made a search of the literature.
Unfortunately as the end of the grant period approached he had not yet located
the original reference which had inspired Dr. Bjerstein that day on the way to
the faculty club some two years previous. Obviously, if the good professor's
theory was to be evaluated experimentally the project must be renewed and
extended. To this end Dr. Bjerstein turned his attention as the project had
now become a comfortable habit - and the thought of losing the secretary was a
bit frightening.

By this time, however, the research climate had changed significantly.
The University was gung-ho for multidiscipline projects; national priorities
had turned from the gentle dreams of academicians to a virulent concern for
problems or urban blight, degredation of the environment, and, so as not to
overlook anything, to something called ecosystems. To these new constraints
Dr. Bjerstein turned his attention; and with such delightful results that he
marveled that he had not thought of them sooner.

If there be an alley, he reasoned, there must exist within the city an
old degraded neighborhood. Subdividers and builders have not included alleys
for a quarter of a century. Obviously the city is long overdue for urban

234

renewal and the research team should therefore include a city planner.
Moreover, the presence of a cat in the alley could only mean that the place
is infested with rats and mice. If there are rats and mice, there must be
rubbish. If there is rubbish, culturally deprived people must live there.
Unquestionably- the whole place is a ghetto, occupied by frustrated men and
women deprived of civil rights, overwhelmed with poverty and despair, ripe for
communism, and with no recourse but rioting to bring their plight to the
attention of a callous Establishment. The prospect vas enough to incite
Dr. Bjerstein to break every window in the university. But that would have to
wait until renewal of the project was assured. He would need a city planner to
renew the housing; a public health specialist to deal with the rats; an
engineer to cope with the rubbish; a sociologist to deal with the people; a
political scientist to fend off the communists; and, of course, Dr. Bjerstein
himself to observe the reactions of the cat.

This time Dr. Bjerstein had the perfect proposal. His project was
sufficiently multidisciplined to delight the University. It had all the
factors of poverty, crime, and urban decay needed to give it national
priority. And it cost 1.5 million dollars for three years. Thus it was
expensive enough and absurd enough to be attractive to the major foundations.

How could he lose?

The answer was unexpected both by Dr. Bjerstein and the academic world
in general. By the time the new proposal by Bjerstein et al had cleared the
University hurdles, the national scene had undergone a further change. The
plight of cities, the rise of crime, and the restlessness of poverty, it was
reasoned, had grown to critical dimensions in spite of years of research.
Action; construction; demonstration of new systems were now in vogue and
research had declined in prestige. Besides the nation had elected to fight
communism overseas. This proved so costly that it was no longer possible to
fight it at home - at least not through multidiscipline research.

Dr. Bjerstein had to be satisfied with a mere $10,000 and a one-year
extension of his project in which to carry out its important experimental

phase --to raise a cat.

---0- —

235

February 1974

Early in life I developed a love for poetry and during my
college days spent many hours in the library reading classic and
contemporary verse. In those days, which most of the people alive
today might consider as predating the dawn of mankind, the Waring
Blender had not been invented. Therefore poetry was still some
what structured and more often than not conveyed some impressions
of life to the reader, or at least persuaded him that the poet in
some manner had a depth of perception of the subtleties of nature
and the emotions and vicissitudes of mankind. Of course, there
was some attempt to randomize words or to symbolize non-thought
in terms of non-language, but the technology for producing 'poetry"
by dropping Webster into the blender did not exist. My first
attempts at verse go back to high school days and a recent encoun
ter with some old high school annuals reveals that more of it got
into these annual publications than I remember. Thank goodness,
the publications no longer exist. They did show, however, that
in verse as well as in other aspects of my life I was quite highly
disciplined — a bad approach to poetry.

I long ago ceased to designate my writings as poetry,
preferring the word "verse " as being less presumptive and better
for the ego than "doggerel ". In the two examples which follow
I say something I wanted to say, in the way I wanted to say it.
Others may classify them as they choose.

236

PIONEER

He came with bull -tongue plow and grubbing hoe
To clear away the crop the Lord had sown;
To make a field with tilth and ordered rows;
To make a spot on earth to call his own.

Sagebrush and juniper and needle grass,
Greasewood and rabbit brush and creosote,
Succumbed to sharpened steel and searing fire,
That earth each year might wear a greener coat.

The new wife brought a cow with suckling calf,
A rooster and a half a dozen hens -
The wedding gifts of uncles in the east
Who settled where the arid west begins.

237

By sweat and toil he prospered for a while;
All life bore fruit, and blessings multiplied;
But speeding years outraced ambition's scale;
The subtle hand of Time reversed the tide.

An ox that weighed a ton stepped on his foot.

A falling timber broke his collar bone.

So opened avenues to aches and pains

By which impending weather change is known.

The red rust came to take the bull-tongue plow.
Microbe and insect lurked in post and rail.
The barn grew weary, leaning all awry,
As joist and rafter sagged as if to fail.

The children grew, and wed, and moved away.
He sold the stock and harness when they'd gone.
A sheepman bought the land, but left the house
And let the pioneer and wife a while stay on.

I think the Lord admired this rugged soul

Who fought him for the land men thought was free.

He sent his tares to take the field away -

But let the old man die with dignity.

238

THE BRAVE AND STRONG

He who climbs the highest mountain
Peels no need to seek the pass.
He who conquers creeping glaciers
Must disdain the dark crevasse.

He who stalks the lurking tiger
Discards the wisdom to beware.
Who defies the restless ocean
May neglect to say a prayer.

Who must show the world his courage
Seeks his own respect to win.
In the Valley of the Shadow
I have walked with braver men.

239

Reprinted from AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, Vol. 57, No. 11, November. 1967
Copyright by the American Public Health Association, Inc., 1740 Broadway, New York, N. Y. 10019

In a world surveyed by flying saucers in periodic waves we are not surprised
to learn of a report produced by a process of apparition and prepared
by an observer from Laputa. Readers who are so inclined are invited
to comment on these observations or perhaps to rebut them.

ON THE NATURE OF PUBLIC HEALTH: A PREVIEW
OF LITERATURE

P. H. McCauhey, M.S., F.A.P.HA.

\\QTUDIES on the Physical and Psycho-
O logical Structure of the Nuclei of
Certain Conceptual Systems Existing on
an Obscure Minor Planet, and the
Mechanism of Their Creation."

Under this somewhat ponderous title
there has recently appeared* a report
which because of its pertinence, or im
pertinence, seems worthy of our atten
tion. Its author is an ultra-scientific ob
server from somewhere in ultra-space
about whom little is known beyond the
fact that unusual qualities of mind en
abled him to analyze conceptual sys
tems in a manner such as atomic physi
cists might apply to physical systems;
and an inordinate curiosity led him to
direct his attention to certain aspects
of human affairs. Unfortunately the re
port is written in a language nobody can
read, hence it is reviewed here neces
sarily in imperfect form.

