Joe Moore, Jr. Interview, Part 1 of 2

(misc.) DT: My name is David Todd. I'm here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. It's June 22, 1999. We're in San Marcos, Texas at Southwest Texas State University and we have the pleasure to interview Mr. Joe Moore, Jr. and to talk about his many contributions to conservation to the state, especially in the fields of water supply and water quality but including many other areas as well. I want to take this chance to thank you for participating.

JM: Glad to do that.

DT: I'd like to start out by asking you if there might have been any early influences in your life, you parents, early teachers you might have had, friends, other kinds of mentors who might have led to your interest in conservation and the outdoors and natural resources?

JM: You asked about my early exposure to the outdoors or conservation issues. I grew up on a farm. We had four different pieces of property that we farmed in northeast Texas and I grew up in the days when we didn't have electricity or running water or paved roads.

We did camp and one of the earliest camping trips I remember is one we took by wagon from the house to the Red River, 30 miles. Took us 2 days to get there. The team wasn't all that anxious to make the trip. We camped for a week on the-on the bank of the Red River. Also when we eventually got an automobile, 1928 Dodge, we used to go over to Broken Bowl, Oklahoma where there was an old Civilian Conservation Corp camp that had-that we used for Boy Scout trips. And so I did get that sort of exposure.

Now as to conservation itself, since we were involved with agriculture, my exposure was in the agricultural sense and the early conservation programs were rudimentary in today's terms but my father was involved in that. We did terracing which the neighboring farmers thought was absolutely silly to put all those curved obstructions on the land when you could plow straight up and down when it would be a lot simpler to plow and all those crooked rows were just a waste of time.

So he was involved in conservation in an agricultural sense but we didn't-and-and we had guns and we hunted, not an awful lot. We didn't do the kinds of hunting that you would do today. We didn't have deer although we had bobwhite quail that an uncle of mine used to come hunt and we'd occasionally go with him. But we trapped in-in ways that today wouldn't be politically acceptable with metal spring traps and-and even the Boy Scout handbook had-had descriptions of how you could build traps to catch animals. And we caught skunks and possums and skinned them. But that sort of activity was the-and we fished because there were-there were streams around you could fish in. There are not fish there today but we had fish there in those days.

We also used to picnic a lot. The land was not as restricted as it is-as it is today and a lot of it was undeveloped. And so we could go places and just go out on the land and picnic. We did a lot of that. There was an-there was outdoor exposure and through scouts. My father was Scoutmaster.

We were unusual farmers in that he had attended Texas AandM University for a couple of years before World War I and my mother had attended the University of Texas at Austin and so-and they were both school teachers before they farmed, teaching what today would be unusual subjects. My mother taught English and Latin which is not even taught in high schools today. And my father-my father taught mathematics and history. We also had, on both sides of the family, where there were teachers in Cleburne, Texas and Fort Worth Schools. We had teachers in the family, my aunts and uncles, a lot of them were teachers. So we were exposed a lot to education. We were exposed differently from the young people who were in-lived in the farms around us because of my parents' background.

DT: You mentioned that your father did contour plowing and I was wondering if you could mention any of his concerns about soil erosion or other issues?

JM: The-the-these were designed for soil erosion of course and for water retention. If you contour the land properly, you can trap more water and get it-you don't have to build a dam in a lake. You can trap water and the-the-the terraces, we called them, were designed primarily for both the water and the soil retention. This land-we were-we were on both sand and black land with mixed land in between. The sand land was subject to erosion. Part of this land, my father had cleared with a team, cutting the trees down and digging the stumps up by hand. Pulling the stumps out with-with a team of mules. And that land had a tendency to erode on the hills and then the-the soil would collect in the-in the lowlands.

But we practiced not only that kind of soil conservation, in those days we fertilized with manure from the barn but we also-there was a program that paid people to grow legumes, peas. And there was a pea check that every farmer got in the summer time for growing black eyed peas. You weren't supposed to pick them-you could pick the peas but you-you-no I take it back. You could not even pick the peas. You were supposed to plow the whole thing under. But, of course, nearly everybody picked the peas anyway. But the object-the-the legumes would place nitrogen in the soil and that was the way-we-we-one of the ways we improved the quality of the soil.

DT: Did the Dust Bowl extend to your part of the--

JM: Yes, yes, the-we-the Dust Bowl would come in from the-from the west. This was in the `30's. I was born in 1924 so I went through the Depression and the Dust Bowl days. We could see the dust coming in a-in a-and you could see it coming on the horizon before it ever got there and then it would turn the-turn the day into a-a dull day just from the dust. We also had forest fires to the north of us. We had nearly twenty miles of timber and we had forest fires on the north.

The Talco Oil Field was developed south of us. And, in those days, natural gas was flared so we had what we called the southern lights. At night, you could watch the glow on the southern horizon that was the burning the gas off of the East Texas Oil Field which, by the way, turned out to be a disaster because once they took the gas pressure off, the oil solidified to the consistency of asphalt and they had to wait until technology developed so they could recover the oil. But we-we had that kind of-that kind of environment. We went through the Dust Bowl, the drought.

