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would guarantee that planning and program development be done 

 at the watershed level rather than at this higher, so-called higher 

 level of the Federal Government or State government? 



Mr. House. Well, once watershed plans are developed it is hard 

 for me to imagine a way that they would come back to Washington 

 and be efficiently prioritized. There may be no way to avoid the 

 creation of, if not regional councils, at least small regional staffs 

 who might have the function both of prioritizing projects and plans 

 within their region, and these same people might be able to or 

 should be able to go out in the field and assist the local people in 

 their work. 



A good model for that that has worked well in the State of Cali- 

 fornia is the way the Department of Fish and Game runs their 

 salmonid enhancement programs. There is actually one staff person 

 for something between a million and $2 million worth of projects 

 a year, they must have a very difficult family life, but stays on the 

 road all the time and does offer the kind of responsiveness and ex- 

 pertise that is needed. 



Without that kind of interaction, you do not really have a solid 

 way of evaluating what is going on, how good the plans are. The 

 local people also need that kind of expert advice in order to im- 

 prove their own work. 



Mr. Hamburg. What about the role local residents have to play 

 in the more technical aspects of this program? What is your feel 

 for that from having worked with the MRC? 



Mr. House. Well, you know all of us who began the MRC began 

 as college graduates in fields like English literature, sociology. We 

 did not have a clue. What we found immediately, though, was that 

 the expertise was there for us close by. 



We had the good fortune, and even though we are a very remote 

 watershed, we had the fortune to be within 100 miles of the Red- 

 wood National Park, which is a world class laboratory for this kind 

 of work. The people there were more than willing to come all the 

 way out to us and to train us in some essential skills, and it really 

 did not take them a very long time. They trained us in 

 geomorphology mapping techniques in a very few days. We had 

 also at our disposal Humboldt State College at Areata, which is full 

 of experts in this kind of work. 



I would suggest that almost any watershed group in the country 

 has that kind of expertise nearby. Where that does not exist, I 

 would assume the Fish and Wildlife Service would be able to pro- 

 vide those kinds of experts. 



The important thing, I think, in terms of efficient use of public 

 funds, is to trust the locals to develop the right questions. We were 

 able to develop a fairly comprehensive inventory of catastrophic 

 sources of erosion in the Mattole using the training from those 

 sources and then employing 24 nonprofessionals, and we created a 

 document which we were then able to send to every resident in the 

 watershed at a cost of $50,000. I think for a remote agency to have 

 accomplished the same task would have cost maybe five or six 

 times that much. 



Mr. Hamburg. Right. Right. Do you have any fear that setting 

 up this kind of national program is somehow going to compromise 

 the energy on the local level? You know, I guess that could happen 



