Full text of "The passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, 1991-1992 : oral history transcript : the Metropolitan Water District perspective / 1999"

University of California Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

California Water Resources Oral History Series

Carl Boronkay

and
Timothy H. Quinn

THE PASSAGE OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT IMPROVEMENT ACT, 1991-1992:
THE METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT PERSPECTIVE

Interviews Conducted by

Malca Chall

in 1997

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of
collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a
narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-
informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the
historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for
continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected
manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable.

************************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by legal agreements
between The Regents of the University of California and both Carl
Boronkay and Timothy H. Quinn dated, respectively, April 23, 1998
and July 11, 1998. The manuscript is thereby made available for
research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including
the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the
University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may
be quoted for publication without the written permission of the
Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California,
Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be
addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreements with Carl Boronkay and Timothy H. Quinn require that they
be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to
respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Carl Boronkay and Timothy H. Quinn, "The
Passage of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act, 1991-1992: The
Metropolitan Water District Perspective,"
an oral history conducted in 1997 by Malca
Chall, Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 1999.

Copy no.

Carl Boronkay, "...The serious me (perhaps the visionary Tim
describes)," 1992.

Tim Quinn, 1996.

Photo by Linda Okamura

Cataloguing information

Boronkay, Carl (b. 1929) General Manager, Metropolitan Water District
Quinn, Timothy (b. 1951) Deputy General Manager

The Passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act. 1991-1992: The
Metropolitan Water District Perspective. 1999, viii, 152pp.

Joint interview discusses the background of the Los Angeles Metropolitan
Water District s (MWD) interest in water marketing and transfers, and water
banking; Imperial Irrigation District, Palo Irrigation District, Arvin-
Edison Water Storage District, Areias Dairy Farm Transaction; the three-way
process, formation of the California and Western Urban Water Coalition;
assistance in drafting, lobbying for, passage of the Seymour, Miller-
Bradley bills to ensure water marketing; changed relationships with
agriculture and environmental communities; analysis of CVPIA implementation
and CALFED; MWD board: size, committees, and support for water marketing
before and during passage of the CVPIA.

Interviewed 1997 by Malca Chall for the California Water Resources
Oral History Series, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Bancroft Library, on behalf of future researchers,

wishes to thank

The Metropolitan Water District

whose contributions made possible this oral history
of Carl Boronkay and Timothy H. Quinn.

TABLE OF CONTENTS --Carl Boronkay and Timothy H. Quinn

PREFACE i

INTERVIEW HISTORY iv

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION- -Carl Boronkay vii

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION- -Timothy H. Quinn viii

I CARL BORONKAY: GENERAL MANAGER, METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT,
1984-1993 1
Education and Career Path to the Metropolitan Water District 1

Law School and Interest in Water Law 1
State of California, Office of the Attorney General,

1957-1976 3
The Metropolitan Water District: Assistant General Counsel,

General Counsel, 1976-1984 7

General Manager, 1984-1993 11

Attorney or Engineer? 12

Major Staff Changes 14

Tackling the Issues: The Need for Future Water Facilities 15
The Imperial Irrigation District: MET s Plan to Increase

its Water Supply 17

Organizing the California Urban Water Agencies 22

Contacts with Representatives of Agriculture 23
Organizing the Three-Way Process: The Concerns of the

Environmental Community 24
Gearing up for Water Marketing: The Rationale and the

Hurdles 27

Convincing the MET Board 30

The Bradley Bill Surfaces: MET Supports Transfers 33

Helping to Draft the Seymour Bill: Support in Principle 35

II TIMOTHY QUINN: DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER, METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT,
1993-PRESENT (1998) 39
Education and Career Path to the Metropolitan Water District 39

Major Field of Study: Economics, 1970-1983 40

The President s Council of Economic Advisors, 1976-1977 41

The Ph.D. Dissertation on Groundwater Law 42

Metropolitan Water District: Economist, 1985 43
Analyzing Carl Boronkay s Vision: The Need to Change

Historic Water Alliances 45

First Assignments with MET: Water Transfer Initiatives 49

The Palo Verde Irrigation District 50

The Arvin-Edison Water Storage District 53

Water Marketing: An Accepted Concept Today 54
John Wodraska: Current MET General Manager, 1993 to

Present [1998] 56

Assessing the Need for "Revolutionary" Changes Within

the Urban, Agricultural, and Environmental Communities 58

III PASSAGE OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT IMPROVEMENT ACT: THE
METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT STAYS FOCUSED ON WATER MARKETING 60
Drafting and Introducing the Seymour Bill, S. 2016 60
Carl Boronkay s Single Interest in Water Marketing Confuses

Seymour Bill Proponents 66
Analyzing Senator John Seymour s Understanding of the Dynamics

of the Debate 69
Carl Boronkay Moves to Realign the Politics of Western Water

Interests 72
Senator Bennett Johnston s Mark Stirs the Water-Agriculture

Communities 75

Solving the Lobbying Dilemma 76
How and Why the Seymour Bill Passed Out of the Senate Energy

and Natural Resources Committee Onto the Senate Floor 79
The Effect of the Johnston Mark on MET s Stance on the

Competing Reform Bills: Setting Forth the Principles 83

The MET Board and Its Committee Structure 88
The Bradley Bill Changed the Agricultural, Urban, and

Environmental Relationships 91
Agriculture s Strength in Congress and the Need for Equity

Among the Sectors 91
Carl Boronkay Testifies at Hearing on H.R. 5099: Suggests

Modifications to S. 2016 96

The Interest of the Business Community in Water Marketing 99

The Environmental Community and Water Marketing 101

The Somach-Graff Negotiations 102

The CVPIA: Interpretation and Implementation 108
Reviewing the Bumpy Ride to Passage of the CVPIA from MET s

Perspective 109
MET Sees Need to Maintain Relationships with Agricultural and

Environmental Interests: Accords May Vary 111

IV IMPLEMENTING THE CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT IMPROVEMENT ACT AND
ATTEMPTS TO LINK THE BAY DELTA ACCORD AND THE CALFED PROCESS 114
"We Want to Get Better Together" 114
The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same? 117

