Jim Earhart Interview, Part 2 of 3

  • DT: Let's resume where we last broke off and you were talking about trying to give some examples of how your research might pull back into education.
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  • JE: Yeah. And I-I think I had mentioned the fact that the sort of the toxicological training in connection with the molecular bio and so on had helped in interpreting the 1994 and 1997 binational studies of toxic materials in the Rio Grande and how those had been used to inform my students, those at the first and second year levels, as well as those-I'm still using those with the South Texas Environmental Education Research group, the medical students. And so I still use that particular data.
  • DT: We were talking particularly about how greed and technology and ignorance can work together and that you'd found through your research and teaching that sometimes good information that you develop doesn't necessarily play out well in policy or what people do. And maybe you could give us an example of that?
  • 00:02:25 - 2367 JE: Yeah, let-let me give you an example here of a situation that I think the individual-and I'm not mentioning names of individuals-but an individual had a, you know, a good-hearted attempt. I mean, wanted to do something basically good. I mean, who could argue for building-who could argue against building soccer fields for our kids to play on? I mean, we need that kind of stuff. So there's no problem with that. And yet we had an individual in the city, in fact, I think even working for the city. Maybe even the Environmental Services Department in the city, who in looking for a place to build soccer fields had evidently gotten some permission from the landowners
  • 00:03:12 - 2367 down by the river, in the floodplain, the vega, to build soccer field. Now-so it-it so happened that this was in-in the flood zone and, in fact, was covered with water in 1998 and certainly covered with water in the flood of '54, which was, you know, like 60 feet off of the-the river surface. But at any rate, I was-I used to walk the trail because we had worked the-we had worked on getting the Paso del Indio Nature Trail developed and I used to think boy, I would like to extend that trail on from the college and move on up the river if we could get permission from that landowner to put that trail in because it
  • 00:03:50 - 2367 was beautiful mesquite forest up there, you know, with big-I mean, big mesquite trees at the base. And I would walk that trail about every day and-and one Monday morning, I came in after the weekend and I walked down and suddenly I looked out there and that mesquite wood was gone. It had been annihilated by a bulldozer. And then when I inquired into the situation, this individual had-had done that with the idea of building soccer field. Well, of course, the soccer fields never got put there. For one thing, it's-it's-it's down in the-in the vega of the river. Probably, you know, who knows what
  • 00:04:31 - 2367 kind of laws were broken-I never pursued that. But at any rate, they finally put more soccer fields up on the el-Laredo Community College campus, which is what should've happened at first and then that property should've been used to extend the trail and leave it pretty much intact. But there's a situation, I think, in-ignorance was involved. Ignorance and-and-coupled with a motive that nobody could question, right? I mean, the idea of wanting to create more soccer fields for students. So we have to deal with that
  • 00:05:00 - 2367 kind of thing.
  • Then we have other situations where you've got ignorance coupled with greed. I've dealt with a number of situations in town, one I'm thinking of in my mind right now is located on one of the creek systems here in Laredo. And three developers sort of converged on one part of the creek system. One of them was on one branch of the creek, to the north, and where you had a lot of small tributaries coming together to form what is called in the-in the field a third order stream. Third order stream has to-that's based on-on the US-US Geological Survey map-topographic map scaled one to 24
  • 00:06:00 - 2367 thousand. You see the little blue lines on that map representing stream. Where you see the first blue lines that just end up there, those would be the first order streams. Where two of those come together, you got a second order. Where two second orders come together, you got a third order and so on. And so in one of these situations, we had a third order stream, a pretty good size stream coming into this particular area that I have in mind here where people suffered flooding problems. Then you had another individual on the stream directly north of where these folks are located. And then you had a property
  • 00:06:37 - 2367 owner to the east and then you had the developer of the property itself, so you had three developers involved. The developer where the houses were located had extended his street too far toward the stream and was down in the flood plain. The landowner / developer to the north had brought all of those little tributaries of this third order stream system into one big channel, greatly reducing the absorptive area and sending a lot more water down, plus had begun to build streets and houses and so on. So that sent a lot of
  • 00:07:13 - 2367 water down. And then the other developer just to the north, just immediately adjacent to the homeowners, had diverted the third order stream, filled it, diverted it through a channel, right angle turn, another right angle turn, and sent it down toward the houses toward the second order stream that was coming in from the east. In other words, he had combined two streams next to the houses, so the streams were now on a higher order stream with a lot more water capa-capacity than they had been. And so every one of those developers, you know, I didn't want to cause anybody any trouble; they just wanted
  • 00:07:54 - 2367 all of the available space possible on which to put houses and businesses. And to do that, they all pushed the envelope. Based on that, there were seven homes that flooded. Also some vacant lots that flooded, but seven homes that flooded because of that interaction. Kind of interesting now, the courts will want to try to figure out well, you know, what's the relative responsibility of the different developers? But-but this kind of situation takes place over a good portion of Laredo. I-I'd say two to three years ago, by that time, I had identified at least 60 flooding episodes, 60 different businesses and houses that had flooded. I'm sure there are a lot more than that. But this is the result
  • 00:08:45 - 2367 when you have greed, ignorance, a lot of technology to move a lot of earth and to reorganize the order of the earth and the lack of coordination and control. And that's where government, I think, comes in. Government, in my opinion, should be a referee to sort of be sure that the game is played fairly, just like an athletic co-or like an athletic referee or umpire, whatever, would make certain that things are done according to the rules that are going to be fair for all. And it's pretty obvious to me that we do not have that fairness in Laredo, Texas today.
