Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

dealt with it are afraid to reopen it. It’s an enormously complex compromise and I
think most people fear that Arizona might not come out as well as it did if it were
reopened. We would like to have our priority revisited. We were not made the
junior right holder, the CAP, was not by that compact, that just allocates amongst
the states. It was the later act authorizing the CAP where we had to give up our
sort of pari passu, equal-equal priority. We’d like to revisit that. You know I have
some sympathy for Nevada; I think they did not get a fair deal. I think California’s
done just fine. They used a whole lot more than their 4.4 million for a long time;
mostly, yes, it was our water. The whole, part of the reason why we created the
Arizona Water Banking Authority was to deal with Nevada, to try to help Nevada
in a way that didn’t hurt Arizona. Because this is all like a giant game of
diplomacy, like you used to play in college where you’d be Albania and you‘d
have to find an ally. Well Arizona is a little better than Albania but we’re small
fish here in the scheme of a lot of this. And Nevada is someone that we’ve been
able to help. So that’s one of the major things we did when I was on the CAP,
was try to cut a deal to help Nevada because we need them in order to deal with
California. Were it reopened it would be very hard to be sure we could put a
check on California’s political clout. So I would say, no, we should not reopen it.
Q. Talk a little bit about the Arizona Water Bank. What is it and what part did you
play in it
Interview with Grady Gammage
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