Senate Bill 900 Becomes Proposition 204 118

Building the Coalition for Proposition 204 120

The Metropolitan Water District, the CVPIA, and Water Marketing 122

The Failed Areias Dairy Farm Transaction 123

The Successful Arvin-Edison Partnership Plan 125

Continuing Analysis of the CVPIA: Problems with Implementation 126

Dealing with the 800,000 Acre-Foot Promise /Premise 127

More on Finalizing the Arvin-Edison Partnership: The Concerns

of the Friant Water Users and the Environmental Community 132

Trying to Set Policy in Partisan Legislative Settings 137

TAPE GUIDE 141

APPENDIX

A Carl Boronkay Curriculum Vitae 142

B "MWD s general manager retires after nine years of

innovation," Focus. No. 2, 1993 144

C Proposition 204, "Safe, Clean, Reliable Water Supply

Act," from ballot pamphlet, November 1996 146

INDEX 150

PREFACE

The Water Resources Center of the University of California, in 1965,
established a History of California Water Resources Development Oral
History Series, to be carried out by the oral history offices at the Los
Angeles and Berkeley campuses. The basic purpose of the program was "to
document historical developments in California s water resources by means
of tape recorded interviews with men who have played a prominent role in
this field." The concern of those who drafted the program was that while
the published material on California water resources described
engineering and economic aspects of specific water projects, little dealt
with concepts, evolution of plans, and relationships between and among
the various interested federal, state, and local agencies.

To bridge this information gap, the Water Resources Center, during
the past quarter century under the successive direction of Professors
Arthur F. Pillsbury, J. Herbert Snyder, and Henry Vaux, Jr., has provided
funding in full or in part for interviews with men who have been
observers and participants in significant aspects of water resources
development. Early advisors to the project on the Berkeley campus were
Professors J. W. Johnson and David K. Todd. Gerald Giefer, librarian of
the Water Resources Center Archives, Berkeley, has maintained an
important advisory role in the project.

Interviewees in the Berkeley series have been pioneers in western
water irrigation, in the planning and development of the Central Valley
and California State Water Projects, in the administration of the
Department of Water Resources, and in the pioneering work of the field of
sanitary engineering. Some have been active in the formation of the San
Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission; others have
developed seminal theories on soil erosion and soil science. But in all
cases, these men have been deeply concerned with water resources in
California.

Their oral histories provide unique background into the history of
water resources development and are valuable assets to students
interested in understanding the past and in developing theories for
future use of this essential, controversial, and threatened commodity- -
water.

Henry J. Vaux, Jr., Director
Water Resources Center

January 1989

University of California, Riverside

January 1999

The following Regional Oral History Office interviews of have been funded in
whole or in part by The Water Resources Center, University of California.

Banks, Harvey (b. 1910)

California Water Project. 1955-1961. 1967 82 pp.

Gianelli, William R. (b. 1919)

The California State Department of Water Resources. 1967-1973.
1985, 86 pp.

Gillespie, Chester G. (1884-1971)

Origins and Early Years of the Bureau of Sanitary Engineering.
1971, 39 pp.

Harding, Sidney T. (1883-1969)

A Life in Western Water Development. 1967, 524 pp.

Jenny, Hans (1899-1992)

Soil Scientist. Teacher, and Scholar. 1989, 364 pp.

Langelier, Wilfred F. (1886-1981)

Teaching. Research, and Consultation in Water Purification and Sewage
Treatment. University of California at Berkeley. 1916-1955.
1982, 81 pp.

Leedom, Sam R. (1896-1971)

California Water Development. 1930-1955. 1967, 83 pp.

Leopold, Luna B. (b. 1915)

Hydrology. Geomorphology. and Environmental Policy: U.S. Geological
Survey. 1950-1072. and UC Berkeley. 1972-1987. 1993, 309 pp.

Lowdermilk, Walter Clay (1888-1974)

Soil. Forest, and Water Conservation and Reclamation in China. Israel,
Africa, and The United States. 1969, 704 pp. (Two volumes)

McGaughey, Percy H. (1904-1975)

The Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory: Administration. Research,
and Consultation. 1950-1972. 1974, 259 pp.

Robie, Ronald B. (b. 1937)

The California State Department of Water Resources. 1975-1983.
1989, 97 pp.

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. 1964-1973.

Interviews with Joseph E. Bodovitz, Melvin Lane, and E. Clement Shute.
1986, 98 pp.

iii
The Central Valley Project Improvement Act Oral History Series

Beard, Daniel P. (b. 1943)

Passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act. 1991-1992: The
Role of George Miller. 1996, 67 pp.

Boronkay, Carl (b. 1929) and Timothy H. Quinn (b. 1951)

The Passage of the Central Valley Proiect Improvement Act. 1991-1992;
The Metropolitan Water District Perspective. 1999, 152 pp.

Golb, Richard K. (b. 1962)

The Passage of the Central Valley Proiect Improvement Act. 1991-1992:
The Role of John Seymour. 1997, 136 pp.

Graff, Thomas J. (b. 1944) and David R. Yardas (b. 1956)

The Passage of the Central Valley Proiect Improvement Act. 1991-1992;
Environmental Defense Fund Perspective. 1996, 133 pp.

Nelson, Barry (b. 1959)

The Passage of the Central Valley Proiect Improvement Act. 1991-1992;
Executive Director. Save San Francisco Bay Assocation. 1994, 88 pp.

Peltier, Jason (b. 1955)

The Passage of the Central Valley Proiect Improvement Act, 1991-1992:
Manager, Central Valley Proiect Water Association. 1994, 84 pp.

Somach, Stuart (b. 1948) In process.

For other California water-related interviews see California Water Resources
list.

iv
INTERVIEW HISTORY- -by Malca Chall

Momentous shifts in social policy often seem to arrive on the
scene without a history. On close inspection, one finds that people
have worked, perhaps for decades, on a concept that now works its way
into our consciousness. So it was with the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act (CVPIA) , that significant transition in California water
policy history which was signed into law by President George Bush in
1992. In 1993, the Regional Oral History Office initiated an oral
history series, the Passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement
Act, 1991-1992, to document this important legislation. The series
began with interviews with Jason Peltier and Barry Nelson, continued
with Thomas Graff and David Yardas, Daniel Beard, and Richard Golb, and
now moves to Carl Boronkay and Timothy Quinn.

The history of the CVPIA is incomplete without understanding the
role of the Metropolitan Water District (MET) and its key players
Boronkay and Quinn in the passage of that landmark water policy
legislation. Others who were interviewed in the CVPIA oral history
series, while concentrating on their special interests for or against
the reform act, discussed the MET and its shifting positions on the
Seymour, Bradley and Miller bills.