  • DT: Let's talk about maybe a third aspect of your life. You talked about educating kids and teachers and even politicians and doing research or interpreting other people's research. And then it seems like there's a third angle and that's that you and others grouped together to form something called the Rio Grande International Study Center, maybe as an effort to bring a little more fairness, lessen some of the ignorance, maybe increase some of the coordination. Can you talk about how that group started and what some of the problems they're trying to confront and some of the programs they undertook?
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  • JE: Yeah. And talking about ignorance, when I say that, that is not to put anybody down. We're all ignorant. We get-shine little bits of light here and there. When we first started the Rio Grande International Study Center, and it got sort of started roughly around 1990, but it was actually chartered in 1994, I believe. And when we started that, we were ignorant. I was ignorant. I mean, I started a learning process that's been going on since then.
  • What we knew, though, what we knew, that there was millions of gallons of raw sewage going into the river, at least from Nuevo Laredo. We didn't know about this-that all the stuff on this side. Although I do remember we knew some of it was going in from the Zacate Creek Wastewater Trant-Plant back during the first Earth Day. And I said something about it, but I didn't do much because here I'm a young, wet
  • 00:11:17 - 2367
  • behind the ears teacher here.
  • But Lawrence Berry-I want to mention another name here. Lawrence Berry, deceased individual now, stood up on that issue, I remember. And he set forth the motion that brought down a political dynasty that had been here for a long time and that was the Mayor [J.C.] Martin regime. And course, he had other people helping back there, he had some supporters, but that was the process. That was on 60 Minutes, by the way, and they-they showed the snake pit, which was down at the Hamilton Hotel. They called it the snake pit, where they had the big leaders-political
  • 00:11:56 - 2367 leaders and so on and the community meeting. Lawrence Berry did that. Okay, I just-that triggered that idea. Now let me come back, though, to-to the beginning of the Rio Grande International Study Center, which means I got to fast forward now. We're going to come into the early 1990's.
  • DT: Before you fast forward, why don't you just complete that story about the Earth Day back in the early 70's?
  • 00:12:19 - 2367 JE: Yeah, okay. I recall we were seeing-let's see. I'm trying to remember why I was down there. Maybe somebody told me, but we had seen sort of a sudsy material, sudsy looking stuff coming out of the wastewater treat pla-plant and going into the Rio Grande. Didn't look too good. And of course, I think I was in-when was the first Earth Day? I'm trying to remember the date of that. I think it was back in 1980 something?
  • 00:12:49 - 2367
  • Was 70's? 70? Wow. Okay. I think I was-I was certainly involved in that. And I remember we talked about that issue and we showed pictures and I had-yes, I had Mr. Pettis, I believe, who was in charge of the water at that time, come speak to an Earth Day meeting at the college. You know, I mean, how colleges are-I got to be realis-colleges and universities, very often, their-by the time they get there, everybody's got to be nice and, you know, everything's okay. Not too much hassle, at least that's the way it's been here. And so I was doing that kind of thing. I was doing the
  • 00:13:23 - 2367 typical thing that you're going to see around a college or university. But Lawrence Berry-Lawrence Berry, who was a custodian. He was-in fact, he was head of maintenance for the college, the Laredo Junior College, at that time. Somehow got involved, and I don't know what all the ins and outs of how he got involved. I think he was probably tied in with Mr. [Aldo] Tatangelo, who finally became mayor. He became mayor after that, Mayor Tatangelo and-and he's still living. He's 96 or 7 years old and, you know, he was a very activist kind of guy. And one that I like-I'm not saying, you know,
  • 00:14:10 - 2367 he doesn't-he probably d-I'm sure he doesn't see everything the way I see it, but he was a go-getter and I think made some positive changes for the city. But I think maybe Mr. Berry was tied in with him somehow. But Berry was down collecting data. I mean, here he is a maintenance guy. He's collecting data and he's bringing this to the public. And like I say, pretty soon, I don't know if he did-if he stimulated-well, he stimulated it. I don't know who actually called them down, but I remember 60 Minutes came down and did-and there was a national televised appearance. Of course, that-you can imagine what that did to the local political setup. They-they didn't like it. But I think that was the beginning of the end of that particular regime, which I'm not sure-do you have another question? I'm not sure what else I can say about that at the moment unless you might raise a question of it.
  • DT: Want to clarify if we can, there was some sort of pollution that was coming into-some kind of pipe and it came through an outfall and you...
  • 00:15:13 - 2367 JE: Yeah, I think-I-and I don't-see, I don't remember the specific details. I'm not even sure I was that much into it at that time. As to what was hap-we knew it was sudsy looking water and I don't remember if they had a-probably-probably Berry did have somebody a-analyze it, but I don't remember exactly what was there. But you know, I don't know if there was fecal ma-if there was fecal material. It's very likely there could've been fecal material. But I was down there and, seemed to me, I got more of a chemical odor from the situation. That's been a-that's been a while back. But I know-I know one thing, it had political implications-strong political implication, which did change regimes as far as city government was concerned.
  • DT: It maybe had the same flavor of what happened in the mid-90's and early 90's when you were putting together the Rio Grande International Study Center.