Communities

Our observer reports that while idly
scanning a minor planet generally con
ceded to exhibit no characteristics of
interest to the serious ultra-scientist, he
came across what at first appeared to
be relatively formless conglomerate
masses within a matrix or universe of

' By process of apparition.

pseudo-reality. On closer observation,
however, 'these masses exhibited enough
structural similarity to suggest that
there existed some degree of order
which was recurrent in each of the psy
chological blobs. To describe these
blobs the scientist coined the word
"communities" and employed a modern
artist, who specialized in attempts to
express non-dimensional psychological
matters in graphic form, to prepare a
lantern slide which might be useful later
in lectures before ultra-learned societies.
It looked somewhat like Figure 1.

The Public Health Organization

Intrigued by his preliminary observa
tions, the ultra-scientist began to exam
ine in detail the structure of the com
munity. He found it to consist of a whole
series of conceptual systems linked to
gether in a sufficient variety of forms
to suggest a random, rather than a sys
tematic association. Like any good sci
entist, Dr. Ultra vowed to explore rach
of these submolecular systems as soon
as they could be classified and finan
cial support developed. He was particu
larly intrigued, however, by one pe
culiar submolecule which seemed to ap
pear at the heart of each community
system essentially always in the same

NOVEMBER. 1967

1»47

240

BLOB OF MASKING TAPE
TO WELD SLIDE TO
PROJECTOR

UNIVERSE

OK
DREAM WORLD

TYPICAL HUMAN
COMMUNITIES

Figure 1 — Lantern slide

form, whereas other submolecules, al
though always recognizable, did not ap
pear so constant in their makeup. This
led the ultra-scientist to postulate that
this one particular group of atoms was
the driving force of the whole commu
nity. He therefore singled it out for
first attention and justified this in his
notes on the grounds of its apparent lo
cation at the center of gravity of the
mass, its constant size and form, and
"other characteristics" which he did not
catalog. Thinking it to be a single ideo
logical particle, a nucleus, on which the
organization of the community mass
must somehow depend, and for reasons
of reference and communication, he
named this "particle" the "Public
Health Organization."

A footnote in the report records that
this led a group of ultra-conservative
ulfra-semanticists, concerned with things
of a higher level of culture than ultra-
psychoscience, to inquire, "What indeed
does 'Public Health' mean?" Such

quibbling over meaning annoyed our
scientist and he reports in the footnote
that he dismissed the matter with a re
fusal to debate it and with the curt
statement that the phrase "may be just
words, but if you are going to talk about
a phenomenon there must be words ; and
from what I have thus far observed,
'Public Health' may well prove to be
worth talking about."

Nature of the Public Health
Organization

Turning attention to the nucleus of
the community the ultra-scientist re
ports that he soon found it to consist
not of a single cell but a number of
apparently identical atoms arranged in
an almost invariable pattern. Each atom,
he noted was roughly spherical in shape
but with numerous recognizable facets.
Curiously enough, one of these facets
was always larger than the others. Also,
this large facet was invariably highly

1968

VOL. 57. NO. 11. A.J.P.H.

241

ON THI NATURE OF PUBLIC HEALTH

polished and, as if to reflect its glory,
the smaller ones immediately surround
ing it were also polished, although to a
lesser degree. In contrast, the remainder
of the facets appeared rough. Crude
sketches from the ultra-scientist's note
book made at the time and reproduced
in his report, together with the terms
invented to describe the several facets,
are shown in Figures 2a and 2b. No
attempt to list the number of facets was
reported.

Specialty Areas (Smashing the Atom)

First evidence that the several atoms
were identical began to be questioned
by the scientist when he observed that
certain elements of the community were
always oriented toward the specialty
area of one atom while others were
oriented toward the specialty area of
another atom. This led to the discovery
that the highly polished "specialty area"
of one atom appeared as a smaller satel
lite area in others, and in still others,
as the rough subspecialty area. Thus
each atom presented a different specialty
area to the community and so polarized
some other element of the commu
nity structure. Thereupon the scientist
smashed a series of atoms and estab
lished several intriguing facts:

1. Each atom had a common core divided
into four spherical segments which the
scientist named:

(a) Administration

(b) Epidemiology

(d) Sanitation

2. Each core segment exerts a force on each
of the surfaces, or facets, in the sur
rounding shell.

3. Each facet has identifiable characteristics;
hence the scientist gave each one an
identifying name, such as:

(a) Public Health Administration

(b) Epidemiology

(d) Environmental Sanitation

(e) Health Education

(f) Public Health Nursing

(g) MCH

(h) Hospital Administration.

A School of Public Health

Having split the complex atom and
resolved the nature of the specialty area
phenomenon, the ultra-scientist, using
advanced methods of ultra-omniscience,
explored and reported on the nature of
the forces that create the atoms which
in combination constitute the Public
Health Organization of the community.
His report notes that the machine to do
this, which he called a "School of Pub
lic Health," is vastly more complicated

Figure 2 — Nature of a PHO (Public
Health Organization) component atom

• -HIGHLY POLISHED FACET
b-POLISHED FACET
e- ROUGH FACET

SPHERICAL PARTICLE

b- SATELLITE SPECIALTY AREA
• -SPECIALTY AREA
b-SATELLITE SPECIALTY AREA
c- SUB-SPECIALTY AREA

CROSS-SECTION VIEW

NOVEMBER. 1967

1969

242

Figure 3 — Illustrates a schematic cross-
section through a typical PHO com-
ponrnt atom

a = ADMINISTRATION
b = EPIDEMIOLOGY
e = BIOSTATISTICS
d- SANITATION

than its product. In a philosophical
mood the scientist speculated that, in
general, creators are more complicated
than the things they create.

The system (or School of Puhlic
Health) discovered by the Ultra-scien
tist was reported by him pictorially as
in Figure 4.

By way of explanation the school was
described by our scientist as consisting
of a series of specialty area professors,
plus satellite minds (not shown in Fig
ure 4), arranged in an orderly system
and separated by mutually repulsive
forces, yet all positively oriented to the
four-segment common core. Each pro
fessor remains relatively static. He has
two negative charges with which he
keeps other professors at a proper dis
tance. Likewise he has two positive
charges, one of which contributes to a
'potential characteristic of one of the
four core segments (a, b, c, d, Figure
4). The second positive charge repre
sents the specialty potential which ap
pears as thn polished facet of one of the

PHO (Public Health Organization)
component atoms of Figure 2. This en
tire system is held together by a single
dean, somewhat akin to the lone elec
tron of a hydrogen atom, rapidly orbit
ing the ring of professors which our
scientist, semantic inventor that he is,
has called the "Faculty" of the system.
This single dean, or "academic elec
tron," traverses his orbit at such velocity
that he seems to be everywhere at once.