DT: I'd like to fast-forward a little bit if I could and talk about your days as a budget examiner and administrative aide to Governor Connally in the early `60's. One thing in particular I was curious about is that I know Governor Connally was interested in, and I think effective in, changing the organization of water law and water agencies, and maybe you could explain why he did that, and how?

JM: The-this was in the `60's. I went to work for the governor in 1963 when he was first elected in his budget office. There I was the number two person in the budget office but the area of responsibility I had was primarily public and higher education. Colleges and Universities and public schools including junior colleges but I also assisted the budget director for the whole budget.

In the-in 1967, I'm sorry, in 196-it would have been 1964, the-there was a situation developing involving the federal agencies. The Corp of Engineers in the Department and the Army Corp of Engineers and the Department of Defense. And the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Interior and the Soil Conservation Service and the Department of Agriculture were all involved in water development in Texas. The state was divided at the 100th meridian with the Bureau of Reclamation generally responsible west of that and the Corp of Engineers responsible east of that.

Lyndon Johnson had gotten-created something called U.S. Study Commission Texas which issued a report having to do with water development in Texas. Since it was done primarily under the auspices of a congressional act and with federal agencies, the primary emphasis was-was upon the role of the federal agencies and water development. At the same time, there was conflict between the Corp of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation over who was going to do what in this water development process.

There was a man named Harry Burley with the Bureau of Reclamation who was in the Austin office of the-of the agency. He and Lyndon Johnson had a close personal relationship. If Burley wanted something, he didn't go through the chain of command up in the Department of Interior, he went to Lyndon Johnson. When Lyndon Johnson became president, he had his office in the federal building in Austin and Harry Burley had his office in the same building so all Harry had to do was go upstairs if he wanted to get something done in water in Texas.

Strange as it may seem, even though Connally and-and Johnson were close personally, Johnson was concerned-I mean, Connally was concerned about the dominance of the federal agencies and water source development. In 1964, the then Chief Engineer and-and the Chair of the old Board of Water Engineers came to see Governor Connally. Joe Carter was his name. He's dead now. The Chief Engineer was John Vandertulip. He's now in El Paso. He retired from the International Boundary and Water Commission but they came to the governor saying we're going to be dominated. Our water development is going to be dominated by the federal agencies unless the state does something.

And so Governor Connally granted the Board of Water Engineers an interim extra appropriation out of emergency funds that were available to him to initiate a water planning effort. That water planning effort then-that started in between legislative sessions.

By the time the 1965 legislature convened, there had been a study done by the Texas Research League which was then a very powerful, privately funded research organization. They had been given the assignment to determine what ought to be done with the organizational water agencies in Texas.

They came out with the recommendation that the planning function should be moved from the Board of Water Engineers to the Texas Water Development Board, an agency created after the drought in the `50's to provide financial assistance for water supply projects for political subdivisions which could not finance their own water development.

And so that recommendation led to significant legislation in 1965 legislative session. But it was all initiated primarily as a reaction to the potential effect of the federal government. I had been handling, in the budget office remember, higher education. In the 1965 legislative session, the governor had two emphases, higher education and water development.

In the discussion with the governor where my role shifted from the budget office to being administrative assistant, George Christian and the governor and I were discussing this and he talked a lot about what he wanted to do in higher education because I'd had experience in that field.

But the-the-and he was-the governor was interrupted by telephone calls and so, in the process, when we finished and were about to leave, George Christian looked at me and said, did he mention water? And I said, no he didn't mention water.

And George says, well you'll handle water too. So I-that's how I got in the water business, was-was the decision that I would handle water in the 1965 legislative session and there were four major pieces of legislation that had to go through. We got three of them passed during that session of the legislature and that is the statute that created the requirement for the first 50 year water plan.

There had been a water plan done under Price Daniel's administration that covered 20 years from 1960 to 1980. That water plan did not predict shortage in the state because the time frame was too short. Once we got into the planning effort for 196-for the 1965 effort then we realized there was going to be-the-the state was already approaching deficit in total if you take the state as a-a-an hydrologic unit. But the governor's emphasis was on water and education and we got the-those programs substantially through that session of legislature.

Now as to what you do, since we were shifting the planning function, there were going to be 240 employees moved from the Board of Water Engineers to the Water Development Board and the question was, who should head up the staff? And the governor came to me and said, who should do this and after doing some thinking and going-I went back to him and said, governor the person that should do this is John Simmons, the general manager of the-of the Civilian River Authority.

And he said okay, talk to him and see if-now you understand there was a six member board but the governor dominated that board by his appointees and so he was, in effect, going to influence the selection of the executive director of the Water Development Board. So I called John Simmons and said, the governor and I have been talking about the Water Development Board, would you take that position? And he said, I probably would if you twisted my arm but don't twist my arm. I'd rather stay where I am. So I went back to the governor and says he would do it but reluctantly.