  • 00:16:09 - 2367 JE: Yeah. DT: Maybe you can fast forward.
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  • JE: Okay, now let's go-let's go to that because we would spend time down in river-Doctor Vaughan and I would spend time down on the river and, along with other, and of course, we would see fecal material in the river. I-I remember the carp down at the bend of the river below the college, there'd be a lot of fecal material floating out there and the carp would just come up and-and eat the fecal material, right. Not too pleasant an idea, but that's what hap-that's what happens. And if you-of course, if you go back to the history of carp, back over in the Orient, that's-I mean, they have them in the, you know, the moats around there where-and the rice paddies and so on and where the
  • 00:16:52 - 2367
  • honey buckets are dumped, the feces and so on and the carp use that for a food source. And we'd see bottles floating in the river. Oh, and the thing that really-yeah, this is-this is the thing that really got me back in. Doctor Ken took Tom Vaughan and I on his toxic tour over in Nuevo Laredo. And during that tour, we looked at an open garbage dump, which was-by the way, was close to the country club over there. And I think that garbage dump has finally been disposed of, I believe that's the case. But he took-Doctor Kent took us down to the bend of the river, below where Laredo Community
  • 00:17:31 - 2367 College is located now, to where raw sewage was-was flowing into the river. And I remember looking out there and I saw sort of a-a covering-a covering on the bottom of the river, it's sort of a rusty, red color to it, a frothy looking material on the bottom. And I followed it up to on a rock where it came up on the surface and on the rock surface, it was a white layer. And then I realized what it was. There was a sheet as far as I could see around there-a sheet of plastic baby diapers that had washed down from the Arroyo because there was no sewage treatment or anything. And so people had just dumped the
  • 00:18:18 - 2367 diapers and-and they had washed down and covered over. Well, you know, that has negative effects, too, for your macroinvertebrates, like the dragonfly larvae, caddis flies, all that kind of thing which are necessary for river health because that-that means they don't really have a-a good-I mean, that-that could sort of cover over the bottom. They don't have a good surface in which to develop. And of course, that probably cuts down their oxygen supply, cuts down their access to the bottom and so on. So anyway, that-that really made an impression on me and I think that was the very image that's
  • 00:18:54 - 2367 still in my mind. And-and of course, we photographed it and I've still got the-the image somewhere else, probably digitized.
  • That image is what led us to develop the-the river curriculum course to start with. So we had a little group before we got a National Science Foundation, and this goes way back. We just got a group of people and in that first group, we had-we had ordinary first and second year students, Doctor Ken joined the class.
  • DT: This is Adolph Ken?
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  • JE: Adolph Ken joined-he was in my class because he wanted to be in there. (?) And we had Doctor Rolanda Guerra, the dentist who's on our board now. He was part of the class-all these people enrolled in the class, right? So it's-you had these adults and the young kids altogether. Doctor Vaughan was over there with us each time. I don't know if he enrolled or just came to the class, you know. But anyway, we had these folks in the class and we were all starting out, you know, what do we know? We know that the river is a mess. Why is the river a mess? And see, then Doctor Ken owned one of those warehouses over there.
  • And that's-that's why I really-I like to try to make-I know
  • 00:20:02 - 2367 I've made some pretty strong statements here today, but still we'd like to try to attempt to deal with people and educate as much as possible and say look, just because you're doing something right now that's not very good, you know, we don't mean to put you down by that, but you need to really think about what you're doing because all of us have been involved before. I mean, what do you say when you point the finger at somebody, you got three pointing back at you, right? And-and no way, I-I mean, I feel sort of guilty when I think back over some of my actions in the past, but it takes education to realize how you're affecting.
  • When I was growing up in east Texas, it seemed like to me that everything north of Hawkins was the big woods. It probably went to the North Pole, right? That's just the way-the impression you sort of have. And you know, if you
  • 00:20:54 - 2367 throw down a chewing gum wrapper, well, you know, what big deal is that? But you realize after a while-you know, back then it's hard to see this cumulative effect and we've got a lot of people here in town, if you've driven around much, you've no doubt have seen the plastic bags and everything scattered all over the place. And people just go along, I've seen them, (sound), just like that. Just throw it down out of the car. So somehow changing these attitudes, but that's what this course was about. We started out with people-we just realized there was a problem; we wanted to see what we could do to make changes.
  • From that course, we said hey, we need to get an organization going
  • 00:21:34 - 2367 and so eventually we were chartered in 1994 specifically as a nonprofit organization. I believe it was 1995 when Meg Guerra, who's with LareDOS here in town-I don't know if you met her yet or not. (?). Meg was director of the Center at that time and Meg was able to, at that time, get us a grant from the Meadows Foundation. So we did at one time have about 53 thousand dollars. We haven't had much since, little grant from the county and then a little grant from the city. After that, right now, we've got really nothing except donations coming in from members. But yeah that-that-seeing that image over there sort of triggered getting that course going, it triggered getting the organization and let's see. You got a leading question that would be useful right now?
  • DT: Well, the course and the organization that you put together, what sort of problems did both of those identify about the river? I think you've mentioned some of the toxic and sewage outfalls that you were finding. There was a flooding problem, a dredging and filling problem, I guess, related to the flooding. What other problems were you seeing that were affecting the river and what sort of programs did you try to undertake?