Production of the PHO Component
Atom

A PHO component atom is generated
when a fragment of anti-intellect (or
"student" as the ultra-scientist calls it)
is forced at high velocity through the
center of the system, i.e., into the page
at center of Figure 4. In passing through
this inner core potential this fragment
is converted directly into a four-sector
spherical core such as forms the nucleus
of each of the PHO component atoms.
However, because of velocity and the po
tential of other systems of education
which influence it, this newly created
core often escapes the gravitational pull
of the School of Public Health and ap
pears in the community without the
shell shown in Figure 3 but in some
mass polarized toward the Public Health
Organization.

A few such nuclei, or cores, how
ever, stray into an elliptical, apparently
unguided, path and eventually return
to orbit the school in a circular eccen
tric orbit which at one point approaches
the outer potential ring as indicated in
Figure 5. A few appear to approach too
closely and so collide with the dean and
disintegrate. Most, however, pass close
to one or another of the specialty po
tential points.

The phenomenon is sketched by the
ultra-scientist (Figure 5). As the four-
sector core orbits the school it tnkrs on
all the multiple facets observed and re
ported by Dr. Ultra. Its polished facet

1770

VOL. 57. NO. 11. A.J.P.H.

243

results from the influence of the poten
tial of that professor most closely ap
proached by the core in its headlong
path, e.g., (a) in Figure 5. The less
polished facets result from nearby satel
lite specialty potentials less closely ap
proached, e.g., (b) in Figure 5, and the
rougher ones from still lesser exposure to
those potentials most remote from the
orbit.

After one, two, or three annual orbits
around the School of Public Health, the
surface charge (mysteriously designated
by the author by the symbols MPH or
Dr.P.H.) acquired by the newly created
PHO component atom is sufficient to
repel it from the system and it flies off

tangentially to become a part of the
PHO system within a community, i.e.,
nucleus of blobs, Figure 1.

Further Research Necessary

Having discovered the nature of a
human community, the presence of a
Public Health Organization within it,
split the specialty atom, and determined
the nature of its creation in a School
of Public Health, our ultra-scientist
could no longer delay publishing his re
port. However, the report concludes that
further research on the nature of the
minds of Public Health Professors is
necessary.

KING OF OUTER POTENTIAL

Figure 4 — School of Public Health

NOVEMBER. 1967

If 71

244

OVEREXPOSURE TO SPECIALTY POTENTIAL
DURING FLY-BY PRODUCES POLISHED FACET

PHO ORGAN.

TO SCHOOL

ORBIT

Figure 5 — Path of exit to PHO system

Since the report was released the ul
tra-scientist has revealed in private com
munications that systems involving a
professor of high reputation potential,
himself orbited by one or more satel
lite professors each with increasing po
tential of his own, is a quite simple phe
nomenon. However, preliminary ex
planations of the professorial mind do

not seem encouraging. There is some
thing there all right but no evidence
of order has thus far been found. The
scientist, an inveterate sketcher, reports
that he has been unable to prepare "the
first slide" for a forthcoming lecture
on "The Professorial Mind." "Have you
ever," he asks pointedly, "tried to
sketch a plate of spaghetti?"

Mr. McCauhey is professor of public health engineering, University of Cali
fornia, Berkeley (1301 South 46th St.), Richmond, Calif. 94804.
This paper was submitted for publication in June, 1966.

1972

VOL. 57. NO. 11. A.J.P.H.

24. 5

rrJ!u;:ip;.l rublikvitJuiK! and Papers (195.'' - dote)

* McGauhey, P. 31. "Flow through orifices," Water Works Eng.. 104-758

731-82 (8), August 1951.

# McGauhey, P. H., co -author. "A critical review of the literature of

1951 on sewage, waste treatment, and water pollution,"
Sewage and Ind. Wastes, 24_:54l-64l (5), May 1952.

*McGauhey, P. H. "Sanitary engineering research project of

University of California," Water and Sewage Works, 9j?: (8),
August 1952.

'* McGauhey, P. H- "New methods of refuse disposal," Sanitarian, 15:59-64
(2), September-October 1952.

November 1952-

*McGauhey, P. H. "Concrete pipe in sanitary sewer construction,"
Concrete Pipe News, £:39~45 (4), April 1953-

*McGauhey, P. H., co-author. "A critical review of the literature of
1952 on sewage, waste treatment, and water pollution,"
Sewage and Ind. Wastes, 25:633-84 (6), June 1953-

McGauhey, P. H., and C. G. Golueke. "Possibilities of composting
municipal refuse," Public Works, 1-4, October 1953-

*McGauhey, P. H., and H. B. Gotaas . "Stabilisation of municipal refuse
by composting, " Proc . Paper 2767* Trans. Am. Soc . Civil
Engrs . , 120:897-915; disc.: 916-920, 1956-

*McGauhey, P. H., and C. G. Golueke. "Composting of municipal refuse,"
Boletin Oficina Sanitaria Panamericana, 3j5:l67-80 (2),
February 1954.

« McGauhey, P. H., and H. B. Gotaas. "Urban service and utilities,"
paper presented at Conf . on Calif. Development Problems,
Berkeley, Calif., 4-5 February 1954.

* McGauhey, P. H., R. G. Butler, and G. T. Or lob. "Underground movement
of bacterial and chemical pollutants," J. Am. Water Works
Assoc., 46_: 97-111 (2), February 1954.

*McGauhey, P. H., co-author. "Refuse collection," report of a sub-committee
of the Comm. on Refuse Collection and Disposal of the Sanit.
Eng. Div., Proc. Am. Soc. Civil Engrs., 8_0:l-l4 (Sept. 473),
Aufe-ust 1954.

*McGauhcy, P. H-, co-author. "Dumping and land fill," report of a

subcommittee of the .Comm. on Refuse Collection and Disposal
of the Sanit. Eng. Div., Proc. Am. Soc. Civil Engrs., 8_0-:3.-23

246

Golueke, C. G., B. J. Card, and P. H. McGauhey. "A critical evaluation

of inoculums in composting," Appl . Microbio] . , 2_:45-55 (l), 1954.

*McGauhey, P. H., and H. B. Gotaas. "Discussion of 'Stabilization of
municipal refuse by compacting, '" Sanit. Eng. Div., Proc . Am.
Soc. Civil Engrs.. 81:1-2 (Sep. 593), January 1955. "

*Greenberg, A. E., and P. H. McGauhey. "Chemical changes in sewages
during reclamation by spreading," Soil Sci., 79:35-59 (l)
January 1955-

*McGauhey, P. H., and R. B. Krone. "Waste water reclamation," Civil
Eng. Div., Bull. Am. Soc. Elec . Engrs., 2.1:9-14 (2),
February 1956-

* McGauhey, P. H. "Economic worth of reclaimed water," in: Proc . Conf .
on Waste Water Reclamation, 26-27 January 1956. Berkeley:
Sanit. Eng. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif., pp. 68-75, March 1956.