And you won't believe it but I ended up as Executive Director of Water Development Board. That happened because Stuart Long, a newspaperman who wrote for the San Angelo Standard Times and the Corpus-the San Angelo-I believe it was Standard Times and Corpus Christi Caller Times and was a stringer for the New York Times, wrote an article speculating about who was going to be Executive Director and he put my name in the list. And Stuart used to come by to see me and I said, Stuart, what are you doing listing me? And he said oh well, I couldn't reach you and I-so I went ahead and put your name in. So I laughed about it.

Two weeks later, he put out another article and he listed me and Larry Temple, another governor's-one of the governor's assistants and George Christian. So I went and told George and Larry, that's my job. You can't have that. I got listed first and-and kidding with Stuart. And then there was a man head of the Water Conservation Association, had an enormous influence on water planning and development in Texas named Judge Sturick(?). He'd been a county judge in Woodville, Texas.

Well Judge Sturick came by and I-we were talking about the Water Development Board and I said, well what do you think about the speculation that I might become Executive Director? And he says, we're behind you. And I said, you're what? I said that's a-that's a-people are going to expect that to be a engineer. He said, no, we're behind you. Well nevertheless, I ended up as Executive Director of the Water Development Board. The governor turned me loose to go-to go be the Executive Director of the Water Development Board.

Now you want to know how things happen? That's the way I got in the water business. First off, with a casual comment by George Christian that says, you'll handle water too. And when we-when the decision was made, we were in governor's staff meeting with nine staff assistants and the question before them was, should Joe Moore go over and be Executive Director of Water Development Board. And it kind of went around the room and everybody expressed their opinions. I have pictures that were taken that day. It's a-it's a historic day for me. (misc.)

DT: I was wondering if you could start by describing what the basic problem of water and water supply distribution in the state is? (misc.)

JM: Yes it-what-what is the problem with water supply in Texas. The governor actually had made the statement and we began with the assumption that there was enough water for everybody and for all the nee-needs that we had at the time. The proposals that had been made were restricted to-the federal proposals were restricted to the river basins from the Neches through the Nueces. It excluded the Sabine, the Red River, the Canadian River, the Pecos and the Rio Grande. It excluded all the international river-I mean, the interstate or international rivers. And so the governor emphasized we needed a plan for the-the needs of the entire state.

The excess water in terms of yield lies in the eastern river basins, generally from the Trinity to the east. The shortage lies from the Brazos to the west or-or the projected shortage. You understand we planned both ground and surface water uses but they are governed differently under state law. And so the agencies, the state agencies, had no jurisdiction over groundwater allocation. The Texas Water Commission and now the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission have the responsibility for allocating surface water. Wherever we could, we relied on groundwater because it is cheaper to pump than it is to build dams and transport the water to the points of need.

The population is not distributed according to the availability of water. It's distributed obviously based on individual choices of persons as where they wish to live plus economic considerations. There has to be adequate economic development to support a population anywhere and so if the-the water needs arise where the people are unless you're dealing with irrigation and then the combination of soil and weather influence the water needs. In Texas, the majority of the water is used for irrigation by far, even today in the range of 80 to 90%, depending upon how you calculate it. So irrigation is a significant water demand.

We soon recognized that the irrigation on the Texas High Plains over the Ogalalla Aquifer would cause the state to be in deficit. It-our prediction in those days and this is 1965, was that irrigation would begin declining on the Texas High Plains in the mid `80's unless something was done to provide water. The agri-business interests in this state then had enormous political influence and still do. They claim major economic benefits to the state. They probably claim more than is actually justified.

On the other hand, the-the lesser populated regions of the eastern part of the state tend to believe that the water is "ours" and if you want our water, you must come to our part of the state to use it. As a matter of fact, the state constitution that sets up the-the state's right to conserve the resources of the states specifically requires that the water of the entire state be held in trust for the people of the entire state. And so on a purely factual basis, it's not our water. It belongs to all the people of the state.

We had to begin with persuading the eastern sections of the state that they had a-a vital economic interest in the well being of the Texas High Plains and vice versa. Tell audiences in the High Plains that you must be concerned about what happens in Houston and Galveston and Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange and Dallas/Fort Worth, Waco and San Antonio and so on. Very difficult arguments. We got into them in the legislature. Senator Long, strangely enough from Longview, but Senator Long represented the eastern interests. Since we were doing a 50 year water plan, they wanted a guarantee that the water requirements of the eastern basins would be met in any event.

Working with-with Senator Long who was handling the governor's-some of the governor's education legislation for public schools, the governor said, you must accommodate his interest. The-the sponsor of the legislation was Senator Parkhouse from Dallas. He was a-a character in the senate. He'd been a character in the House before he went to the senate. But Parkhouse and-well between Parkhouse and Strong we had to work out a-a resolution of the eastern basin/western basin dispute.