  • 00:23:06 - 2367 JE: Yeah. See I-I can't really say when we first started that that we understood exactly the implications of all these things that were going on in tribu-well, we obviously knew that the warehouses being close to the river and the tributaries was not good, right? But then the more we got to looking around and we see the kind of actions that are taking place, like the-the-the dredging and diversions of the streams and so on and the gouging out the streams, how that is affecting the-the quality of water in the river and probably quantity. Because okay, the-the erosion down by the river itself
  • 00:23:40 - 2367 where the Border Patrol Road is. The d-the dredging-I mean, the-the com-the construction of that Border Patrol Road by the Army Engineers in 1998, the spring of 1998, greatly destabilized the bank. That's river silt, highly erodible. Now down by the Channel 13 tower is a city storm drain, quite a ways from the river itself, quite a ways from the water and where that storm drain comes out, it digs out, you know, a little arroyo. But below that, the terrain sort of flattens out into a grassy brush-covered area and the water spreads into a wide sheet flow, then it flows into the river. So the water was pretty much clean and the flow reduced and there was no erosion to speak of going to the river. But when they came in-when the engineers came in and-and-and dozed that road, what happened then was this water came down the sheet flow, when it hit the
  • 00:24:46 - 2367 road, it turned downhill. It turned downhill and began to erode that road. And within-okay, they cut that road in 1998-spring of 1998, we had a lawsuit going to try to stop it. They did it anyway. This is another thing that bothered me in democracy. When we were in court, I remember we had-I think we had some good attorneys-attorneys you probably know one of them there in Austin. Can't call his name right now, but the attorneys made the case and the-and the federal judge says well, you're right. The Corps of Engineers has not satisfied all the requirements of the environmental assessment, but they say they're going to. And besides that, the President and the
  • 00:25:41 - 2367 Congress want this road. And so I'm thinking in my mind, you know, where is local opinions in American democracy? I couldn't say-you know, I was-I was rather bothered by that-that whole episode. But anyway, they went ahead with the road. When the road was finished, I got on a bus with the mayor, with the head of the Border Patrol sector here and a number of people and we rode around the road down by the river. That was in the spring of 1998 and okay. So that happened. Now in the fall of 1998, we had a flood. One of the tropical storms stalled out up by Del Rio, let out a lot of rain. Joe
  • 00:26:42 - 2367 McCaddy and-Carey and one of our other friends and I had just come from a junket around Chihuahua, Mexico. We had gone around those head-those headwaters in Mexico, the headwaters of the Rio Grande there and we had seen this-the lakes up there that were just-practically no water in them. It was very dry. The Conchos River, as we-we came down was a-just a trickle. Looked like a creek. But when we got to-
  • 00:27:11 - 2367 when we got north of Del Rio to the Seminole Canyon State Park, we stopped in because I wanted the guys-hey, Joe, I want you guys to see this park. Well, we saw the sign on the road, well, we're closed because of flooding. And I said ah, these guys just want to take off. But anyway, we drove on toward Del Rio and when we got there and we-when we crossed San Felipe Creek, which is coming from the San Felipe Springs, which is the public water supply for Del Rio, we crossed over the creek and wow, it was flooding like crazy and we could see that it was wiping out houses and all this kind of
  • 00:27:48 - 2367 stuff. And you know, I mean, there were loss-there was loss of life there, loss of livestock and so on. And I said okay, in three days, we'll see it. And of course, we came back to Laredo and sure enough, three days-that's about how long it takes water to get from Del Rio to Laredo-in three days, the flood stage hit in-in Laredo. The Border Patrol Road was completely covered-well, not-not the whole Border Road covered, but most of the Border Patrol Road was covered. I remember there was a little stretch down below just west of the college that we got down there and walked and we could see
  • 00:28:24 - 2367 all these rafts of Carrizo coming down, you know. And of course, there were bodies of animals and stuff washing down through there. After the flood subsided, we went down to the-the road south of the college and, of course, it was annihilated because what had happened when they built the road around, that's a-that's almost a right angle turn, that bend of the river downtown. When they built that road around there, they, in effect, built a dike. They built a dam. And when the water was coming down the river, as it
  • 00:29:03 - 2367 reached flood stage, it began to cross it. In other words, it went across the-the shortest distance. The hypotenuse of a right angle, right? And-and went across and hit that dam and just broadsided and wiped it out. So that-right after the flood, we went down there with the news and, of course, I hated to see what had happened, but it was kind of hard to keep this, you know, the I-told-you-so look off my face, I guess because, you know, here it was, within a matter of months, after we had predicted what had happened. And I think that gave us the-gave us some credibility with the community, too, at that time
  • 00:29:40 - 2367 because we had-actually it was worse than what we had thought it would be because we hadn't really expected that much rain. We knew it was going to erode, but I mean, sometimes I pray for rain, you know, and if you're going to do it anyway, well, let's-let's put it to the test, right? And it was put to the test and it failed. Now here's the interesting thing. Since it failed the first time, the Corps eventually came back in and sort of rerouted. Did it a little bit differently. And it washed out again. There's been another-well, not as bad as the '98 flood, but another flood washed that work out. Another place further upstream, which is a very good place-if you want to do some
  • 00:30:33 - 2367 photography, that's a good place to look at erosion on the river by the Channel 13 tower. The Corps fixed it, I believe, twice and then a-a little over a year ago, I had my STEER students down there and the city was repairing it. And then in a month or so, I had my STEER students down there after a rain and it was gone again. Now whether they're going to get it through their heads eventually that you can't build a road, I don't know. I have said that over and over. You cannot maintain a road down there. So now they've put in four wheel-they put in a little four-wheel buggies right at the-what do you call them, the power-the little four wheeled vehicles.