They left many questions: What was the MET s core philosophy on
water policy? Why was MET willing to abandon its former special
relationships with the agriculture /water community in order to achieve
certainty of a water marketing provision in the Act? Did the rise of
the organized urban water community signify that MET had assumed a
divergent position from that of the age-old, but surely changing, water
coalition in California?

Fortunately the board and administration of the MET also
recognized the importance of recording the experiences of Boronkay and
Quinn and their dramatic story behind passage of the CVPIA, and was
willing to consider funding an oral history. With funding assured by
July 1997, as arranged by Chief of Operations Jay Malinowski, only
scheduling conflicts prevented starting the process until December.

Carl Boronkay, now retired, was for seventeen years a top-ranking
officer of the Metropolitan Water District, seven as general counsel and
nine as general manager. He was a key player in MET s action to ensure
a place for water marketing in the several CVP reform packages moving
through the Congress between 1991 and 1992.

Timothy Quinn, now deputy general manager of the MET, was the
district s economist during the CVP debates, and a close associate of
Mr. Boronkay throughout the several years of drafting, lobbying, and

pushing for the final passage of the Omnibus Water Act in which the
CVPIA was embedded. Between them, as the oral history aptly
demonstrates, is a striking bond of friendship, admiration, and trust.

Prior to the scheduled December 9 interview in Los Angeles, I sent
to Mr. Boronkay and Mr. Quinn an updated chronology of significant
dates, events, and personnel within the framework of the 1991-1992 CVPIA
debates, and a brief outline for the planned interviews. In turn, I
received resumes, and from Mr. Boronkay an article he had co-authored
dealing with the Miller-Bradley bills. He also proffered twelve broad
questions which he thought might be useful, and an invitation to lunch
so that we might not be strangers as we began the process.

We also established this format for the interviews: On December 9,
after lunch, I would meet with Mr. Boronkay in an office in MET
headquarters, to obtain biographical background and information on
aspects of his career leading to his involvement with the CVPIA
legislation. Later, I would do the same with Mr. Quinn. On December
19, I would return and interview them together about their experiences
during the congressional debates, and, in so doing, get answers to those
questions about the role of the MET, its board, and the adherence to the
concept of water marketing which shattered their long-time relationship
with the ag community. Then, in view of the fact that, since 1992, the
Bay-Delta Accord had been hammered out and the CALFED organized, and
that there surely had been opportunity for the MET to have made some
progress in water transfers, I asked Mr. Quinn to grant me another hour
or so to discuss these issues. Within about seven hours we completed
the interviews.

Mr. Boronkay appeared to welcome the opportunity to reflect on the
highly emotional debates, which shifted personal and business
relationships. Leaning back in his chair, he spoke slowly and quietly,
frequently embellishing his story with quotations, helping one feel the
drama of a given situation. He also made clear why he and the MET
board, whose members he had carefully brought around to his position,
would ultimately favor any bill which included water marketing.

Tim Quinn, on the other hand, spoke rapidly and forcefully, yet,
like Mr. Boronkay, with total recall. He looked back at the events
which propelled him and MET into the current contentious debates on
water policy with the sense of mission he has held in both periods-
ensuring water marketing and reaching compromise among competing
stakeholders. Recognizing the meaning of the landmark CVPIA legislation
he said, "[In 1992] the urbans were voicing an independent view which we
continue to do today. Today, we assert ourselves very much as an
independent voice. In 92 we were just breaking away. I think it will
go down as one of the most important times in natural resources politics
in the West."

The CVPIA did indeed change relationships between agriculture and
the MET and formerly allied interests. Now farmers must share water
with the environment (fish and wildlife) and the organized urban
interests. Boronkay and Quinn agree that this triad is not an
equilateral triangle. Yet among these three competing interests,
cooperative relationships must be established.

Boronkay, completing his interview, said, "There are times when
we ll be with the ag people, say, on a new facility in the Delta. There
will be times where we re with the environmentalists, say, on fisheries
restoration. . .So, I think Tim works always toward the right goal--a
suitable compromise, but of three parties. But there are times when a
compromise can t be reached, and then you can t allow a third party to
simply veto any action. . .There are now three independent parties at the
table."

And Quinn, ending his recital of MET s attempts to forge water
marketing agreements, and his striving currently to build a coalition to
support CALFED solutions, said, "Remember the revolution has been won.
Now the issue is: can we govern what we have won."

The lightly edited transcripts were sent to the interviewees in
March 1998 and returned, carefully reviewed, in August, with some
corrections but few substantive changes. With the additions of relevant
articles and memoranda inserted to enhance the story, and other donated
material deposited in the Water Resources Center Library, the Boronkay-
Quinn oral history has added an essential dimension to the history of
passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.

The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to
augment through tape-recorded memoirs the Library s materials on the
history of California and the West. Copies of all interviews are
available for research use in The Bancroft Library and in the UCLA
Department of Special Collections. The office is under the direction of
Willa K. Baum, Division Head, and the administrative direction of
Charles B. Faulhaber, James D. Hart Director of The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley.

Malca Chall
Interviewer /Editor

January 1999

Regional Oral History Office

The Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley

vii

Regional Oral History Office
Room A86 The Bancroft Library

University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

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viii

Regional Oral History Office
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University of California
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INTERVIEW WITH CARL BORONKAY

I CARL BORONKAY: GENERAL MANAGER, METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT,
1984-1993

[Interview 1: December 9, 1997] ##

Education and Career Path to the Metropolitan Water District

Chall: First I d like to find out a little bit of background about
you, leading up to how you became general manager of the
Metropolitan Water District. So let me know where you were
born and where you had your original early education.

Law School and Interest in Water Law

Boronkay: I was born in New York City in 1929 and attended grade school
there. At the age of twelve, in 1942, my family moved to Los
Angeles where I attended public school in Boyle Heights. Then,
in 1947, I went to UCLA, where I graduated in sociology and
then went on to law school. I graduated law school in "54.

I had general interests in law. I liked it all very much.
I didn t have any specialty that I was after, although I was
interested in water law, and they gave all of an hour
instruction on water law, in the course on real property.

Chall: Why were you interested in water law?

This symbol indicates a tape or tape segment has begun or ended. A
guide to the tapes follows the transcript.

