Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

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A. It’s interesting. I was in Las Vegas awhile back talking about these water and growth issues. I was on a panel with Pat Mulroy the czarina of Las Vegas. I was talking about my concerns that we have decoupled water and growth in the West largely and partly because of our inherited Bureau of Reclamation mind set; partly because of our unwillingness to recognize potential restraints on growth in places like Phoenix. We don’t very often talk about water and growth at the same time in the same place with the same people. I think we have to re-couple those. She’s very resistant to that. She is a true water buffalo and true buffalos don’t want to be involved in growth debates. They just want to go get the water and let somebody else fight about it. When Mulholland dedicated the aqueduct to bring the water from the Owens River Valley to Los Angeles, he turned the head gate and said, “There it is. Take it.” That is the attitude of most water managers. It’s not my problem now. You wanted me to get it here. I built you the plumbing and I got you the water. What her answer to Las Vegas—which is essentially out of water, there’s no more water to grow in Las Vegas—is we’ll just [build] desalting plants over on the California coast. They’ll use that water and we’ll use their water out of the Colorado. Ultimately, she is probably right. What the market will bear for domestic water is houses, we have no idea. We know what people will pay for Aquafina and Desanti water and if they would pay that for tap water, you could build all the desalting plants that you’d ever need. It’s just a matter of economics. Interview with Grady Gammage Page 76 of 91
The Yuma Desalter is just a wonderful, quirky, weird piece of history that we have this thing from Guantanamo Bay sitting in Yuma that we didn’t run all these years. We felt strongly at the CAP that is should be operated. I’m glad that they’re starting it now. Q. Where you on the Board when they put it down there A. No. It was put down there a long time ago. It was put down there in the 60’s I think, late 60’s, early 70’s after it was dismantled at Guantanamo after the Cuban missile crisis, it was built down there. Q. I knew it was there a long time but I didn’t know it was there that long. A. It’s pretty old. Q. Maybe it will be economical . . . A. Yeah. I got to believe you can build a whole lot more efficient one today than one that old. Interview with Grady Gammage Page 77 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
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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
Page 50 and 51: that. That we needed to get some le
Page 52 and 53: the most important constituent grou
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
Page 60 and 61: complex commodities for our legal s
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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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Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

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