  • DT: Four-wheelers?
  • 00:31:16 - 2367 JE: Four-wheelers down there and they're running all over the place and, of course, that is destabilizing as well. So here-and-and I've made this statement probably many times before, that I think making a river an international border is-is one of the worst things...[Cell phone ringing]
  • 00:31:35 - 2367 JE: One of the worst things that can be done to a river...(misc.)
  • DT: When we broke off, we were talking about the construction of the Border Patrol Road and-and some of the problems from flooding and essentially a dike being created and then breaking loose and causing the collapse of the bank of the Rio Grande. And I think you made an interesting comment that-that one of the worst curses that a river can have is to be an international boundary and it seems to me that there are a number of plans that might have existed for the river, you know, whether it's being used as a sort of fortified and monitored zone or being used as a hike and bike trail, which I think you worked for. Or as a riverine corridor for wildlife and because it's this international boundary, all those plans may come to naught because there's this loophole in the jurisdictions and I was hoping you could help us understand some of the problems of it being not only a river, but also a boundary.
  • 00:32:52 - 2367 JE: Yeah, okay, one of the problems and-and I'm thinking about this wildlife corridor you mentioned. One of the problems is that on this side of the river, we have private ownership of the land. In other words, the U.S. Government owns the water and apportions the water. But the land under the water is owned by-well, it could be owned-it could be owned by the government. I know the gov-the federal government's buying some further upriver, buying some for park space and so on. But right here, you have strips of land. I've looked at some of those surveys and there're
  • 00:33:31 - 2367 strips of land running down to mid river and individuals own that land. That means if they were-if you were to go down and find oil or gas under the river, that would go to whoever owns that-that property. You know, they might slant drill or something there to get that. So that means that individuals have control of that. And then also the city, like Laredo, has control of-of that vega. Now the River Drive Mall ha-ha-a mall has been built right down in the flood plain. The parking lot is right in the flood plain and
  • 00:34:10 - 2367 where you should have vegetation for a wildlife corridor is covered over by pavement for parking. And then also, next to that was the government parking lot by Bridge One. Now I believe the city has also been granted that piece of property, but it's still covered over by pavement and parking lot. You do have a little stretch of carrizo [reed] next to the river and I assume that some animals, you know, of certain stripes might make it up through that. Unfortunately, we do not have the protection that is down in the lower valley because they're concerned about ocelots, right, and jaguars, the cats and so on and so
  • 00:34:56 - 2367 they have built bridges down there with that idea in mind so that-that animals can still migrate through that. Laredo, Texas is not constructed very well that way. And also certain individuals-individual landowners have pretty much wiped out a lot of the vegetation all the way down to the river because they want to go down and have a place to launch boats, for example. So yeah, that's a problem. We would-we are an international border, which I think is a terrible thing for the river and I'm going to explain that. One good thing on the Mexican side is that-that the federal government owns the
  • 00:35:32 - 2367 vega. If we had that here and we'd control it and they had it and controlled it, we could have a-a much better controlled river.
  • Now why do I say it's a terrible curse to have it as an international border? Now that way I'd like to move up and look at a specific example in El Paso. This is where the international border along the river begins and if you recall, El Chamizal, which El Chamizal, this is-dealt with a piece of land that was changed by the changing course of the river that had been, I believe, in Mexico but then the river
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  • changed its course and it was now in the US. And there was a big battle because there were-there were structures down there on that, obviously built in the flood plain. But there were structures on it and then there was an argument between the Mexican and the U.S. Government about whose property that was. And finally, I believe, the U.S. ceded that property to Mexico. Now because of that conflict, the International Boundary and Water Commission channeled the stream. If you go to El Paso right now and you look at the river, it's a concrete channel and down through the Big Bend in places, this has been
  • 00:36:58 - 2367 channeled to keep the river from migrating. A river migrates. If you have a bend in the river, for example, a meander, over long periods of time, that meander may migrate. And so in order-it-by-by making the river the political border between two nations, now you got to make it stay put and that creates all of this channeling and concreting and so on. And El Paso is a-just an excellent place to see that negative aspect. The fact that the river changes-I was talking to somebody here a while back who's studying that. They're going back in geological time. I mean, this river has tremendous meanders all
  • 00:37:51 - 2367
  • through it extending a long way from where the river is now. I saw just a little bit of that in a study that someone was doing. And of course, the whole area at one time-or-or in fact, more than one time, was covered by the sea and you can find oyster beds and so on. Some of these things show up, you know, by the erosion taking place in the creeks here in town. So okay, there's-there's one example of having problems with it-with having the-the river as a border. Another problem would be this. The '94 and '97 studies that I
  • 00:38:23 - 2367
  • mentioned earlier. Of course, this was back before they started putting a lot of this stuff online and then we had trouble. I mean, the-okay, so the work was done for the '94 study probably in '92 or '93 and I've forgotten when we finally got the study, it may be more like '95 because we couldn't even get at the data because there was this problem between the International Boundary and Water Commission here and CILA [Comision Internacional de Limites y Aguas], the corresponding group across. So that creates, you know, some political tension. So-so that's another problem. But I'd say the biggest-the biggest hindrance would be this-
  • 00:39:04 - 2367
  • this problem of just messing up the stream channel. That's the thing that bothers me, right now, worse about it. I'm sure there are other issues in-in dealing with that.