Boronkay:

Chall:

Boronkay;

Chall:

Boronkay :

It just struck me as being a very intellectually stimulating,
puzzling area. Water law not only deals with an essential
resource to humanity, but it was derived from England and the
eastern states where there was lots of water, and so the
debates were among riparian owners. There was essentially a
lot of water most of the time. Then you had an inconsistent,
independent concept of water ownership or water rights
ownership in the Westthe appropriative water rights. Here in
California they came together and clashed. So you could follow
how the law developed to resolve these differences to the
extent that they are resolved. I don t think that they are
entirely resolved.

But it was just a very stimulating thingas, incidentally,
was oil and gas law. But those were casual lectures. I mean,
you didn t get three units of credit for them. I think oil and
gas law was a courseperhaps two units of a semesterand that
interested me too: the concept of regarding minerals as being
wild animals. They re called ferae naturae because if you put
oil back in the ground it s anybody s; it s a wild animal,
released. Those are just quite curious to me.

Did that come out of some philosophical concern that came with
sociology?

I don t think so. I don t relate it to that at all. I found
various classes at law school interesting some very, some less
soand these turned out to be very interesting, but I found a
lot of philosophical concepts in the law interesting,
definitely: constitutional law, contracts law, tort law not so
much the practice of anything, but the understanding of it and
how it develops and why. To that extent, there is a kind of a
sociological connection. To see how the law develops is always
fascinating.

And so from there, with your LL.B. you went on to get a
master s?

Well, first I went into the army for close to two years,
was the end of the Korean conflict. I spent time in the
infantry, basically.

When I came out, I had already passed the bar; I d taken
the bar before I went into the service in 1954. I was already
married, and I got a job when I came out with a sole
practitioner. His work wasn t very interesting. It was
remunerative to him. He didn t pay me a great deal, but I was
brand new and just doing low level stuff. Mostly there were
business or collection and finance matters. So when an

Chall:

opportunity came to join the state attorney general s office
six months later, I was quick to take that opportunity. I had
friends there, so I knew what it was about.

Let s see. In 19--

State of California, Office of the Attorney General, 1957-
1976

Boronkay: It would be February of 57 that I joined the attorney
general s office.

Chall: In "57. That would be just before Pat Brown became governor.

Boronkay: That s correct. He was still attorney general. He had one
year to go and was a very impressive man.

Chall: What did you do at the beginning of your career there?

Boronkay: The program there was that almost all new people started doing
criminal appeals. There are just lots of them; that s the
bread and butter of the attorney general s off ice- -the handling
of appeals for all the district attorneys throughout the state
--so perhaps half the office is devoted to that. So I did that
a couple of years, and while it was good training it just
became old hat. Surely there were some interesting issues, but
most people tired of that.

I don t know if that is the case today, because there is so
much constitutional law involved today. At the time I did it,
there was not a lot the defense could do. There are so many
more rules now on advising the person arrested and getting an
attorney for him, and I think even the exclusion of evidence
that was wrongfully seized- -those were not yet concepts that
had been accepted. So criminal law, I m saying, may be more
interesting today than it was to me then.

But from there I asked to go into other things as soon as
something was possible. Fortuitously, what was possible was a
major water case in San Diego, even though I lived in the San
Fernando Valley and had a child by then. I assisted Adolph
Moskowitz, who was a very prominent attorney in Sacramento in
the attorney general s office. He had been with, I believe,
the Bureau of Reclamation. So I was sent to San Diego to
assist him in a trial that would go for months. I actually
wound up moving down there with my family for a few months.

I was always interested in water law as an intellectual
pursuit, and here I was right in a major case. And 1 learned a
lot there. It was a federal case involving the Pendleton
marine base, the Santa Margarita Water District, the Vail
Ranch, the stateand there were lots of private parties. I
was very young and inexperienced, and I think I learned a great
deal there and met several of the top water lawyers .

When that ran out, I then looked for other openings back in
the L.A. office. It was a small of fice--thirty-f ive, forty,
maybe that number of people- -so you would kind of talk around
and ask about what was available. So available came up
administrative law: a lot of business matters, professional
licensing, Department of Motor Vehiclesall kinds of things
where a state agency issued licenses or otherwise administered
something. So it was administrative law, and I did that for a
couple of years or more.

Then I got involved in the Charitable Trust Enforcement
[section]. That involved wills, leaving money to charity, and
trusts, and also charitable corporations. The purpose there
was to see that the money was spent for the proper purposes and
not either wrongfully taken by those in charge of it or not
investing it properly.

You had a variety of cases, anywhere from you suing someone
who was speculating on the futures market with charitable
fundsour problem was that he was doing well. [laughter] So
I had to stop him doing it because it wasn t a proper
investment category. We couldn t show that he lost anything.
But he agreed to stop, so that was nice. On the other end, you
saw people that were misusing charitable funds. And in
between, you were trying to uphold wills where an identified
charity wasn t named, such as "my estate for the poor," "my
estate for cancer research," things like that, and the heirs
would attack it as an indefinite or vague gift. Or you had
other charitable gifts which by some means or another were
being attacked, such as an heir saying that the testator was
not of sound mind or suffered undue influence.

So I stayed in there about twelve years . It was a
fascinating area of law, but it was on a low level of office
interest. There were never more than two or three of us doing
that one in L.A. and perhaps one or two elsewhere in the
state although the funds involved were in the millions.

Chall: You state in your vita that from 71 to 76 you were a senior
assistant attorney general and managed the public resources
section.

Boronkay: Yes. In 71 I was asked to take over the public resources

section by a classmate and close friend who was doing that work
when I was doing the charitable enforcement work. He became
[Evelle] Younger s special assistant at one of the very top
exempt personnel levels. I said to him, "Well, I don t have
any background. I haven t done that." There must have been
ten or fifteen people working for him, mostly in San Francisco
and Sacramento. And, "Gee, those are old timers and they know
this stuff and why do you want me to do it?" He said, "Well,
you re a better administrator and that s what s needed, and
you ll learn the law fast enough." I said, "Well, let me think
about it." Well, I got enough courage up, and I finally did
it.

Chall: Certainly, it was in the field that you had been interested in
anyway, in terms of law.

Boronkay: Yes. And it turned out that it was far more interesting than I
had anticipated. I knew the water end of it was in that
section, but forestry matters and fish and game matters and
water pollution and air pollution and Colorado River Board- -
There were so many areas.

Chall: It was humming.

Boronkay: Yes. And then, of course, in 72--

Chall: CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] came out in that
period.