* McGauhey, P. H- "Theory of sedimentation," J. Am. Water Works Assoc.,
48:437-48 (4), April 1956.

McGauhey, P. II . "Sewage reclamation," Proc. Western Development Conf.,
3rd Ann . , Stanford Research Inst., January 1957-

* McGauhey, P. H. "The why and how of sewage effluent reclamation,"
Water and Sewage Works, 104:265-270 (6), June 1957-

*McGauhey, P. H., co-author. "A critical review of the literature of
1956 on sewage, waste treatment, and water pollution," Sewage
and Ind. Wastes, 2£: 727-56 (7), July 1957-

Krone, R. B., P. H. McGauhey, and H. B. Gotaas. "Direct recharge of
ground water with sewage effluents," Proc. Paper 1335* Sanit.
Eng. Div., J. Am. Soc. Civil Engrs., 8_3_:l-25 (SA 4), August 1957-

McGauhey, P. H. "Studies of detergent breakdown and air pollution by
insufficient combustion," Public Works, 88: (12), December 1957-

Economic Evaluation of Water. Part I. A Search for Criteria. Berkeley:
Sanit. Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif. Water Resources Center
Contribution No. 13, December 1957 x+237 pp. Co-author H. Erlich.

* McGauhey, P. H., and G. T. Or lob. "Surface and ground -water quality
changes resulting from water disposal practice," Proc . Conf .
on Quality of Water for Irrigation, Univ. of Calif., Davis,
pp. 119-24, 22 January 1958.

*McGauhey, P. H., co-author. "A review of the literature of 1957 on

sewage, waste treatment, and water pollution," Sewage and Ind.
Wastes, 3_£: 609-33 (5), May 1958.

"McGauhey P. H. "Sewage effluent reclamation," Water and Sewage Works.
105_:R24l-45 (R.N.), September 1958.

247

#Erlich, 11., and P. H. McGauhey. "Economic value of water," paper

presented at Regional Water Resources Conf . at State College
of Washington, 6-7 November 1958, Water, Proc. Reg. Water
Resources Conf., p. 77-

tfMcGauhey, P. H., and S. A. Klein. "Removal of ABS by sewage treatment,"
Water and Sewn go Works, 10J>: 518-19 (12), December 1958.

MeG.'.uhey, T.H. and H. Erllch. Statement Before Subcommittee on Economic and
Policies for Htate Water Projects of the Joint Committee on

SHIS, lifornia Gtate Legislature. September 15, 1958. Mimeo. 30 pp
McGauhey, P.H., G.T. Or lob and J.H. Winneberger. A Study of the Biological Aspects
of Septic Tank Percolation Fields. 1st Progress Report. Berkeley: Sanitary
Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif. December 1958."

McGauhey, P.H., E.S. Crosby and S.A. Klein. A Study of Operating Variables as

they Affect ABS Removal by Sewage Treatment Plants. Progr. Rept. 2. Berkeley:
Sanit. Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif., April 1958. Rept. 3, Nov. 1958

Greenberg, A.E.. P.M. McGauhey, and H.B. Gotaas. Field Investigation of Waste
Water Reclamation in Relation to Ground Water Pollution. Final Report.
State Water Pollution Control Board Publication No. 6, 1953

Krone, R.B., P.M. McGauhey, and H.B. Gotaas. Report on the Investigation of
Travel of Pollution . State Water Pollution Control Board Publication
No. 11, iy|ji»

McGauhey, P.H., C.G. Golueke, and H.B. Gotaas. Reclamation of Municipal Refuse

by Composting. Tech. Bull. No. 9, l.E.R. Series 37. Berkeley: Sanitary Engr.
Research Proj., Univ. of Calif., June 1953.

Todd, D.K., P.H. McGauhey, and T.R. Simpson. An Abstract of Literature Pertaining
to Sea Water Intrusion . Tech. Bull. No. 10, l.E.R. Series 37. Berkeley:
Sanit. Engr. Research Proj., Univ. of Calif., July 1953

McGauhey, P.H. Studies in Water Reclamation . Tech. Bull. No. 13, l.E.R. Series 37,
Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Research Proj., Univ. of Calif., July 1955

McGauhey, P.H., E.S. Crosby, and S.R. Klein. The Fate of Alkylbenzenesulfonate
in Sevage Treatment. Final Report. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Research Lab.,
Univ. of Calif., July 1957

McGauhey, P.H., G.T. Orlob, and J.H. Winneberger. A Study of the Biological
Aspectss of Failure of Septic Tank Percolation Fields . Progr. Rept. 2.
Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif., July 1959

McGauhey, P.H., S.A. Klein, and P.B. Palmer. A Study of Operating Variables
As They Affect ABS Removal by Scvngc Treatment Plants. Final Report.
Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif., October 1959-

McGauhey, P.H. and H. Erlich. Economic Evaluation of Water. Fart I. A Search

For Criteria . Tech. Bull. No. 14, l.E.R. Series 37. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr.
Research Lab., Univ. of California, July 1960.

P.H. McGauhey, and H. Erlich. "Economic Evaluation of Water". Journal Irrig. and
Drainage Div., Proc. ASGE, 85 IR ?-, Paper 2059, June 1959

McGauhey, P.H., and S.A. Klein. "Removal of ABS by Sewage Treatment." Sewage
and Industrial Wastes, 31 (8): 877-99- August 1959

Golueke, C.G., W.J. Oswald, and P.H. McGauhey. "The Biological Control of

Enclosed Environments." Sewage and Ind. Wastes 31 (10): 1325-'*, Oc >ber

248

*Banta, J-, P. H- McGnuhey, J. L. Vincenz, I,. Weaver, and D. T. Mitche.11.
"Sanitary landfill," in: Manual of Engineering Practice,
No. 39- New York: Am. Soc . Civil Engr:: . , 19 59.

* McGauhey, P. H. "Discussion of composting," in: Waste Treatment,

Peter C. G Isaac, ed. Oxford, Eng.: Pergamon Press, Symposium
Pubs. Div., pp. 360-61, I960.

McGauhey, P. H. "Reclamation of water from domestic and industrial

wastes," in: Waste Treatment, Peter C. G. Isaac, ed., Oxford,
Eng.: Pergamon Press, Symposium Pubs . Div., pp. 429-39, I960.

-McGauhey, P. H. "Refuse composting plant at Norman, Oaklahoma,"
Compost Sci., 1^5-8 (3), Autumn I960.

*McGauhey, P. H., co-author. "A review of the literature of 1958 on
sewage, waste treatment, and water pollution," Sewage and
Ind. Wastes, 31.: 511-41 (5), May 1959.