  • DT: Well, one issue that comes to mind that maybe heightens this difference between the north side of the river and the south side of the river is that there are water claims on the Rio Grande that are always brought into high relief whenever there's a drought, which is pretty frequently. And I was hoping that you could talk about the different claims on the river and how the river, I guess, three or four years ago actually ran dry before it could go across the Boca Chica and into the Gulf of Mexico.
  • 00:39:49 - 2367 JE: Yeah, I would love to do that. In fact, one of the issues that I'm working on right now that ties in with that. I've been trying to get this message across to our local political leaders because they keep riding the political hobbyhorse of saying hey; we've got to have a secondary water source. We're going to have raise our-our water rates in the city so we'll have this money to go to the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer in northwest Webb County. My opinion is after these, what, 15 years or so of studying this, the Rio Grande provided water for this area for 250 years and, if properly managed, in my opinion, can provide it for another 250 years. If properly managed, that's the key-that's the key
  • 00:40:34 - 2367 point-properly managed because right now, 85 gallons out of every 100 gallons of water that is taken from the river goes for agricultural irrigation. Agricultural irrigation along the Rio Grande is a highly wasteful process. The delivery systems to the fields or orchards for irrigation are very leaky. Some of them are uncovered and so there's chance for evaporation, there's a chance for water seeping into the subsoil. And then the irrigation practices themselves. Sometimes they flood a whole orchard. Now you put a foot of water out there and-or the fields. It has been shown by technology such as drip irrigation and, in fact, when Jim Hightower was agricultural commissioner of the State of
  • 00:41:37 - 2367 Texas, we had on the Laredo Community College campus the Texas-Israeli Exchange Forum. We had a group of people at the college from Israel and, in fact, they raised various crops using drip irrigation. The drip irrigation was controlled by computers. It was computerized irrigation. This is back in 80's, I guess. Drip irrigation-and-and the Israeli experience has shown that you can-depending upon the different kinds of crops, you can save probably anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of the water by irrigation
  • 00:42:14 - 2367
  • techniques. And I think that doesn't even count what's lost in the delivery systems. So I think we could save far more than half of the water that's being taken from the river. Now that means 85 percent out of every 100 gallons goes for irrigation-for agricultural irrigation. So that means that cities such as Laredo and other cities along the river are taking their water out of the other 15 gallons. Now if we could work with-if cities could work with the irrigators and somehow provide-help provide the financial backing, basically purchase water from those irrigators so that they could put in modern water
  • 00:43:08 - 2367 conserving deli-delivery and irrigation technologies, they could save a tremendous amount of water. I mean, just think, if you're going-if you got 85 percent, you save 10 percent of that, you saved almost as much as you're-you're using from municipalities. And if you save twice that, you're over-you'll have over twice as much as what you're-what you're using for cities right now. So what has to happen-this is what I'm trying to get the local politicians to see because they sort of have their head in the sand. They're saying oh, we can't deal with the people down in the lower valley. Too many of them-no, no, no. That's not the gu-that's the whole reason that we should be dealing
  • 00:43:47 - 2367 with them because there are so many and they're using so much water. We need to be at the table with them. I went to a water summit down in-down in lower valley here in the fall. I saw one person from the City of Laredo who was an underling, nobody at the top level that could be negotiating. I didn't see anybody from the county. We need to be negotiating with those folks. Now what we need to negotiate with them then, we need to get our representatives in the legislature to get involved and it's going to take the passage of one or more bills to get that kind of interaction going so that-that cities-I mean, a-a gallon of water is worth a whole lot more in the city than it is in agriculture. You stop and think about that, I mean, you know, a-a gallon of water to coming into a doctor's office can bring a lot more money than a gallon of water going to irrigate a crop.[Phone ringing]
  • DT: You were talking about the overuse of agricultural water.
  • 00:44:55 - 2367
  • JE: Right. If-if by saving, you know, 10 or 20 percent of the water that's used for agriculture inter-irrigation would double-more than double the amount of water that's being used in the-by municipalities right now, right now. And you could save probably 40 percent or maybe 50 percent with time. And you could have room for tremendous amount of municipal growth by saving the agricultural water. That would be the-that's the biggest area to save, but
  • there's another important area for saving, we're also trying to get our local politicians to see this. This would also-needs involvement of the
  • 00:45:34 - 2367
  • legislature. It needs involvement of the representatives in legislature. And that would be to give the-to allow cities like Laredo to bank water that is saved through conservation. Right now, the City of Laredo, based on usage, has a 200-gallon per capita usage per day. For each citizen, one-two hundred gallons of water are used per day. San Antonio is
  • 00:46:07 - 2367 like, the last I heard, 147. Years ago, San Antonio was using 213 gallons per day. Some of our politicians have said in the past, oh well, yeah, we can't save water like San Antonio because if we save it, then we just lose it. We don't have a place to store it. They've got the Edwards Aquifer. I'm not sure how sound an argument that is, but to-just to satisfy that argument, that's why we need to be interacting with our representatives in the legislature. We need a bill in the legislature that would say municipalities along the Rio Grande who under-who develop a water conservation program and save water
  • 00:46:49 - 2367 will be able to bank that water for future use. And that water for us is stored in Amistad Reservoir. And true, we're talking about a water bank account that is very-it's not like your, maybe your checking account at a regular bank because it is subject to climatic change-or climatic conditions. It's subject to drought and a lot of rainfall and so on. And so the balance-your balance might fluctuate from year to year. So it would have to be done on some kind of percentage basis. You save so much, now when the times get lean, you can-you'll-you'll eith-least you'll have a certain percentage out of what's
  • 00:47:37 - 2367 left there. Or maybe times are not getting so lean, maybe you're growing. You expand a lot and you need a lot more water. Then you could draw more water-you could start drawing more water against what you've saved, what you've banked. We need that kind of thing and then, you know, the incentives will be there for the city to conserve. A few years ago when Fernando Romano, I mention his name because he's a guy I really respected here who ran the water treatment plant. He was head of the water treatment
  • 00:48:06 - 2367
  • facilities here in Laredo. In one of the previous droughts, he implemented a water savings program and reduced-very significantly reduced the amount of water that was used for watering lawns and so on in the summer. When the council looked at that, they said wow, you know, we got a million dollars less this time than we normally get. We can't have this. We can't have water conservation. That's the kind of mentality that we need to get rid of.