Boronkay: Well, I think CEQA came out in that period, but of greater,

immediate impact on us was the California Coastal Act passed as
an initiative. 1 I think that was in 72. That was a tremendous
new challenge with creation of six regional agencies and a
state board, and I was put in charge of all of that. So we
were really humming- -try ing to interpret and apply uniformly
throughout the state, comprehensive, not always clear, law
affecting development of the coast. Lots of litigation ensued.

Then Union Oil company had a major spill. I think it was
Union. Well, you know, I m not sure now who it was, but it was
off the shore of Santa Barbaraa major, major drilling blowout
and a spill. Then we brought a suit for environmental damages
for several million dollars at a time when we weren t prepared
for that. Our budget was just for these other activities, and
suddenly you have a $10 million suit and the need for funds to

Proposition 20, the Coastal Zone Conservation Act, November 1972.

Chall:
Boronkay:

Chall:

Boronkay:

Chall:

have experts and develop your case. We actually relied upon
volunteer experts, retired engineers, for a while.

You were working under Evelle Younger, right?

Before it had been Brown,

At that time it was Evelle Younger.
Mosk--

Oh, Stanley Mosk?

Yes. Mosk was there for quite a bit. Tom Lynch for a short
time, and then, I think, it was Younger.

Did you find any one or the other of those men more interesting
to work with? Or did it matter who was the attorney general?

Well, it mattered because of the identification you made as an
employee with the boss. In any action, you like to think the
boss is someone you admire, and you get some aura from that. I
think under Brown I was there so short a time that I really
learned to appreciate him only years later when I used to have
something to do with him on water matters . I thought very
highly of him then.

Mosk was clearly a giant- like figure intellectually. You
knew you would have someone that understood everything. He was
very bright, fairly independent, a fine public official, a fine
leader.

Lynch was there for too short a time--I mean, he finished
Mosk s second term- -and he was mostly in San Francisco, so you
didn t see that much of him, and you had seen a lot of Stanley
Mosk.

Then Younger took office and was down here most of the
time. I thought highly of him; his strength was practical and
organizational; he had the ability to judge the staff members
well and to distribute responsibilities.

Mosk has been on the [California] supreme court for many years.
Many, many years.

So, you were a senior assistant in charge of the natural
resources section for about five years, it seems.

Boronkay: That s right, five or six years. I left in the summer of 1976.

The Metropolitan Water District; Assistant General Counsel.
General Counsel, 1976-1984

Chall: And then you went into the Metropolitan Water District in "76

as the assistant general counsel. Now, what brought you there?

Boronkay: I was tiring in the sense that, although the water resources
and all the natural resources questions are always very
stimulating, I had been with the attorney general s office a
long time, almost twenty years. I wasn t--! m kind of looking
back at myself--! didn t feel bored; I was not motivated to
leave by the work, but two things happened. There is an
awkwardness here, but I ll tell you about them.

We weren t getting very much in the way of salary increases
in those years. Here we were, senior people, and we used to
have trials against O Melveny and Meyers and Gibson Dunn and
Crutcher--the major firms. We certainly never dreamed of
having remuneration on a comparable basis, but we thought there
was a certain amount of respect that goes with your salary and
that hadn t been increasing.

So, one or more years were skipped, and then there was a
year that Jerry Brown 1 proposed for welfare people and state
employees the same increase something like 2 percentand I
just felt that there was not a real appreciation of public
employees, whether they were the attorney general s people or
others. You can box them in with the increase you are going to
give as a largess to welfare people, but there is a lack of
respect. I didn t do anything; I just felt that way.

I certainly never thought about moving to the Metropolitan
Water District but I had a friend there who was chief counsel.
He wasn t, then, a close friend. I knew him because 1 had
represented the state s Colorado River Board and MET
[Metropolitan Water District] was very much involved in it as a
member. At about that time, Bob Will asked me to come over as
assistant general counsel, and I found myself in a frame of
mind where I talked to him about it and accepted the position.

In years past, my satisfaction with the attorney general s
office was such that I rarely would talk to anyone about
leaving. I mean, if I got a call from time to time saying,
"We re interested in an experienced person. My partner has
just become a judge and we need to fill in," I would say,

Edmund Brown, Jr. (Jerry) was governor of California 1975-1983.

"Well, let s not have lunch because you re going to make this
attractive and I don t want to think about it." [laughs] "I
like what I m doing." But Bob Will asked me at a time when I
was at a state of mind that, "By god, I am not going to stay
here if I don t have to," so I left. But that s what it was.
I m not sure I should be proud of that, but that s how it was.

Chall: Many people make decisions based on moving ahead in some way,

financially or otherwise. But it turned out to be a good move.
You were the assistant general counsel with ten attorneys under
your direction?

Boronkay: Yes. That sounds right.

Chall: I m reading it off here [vita]. So again, you were an
administrator .

Boronkay: Yes. In the attorney general s office there were about thirty-
five attorneys who had been under my supervision, and this was
about ten. But there was a big difference in that these
attorneys did not go to trial; they were for in-house advisory
opinions, preparing documents, and reviewing transactionsbut
they were not expected to go to trial. It s like any large
company: they would have their in-house counsel, but then if
they went to trial they would hire a major firm or have the
major firm on retainer. We basically used O Melveny and Meyers
for any important trial work, which was not frequent; we didn t
have a lot of trial work.

Chall: At that time.

Boronkay: Right. But I should mention that in that period when I was

assistant general counsel, Proposition 13 passed, and a number
of questions came up on whether we should still annex land to
Metropolitan. 1 Now, Metropolitan never to my understanding and
memory acted unilaterally to annex anything. A district or
city would come to MET asking to become part of MET to get a
water supply and we had to agree. So when we say, "MET annexes
someone," that means not only with their permission but at
their request. But it took two: they had to vote it, and we
had to vote it. We also required they pay certain back taxes
and catch up with what everybody else had done. So it wasn t
that easy a thing, but whoever did it felt, for the reliability
of the water supply, it was worth it.

Proposition 13, Tax Limitation Initiative, June 1978.

But Proposition 13 limited the raising of taxes to areas
where there was outstanding voter-approved indebtedness. Well,
we had a lot of bonds out, and that s voter-approved
indebtedness, and we taxed to pay it. Well, now you re going
to be asked to annex new areas where the people there didn t
vote on our bonds, raising the question of whether they can be
taxed. The board after strong debate just put a moratorium on
annexations while they were going to think through whether they
were going to allow any more.

Chall: The result was, that because of Proposition 13 you stopped
annexing?