McGauhey, P. H., and H. Erlich. "Economic evaluation of water," Proc .
Paper 2059, Irrigation and Drainage Div., J. Am. Soc. Civil
Engrs . , 8_5_:1-21 (IR 2), June 1959-

McGauhey, P.H. "Water Development for Urban Use." Progress Report No. 2,
Water Resources Center Conference, May 1960.

McGauhey, P.H. "Some economic Considerations in Water Planning." Presented
ASCE National Meeting, Reno, Nevada, June 1960.

McGauhey. P.H. "Quality - Water's Fourth Dimension," Report No. >, Berkeley:

Sanit. Engr. Res. Lab., Water Resources Center Water Policy Conf. Jaa. 1961

,.. McGauhey, P.H. "Quality Aspects of our National Water Resources." Address
AGU Conference, Univ. of Calif. January 26, 1961

McGauhey, P.H. "Problems and Research in the Field of Environmental Health."
Northwest Research Symposium, Portland, Oregon April 18, 1961

*McGauhoy, P. H. "Ground water contamination research and research

needs," in: Proc. 1961 Symposium, Ground Water Contamination.
Tech. Rept. W 6l-5- Cincinnati: R. A. Taft Sanit. Eng. Center.

* McGauhey, P. II., co-author. "Review of literature of I960 on waste

water and water pollution control," J. Water Pollution Control
Federation, 3Jj_:^59-62 (5), May 1961.

McGauhey, P. H. "Sanitary engineering comes of age," Sanit. Eng. Div.,
J. Am. Soc. Civil Engrs., 8? : 1-10 (SA 3), May 1961.

McGauhey, P. H-, and S. A. Klein. "The removal of ABS from sewage,"
Public Works, 9_2: 101-04 (5), May 1961.

*McGauhey, P. H. "Closure: Sanitary engineering comes of age," Proc.

Paper 2806, San. Eng. Div., J. Am. Soc. Civil Engrs., 88:115-16
(SA 2, Pt. 1), March 1962.

Winneberger, J.H., L. Francis, S.A. Klein, and P.H. McGauhey. Biological
Aspects of Failure of Septic -Tank Percolation Systems. Final Report.
Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif. August 1960

249

Wirmeborcer, J.H., W.I. Saad, and P.H. McGauhey. Method >.. »<•

of Scptic-Tnnk Percolation Fields. 1 st Annual Report. Berkeley: Sanit.
Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of California, December 1961

Winneberger, J.Jt., A.B. Menar, .and P.H. McGauhey. Methods of Preventing Failure
of Septic Tank Percolation Fields. 2nd Annual Report^ Berkeley: Sanit.
Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of California, December 1962

McGauhey, P.H. and J.H. Winneberger. Causes and Prevention of Failure of Septic-
Tank Percolation Systems. Final Report. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Res". Lab.
Rept. No . 6J-5, Univ. of Calif. April 1963. FHA Publication No. 533
April, 196^ Also HUD Report, October 1967.

Klein, S.A., D. Jenkins, and P.H. McGauhey. Travel of Synthetic Detergents With
Percolating Water. 2nd Ann. Rept. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Research Lab.,
Univ. of Calif., December 1962

Winneberger, J.H., A.B. Menar, and P.H. McGauhey. A Study of Methods of Preventing
Failure of Septic-Tank Percolation Fields . 3rd Annual Rept. SERL No. 63-9
B erkeley; Sanit. Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of California December 1963.

Erlich, H. and P.H. McGauhey. Economic Evaluation of Water. Fart II.

Jurisdictional Considerations in Water Resources Management ~ Contrib.
No. k?, Water Resources Center. Berkeley: Sanit. EngrT Research Lob.,
Univ. of California, June 196^

Klein, S.A. and P.H. McGauhey. Travel of Synthetic Detergents With Percolating
Water. Third Annual Rept. SERL Rept. No. 64-2. Berkeley: Sanit. EngrT
Research Lab., Univ. of Calif., February 1964

Stephenson, M.E., J.F. Thomas, and P.H. McGauhey. Application of Foam Fractiona-

tion to Sewage Treatment. I. Foam Separation of Dilute Aqueous Solutions,
SERL Rept. No. 61* -7. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Res. Lab., Univ. of Calif.
September 1964

Jenkins, D., and P.H. McGauhey. Application of Foam Fractionation to Sevage
Treatment . II. Foam Fractionation of Sewage and Sevage Effluents.
SERL Rept. No. 64-10. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Res, Lan., Univ. of
Calif., December 1964.

Eckhoff, D.W., D. Jenkins, and P.H. McGauhey. Evaluation of Improved-Type

Detergents . SERL Rept. No. 64-12. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Res. Lab.,
Univ. of Calif. December 1964

Jenkins, D. amd P.H. McGauhey. Broad Characterization of the Improvement of

Sevage Effluents by Foam Fractionation. SERL Rept. No. 65-5. Berkeley :
Sanit. Engr. Res. Lab., Univ. of Calif., March 1965

McGauhey, P.H. "The Role of Water Reclamation in Water Resources Management."

U.S.P.H.S. Conf. for Latin American Engineers, Cincinnati, Ohio. June 1962

McGauhey, P.H. "Basic Concepts in Water Pollution Control." Proc., Calif Olive
Growers Technical Conference, Monterey, Calif., June 1962.

*McGauhey, P. H. "A review of literature of 1961 °f

J. Water Pollution Control Federation, 2*36-

*McGauhey, P. H. "Reclaiming Hyperion effluent,." discussion of Proc.
Paper 2985, Sanit. Eng. Div., J. Am. Soc . Civil Engrs_^

162.

Lper £~y^j j ) UCLII -L u • -u^e, • • - j — .—

[: 177-79 (SA 5, Pt. l), May 1962.

250

McGmihcy, P.H. "The perisitence of ABS in waste water". Berkeley: Sanit. Engr.
Hes. Lab., Univ. of Calif. August 1963

McGmihey, P.H. and J.l). Winneberger. "Studies of the failure of septic tank
percolation systems." WPCF Conference, Seattle, Wn. October 196^

McGauhey, P.H. "Detergents as a factor in water quality." Symposium of Univ. of
Calif, and WPCF, Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, Calif. October 1963.

P.H. McGauhey. "Processing, converting, and utilizing solid wastes." Compost
Science, Summer 1964.

MgGauhey, P.H. "Current problems in the control of water pollution." UCLA

Extension Institute of Public Health Law. December l4, 1963

McGauhey, P.H. "Review of Literature, 1963, Sludge Digestion." Jour. WPCF, 36 (6)
June 1964

Klein, S. A., and P. H. McGauhey. "Detergent removal by surface

stripping," J. Water Poll. Control Federation. 3J>: 100-15 (l),
January 1963 •

Klein, S. A., D. I. Jenkins, and P. H. McGauhey. "The fate of ABS in

soils and plants," J. Water Poll. Control Federation, 35=636-54
(5), May 1963-

*MoGauhey, P. H. "Processing, converting, and utilizing solid wastes,"
Compost Scl., £:8-3.4 (2), Summer 196') .