  • DT: Well, it's interesting. You're talking about changing mentalities through water conservation and water banking and then some mentalities, it sounds like, of your local politicians and your state legislators. And I'm curious if you could talk about that same effort to change people's minds in the context of your own life, where recently you've resigned from being the Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center to be a private citizen acting more as a lobbyist and an advocate in the public governmental realm. Can you talk about that change in your own life and maybe give some examples of some of these political actions that you've undertaken?
  • 00:49:21 - 2367 JE: I'd be happy to. In fact, at a town meeting a couple of weeks ago, I had a chance to talk to the candidates for state representatives from here, Richard Raymond, Mercurial Martinez, I believe, Mister Mora and Mister Cantu, I think. But anyway, I was talking specifically, I asked-I asked-I had the opportunity publicly to ask Candidate Martinez if he would introduce and/or support a bill just as I've described to you. And-and of
  • 00:50:04 - 2367 course, he said yes before the group at that time, so I've got him on record as saying that he would. Mister Raymond, I did not catch him in public, but I asked him outside and he agr-he agreed to the same thing. Yes, he would look at that. So those are the kinds of things I'm doing and-and-and just-just today, before coming here, I'd written a letter of endorsement for one of the candidates for county-county judge, in which I pretty much outlined the essence of what I've just talked about here. N-not that the candidate I'm endorsing has embraced that yet, but that candidate is at least above the rest in
  • 00:50:47 - 2367 general as far as, I think, preparedness, as far as a general bent toward having a better environment and a better quality of life. And I'm hoping to influence this person that way and, in fact, in the endorsement, I have included this and then I'm including why I'm endorsing her. And I'm not saying she's not agreeing with that, but I'm not saying that she is agreeing with that. I'm putting that all in the same email which will go to hundreds of people on my email list. And I don't know if it-well, I think-I think the LareDOS would pick it up, but I don't think there's time. I think that issue will be coming out-it's
  • 00:51:26 - 2367 only a monthly. Whether the [Laredo Morning] Times will pick that up, I don't know. I would hope so. But at least a lot of people are going to get that message, including the candidates because I want to make sure that they-that-that-that the candidates get it.
  • DT: Where does this effort to be a sort of private ombudsman, a kind of proponent of better government-you mentioned the LareDOS and the Laredo Morning Times and I'm curious how sympathetic the media has been and how much of a partner or an opponent local newspapers and journals have been to environmental concerns that you've had?
  • 00:52:07 - 2367 JE: We've had-actually both of them have been very good. Over the years, I've cultivated reporters and we've had some very good ones. We've got one right now with the Times, Tri-Tricia Cortez, west side of San Antonio. She grew up with a-a degree from-back in the Northeast. But she has done an excellent job. She's-she's-she's been sort of heavy ammunition sometimes on some of the projects that we were working on. And then of course, the Laredo Times-the-the LareDOS had been with us all along. I mean, Meg-the monthly paper, I wish it were weekly, at least. I mean, it's
  • 00:52:51 - 2367 clearly in our camp.
  • And I think-and I consider it coming down on the side of the citizens. And people have a pretty time-hard time arguing with that because I don't make any money out of this. And that's kind of hard-that's been hard for some people in Laredo to understand. They don't quite understand somebody who would spend this much time and effort if you're not making something out of it financially. And, you know, but it-it has to do with that east-east Texas upbringing I had at Hawkins. Goes back-it goes back to the scouting, to the school, to the Sunday school. All those where you were taught, you know, it's kind of important how you live your life. It all goes back to that. Now the-several years ago, the-few years back, the-I was surprised when the paper, they named me, I think, Laredoan of the Year, or something like that. That was-
  • 00:53:49 - 2367 that really was kind of a surprise when I got that. But-like I say, they have been good to present things and very often, just like on this-I had the two-part series on the-on this water conservation, which they published a few years back.