And the compromise was a requirement that was written into the constitution and into the planning statute that the reasonably foreseeable future water requirements for the next ensuing 50 years period in the eastern basins would be protected in the planning process. The intent was that the plans be revised every five years and so the 50 year planning horizon would move forward every five years and as it moved forward, there had to be a guarantee for the eastern basins that their reasonably foreseeable future water requirements would be protected.

This survived in the house. When it got in the senate-I mean, it survived in the senate. The bill was passed first in the senate. When it got in the house, they started tampering with some of the legislation. Made Parkhouse unhappy. Parkhouse was an irreverent senator though very effective. He was-he was deformed as a result of a-of a automobile accident. One leg was shorter than the other. One arm was unusable. He had a shock of gray hair and a-and a frightening face. I mean, he could give you a scowl that would wither you. Very irreverent. He called Governor Connally, God. And Larry Temple, the first assistant was St. Peter. And I was the Angel Gabriel.

So, I was going to the law school at the time and I got into work one morning and the secretary said, Senator Parkhouse called for the Angel Gabriel. And Parkhouse was absolutely livid because the language of his bill was being tampered with in the house. And so I went over and he dressed me down and-and ended up by saying, I'm going into the senate this morning and pull down every bit of this legislation and I will not sponsor it anymore. And he got all through with his tirade and I looked at him and I said, I'm sorry senator but you can't do that. And that calmed him down and we went on from there.

I said, if the language is changed and they-once they've settled on what the language is going to be, I said, you'll have a chance to veto it before it is ever written into the house side. But we had those kinds of problems in-in getting the legislation passed because of this east/west split. That language survived in the planning statute until the 1991 legislative session and unfortunately it was taken out which has precipitated the east/west conflict all over again because the water is still in the east. What-what water there is left is still in the east.

And that-that is probably the most significant water issue today is the question of innovation transfers. We resolved it at that time. Now the constitutional provision is still there. No money from the Texas Water Development Fund can be spent unless you can guarantee that the-and the constitution has the same language that's in the statute-that you can guarantee the eastern basin's water.

We had on the board a member from Petersburg, Texas which is on the Texas High Plains, a man named Marvin Sherbet. His name is recorded in history because he was the plaintiff in a suit against the Internal Revenue Service under which the right for a water depletion allowance was affirmed by the U.S. Courts in the income tax process. The Texas High Plains, at that time, was the only place in the United States where those who were pumping the water and lowering the water table could get a depletion allowance for the decline in the water table each year under their-under their income tax filings.

Well Marvin was dead set on building a river to-to Lubbock and so he influenced this six member board to such an extent that we had to plan and-and when the plan-that plan actually came out, it called for turning the Sabine River around. The Sabine River would flow north and east-north and west instead of-instead of east and south. You would actually pump the Sabine backwards and it would cross over at the upper end into the Sulfur and go-there would be a canal the width of an interstate highway right-of-way, 60 or 70 feet wide and as deep as 18 feet that would run from the point above Dallas to Lubbock. You would, in effect, pump over 500,000 acre feet a year, 300 miles and lift it 3000 feet and deliver-there would be a-there would be a delivery also to eastern New Mexico on-on this delivery system. But the water would go all the way to Lubbock.

There was-it would-the-it would have required 4 billion dollars and there was a 4 and a half billion dollar bond issue placed on the ballot. You have to do that with a constitutional amendment.

It failed by 5000 votes. Had 5000 people in and over a million and a half were cast in the election but, had 5000 people in Harris County voted in favor of that constitutional amendment, they would have voted in 4 and a half billion dollars to build a water project that's comparable to the California Water Project which takes water from Northern California all the way to Los Angeles through over a couple ranges of mountains, by the way.

But that failed and that-that-that bond issue failure was-there was-there was not a bond issue that was passed between one adopted in 1967 and one adopted in 1985 that had to do with increasing the amount of money in the Water Development Fund.

DT: I understand that the State's voters had typically decided to fund almost every water quality bond issue but had failed to give money to water supply. Can you explain why that is?

JM: That-first off is-you can imagine the impact of a 4 and a half billion dollar bond issue in 1967-no it was later than that, would've been '71, I guess. Not it was '69. The-a bond issue that size just staggers the imagination or did then. Today it may not. You must understand we had state budgets in the range of hundreds of millions. We hadn't gone over a billion dollars in state budget and now you-you know, we just adopted a state budget for two years that's 98 billion dollars. So the billions were-were staggering numbers 30 years ago.

The other thing is, generally speaking, the environmentalists have opposed the bond issues for water development. In those days, the environmentalists-the-the Sierra Club was not as active as it later became but the-the Texas Committee on Natural Resources, Ned Fritz was opposed to these-these plans. When we held hearings on the plan, Ned or one of his representatives appeared at every hearing. We held 35 in the state in 1966 and '67 and somebody from that organization appeared at every one of them and opposed the water development. So you had the beginnings of-of opposition from environmentalist groups.