Boronkay: Yes. So that s a major legal and policy question, suddenly. A
lot of the board felt, "Well, they re not going to come in and
get the benefit of the water supply from MET and not pay taxes
for their fair share of the outstanding bonds." Others argued,
"Well, we exist to make sure there s an adequate water supply
in southern California, and what are we going to do? Just stop
all development?"

There was critical dispute there, so I persuaded the board
to bring a test case to raise the questions and we won that
case. For one thing, the court didn t like that act; nobody in
the government establishment liked that act, suddenly
curtailing taxes that way. So I argued that the law required a
voter-approved indebtedness prior to the date of the act, but
didn t specify upon whom the taxes may be levied. So, if
you re the one that is seeking to join MET and you are willing
to pay the voter-approved indebtedness, then why should anybody
object? Well, the court thought that was a practical legal
position and accepted it. So we got back to annexations again.

In pursuing this and other cases , the legal department was
becoming more aggressive and gaining the confidence of the
board.

Chall: In 1980, you moved up to the position of general counsel.

Boronkay: In 1980, Bob Will surprisingly resigned from MET to become a
lobbyist in Washington.

Chall: A lobbyist for what?

Boronkay: Well, he wanted to represent water organizations, and he did.
He signed up Metropolitan, and then I believe he went to
Sacramento and eventually got some clients up there. I think
he represented water interests elsewhere in the West, too. I
know Arizona is one such area.

That left his position open, and I was promoted to that
position.

Chall: So that was another four years. I noticed that you

"represented the board in numerous meetings and conferences,
often participating as a speaker," and "participated in policy
development and implementation." That was a broader scope than
what you had been doing previously as assistant.

Boronkay: Yes. As assistant, you kind of manage the office, freeing the
general counsel to get involved with the board and policy
matters and relationships with the federal government, the
state and water agencies. Now, you re the board s advisor, and
you re the board s representative in major policy matters.
Incidentally, I recommended to the board as my replacement
Warren Abbott, whom I knew at the AG s office as an extremely
competent lawyer. Of course, some senior staff were
disappointed but most came to appreciate his skills and
experience.

Chall: How did you feel about your promotion?

Boronkay: Well, it felt wonderful. It really did. The Peripheral Canal
defeat had occurred when I was still assistant counsel, and was
behind us: I had been given little or no real part to play
thereoccasional speech was all. There was a federal lawsuit
during the Peripheral Canal matter, and I was involved in that.
It was an action alleging that we were misspending public funds
for the election, which was brought really for publicity
purposes; the board saw it that way, as did the federal court,
and it didn t go anywhere.

But as general counsel, there was much more in the way of
carrying out policy, helping to develop policy, relationships
with others. I mean, you were looked upon as the point man in
a lot of ways, particularly if you had a general manager who
was engineering oriented, as was the case. So he looked
internally. His strengths were in building pipelines and dams
and figuring out how many engineers you need to operate the
system.

Chall: And who was this?

Boronkay: It was Evan Griffith. Evan Griffith was the manager, and he

was oriented that way, toward the internal organization and its
construction activities. So, now, with regard to the outer
world- -if you say inner or outer world- -now the outer world,
mostly political matters, fell more completely on the general
counsel, but that need not be the case. Indeed, when I became

Chall:
Boronkay :

Chall:
Boronkay:

manager, I discontinued that division. But he was well-
satisfied that I handle the outer world, and so I was involved
in many more things .

It was exciting being general counsel, entering the
legislative arena. With the Peripheral Canal campaign behind
us, I made some efforts to get so-called Through Delta
legislation- -very modest legislation that improved some
channels and connected channels. I believe Assemblyman [Jim]
Costa authored that legislation and we, at MET, reluctantly
supported it, some directors saying, "Well, we really want a
peripheral canal, but all right, we ll do this as an interim
measure . "

Well, we couldn t get to first base on that. I mean, the
water agencies misread everything. I certainly was with the
rest of them. I didn t realize how strong were the feelings of
opposition to water developmentnot merely to the Peripheral
Canal, but beyond that to almost all water development. So
that was the end of water development for a while.

You began, then, to become involved in working with the board,
I presume .

As general counsel, much more than as assistant general
manager.

Right. And they became much more aware of you.

Yes. In that respect, I believe the board s regard for me was
increased when I was able to come up with a legislative
solution to a longstanding dispute concerning MET s tax policy.
The chief opponents were the two largest agencies of MET, Los
Angeles and the San Diego County Water Authority. It took a
lot of shuttle diplomacy on my behalf but, with the help of a
couple of long-time board members from each agency, the issue
was resolved. We got unanimous board approval on our
compromise legislation (tax only to pay our general obligation
bonds and our share of the State Water Project s bonds) and
quick approval in the legislature. There s a lesson in that.

General Manager. 1984-1993

Chall: In 1984, then, you became general manager. How did that come
about?

Boronkay: Well, the manager retired. He had been ill for a while.
Chall: That was Mr. Griffith?

Boronkay: Yes. He finally decided to retire. He gave a year s notice,
and the board undertook a search for his successor.

Chall: They made a regular professional search, I assume, outside and
inside of California?

Boronkay: I believe so. You know, I never did have a clear understanding
of how they went about the selection of general manager. I
knew that internally there were at least three of us who were
being considered. Indeed, you had to indicate your interest,
file a lengthy application with the personnel division.

Chall: Did you?

Boronkay: Yes. And through an interview schedule conflict between me and
someone from out of state, I realized the board s interview
committee was looking at outsiders. How they went about that,
I really don t know, but I do know that they considered
outsiders and, indeed, interviewed some.

Attorney or Engineer?

Chall: When they were thinking about hiring you, was the board

interested in continuing with an engineer as the chief or
somebody like you who would represent them in a different kind
of fashion? I mean, they picked you, but I wondered if within
the board there was this question.

Boronkay: Well, the board is a large board--f ifty-one members

representing twenty-seven member agencies that make up MET.
And within fifty-one persons you will have lots of views, but
sometimes they coalesce.

I think there was no question that the problems we were
having were understood by the board correctly not to be
engineering problems. You could build anything. The problems
we were having were political problems, legal problems, public
relations problems, getting support from other water agencies
and governmental agencies, getting along with environmental
organizations if possible, or fighting them, if necessary.

Chall:
Boronkay:

The quarrels, the opposition, the forum was always various
interested parties, whether it was from the EPA [Environmental
Protection Agency] or Fish and Game Department or Environmental
Defense Fund or certain administration officials or
legislators .

