Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

that. That we needed to get some legal issues resolved before we’d ever be able
actually settle with the federal government and so we hired Snell and Wilmer,
appropriately, and Stuart Somach, a Reclamation law specialist in California, to
represent us. And we started the lawsuit against the federal government over
the cost of the canal. And we won enough early motions in that, that resulted in
our being able to re-engage on an attempt to settle. At that point it was David
Hayes who had then become Assistant Secretary of Interior and that’s what
ultimately resulted in the settlement that was reached.
Q. You mention about the Indians. Is that something you had been aware of or that
people had thought of when they envisioned Central Arizona Project water
coming here
A. I think that there was always a thought that some of it would go to the Indians. I
don’t think in the early days it would ever have been anticipated that as much of
the water would wind up with the Indian tribes as wound up with the Indian tribes.
I don’t know when they first filed their claims against the Gila River. Really it’s
the Gila River General Adjudication. This is another one of these… There’s a
law firm in town that has passed this lawsuit down from grandfather to grandson,
these go on for so long. I don’t know the whole history there, but their claims
aggregated more water than there is in Arizona. But they were not claims to be
scoffed at. Basically there’re claims against the federal government really for
creating the Salt River Project. That’s where the water went, the Gila doesn’t
flow because we dammed it up and we all use it. Well, you can’t take that back.
Interview with Grady Gammage
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