Council's Division of Geology and Geography. In fact, in its annual report for 1930-31, this 

 National Research Council Committee on Shoreline Investigations of the Atlantic and Gulf 

 Coasts commented on the creation of the BEB and expressed the hope that "a solution of 

 the engineering problems is now in sight." 



It is interesting to note how the ASBPA described its reasons for supporting efforts to 

 create the BEB. An Association brochure dated January 1939 states that the Association's 

 early studies concluded: 



"That a centraUzed agency of high authority must be set up, an agency endowed 

 with resources for general and particular studies, an agency possessing a highly 

 trained scientific and engineering personnel; that this must be a federal body; that 

 the United States Corps of Engineers had these qualifications, as no other body 

 had, but that they were limited by law to consideration of harbor works and aids 

 to navigation; therefore, that new legislation must be obtained, extending the 

 province of that Corps to include the field of shore protection."^ ^ 



This excerpt illustrates the Association's departure from the concept of State responsibility, 

 to that of Federal responsibiUty for shore protection commented Upon earUer. Moreover, 

 the ASBPA suggests here that the U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers possessed special 

 qualifications in coastal engineering per se. While it is certainly true that for many years the 

 Corps of Engineers had been closely involved with harbor and navigation works and even in 

 some shore protection works, and had developed considerable expertise in these activities, 

 yet in 1930, many of the scientific aspects associated with coastal engineering were still 

 largely in an experimental stage. Few realized this fact better than the members of the BEB, 

 and this realization accounted for their intense desire to continue the basic research begun 

 by the BSMBE. It seems, therefore, that the ASBPA had begun to see the BEB as other than 

 a "unifying and coordinating" centraUzed agency. Rather, the Association gradually came to 

 regard the BEB (and the Corps of Engineers generally), as a possible source of Federal 

 funding to assist in the construction of shore protection structures at public beaches. 



The ASBPA 's position in this matter was based on the fact that it viewed public beaches 

 as a resource of all the people of the Nation, and a resource that was now being increasingly 

 used by vacationers who hved beyond the boundaries of the coastal States. Thus, by the 

 early 1930's, the ASBPA had come to believe that the responsibility for protecting and 

 preserving these beaches should be shared by the Federal Government rather than leaving it. 

 solely to the individual States where the beaches were located.^ ^ To meet this 

 responsibility, the Association felt that the Federal Government should provide financial 

 assistance for construction of the necessary protective structures. In the years following the 

 formation of the BEB, the ASBPA worked steadily toward attaining this goal, and its efforts 

 had a definite effect on the history of the Board. 



25 