M<H;..lUhc.y, P.H. »olUraillMry t on the detergent o

Hart, S. A., and P. H McGauhey. "The management of wastes in the fopd
producing and food processing industries," Food Techno] . ,
18:30-36 (4), 1964.

*McGauhey, P H. e_t al. "A review of the literature of 1963 on wastewater
and water pollution control, " J. Water Poll. Control Federation,
3.6:699-711 (6), June 1964.

McGauhey, P. H., and J. H. Winneberger. "Studies of the failure of
septic -tank percolation systems," J. Water Poll. Control
Federation, 3_6:593-6o6 (5), May 1964.

McGauhey, P. H- "Resolving power of antipollution laws," Public Health
Repts . , 72=707-8 (8), August 1964.

* McGauhey, P. H. "Statement before subcommittee on governement operations,"
House of Representatives, 98th Cong., June 1963- Water Poll.
Control and Abatement (Part IB- -Nat 1. Survey), U.S. Government
Printing Office, pp. 1119-26. 1Q64.

*McGauhey, P. H. "Fate of synthetic detergents in ground waters,"
Proc . ^rd Ann. Sanit. and Water Resources Eng . Conf ..,
Vanderbilt Univ., Dept- of C . E., Nashville, Tenn., pp. I >6,
.May 1964.

*McGauhey, P. H. "Industry's role in the problem of water quality,"
Proc. 15th Okla. Ind. Waste Conf., pp. 71-76, November 196*1.

251

fc?-^ - r -»—»•*." Toe.

Management. August 1^ " Rechare°* Development, and

, P. H. "Folklore in water quality parameter.';," Paper, presented
tit Am. Hoc. Civil Engrs . Water Resources Kng. Cc-ni.'., Mob.i.lc:,
Alabama, C<->rif'. Preprint No. 17^, March 1965"

*McCauhcy, P. H. "Economic evaluation/' Proceedings Seminar on Management

River Basins, sponsored by The Univ. of Texas Center for
Research in Water Resources. Univ. of Texas, Austin, Texas.
5 April 1965.

•-i-McGauhey, P. II. "Folklore in water quality standards," Civ. EngA,
2£:70-71 (6), June 1965.

Klein, S. A., and P H. McGauhey. "Degradation of biologically soft
detergents by wastewater treatment processes," J. Water Poll.
Control Federation, £7:857-66 (6), June 1965.

*McGauhey P. H., and G. A. Klein. "Degradable pollutants - a study of
the new detergents," J. Water Pollution Control Fednra+.^n,
Vol. .,«, No. 'j, Munich Abstracts - Section I, pp. 339-51,0
March .1966.

McGauhoy, P. H. and S. A. Klein. "De^radable pollutants - a study of
the new detorcento," in Advances in Water Pollution Research.
Volume 1, Proceedings of tlic 3rd International Conference,
Munich, Germany, September 1966.

McCauhcy, P.1I. "Multipurpose water resource development1.' Univ. Calif.

Engineering Extension Series on Professional Engineering Techniques.
February 1966.

McGauhey, P.H. and C.G. Golueke. "Background and perspective of Solid Waste

Management." 59th Annual Meeting of the APCA, San Francisco, Calif.
June '20-2^1, 1966

RcGauhey, P.H. and S.A. Klein. Effects of LAS on the Quality of Waste Water
Effluents, SERL Report No. 66-5. Berkeley: Sonlt. Engr. Research
Lab., Univ. of Calif. September 1966

I'.JI. McGa'jliey and C.G. Golueke. "Future alternatives to incineration and their

air pollution potential." National Conference on Air Pollution, Wn. D.C.
December 1L'-1^, 1966

Woods, P. C«, P. H. McGauhey, and G. T. Orlob. Management of l{ydrolo.i;Jc
Systems for Wnter Quality Control . Water Rocoiirccs Center
Contribution No. 121. Berkeley: Sanlt. En«. nfioearch' Inb.,
Univ. of Calif., June 1967-

*Golueke, C. G., and P. H. McGauhey. Comprehensive Studies of Solid

Wastes Management - First Annual Report. SERL Rept. No. 6*7-7 .
Berkeley: S^nit. Eng. Research I/ib., Univ. of Calif.,

McGauhey, P. H., .and R. B. Krone. Solid Mantle as a Wastovater Treatment.
> Flnal Report. SERL Kept. No. 67-11. IterkeJey: ri-miti""

En(T. Rr>Kr>flT-r>>i TaV.

McGauhcy, P. H. "Earth's Tolerance for Wastes," reprinted from Thc_
Texas Quarterly, Summer 1968.

Stead, F.M. and P.H. McGauhcy. "Air; Water, Land, and People." Journal VPCF
. . kO (2): 233-^0, February 1968

McGauhey, P. H. "On the nature of public health: A preview of

literature," Am. J. Public Health, £7_(ll) :1967-72, November 1967-

McGauhey P. H. and J. H. Winneberger. "A Study of Methods of
Preventing Failure of Septic -Tank Percolation Systems,"
U. 5. Department of Housing and Urban Development, FT/TS-25
Washington, D. C., March 1968.

McGauhey, P. H., I. R. Tabershaw, R. c. Cooper, and B. D. Tebbens.

Man versus his environment," J. Occupational Med., 10:165-173,
April 1968.

Engineering Management of Water Quality. McGauhey. McGraw-Hill, 1968

Carew, J.P. and P.H. McGauhey. Economic Evaluation of Water Quality - A
Linear Programming Water Quality Control Model. SERL Rept.
No. 68-2. Berkeley: Sanit. Engr. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif.
February 1968

Golueke, C.G. and P.H. McGauhey. Comprehensive Studies of Solid Wastes

Management - First Annual Report. SERL Rept. No. 67-7, Berkeley;
Sanit. Engr. Res. Lab., Univ. of Calif. May 1967

Also Second Annual Report, SERL No. 69-!, January 1969

(Available in single volume SW 3rg, Bureau of Solid Waste
Management, July 1970)

Lofting, E. M., and P. H. McGauhey. jconomlc^ Fvaluotl on pf '•'atc-r, Part

IV, An Input- Outrut and Ilt.ear Program i r.'g A • ia iy s IF jf .a i 1 for nia
Water Reoui repeats. V.'ater Lesources ...enter '.'ontriu. No. i 16 .
Berkeley: Sanit. Bng. Research Lab., Univ. of Calif'., August
1968.