But last on the list was engineering problems. I think
they understood that, and they saw me for four years as their
general counsel and for four earlier years as the assistant. I
think they just decided that I understood the district well
enough and could address the problems today s problems. They
had always had engineers , but always was when they were
building the Colorado River aqueduct, or our distribution
system- -that was the whole purpose, pipelines, treatment
plants, and all kinds of waterworks facilities.

When Evan Griffith was manager--,
sidelight I can tell you.

Oh yes?

There s an interesting

Evan followed the only other lawyer in MET s history who became
general manager. John Lauten had been general counsel, and
when the manager left they made him the general manager. I got
to know John professionally only for the last year before he
retired. I found him to live up to his reputation as being
very firm. Years later this came up in a debate I had with a
director in my office. The director said after I didn t agree
with him on something-- "Carl, I remember now why we said after
John Lauten we d never have another lawyer as manager."

So we had had several years with an engineer, and to be
candid, my personal relationship with Evan Griffith couldn t
have been more pleasant. I really liked him, and we had a lot
of fun singing together. But he didn t like confrontation. He
said so; he simply didn t like confrontation, whether it was a
lawsuit over how much we had to pay a contractor or whether it
was arguing about legislation in Sacramento or going to
Washington. He just didn t like it; he was anxious about
controversies; he sent others. So in that period, I don t
think we were out in front as aggressively as I think was
warranted.

But you know, I m giving you my view, and I m a lawyer, and
I m more used to a confrontational situation, or willing to
engage in it when necessary. I think the board saw that there
were things that we should be doing, and that they had to get
someone who would do them. And our problems were more and more

Chall:

Boronkay :

in Washington and with environmental groups and with the state
legislature. So I think I was selected on that basis.

I see. Now you were in the hot seat, as it were, the manager
seat. What were some of the chief problems or issues that you
confronted when you came into the job? Did any of them

surprise you, or did you just look at them and say,
here and I can take them on"?

"Now I m

Some surprised me in the sense that they were engineering
problemspart engineering, part political/f inancial--which
simply had not been addressed. They were very difficult
problems, and they were just put off. They slid. So when I
became manager and the other people in responsible positions
started telling me what things had to be looked at, 1 just had
to get after them, but I also knew there were staff weaknesses.

Major Staff Changes

Boronkay: The top staff was very good, but in certain areas there were
pieces missing. It took time, but I hired a lot of the
wonderful people. Tim Quinn I hired from the Rand Corporation,
and before that Myron Holburt, who had been the chief engineer
at the Colorado River Board for most of his whole career, and I
plugged in experienced finance people and others. Later I
hired Duane Georgeson from the L.A. DWP [Los Angeles Department
of Water and Power] . There was a good degree of resentment
from people who were used to just matriculating, but I hired
people that the staff had to realize in short order were
bringing something that wasn t here, otherwise the morale would
have been very bad. It would have stayed bad.

Chall: How did you get these persons that you needed, and then how did
you relate this change to the staff?

Boronkay: Well, with regard to the staff, there would be openings, and I
would explain, certainly at the top level, "Here is what we
need: we need people with a total understanding of the Colorado
River. That s our only firm water supply, and it s in dispute
--it always is--and Holburt is the guy who has lived his life
on the Colorado River Board or as their chief engineer." I
knew him personally, and he is a brilliant guy. Happily, the
other top people knew Myron personally or by reputation and
could accept his coming aboard as an assistant general manager
although not everyone was pleased.

Later Myron and I were both looking for someone with a
strong economics background because we had an economist on
board and he was very traditional, not very inventive, in
enabling us to make cost comparisons on programs and
strategies, not recognizing that the picture was bigger and
more complicated than that assumed. So you needed
comprehensive economic analysis, not just number crunching.
Happily, there was a board member- -Marty Goldsmith from
Pasadena- -who worked for JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] , and
later worked at Rand. He knew we had been looking for the
economics specialist for a year or two, and then he told us
about Tim. We interviewed Tim, and we hired him.

There were other people we hired here and there: one from
the federal government, from the Bureau of Reclamationpeople
we would come in contact with that we knew were knowledgeable
and wouldn t have to learn on the job. We had important
problems that we had to address immediately. We didn t have
time to teach someone for two years, assuming we could teach
them in two years. So we hired about half a dozen people over
a period of time at higher levels, but they all showed in what
they did that they brought something that wasn t here. I also
upgraded the top staff by some promotions, reorganization, and
reassignments.

Tackling the Issues: The Need for Future Water Facilities

Boronkay: So I looked at improving the staff --a good staff, but it needed
some specialized helpand, at the same time, I took on the
issues. One issue was how do we expand our distribution
facilities? There are times when the state gets more water
than it can handle and has more water than we can handle.

Chall: That s the State Water Project you re talking about?
Boronkay: Yes. The State Water Project.

Chall: This was water that was available that nobody was using at the
time?

Boronkay: Yes, but we couldn t take it. We had to build up our

facilities, and there was a big debate on the staff, whether
you build or, rather, expand the East Branch of the State Water
Project up toward Riverside and San Bernardino. Then we could
take the water into our system. Or we could build our own
linethe larger capacity Middle Reach of the foothill feeder,

to my recollection. And that s our own: we would build it, we
would pay for it, and it would be ours. If we did the East
Branch, it s still the state s, but they charge us because
we re the one benefitting primarily from it. So there was a
big dispute on staff between highly qualified engineers on what
would be the soundest thing to do.

My god, I had just become manager, and I said to one of the
old-timers who had encouraged me, "You see, this is why I
didn t feel I should be manager. How am I, a lawyer, going to
answer a question like that?" Then someone said, "Well, they
can t answer it, and they re all engineers on both sides of
it." It came down to judgment. You have to think about what
water demands are going to look like twenty-five, fifty years
ahead. How much does the East Branch cost versus the Middle
Reach? How much water are we going to get from the state? I
mean, they re judgment calls, and the engineers were no more
able to make that overall determination than anyone else.

Chall: They were economic, too, weren t they?

Boronkay: Oh, yes. They were all tied into economics, but you have to

make that overall judgment. You have to decide. There will be
enough additional people so that we will need the water and
justify one facility over another. You have to first determine
that, and it s guessing the future twenty-five and thirty years
out. You have to then make a decision: will the state water be
there for you. See, you re going to build this large aqueduct
to take a certain amount of water, and you will have to spend a
lot of money; so you don t need it if the demand isn t there or
if the water isn t there. But you can t just ignore it,
because if the demand is there, your responsibility is to make
sure there s water. There are a lot of difficulties here. The
state s East Branch would be a lot cheaper than adding to our
own system. Our system would take us maybe seventy-five years
in projected demand and the state s maybe fifty years.

