Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

The second observation I had, it’s sort of a general thing about water is; water is
a tribal commodity. We use water to define “us” and “them”. “Us” are the people
with whom we share a water system or water supply and “them” are the people
who are trying to take it away. The ultimate example is Arizona is “us”, that’s our
tribe. California is the evil tribe that’s trying to steal our water. Nevada is a
foreign tribe, but it’s a tribe we’ve cut some alliances with, so they’re kind of okay.
And up in Prescott they have sub-tribes, I mean there are people who, we in
Maricopa County are the enemy to them because we’ve been taking the water
from them for so long in their mind. We knew that. We were the ones that
developed the Salt River Project to begin with and it’s our water as a result and
now they’re beginning to grow and boom enough that they want to take it back.
One of the real ironies that I mention is that in many cases it’s the same people
who live in the valley and use the SRP water supply that are now building cabins
in the headwaters of the Verde where they think they should have water up there.
So the ultimate sort of nirvana for a lawyer is we may have people suing
themselves over the same water. Which is great, because if you sue yourself
you’ll never settle the case.
Q. That’s interesting. I never heard it quite put that way before. But I have heard
that the groundwater laws that Babbitt in that era, the late 70’s early 80’s kind of
crafted and revised, didn’t take into account the growth of the rural areas.
A. Yes, that’s right. I mean the most egregious example, I think is when it was
originally written the Groundwater Management Act treated Pinal County as an
Interview with Grady Gammage
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