Bargur, J., and P. H. McGauhey. Economic Evaluation of Water, Part VI;
A Dynamic Interregional Input -Output Programming Model oi
California and the Western States Water Economy,. Water Resources
Center Contrib. No. 128. Berkeley: Sanit. Eng. Research Lab.,
Univ. of Calif., May 1969-

Mc; Gauhey, P.H., E.A. Pearson, and G.A. Rohlich. Eutrophication of Surface
Waters - Lake Tahoe

Bioassay of Nutrient Sources, 1st Prog. Rept. to FWQA, May 1968
Laboratory and Pilot Pond Studies, 2nd ditto , May 1969
Pilot Pond and Field Studies, 3rd ditto , May 1970

Also: Eutrophication of Surface Waters - Indian Creek Reservoir, 1st
Prog. Rept. to FWQA, May 1970

Systems." <J

252

Berkeley: Sanit. En«-
November 1969-

•253

McGauhey, P.H. American Composting Concepts . U.S. Dept. of HEW, Bureau of
Solid Waste Management. Pub 1 i c a t i on SW- 2 r . 1969

McC.niliey, P.H. Developing Strategies For Packaging Wastes Management. Proc.
First National Conference on Packaging Wastes: Davis campus, Univ.
of California. San Francisco, Sept. 1969

McGauhey, P.H. The Problem of Environmental Quality. Proc. Forty-Eighth Annual

Technical Conference of California Olive Association. Monterey, Calif.,
June 16-18, 1969

McGauhey, P.H. Ni tratcs in Water Supplies - - The Problem. Proc. Twelfth
Sanitary Engineering Conference, University of Illinois, Dept. of
Civil Engineering Bulletin 68 (2) . 1969

McGauhey, P.H. Alternatives in Water Management. Water and Western Destiny.
Western Interstate Water Conference Proceedings, Colorado State
University, Fort Collins , Colorado, 1969

McGauhey, P.H. "Recycling Versus Wasting of Resources". Waste Age, Vol. 1,
No. 1, April 1970

"The Role of Incineration in Recycling", ibid Vol. 1, No. 2
May 1970

"Private Enterprise in Solid Waste Management", ibid Vol. 1,
No. 3, June 1970

"The Alchemy of Salvage", ibid Vol. 1, No. 4, July 1970

" Public Works Aspects of Solid Waste Management", ibid Vol. 1,
No. 2, July 1970

"An Overview of Lanfill Disposal", ibid Vol. 1, No. 6,
Nov. -Dec. 1970

"Resource Recycling - An Opportunity and a Challenge", ibid
Vol. 2, No.l, Jan. -Feb. 1971

"Are We Looking in the Same Direction?", Ibid Vol. 2, No. 2,
March-April 1971

"The Utility Concept", ibid Vol. 2, No. 3, May-June 1971

"Dreamland Revisited — A Look at Recycling", ibid Vol 2,
No. 4, July-Aug. 1971

"Manpower Needs in an Unlikely System", ibid Vol. 2, No. 5,
Sept. -Oct. 1971

"Industrial Solid Waste - - What Does it Mean?", ibid Vol. 2,
No. 6, Nov. Dec. 1971

1 Middlebrooks, E.J., E.A. Pearson, M. Tunzi, A. Adinarayana P.H McGauhey ,
and G.A. Rohlich. "Eutrophication of Surface Water - Lake Tahoe , Jo
WPCF, 43, 2, Feb. 1971

254

i'cC.auhev, P.I*, "W.-jste Water Reclamation - Urban and Agricultural".

California Water, David Seckler, Editor. Univ. of Calif. Prctis,
June 1971*

Kldd.lcb rooks, K.J,, D.B. Porcella, E.A. Pearson, P.H. McGauhey, and G.A.

Rohlich. "Biostimulation and Alj;al Growth Kinetics of Wastewater",
Jour. WPCF, A3, 3, Tart 1, March 1971

McGauhey, P.H. "Buried in Affluence", Encyclopaedia Brittannica Yearbook
of Science and the Future, 1972

Shelef, Gedalia, William J. Oswald, and P.H. McGauhey. "Algal Reactor

For Life Support Systems". Journal San. Engr. Div., ASCE, 96, SA1,
February 1970

McGauhey, P.H., E.J. Middlebrooks, and D.B. Porcella. "Manmade Pollution
and America's 100,000 Lakes." Public Works, 103, 3, March 1972

McGauhey, P.H., and E.J. Middlebrooks. "Management of Wastewaters For

Reclamation and Reuse". Water & Sewage Works, 119, 3, March 1972

McGauhey, P.H. "Manrnade Contamination Hazards". Chapter in Man And His

Physical Environment , by Garry D. McKenzie and Russell 0. Utgard;
Burgess, 1972

McGauhey, P.H. "Halfway to Reclamation - Some Thoughts on Commercial
Wastee". Waste Age, Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan. - Feb., 1972

"Searching For The Universal Answer", ibid, Vol. 3, No. 2,
March - April 1972.

McGauhey, P.H. Manmade Contamination Hazards to Ground Water". Chapter
in Mnn's Impact on Environment , by Thomas R. Detwyler, McGraw-
Hill, New York, 1971

McGauhey, P.H. "Clean Water - An Environmental Challenge". Journal, Sanit.
Engr. Div., ASCE, 98, SA2, April 1972

McGauhey, P.H. and Gordon L. Dugan, "Eutrophication of Surface Waters-
Lake Tahoe." Report No. 16010 DSW o5/7l, WECR Series, Environmental
Protection Agency, May 1971

McGauhey, P.H., D.B. Porcella, and Gordon L. Dugan. " Eutrophication of
Surface Waters - Lake Tahoe - Indian Creek Reservoir". Report
No. 16010 DNY 07/71, Environmental Protection Agency, July 1971.

McGauhey, P.H. "Does Private Industry Face an Unfamiliar Role?", Waste Age,
Vol. 3, No. 3, May-June 1972

"Who'll Buy My Violets?", ibid, Vol. 3, No. 4, July-Aug. , 1972

"New Headaches For the Public Works Official", ibid, Vol. 3 N0. 4,
Sept. - Oct., 1972

Porcella, Donald B. , P.H. McGauhey, and Gordon L. Dugan. "Response To Tertiary
Affluent in Indian Creek Reservoir," Jour. WPCF, 44, 11, Nov.

255

McGauhey, P.M. "Solid Waste Management Systems", Proc. Solid Waste Recycling
Conference, Center for Engineering Research, University of Hawaii
Jan. 27-28, 1972

McGauhey, P. II. "Managing Solid Wastes in a Three-Dimensional World", Waste Age,
Vol. 4, No. 1, Jan. -Feb. 1973

McGauhey, I'.H. "Tipping On A Holy Land", Ibid, Vol. 4, No. 2, March-April, 1973
McGauhey, P.H. "There Ought To Be A Law", Ibid. " 4, " 3, May- June, 1973

McGauhey, P.H. "Land Use As A Factor In Coastal Water Quality", Proc. 13th
Coastal Engineering Conference, Vol III, Chapter 119, (1972 Proc.)
Am. Soc. Civil Engrs . , (June 1973, release).

