The job of presiding over the Mississippi River Commission brings with it the same goal as any other task Brig. Gen. Robert Crear has tackled.

From earning a master’s degree to commanding the largest disaster recovery effort in the history of the Army Corps of Engineers after Hurricane Katrina, Crear brings up a familiar theme – doing it right.

&#8220It has a phenomenal heritage, a great reputation for getting things done,” Crear said of the seven-member commission of which he was appointed president last week by President Bush.

With the appointment, Crear becomes the first black president of the MRC and the first Vicksburg native to be selected for the post.

Since June 2004, Crear has been commander and division engineer of the Corps’ Mississippi Valley Division in Vicksburg and president-designee of the MRC, which has management jurisdiction for the nation’s largest waterway.

Appointees include three officers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, an official of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and three civilians, two of whom must be civil engineers.

The MRC was created by Congress in 1879 for the general improvement of the Mississippi River. Its work includes improving navigation, preventing flooding and facilitating commerce along a watershed that drains more than 40 percent of the United States and two provinces in Canada.

&#8220The river wants to do what it wants to do. Our job is to train it,” Crear said.

Making sure the entire river system is up to speed in terms of flood protection is an immediate goal, he said, including the implementation of a $2 billion project to shore up the 27 locks and dams along the river, north of St. Louis.

More pertinent to the Lower Mississippi is an equally expensive project to rebuild coastal Louisiana. Both projects are still awaiting the go-ahead on funding from Congress.

&#8220We’ve endorsed them fully,” Crear said on both endeavors.

Among the MRC’s advisory duties are recommending policy and work programs, studying and reporting on modifications or changes to the Mississippi River and Tributaries project, created by Congress in 1928, commenting on matters authorized by law, making inspection trips, and holding hearings that gather input from the public.

Those activities and that of the MVD are conducted by Corps district offices in St. Paul, Minn.; Rock Island, Ill.; St. Louis; Memphis; Vicksburg; and New Orleans.

In addition to his other duties, Crear was the commander on the ground in Iraq for restoring oil production in 2003.

He has also been commander of the Vicksburg District; chief of staff at Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C.; and commander for the Corps’ Southwestern Division in Dallas.

He is married to the former Reatha Hall, also of Vicksburg. He attended Rosa A. Temple High School here before graduating in engineering from Jackson State University and entering the Army.

Crear continues to command Task Force Hope, the division’s effort in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s national response plan to Hurricane Katrina.

About $6 billion in funding has already flowed into Katrina recovery efforts in southeast Louisiana, covering an array of projects aimed at bringing the levee system there to standards that surpass pre-storm sufficiency.

Some of that work was completed before the 2006 hurricane season began, including replacing faulty I-wall structures with T-walls along the Industrial Canal near the ravaged Ninth Ward.

Reports by various Corps districts are due to Congress by December 2007 that will outline, among other things, what will become of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel that funneled much of the floodwater that submerged eastern New Orleans.

&#8220There’s an array of possibilities with that,” he said.

One of them is making the deep-water channel more shallow instead of closing it altogether, Crear said.

Detailed plans to restore undamaged portions of the city’s 350 miles of levees to heights that will eventually surpass pre-Katrina levels by 3 feet and raising the system to prevent &#8220hundred-year” floods by 2010 are also due before the end of 2007, Crear said.