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« "Oyster Farm Doesn't Belong at Point Reyes" 5/11/09 SF Chronicle op-ed | Main | River Warrior Awardees in the News » Remembrances of Brian O'NeillBrian was a fine friend and professional colleague. His passing leaves a hard-to-fill vacuum in the wonderful experiment of guiding the National Park Service into a large urban program. I have a memory of a little known accomplishment that reflected his courage as a professional. I was on the Governor's cabinet at the time and decided to try and finish establishing 1200 miles of wild rivers in California to be added to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. Then State Senator Peter Behr had carried legislation for the state side to passage. The Federal Wild and Scenic Rivers System had been passed for some time. The problem was that California water interests had a lot of power in Washington, and any attempts to make the final connection between the two had always been blocked by those interests. The Senator asked me as a favor to try and break the knot. After considerable effort it became clear that we had to beat that Washington group. I had as staff person working in Washington and he concluded that we could quietly run some paperwork and surprise the opposition. We needed to get a Washington Interior department official to carry things on that end, such as signing documents. Brian was with an agency called Heritage Conservation and Recreation service, which later became part of the Department of the Interior. Our attorneys choked a bit and warned that maybe we should slow things up--we seemed to have skipped some hurdles and signed documents in speeding the process past the political obstacles. We finished the required steps and established the 1200 miles of California wild rivers amid the screams of the opposition. I doubt that it ever would have happened without Brian's courage.
Posted on May 14, 2009 1:20 PM | Permalink TrackBackTrackBack URL for this entry: |
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