McGauhey, P.H. "Once Trash — Always Trash ?" Env. Activities News Bui. 2,2,
Charles K. Merrill Publishing Co., April 1973.

McGauhey, P.H. "The Agglomerates Are Coming — A Field in Transition", Waste
Age, Vol. 4, No. 4, July - August, 1973

McGauhey, P.H. "The Transfer Station — Trading Post of Solid Wastes" Ibid.
Vol. 4, No. 5, September - October 1973

McGauhey, P.H. "The Future in Retrospect — Government and Private Industry"
Ibid. Vol. 4, No. 6, November-December 1973

McGauhey, P. 11. "The Incentive to Change - - Grasping Our Opportunity",
California Engineer, 52, 2, November 1973

McGauhey, P.H. "Synopsis of Workshop on Modeling of the Eutrophication Process",
Modeling of the Eutrophication Process, 1973 Workshop Proceedings,
Utah State Water Research Laboratory, Logan, Utah, November 1973

256

INDEX — P.H. MoGauhey

agriculture, 53, 155-156, 157-158, 162-166, 168-169, 174, 176

181, 185-186
air pollution, 54
algal systems, ?8, 81, 112, 123, 172-181, 189

California Water Plan, 162-164, 168

Carew, John, l6l

civil engineering curriculum. See sanitary engineering curriculum

development
composting, 77, 81
consultation, criteria for, 202, 205 • See also MoGauhey, as

consultant.

Davis, Craig, 159, 189
detergents, 124
Dickey, Randal, 55

Economic Evaluation of Water, 110, 112, 125, 150-170

Einstein, H.A. , 171

Environmental Health Sciences, 58-61

environmental studies, 225-229

Erlloh, Harry, 157, 158, 189

Etoheverry, Bernard A., 52

fish ponds, 175-177
Prankel, Richard, l6l, 189

Golueke, Clarence G. , 81, 173

Gotaas, Harold B. , 21, 45-46, 48-51, 58-59, 62-64, 68, 74,

77-79, 81-84, 93, 95-96
Gray, Harold, 42
groundwater recharge, 81, 124

Harding, Sidney T., 42, 52

Hawaii, 212, 221-223, 229

Hyde, Charles Gllman, 39, 41-42, 45, 57

257

Industrial responsibility, 153-15*, 184-185. See also reoyoling.
industrial waste pollution, 54-56

Kaufman, W.J., 82, 171
Krone, Ray B. , 171

landfill, 133-13**

land use, 183, 216-218. See also agriculture.

Langelier, Wilfred P., 39, 41-42, 49, 82

League of California Cities, 68

Lofting, E.M., 159-160, 189

Ludwig, Harvey P., 77-79. 217

MoGauhey, Percy H. :

family, 2-*, 7-8, 11-12, 21, 23, 27-29; marriage to Marguerite

Gerow, 16, 21, 98-99
education! elementary, 5-8; high school, 8-10, 199; college,

10-1*; graduate, 16-19
as professor: Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 14-20;

University of California, Berkeley (SEEL), 21, 31, 79, 84;

University of Southern California, 20
as consultant, 188, 200-22*, 229
philosophy oft life and work, 16, 23-2*, 30; administration,

88-92; teaching, 198-199, 225-226; career goals, 8, 10-14,

19-21, 8*, 98, 170, 191, 22*, 230
interest 1m music, 10-11; photography, 17, 2*; writing, 25-27,

223
Mukherjee, S., 161

O'Brien, M.P., 63, 73, 95
Orlob, G.T., 161
Oswald, W.J. , 173-17*
Owens Valley, 158

Pearson, Erman A. , 77, 79, 125, 171, 188, 190-191, 21*
Professors, observations about, 37, 50, 52-53, 63, 68-69,
85, 88-89, 96, 104, 111, 127, 191-201, 226-229

71-75,

Baab, Jeannette, 82
radioactive wastes, 12*5
reoyoling, 131, 135-1**. 1*6-1*8

258

research projects:

administration of, 72, 76-77, 79, 81-86, 90-92, 97, 104, 127-128
criteria for, 106-108, 113-117, 119-122, 189-190
funding for, 63-65, 93-95, 100-119 passim, 120-121, 160-161
legislative interest in, 68, 94, 168, 186-188
multi-disciplinary approach to, 122-123, 126-129, 149, 151-152,

156, 229-230
uses of, 169-170

Richmond Field Station, 66, 69-74, 77, 79

sanitary engineering, at University of California, Berkeley,

^1-53, 56-65. See also School of Public Health.
Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory:

administration. See research projects: administration of

financing, 75-77, 79, 80-81, 100

origins, 64-84 passim, 95-96

personnel, 77-78, 81-82, 85, 125

relationships with School of Public Health and College of
Engineering, 84-87, 90, 95

research projects, 77-79, 81-82, 114, Chapter IV
San Luis Drain, 1?6, 180-181, 185-186
School of Public Health (University of California at Berkeley),

42, 45, 47-49, 57-62, 64-65, 74-75, 95
Sellek, R.E. , 171
septic tanks, 124
sewage treatment, 33, 174, 182, 184, 186, 202-205. 3ee also

wastewater treatment.
Smith, Charles E. , 63

solid waste management, 66-68, 77, 123, 126-150 passim, 221
space, research in. See algal systems.
Stead, Prank, 154, 156

Tahoe, lake, 169, 174, 214-220
Taylor, Paul 3., 163
Tebbens, B.C., 82
Thomas, J.P. , 82

University of California at Los Angeles, 77, 80
University of California, Office of Research Services, 72-73,
102-106, 116

259

wastewater treatment, 5^-55 » 78, 12^-125, 15^, 171-175. 178-181,

205-206, 210, 215, 220-223
water and agriculture. See agriculture

water, cultural and social attitudes toward, 203-205, 207-213
Water Pollution Control Board, 55-56
water quality management, 150, 160-161, 169, 171-172, 177-181,

183-188
World Health Organization, 207-339

Malca Chall

Graduated from Reed College in 1942 with a B.A.
degree, and from the State University of Iowa in
1943 with an M.A. degree in Political Science.

Wage Rate Analyst with the Twelfth Regional War
Labor Board, 1943-1945, specializing in agricul
ture and services. Research and writing in the
New York public relations firm of Edward L.
Bernays, 1946-1947, and research and statistics
for the Oakland Area Community Chest and Council
of Social Agencies 1948-1951

Active in community affairs as a director and
past president of the League of Women Voters of
the Hayward Area specializing in state and local
government; on county-wide committees in the
field of mental health; on election campaign
committees for school tax and bond measures, and
candidates for school board and state legislature.

Employed in 1967 by the Regional Oral History
Office interviewing in fields of agriculture and
Jewish community history.

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