Remarks at a Ceremony Marking the Transfer of the Water Pollution Control Administration to the Department of the Interior.

Secretary Udall, my old friends on the platform from the Department of Interior, ladies and gentlemen:

I am very proud to be here today with a Department whose mission I applaud and whose Secretary I so greatly admire.

Stewart Udall and I share a love for the land and the outdoor life. We are both conservationists, though he outdoes me at times in that. He even manages to conserve his strength by letting Mrs. Johnson paddle his raft down the Rio Grande.

So, that brings me into the real purpose of my visit to the Interior Department today-water.

It is a simple word for most men, but it has never been very simple for me. As Mike Straus and Oscar Chapman will remember, I grew up in a very dusty corner of our country where water, and not bread, was the staff of life. The land was harsh and life was hard.

Generations of my people, my neighbors, my friends, and my kin, had fought for water, prayed for water, and on occasions had died for water. When water did come, the Pedernales River would rise in the spring, flooding the valley.

The first few years I spent in Washington, I spent most of the time in the Public Works offices under the leadership of the Secretary of this Department, or in the Secretary's office, itself. And I might say a good many of my nights were spent here.

I remember many, many times staying here until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning during the days when we were building the dams on the Colorado, when we were electrifying the countryside, and when we were bringing the transmission lines connecting with our urban centers in that area that were using the water from the dams to generate the power.

So I resolved to do something about these hardships brought about by water and I gave a large part of my public life to better management of our natural resources, to larger visions of a more bountiful and, thus, a more beautiful America. I gave a part of myself to that great task and I am still giving.

That is why I came over here this morning. I want to give you my personal thanks. I want to give each of you my personal encouragement and I want to give all of you a personal challenge.

We have come a long way since men fought and died for water, and Nature held whole regions hostage to her whims. Men of faith and foresight have come with every generation to love the land and to nourish it. They have acted to halt decay and bar exploitation, to magnify our splendor and to multiply our resources. And they have reaped the harvest promised in the Bible passage that says, "Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee."

You have been among such men. Your vision and dedication have earned the gratitude of this Nation. But because you are such men, I believe you would be the first to say that the work has just begun and the greater harvest awaits.

The work is now your work, more than it has ever been before, because the transfer of water pollution control to this great Department of Interior gives you a new opportunity and a much greater responsibility.

I hope you are excited by that prospect, because your President is, your Congress is, and your Secretary is. And I believe that he will give every ounce of his great energy and imagination to helping you meet this challenge.

But it is you who must meet it and it is you who will surmount it. It is your energy, your imagination, and your minute-by-minute enthusiasm that will really decide whether we master change or whether we are mastered by it.

The tides of change are running deep and swift this morning. There are questions which you must help to answer. Must our progress engulf us? Shall we choke on our own success? Does our society need to tolerate filthy rivers, poisoned air, strangled cities, and tangled roads? Too few parks? Too few beaches? Too little wildlife? Too much ugliness and too little beauty?

Well, I think there is only one answer. No. No, we must not. No. No, we will not.

That answer has already been affirmed by this administration and by our leadership in the Congress. It has been given life by bold new legislation and by new dynamic programs. The answer is on the record and here is just a part of it.

More than 40 important conservation bills passed. The water pollution control bill, the air control bill, the open space program, the Wilderness Act. All landmarks. All real. A new Land and Water Conservation Fund for our States and our cities. The new Bureau of Outdoor Recreation to run it.

Then, the first new national park in our country in 17 years and a parade of 23 new national park areas. Four new national seashores. All crowned by a bright new concept in parks--the Ozarks National Riverway.

And now the Congress has approved our suggestions on the reorganization plan transferring water pollution control to you. Congress is this very minute considering the clean rivers bill and I hope, and I feel sure, that they will approve that, too.

So, we are on the move. We are harnessing progress to our purpose. We are overtaking our problems and we are closing on our dream of a Great Society. How fast we move, how much we achieve, depends once more on you, on your imagination, on your dreams, on your creativeness, your resourcefulness, your determination to push on from past success to future triumphs.

As I said in my Conservation Message to the Congress, "The work will not be easy. It cannot be completed in a year or even in five years, but there will never be a better time to begin."

I didn't think it would take long this morning and I am grateful for your indulging me, because I wanted to come back to the scenes of earlier years here to say to those of you who are carrying on that you have my gratitude and this Department has my confidence.

You shall always have this administration's full support. Together we can attain the vision that we share--America the strong, America the free, America the beautiful--one shining Nation and people.

Thank you very much.