We did not-the Sierra Club was not that active. Natural Resources Defense Council or Environmental Defense Fund were not active. They-the environmentalists were generally not strong enough to make things happen but they were strong enough to keep things from happening. And so the environmentalist organization generally prevented those bond issues from being-being adopted.

Plus one other thing, some metropolitan areas solved the water problems. The cities of-the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, particularly Dallas, started after the drought of the `50's to build reservoirs in the Upper Trinity and they have consistently assured their water supply for long range. Fort Worth has done the same thing. The city of San Antonio has relied on the Edwards Aquifer so they didn't feel like they had to do anything.

The City of Houston was pumping groundwater from the coastal aquifer and land subsidence was barely a problem although in the water planning effort in the `60's, the staff came in once and-and-and briefed me on the Houston water supply system and said, if they keep pumping groundwater at the rate they're pumping, by the year 2020 which was our horizon then, the down-downtown Houston will be underwater to the first floor of every building.

And I said, does anybody in Houston know that? And he said-and John Vandertulip said yes, they're well aware of that but they weren't telling anybody. The Houston Ship Channel industries were having to raise their docks on the Houston Ship Channel at intervals because otherwise, their docks would have gone underwater because of the-the land subsidence. There were residential areas and Baytown going underwater.

The-the water would just gradually-the land would just gradually subside and the water would gradually creep across the lots. I've seen lots down there where the house is sitting on a little mound and it's surrounded by salt water and all the fences just go down into the bay. You could see them going down into the water. And the landowners sit there just watching. And you could look out there-there were some houses two stories and they were already underwater to the-to the second floor and the second floor was up above the water from land subsidence. This is the first-that's the first time that the state confronted the question of the route of capture on groundwater.

But-but groundwater-Houston relied on groundwater and they didn't see the need for surface water development. We had had extensive emphasis on surface water development after the drought of the `50's.

DT: Can you talk a little about the drought from the `50's and what sort of impact that had on people's thinking about water? (misc.)

JM: Drought of the `50's had enormous impact. It was generalized all across the state. It was not regionalized and it went on for a long time. There's a dispute about actually when did it begin. Some say it began in the '40's and you can look at data that suggests that we were sliding into it before we got into the `50's but the drought of the `50's was generalized. For example, in this area, the springs at-at Comal went dry so that there was no spring flow out of Comal springs and this spring here dropped as low as it has in the-in the record. And you've seen the water gushing over the-over the bridge out-over the dam out here.

But the generalized drought across the state-in Austin, the land would crack so wide that it presented a hazard for walking across your yard. You could-women could trip from catching their heels and you could twist an ankle from and the cracks in the-in the-in the soil.

That, at that-that precipitated the creation of the Texas Water Development Board for making loans for water development. That's the first thing. Also eventually there was a water planning statute in 1956, one of the first ones. It also led to the-ultimately to the 1960 water plan that extended-this was under Governor Price Daniel, extended to 1980.

It also generated enormous support for dam building and there was a flurry of dam building after-after the drought of the `50's. There was a consequence that's often overlooked. The drought ended with a generalized flood so we had a generalized drought followed by a catastrophic generalized flood.

The Highland Lakes in Austin, the five Highland Lakes, filled up for the first time since they had been constructed and construction was started before World War II in the late `30's and-and those lakes-Buchanan had never filled up.

The landowners that owned land up there had built lakefront residences in the-in the flood plain, in the flood easement, inside the area that was to fill up with water and so when the Colorado River flooded, those buildings floated off their foundations and one of the-one of the pastimes for University of Texas students in those days was to go up to the dams and watch the houses go over.

Because these enormous houses would go over the spillways and crash and-and splinter at the bottom of the-of the spillway. Plus boats-boats that were in-in boat docks were not removed quick enough and they popped through the roofs because the boat docks were anchored and the boats floated up and they eventually developed enough pressure that they literally broke through the roofs of the-of the boat docks. Enormous loss all across the state from floods. So you had drought and flood.

We do our water-we-we focus on water when there's a prospect we've got too little or too much and so we-in-in that context we had too little followed by too much and the consequences was enormous support for dam building. We built more dams in that frame-timeframe than have been built before or since.

DT: Can you talk a little bit about some of the dam construction projects that were more controversial or noted?

JM: Well you must remember that that generation of Texans remembered both the drought and the flood so they weren't all that controversial. We had some, and you understand I-with the Water Development Board, the other function was making these grants and loans for-for-for water projects. And one of the things we had done with the constitutional amendment that passed the legislature in 1965 was authorize the state through the Water Development Board to own water supply storage in dams, in reservoirs, behind dams.

And so we could, in a federal project, pay for part of the storage in the lake with state money. In the process of doing that, Senator Parkhouse was handling the constitutional amendment on the senate side. We had the amendment in authorizing the use of $200 million for-for storage.

The $200 million was already in the constitution. It was the original amount in the constitutional amendment that was put in after the drought of the `50's.

