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desalinization of water, and a bill did pass, Public Law 7295 on September 22, 1961, which provided for not more than 75 million dollars to be spent between the fiscal years of '62 and '67 to finance grants and contracts and cooperative agreements and studies under the Act.
Are those monies actually available?
Those monies are available and are being spent. I don't know how energetically they are being spent, because the man who was put in as the head of the Office of Saline Water is a political appointee. His name is McGowan, and he is, I think, an ex-plumber from the Middlewest and not very dynamic or knowing about this area. It's an area that I hope will get more encouragement now that Johnson is President, because he understands the need for water.
Actually, the Freeport, Texas plant was opened in the spring of '61, and Secretary of the Interior Udall and Johnson asked Alice and me to fly to Freeport to see them open this plant. They proposed to get up at be at Friendship Airport at 6:30 in the morning and they were going to fly to Houston and take another plane to Freeport, and open the desalinization plant, and then go to Austin and San Antonio, and then be home the same night. This seemed to us, even though we were very interested in the desalting of water, too much, so we didn't go.
Udall did another thing that seemed to me hopeful. He urged the Atomic physicists at Oak Ridge to do research in the
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