  • I'll have to admit here, you know, there is some tension sometimes. And I think it's kind of understandable. Here a while back on one particular issue involving the Springfield Avenue extension between Del Mar Boulevard and International Boulevard, which has been pushed by certain individuals in the community and Councilman Gene Belmares, who is councilman over
  • 00:54:29 - 2367 there right now, is continuing to push that, although he inherited the problem and I tried to talk with him, hey, you inherited this problem, you shouldn't stick with it. But he has and he claims, you know, no, that will not violate the Green Space ordinance and it won't violate the subdivision ordinance and I, of course, have contested him publicly saying they will. I'm convinced it will. I helped write the Green Space ordinance so pretty much know what's there and I know what roughly they're-they're planning to do out there because they have at least a-have drawn a rough map of that even though they have never actually hired an engineer, you know, to-to look at the situation. And I lost my train of thought. I was the-trying to build.
  • DT: We were talking about the media and before that being a government proponent.
  • 00:55:15 - 2367 JE: Yes. Okay. In this particular situation and Tricia wrote some good articles concerning Springfield, but you know, suddenly it seemed like it was a little-I had experienced more difficulty getting in the paper than I had before on the Springfield Avenue extension. Well, course, a lot of your companies that are dealing in that business are heavy advertisers with the paper and so I'm sure that puts a little pressure on them. For example, the councilman-the councilman, Belmares, is I think the Chief Sales Agent for Westland Builders. And you know, I've-I've just sort of felt like that-it helped create a-you know, let's err on the side of caution. You know, maybe Earhart's
  • 00:56:12 - 2367 wrong on this. And it's a little bit more difficult, I-I just felt a little friction, I felt a little resistance that I had not felt before in getting in the paper. Then LareDOS-Meg Gettes at LareDOS, wrote a pretty scorching editorial concerning flooding over on Candlewood Road. This is kind of in the same vicinity of the Springfield Avenue extension and the development that's taken place up there has been con-considerably responsible at least for part of that flooding of those homes on Candlewood Road, down close to Mary Help of Christians School.
  • And when Meg wrote that scorching editorial involving the
  • 00:56:55 - 2367
  • councilman, I think it was the next day or shortly thereafter, she got a notice or a call or something from Westland Homes that they were canceling their 625 dollar a month ad that they had had with LareDOS for the last three years. Pretty obviously deck-direct response, right? So I think when you have the small town papers and you're talking about issues in the community, I think that's probably a factor. Why, it's obviously a factor in the case of LareDOS. And like I say, I felt a little resistance in getting things in the paper otherwise, and maybe some of the other folks did in trying to write letters to the editor.
  • DT: Do you feel any resistance or conflict in your own mind, besides in the public realm, between being a scientist on the one side, somebody who's trained to be objective and sort of a middle of the road questioner for the truth. And then on the other hand, being an advocate where it's more partisan and you're trying to push a particular view of how things should be.
  • 00:58:04 - 2367
  • JE: Yeah. Yeah, that's been a-a very definitely a factor in my-in my life and in my professional life and in my interest of what's going on in the community. I mean, I like the idea of being a very reserved, clear-thinking scientist who thinks through problems and maybe in the ivory tower, makes pronouncements that come from careful thought and so on. And I still believe that I spend time thinking-I-I spend many hours sometimes toiling over an idea that I want to come up with before I ever say it publicly. I do that. And I think that a lot of people in science and a lot of educators just sort of shy
  • 00:58:54 - 2367 away from confrontation. Confrontation is not fun. Yesterday is an excellent example of that. When you got people you know wish you were gone somewhere. It's not fun and yet, at seventy years-well, before seventy-I'm seventy as of December, but before that, I realized hey, that's okay. I mean, you want good, logical, clear thinking and I wish the whole world was that way. If it were, we wouldn't be having the problems that we're having. But we don't have that.
  • And people listen to clips. I mean, not very many people will ever know about much of this conservation today because they will not take
  • 00:59:43 - 2367 the time no matter where it's put. What they listen to, if anything, would be little sound bites of information or clips or things they pick up here unless something is bothering them very specifically right then. So they don't spend-they will not spend the time to do that.
  • So what I realize then in dealing with this public, that I have to get to the point what I want to say and it has-it's got to be something that stimulates them and I think what I'm observing-and I hate to say this because growing up as a Christian, I know that love is the most important thing-but what I see out here in reality, that fear is a very
  • 01:00:24 - 2367 strong motivator. If I can make somebody understand that, look, if we don't have good, proper inspection of our water facilities, our plumbing and so on, and we get cross connections and we get backflow of toxic material, you might end up with giardia infection or you might conceivably end up dead. You could-somehow people need to understand that. Well, that's fear, I think. That seems to be fear, but I think that's the kind of thing that tends to motivate people. And I don't want to do-I don't want-I don't want to be a fear monger. I don't want to get into the point of you're just trying to shake people up all the time, but if it's the truth, then I think it needs to be said clearly,
  • 01:01:15 - 2367 succinctly and directly and make people understand what you're talking about. This is a distinct possibility. So I don't know. If that-you know, I think-but I think scientists have probably done that for a long time. I think-I think Einstein did that concerning the E=MC squared. I mean, here he came up with this stuff, but he realized the problems and he made that known to Roosevelt. And I don't know. Yeah, you can think but you can make people aware of things. I-I don't know if this exactly fits, but I think of [Richard] Feynman there, you know, of kind of feeling of that-that gasket...
  • DT: The O-ring. 01:02:04 - 2367
  • JE: That O-ring on the Challenger and stuff. I mean, sometimes you just got to say here it is. Like it or not.