Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

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Q. It’s ironic that Bruce Babbitt had been the Governor when the groundwater laws were being rewritten and he was Secretary of the Interior during this time. Where did he fall Was he helpful A. Yes, yes he was. I mean he had his own sort of problems in getting the deal to come together. The Indians, whom they viewed as, the Department of the Interior viewed themselves as negotiating on behalf of the Indians. The Indians weren’t wild about that and didn’t trust them and weren’t sure they were doing a good enough job. So the first time it fell apart, my sense was the Department of the Interior was not able to sell it to the Indian tribes as a good enough deal for them. I think Babbitt didn’t know that initially. He thought it was a good enough deal but then it sort of unraveled on him. Ultimately, David Hayes was fabulous. He was a phenomenal person to negotiate with. Babbitt had kept him right on top of it all the time. Q. What was your role in all of this A. I sort of led the negotiating team, which was unusual. You normally wouldn’t have the President of the Board doing that. Doug Miller, who is our in-house counsel, is our point guy on understanding this stuff. Sid Wilson was very involved as the General Manager. Larry Dozier who has more data and information about the CAP and the Colorado River in his head than every book ever written, I’m convinced. He could sit in these meetings and tell you, no we can’t do that because of this issue or that issue. It was just like having a computer there to calculate it. He can tell you every valve and how well it Interview with Grady Gammage Page 54 of 91
operates. He’s just an amazing guy. If you do an oral history with Larry Dozier you will need a thousand tapes. It will take forever to do, because he does talk a lot. Stu Somach who was our outside counsel was there and Bob Hoffman and Carlos Ronstadt from Snell and Wilmer. They were all the technical guys. I was the big picture guy. I kept saying, okay we’ve got to figure out how to get this done, these pieces ought to fit together. David Hayes and I kind of bonded over this. He had been one year behind me at Stanford. I did not know him, but he had been one year behind me at Stanford. And Doug Miller was one year ahead of me at Stanford. And he and I were able to communicate really well about it. Q. You did these as the CAP Board President, as a volunteer A. Yes, yes. I didn’t get paid for any of this. Which just frosted me (laughing). The money was just flowing out to lawyers like it was water. We were spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in legal fees and I got zero of it. But that’s okay. Frankly it was more fun being the client than it would have been being a lawyer. If I were the lawyer I would have had to lie awake at night worrying more, because that’s what you do. That’s your job as a lawyer. You take your client’s problems over and you fix them. I didn’t have to do that quite so much here. It was really an interesting experience for me to have all these lawyers and everybody. It was important for me I think, as Board President to be engaged on it. It was easier for me to be reasonable than it would have been for them to be reasonable, because for the Staff to give a little bit, they’d then have to go back to the Board and get beaten up by the Board. I had to do the same Interview with Grady Gammage Page 55 of 91
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Interview with Grady Gammage CAP Or
Page 3 and 4: Q. Your father married his high sch
Page 5 and 6: A. Yes, I liked it. It worked reall
Page 7 and 8: frustrated her that I didn’t real
Page 9 and 10: Q. Did you go to downtown Phoenix m
Page 11 and 12: when you have a State agency that d
Page 13 and 14: would clear off, you’d sort of co
Page 15 and 16: to work and so I thought I probably
Page 17 and 18: Q. Prior to that they couldn’t se
Page 19 and 20: like the substance. I liked explain
Page 21 and 22: the CAP Board by the City of Phoeni
Page 23 and 24: Q. It’s kind of interesting that
Page 25 and 26: this bizarre…and the other thing
Page 27 and 28: wanted to get. Until the cities gre
Page 29 and 30: you could grow cotton. You could ma
Page 31 and 32: You are the presiding officer of th
Page 33 and 34: A. Well, you know the immediate thi
Page 35 and 36: that has driven civilization to exi
Page 37 and 38: dealt with it are afraid to reopen
Page 39 and 40: seepage. But we have all this extra
Page 41 and 42: it’s a bank. You don’t know whe
Page 43 and 44: this water has been banked, not thr
Page 46 and 47: the notice of completion. The notic
Page 48 and 49: to be our big customers couldn’t
Page 50 and 51: that. That we needed to get some le
Page 52 and 53: the most important constituent grou
Page 56 and 57: thing but it was different because
Page 58 and 59: Q. We do have water in the Phoenix
Page 60 and 61: complex commodities for our legal s
Page 62 and 63: AMA which was designed to be deplet
Page 64 and 65: end. Well, that worked great for a
Page 66 and 67: ationing water in Phoenix. I said,
Page 68 and 69: water that could be used for agricu
Page 70 and 71: Q. It’s not a current position A.
Page 72 and 73: A. Yeah. I think it was as much as
Page 74 and 75: our side. In the war of western wat
Page 76 and 77: A. It’s interesting. I was in Las
Page 78 and 79: Q. Talking about Nevada again, ther
Page 80 and 81: A. Yeah. Then there’s the Columbi
Page 82 and 83: not sure that’s right. I think it
Page 84 and 85: There’s really two. There’s “
Page 86 and 87: enough to it to hear about things.
Page 88 and 89: Q. Well people might be ready for H
Page 90 and 91: Q. Do you think the new members of
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Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

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