I didn't-nobody from the governor's office showed up when the bill was up for hearing in the constitutional amendments committee and so Parkhouse was asked the question, does this add $200 million to the Water Development Fund or is it just relate to the existing $200 million. And so, he answered it adds $200 million.

So I got my call the next morning, "come around here." So I went around and he said, where-where were the governor's people last night? And I said, I don't know what you're talking about. He said, had a hearing on my constitutional amendment. Said-and the constitutional amendments traditionally as a lot of bills did in those days went to automatically to subcommittee. So it had gone to the subcommittee, constitutional amendments.

And he told me he had been asked the question about the 200 million or 400 million. He says, does it add 200 million? I said, no senator. He says, well you better make damn sure it adds 200 million when it comes out of committee because I don't want to be made a liar.

So we actually increased the Water Development Fund by $200 million because Parkhouse answered the question and we had to make sure that the-that the constitutional amendment conformed with his answer to the question and that constitutional amendment passed because Governor Connally appointed a committee to promote that amendment and Price Daniel was chair of the committee and it-it constituted the financial leadership of the state, the major contributors to the political process were on a statewide committee to promote that constitutional amendment.

That's the reason that one passed is because of the push behind it and the fact that-and the fact that we were launching this 50 year planning process. The first one-I may-I may have them out of sequence but one of the first ones we bought water supply storage in was Lake Palestine because it had been built with a low dam and they wanted to raise the dam and increase the yield behind it.

The engineering staff said-it was called optimization-you optimized the size of the dam in terms of the land you flood for that site so that you get the most yield possible out of the reservoir. They said there's not enough local money to pay for the raising the dam to the size it should be raised. And I said, okay, we're going to put in Water Development Fund money and the staff says there will never be a buyer. There will never be anybody to buy the water. There's-Palestine can't buy it. There's no project growth anywhere close that will-that will ever use the water. And I said, we're going to do it anyway.

So we took the recommendation of the board and it was-the state bought water supply storage in that reservoir. Now it sat there for some years. Now they're building a pipeline from Palestine to Dallas and that water will be a part of the water supply for the Dallas-Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. That one was controversial because of the increment of water that the state bought.

Lake Texana, on the coast, in a coastal river basin between the Guadalupe and the Colorado, promoted by people in Edna-they came to see us about building this reservoir and Edna couldn't buy anything much but they wanted a reservoir. And so I went down and met with the people down there and that-we actually built that reservoir with the state owning practically all of the water po-water supply storage in Lake Texana. By the way, over the strong objections of Stuart Henry with the Sierra Club. That-that was one of my first entanglements with Stuart. He said, you're going to build a mud flat out there and so, but we built Texana. Bureau of Reclamation in the Bureau of Reclamation's jurisdiction, by the way, so we had to deal with Harry Burley.

But that reservoir is the reservoir that saved Corpus Christi's water supply. They now have a pipeline from Corpus Christi to Texana. By the time that reservoir was built, that was controversial. There's another one, Cooper on the Sulfur. Now the Sulfur River basin runs from northeast of the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan complex all the way to the Louisiana border.

It is the most prolific undammed water supply in the state. You can get more-you can get a million and a half acre-feet if you dam the Sulfur River all the way to the Louisiana border and that is now protected-that yield is now protected by an interstate compact between the states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas so that you could build-you could build reservoirs there. But the last reservoir on the-on the western edge is Cooper.

Well they were trying to build Cooper in the `60's and I-we intervened and got designated as one of the co-sponsors of Cooper, the Water Development Board because, at that time, we wanted to build a pump station so we could turn the Sulfur River around make it flow west instead of east and so we wanted to be in on the planning of Cooper. Well that delayed Cooper until the-they just completed Cooper in the late `80's.

It's now impounding water but we delayed that reservoir and some of the water interests up there always blamed it on me because we delayed that reservoir to the point to where archeological interests became strong enough. And the wife of a member of the Texas Water Development Board was an archeology student at the University of North Texas working on a-I believe a Ph.D. and there were Indian Mounds in the reservoir site. And so that reservoir had to be delayed until all the Indian artifacts could be removed. And that environmental issue came in there.

That also came in on Big Sandy, a reservoir on a tributary of the Sabine that was-was built by the Sabine River Authority and-and public power interest. There was another reservoir planned on the Sab-a tributary of the Sabine that had a private gun club, hunting club with members from Dallas primarily. Rich people who went out there to hunt and the Sabine River Authority had a reservoir proposed there.

This hunt club didn't want the reservoir because they would be deprived of their hunting opportunities. And so they found a way under federal statute to transfer a perpetual conservation easement to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and once that easement was accepted by the Fish and Wildlife Service, it forever preempts any reservoir being built on that site. That was litigated by the Sabine River Authority and went all the way up the court system and the-the Authority lost. That-that reservoir site is gone.

Those kinds of environmental issues-the question of mitigation for reservoir sites. There was a Brazos River reservoir where they were going to inundate bottomlands. Unfortunately, you can't build a reservoir on a hill so you're always going to build them in the lowlands. And because of-because of erosion and transport of soils, the bottomlands are always richer than the-than the hills would be. And so bottomlands also have hardwoods in them and we've depleted the hardwoods in the state. So you get-you get a different ecosystem in bottomlands.

