Former Waterway Administrator Joins Dawson & Associates

(Washington, D.C.) – Don Waldon, Administrator of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority for more than 20 years, has joined Dawson & Associates as a Senior Advisor.

Mr. Waldon comes to Dawson & Associates with more than 35 years experience in federal and state water resources issues. From 1984 to 2005, he was Administrator of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority, a four-state compact established by Congress to promote economic and trade development of the Tenn-Tom Waterway in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.  Prior to that, he served nine years as the Authority’s Deputy Administrator.

From 1985 to 2005, Mr. Waldon also served as President of Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Council and from 2002 to 2004 was Vice-Chairman of the National Waterways Conference, Inc., the premier national trade association concerned with water transportation.

During the mid-1970s, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Interior Department, where he oversaw all land and water resource agencies.  That was the backdrop for “one of my favorite anecdotes,” recalls Waldon:

“In 1974, Evel Knievel tried to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in his homemade rocket from private property he had leased.  The jump was scheduled for September 8 but a few days before that, Interior's state office for the Bureau of Land Management notified our department that the land on the other side of the jump was federal land.  I instructed BLM to notify the stunt producers that Interior was not going to issue a permit for Knievel's hare-brained idea and if he landed on federal land, he'd be fined, even though a pittance compared to the money that would be generated by the stunt. 

“As expected, the jump proceeded but he never made it across the canyon so it became a nonissue.”

Waldon also served for 8 years in the Office of Management and Budget of the Executive Office of the President overseeing the Army Corps of Engineers, the Interior Department, and TVA. He has a degree in civil engineering from Mississippi State University.

For more information on Don Waldon, please click here.