Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

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our side. In the war of western water diplomacy that is worth a lot. That is two senators. We each have two senators. You’ll never compete in the House with California but in the Senate it’s a different matter. Of the two senators, Nevada also had Harry Reid who was not then the Majority Leader but was an important guy and was becoming more important. The point is Nevada only got 300,000 acre-feet when the river was divided up. Nobody lived there and there weren’t any farmers. Las Vegas hadn’t boomed at that point. We had enough water to help Nevada in its circumstance and the scheme was that Nevada pays us to bank water in Arizona on their behalf. And then in a point in the future when they need that water, they can just pull it straight out of Lake Mead and we’ll pull up the water they banked here and use it here. Literally, they just pay us to dump water in central Arizona. This is a good deal. The problem was it happened right at the end of my time on the Board. They needed the water earlier than they thought and they hadn’t banked enough. So we loaned them some. We loaned them against their future deposits. This is what banks do. This is how it works. It’s just water instead of money. You’ve got Nevada who may not have much water but they have a printing press for money. You spin the roulette wheels and the money comes out. Instead of legalizing gambling in Arizona, we sold them water and everybody came out fine. It has worked really well I think. It’s been a very good long-term stable alliance that will be useful to us. Interview with Grady Gammage Page 74 of 91
Q. Recently there has been an issue about water up towards the Kingman/Bullhead City area that Nevada wants to buy some of California’s water. Who is going to make that decision A. I just saw a bunch of stuff coming over the internet about Utah, Nevada, Arizona, up there, the Virgin River in the corner, all of the issues. There’s a lot of concern about these proposed subdivisions that would be bedroom communities for Las Vegas primarily but would be in Arizona. That’s one of the areas where we don’t have an AMA. We can’t really deny people the right to subdivide. We allow all kinds of wildcat subdivisions in counties and can’t even say, “You can’t really build there because there’s no assured water supply.” Legislature made a little tweak to that last year. We’ll maybe give some greater regulatory authority to the county over whether or not they can build up there. Q. Do you see that as an ongoing issue A. Yeah that will be hanging around for a long time. I think for right now that issue probably has been solved by the crisis in the home mortgage markets. We have less of a water concern in Mohave County at the moment. Q. What about the Yuma Desalinization Plant They just did a test to restart that. Is it desalting water Interview with Grady Gammage Page 75 of 91
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Interview with Grady Gammage CAP Or
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Q. Your father married his high sch
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A. Yes, I liked it. It worked reall
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frustrated her that I didn’t real
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Q. Did you go to downtown Phoenix m
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when you have a State agency that d
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would clear off, you’d sort of co
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to work and so I thought I probably
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Q. Prior to that they couldn’t se
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like the substance. I liked explain
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the CAP Board by the City of Phoeni
Page 23 and 24: Q. It’s kind of interesting that
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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
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Page 48 and 49: to be our big customers couldn’t
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Page 54 and 55: Q. It’s ironic that Bruce Babbitt
Page 56 and 57: thing but it was different because
Page 58 and 59: Q. We do have water in the Phoenix
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Page 64 and 65: end. Well, that worked great for a
Page 66 and 67: ationing water in Phoenix. I said,
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Page 70 and 71: Q. It’s not a current position A.
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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
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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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