So the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department had become active and were insisting that you couldn't flood these bottomlands unless you mitigated by providing an equal amount of mitigation land somewhere else in the state. So the issue of mitigation got caught up in this reservoir and the water interests were absolutely appalled that you would have to-that the-that purchasers or the users of the water would have to pay not only for the reservoir site, but for an equal amount of land somewhere else that substituted for the reservoir site because of what it was doing to the habitat. And so that was a controversial issue. That was litigated and-and the Brazos River Authority ended up buying the mitigation lands. So the concept of mitigation was embedded.

There's a reservoir on the Trinity, the Wallisville Reservoir, which is what you call a re-regulating reservoir. The-there are reservoirs on the Trinity but it is undammed from the Upper Trinity to Lake Livingston and then there's nothing between Lake Livingston and the coast. So the idea was that the Wallisville Reservoir would kept-would catch the spill, particularly in the dry season and you would catch the balance of the water that you didn't have to let go for freshwater inflows in the Wallisville Reservoir. And that one was-the construction was started and it's been litigated for 20 or 25 years now and has never been and may never be completed. Very controversial. Went up and down the federal court system 2 or 3 times over environmental impact statement issues.

DT: Can you talk about some of the proponents for water supply projects and some of the opponents and how you tried to arbitrate through them?

JM: Well the primary proponents, of course, were the Texas Water Conservation Association. Historically been-de-despite the fact that it has the word conservation in it, they have been the proponents of-of water development, the water hustlers as Stuart Henry would call them.

But you must remember that was the major state water organization and still-and still is on the-on the proponent side. It was-it was always made up of a combination of river authority interests and industrial interests. And they obviously were pushing for-for water development.

There is-there's another aspect that enters into water development and that is the local community always prefers a surface water reservoir rather than a well. We used to say you can't ski in a well and so you get a lot of local support for surface water reservoirs even though they may have available groundwater supplies.

And so, you will find proponents with recreational interests, developer interests. You know, you can increase the value of land substantially if you-if you get a reservoir close by. So those generally were proponents.

The opponents were usually landowners. No landowner ever wants to see their land flooded. They always say my great-grandfather settled this after the civil war and we've got to do-we've got to do something about it. We can't give up our land. But you-again, you have to build a-you have to build a reservoir where you can.

So the-the other opponents were primarily either objecting to the costs, the money that's involved or they were environmental groups, the fledgling environmental groups that gradually have become more and more influential. The-the environmental groups may be approaching a stage where, in the right political environment, they might be able to make things happen but largely they're-they have generally been just re-reducing the impact or restricting what otherwise might have been done.

The-the Water Conservation Association people usually relied on persons either from underground water districts or from river authorities to be their primary staff people too. The-in those days, one of the people that ran the Water Conservation Association came from Water, Inc., an organization out of Lubbock that was interested in protecting the water interests of the Texas High Plains.

Billy Clayton who was Speaker of the House and who has been around a long time is a proponent of-of water development and tried several times to get legislation that would create a water development fund out of general revenue funds circ-surpluses that existed at the beginning of legislative sessions. That money would be set aside for water development. He was unsuccessful with that and he was speaker when some of the constitutional amendments that attempted to increase water development fund-money for water development not-not water quality were defeated. So he was one that was a strong-a strong proponent.

Stuart-Stuart Henry probably has been the-the one around the longest that has been the opponent of water development. Ken Kramer, now the-the staff head of the Sierra Club has been-has been active in recent years and again, can influence the way things-I think he had some influence possibly on Senate Bill 1 but can influence the way things are done.

Ned Fritz was a-has always historically been an almost uncompromising opponent so sometimes he-he-his opposition has been dismissed as well, that's Ned. Ned will always-he'll always oppose them. The-the county in which I grew up proposed a very small reservoir out in the middle of nowhere and Ned Fritz-Ned announced out of Dallas that he would go up there and oppose that reservoir. It was never built for-but it was for a different reason.

The-the local people were primarily are-the-the local politics are dominated by retired persons and they didn't want to see-they didn't want to be responsible for the additional costs that would have to make up the local share of the-of the construction of the reservoir.

Is that the sort of things you're interested in? The-the-we will-we'll probably not see another serious dam building spree until we have exhausted all the potential of water conservation which has considerably more emphasis today than it ever did before. We-we rarely talked about achieving water by water conservation 30 years ago.

The other thing that's-that is critical is water reuse. We have to be careful about water reuse however, in-in river basins where the re-the return flows from treated wastewater facilities, either industrial or municipal, contribute to the volume of water in the water course upon which down street-downstream water rights depend.

And so you can add to the surface water as San Antonio does by pumping groundwater, which until recently was governed by the rule of capture in that area, you can increase the flow on the surface water river-in the surface water streams by pumping the groundwater and then re-discharging it as treated surface water. That increases the regular flow in the San Antonio River system, the Medina River and the San Antonio River and the Guadalupe. It ultimately-you can increase the flow that way for surface water rights.

In Dallas/Fort Worth, for example, if you reuse substantial portions of the Dallas/Fort Worth wastewater, you can deplete the water going into the Livingston Reservoir which is now the water supply-alternative water supply for the City of Houston which has reduced its demand on groundwater to 50% of what it once was. And so it-it-in the manipulation of reuse water, you have to be careful about what kind of impact you-you're going to have on-on other sources of water supply.

But-but we need to exhaust water conservation and water reuse and the most significant water conservation that needs to be done is with irrigation water supply. There are very efficient irrigation watering systems today. One of them Low Energy Precision Application called LEPA for short that is being widely adopted on the Texas High Plains because, you see, they have no foreseeable alternative source. Their only choice is to conserve what they have.

So they're much more sensitive to conservation than they once were. Plus the fact that there's now a constitutional fund from which they can secure loans for purchasing this efficient irrigation equipment, low interest loans and they have-they have taken advantage of that and extended their water supply considerably beyond what we were predicting in the `60's.

So as-since irrigation water supply is the major water use, then if you're going to have significant water conservation benefits, you must concentrate on irrigation as well as municipal uses.

The-the municipal uses that receive the most attention, for example, doing something about commodes or dishwashers are-or clothes washers have a-may have a great deal of-of political appeal but they don't achieve significant water savings.

Irr-on the other hand, irrigating lawns, making a tropical or sub-tropical paradise in Lubbock can be very, very water intensive or doing it in El Paso or even doing it in San Antonio. If-if I could decree something, I would decree we go to xeriscape in any area-pick a precipitation limit and say any precipitation limit above-below that you don't do St. Augustine grass and-and tropical plants. You go to xeriscape like they've done in-in places like Arizona and some places in California. Although, you see, once California got its water project built, there's no-then they've got to sell the water. The pressure is to sell it.

Now that Arizona has a Central Arizona Project, they're going to be under the same kind of pressure. Once you have the water, once you've expended the money, you got to sell the water in order to pay off the debt. And so you get the-the-the-in those instances, water conservation doesn't apply but we'll-it would be difficult to build a reservoir unless you had a severe drought and you exhausted all other alternatives.

DT: Can you tell me if there was a hurdle at any time regarding conservation and using public money to fund private landowners' efforts to provide sufficient irrigation?

JM: The question is, was there any dispute about using governmental funds for private expenditures. I've never seen that significantly debated. You must remember that often you're in a trade-off situation and, in the year in which that irrigation fund was created, the environmentalists had finally managed to get the issue of fresh water inflow to bays and estuaries a sufficient exposure that the legislature recognized they could not get through the-the fund for irrigators unless they made an accommodation on fresh water inflows.

And so that's the first time that there's a statutory recognition of fresh water inflows to bays and estuaries. Now it's not yet a full fledged represent-it's not yet a full fledged recognition. There's not a water right for fresh water inflows.

Now I had an idea in the `60's about how we would handle fresh water inflows and that's where it first came up. And-and we-and we in the water planning process for 50 years, we did it primarily because of consultants we had from San Francisco, Leeds, Hill and Jewett were the-were consultants to the development of the Texas Water Plan and they-one of their people had been with the California Water Resources Control Board and had experience with the California problems on-on San Francisco Bay Delta, for example.

And so we started the process of educating people to the need for fresh water inflows. But, the accommodation that was reached in 1985 was the creation of the fund for the High Plains and the preservation or recognition of fresh water inflows to bays and estuaries.

And-and that was the trade-off the-the environmentalists finally said we'll let you go forward with additions to the-to the water development fund if you'll give us the-the recognition of fresh water inflows. And they got the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in the position where they now can influence any water permits that would reduce the quantity of water going into-to the bays and estuaries and the Parks and Wildlife Department has the primary responsibility with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission and the Texas Water Development Board for determining what the fresh water inflows should be, what amount of water should be reserved for freshwater inflows. But I-I do not recall ever a dispute about using the, in effect, the credit of the State of Texas for private interests.

To some degree, the Water Development Fund does that because the industries that use water get the benefit of reservoirs constructed for municipal water supply because the industrial water generally goes through a municipal system.

All the Houston Ship Channel industries have been switched from groundwater to surface water. That was the first-that was the first water that was delivered into the Houston area-it was delivered generally in the vicinity of the San Jacinto monument and all the industrial facilities along the Houston Ship Channel were required to shift to Lake Livingston water. In fact, the original permit on Lake Livingston restricted the water to industrial use because the quality coming down the river in the Trinity, containing Dallas and Fort Worth treated municipal wastewater was such that the agency would not allow it to be used as a municipal water supply.

And so that-that lake was built and paid for by the people of the City of Houston with the intent to supply that water primarily initially to industries along the Houston Ship Channel.