So I talked to engineers, and they said, "If there is
anything certain about engineering estimates of the future,
it s that they re wrong. It doesn t matter how good you are,
they are going to be wrong. Things are never the way you think
they ll be. So you make your best guess. But now if you want
to be conservative, spend less money than more."

That s how we did it. I decided we would take the cheaper
of the two. It won t give us as big a supply capacity. Maybe
we ll never need it. Maybe the state water won t be there.
But what was sure was that we saved a lot of money.

All I m trying to illustrate is that this is the kind of
problem which I was not used to. As a lawyer I was faced with
difficult problems but I wasn t used to problems like that.
Then there were other similar things , and I got used to them as
we went along, and I felt more and more comfortable with
engineers, and they felt more comfortable with me.

Engineers are like lawyers in terms of identifying what the
problem is: here are alternative solutions; and here s why some
solutions are better than others . I was amazed when working
with engineers at how close they are to the approach of
lawyers, because you don t solve a problem unless you can
clearly identify the problem. So I found more and more that I
enjoyed working with them and that these major things got
resolved.

This was the first big one. There were others: to what
extent we should subsidize member agencies water reuse,
reclaimed water, or development of independent supplies; how
much money we should put in on a public education program to
conserve water, to use less water. Should we stay ahead of the
increasingly expensive EPA water quality standards? What could
we do about getting water from the Imperial Irrigation
District; and what additional facilities should MET build?

The East Side Reservoir, MET s largest project, was decided
on after some years of study. But all these other things were
being worked at the same time. A lot of them were driven by
the 1980s drought. Maybe they would have taken longer to get
going, but we didn t have the time. So at one time we were
starting to build more facilities, subsidize the reclamation of
water, push for a public educational program, and trying to
work with agricultural organizations to store water in their
groundwater basins in conjunctive use programs. When we had
water that we didn t need, we would store it in their basin,
and when we needed it they would pump it for their use and we
would take their water in by surface delivery. Of course,
there had to be the physical setup so that you could do that.
So we were looking in a lot of different directions because we
were driven by the drought and population growth studies .

The Imperial Irrigation District: MET s Plan to Increase
its Water Supply

Chall: You just mentioned the Imperial Irrigation District. Now, as I
understand it, you began to develop one of your early ideas,

concepts, about water transfers, water marketing with IID. Was
it with the Environmental Defense Fund?

Boronkay: I could explain the background on all those things, if you
like.

Chall: All right.

Boronkay: When I was still assistant counsel, David Kennedy, who is now
the director of the state Department of Water Resources, was
the assistant general manager of Metropolitan.

Chall: That s right.

Boronkay: I got to know him quite well, and we worked together a lot.

The concept of MET using water that seeped away or drained from
the IID earthen canals or that was excessive or wasteful water
used in Imperialthat was thought about for years. At the
time, in the 1970s there was a twenty-year-old study in the
Bureau of Reclamation saying they wasted a lot of water, and
that was very troubling. But we didn t need it; we had enough
water. We knew all that was true, but we were getting enough
water from both our sources. As times got tougher and tougher,
you had to look five and ten and fifteen years ahead and say,
"Well, what could we do about that?"

Under the state constitution you could sue Imperial to stop
wasting water. The state constitution actually prohibits the
waste of water. There are statutes too. And we are the ones
that would benefit because there is a priority system in taking
California s share of the water and they re ahead of us, so the
water they don t take becomes available to us under our
contract with the federal government and their contract.

Chall: This is the Colorado River?

Boronkay: Yes, the Colorado River. So, to the extent that they re more

careful in the use of water and take less, we have the savings.
Things were going along in those termsa lot of thinking,
discussion, occasionally getting together and talking about it
with interested persons. But our idea became this:
realistically, we can t press them into spending a lot of money
to conserve water- -millions of dollars to concrete-line canals,
to put in tail water pump-back systems, to put in computerized
gate controls. These are things that lots of agencies have,
but since they had such a mass of water, why spend the money.
They weren t going to do it. The loss was ours--they didn t
lack for water.

So we were talking, and it wasn t actually me. I was
assistant general counsel, just giving advice. I wasn t up
front in the policy-making end; Kennedy was. Kennedy was
because he worked for Evan Griffith, and Griffith s strength
was in construction. So these kinds of things he was aware of
and understood, but he was happy that Kennedy ran with this.

And so our thinking was we would pay Imperial the cost of
conserving the water; they lose no water. The water that s
lost before it gets to them is now not lost, and so that
increment of water becomes available to us. We ll pay the
millions of dollars to upgrade their system; we benefit and
they benefit. They benefit by efficiency and they benefit by
not being sued for wasting water, and there are some other
benefits. We get the water saved, and the amount of money we
spend, we figured out, would be reasonable compared to
alternative costs of a new water supply.

Kennedy was thinking in those terms when Tom Graff came in
one day. I was called to that meeting, and Tom said, "EOF
[Environmental Defense Fund] has done a study on MET leasing
water from Imperial, and I want to explain it and give you an
advance copy for your comments." Dave said, "We aren t
interested in your advance copy. We re working with IID; we
know what we re trying to do and why it s a good idea. We
don t need your help." I may not be quoting exactly, but
certainly the words were to that effect. And Tom, who I d met
from time to time and didn t know well though I know him well
now, said, "Well, not a very friendly reception here," and he
left. But he still published his work a week later, and it got
a lot of publicity that he was solving problems in the Delta by
getting MET to lay off the Delta and lease water from Imperial. 1

Now, about that time or a little later, he and I were
invited to write an article in a bar journal--! think the real
estate bar journal. He wrote in favor of water leasing or
marketing and I wrote that we have to be very cautious. You
lease water, and over the years the public is used to using
that much waterdo you think the farmer is going to say,
"Okay, it s over"? They re going to be reluctant to do it
because they know once they start, they re not going to be able
to stop giving you that water. I believed that conserving the
large amount of water was the better course at the time. And
there are a lot of other considerations.

See interview with Thomas Graff and David Yardas , The Passage of the
Central Valley Project Improvement Act. 1991-1992. Regional Oral History
Office, University of California, Berkeley, 1994, pp. 12-13.

Chall:
Boronkay :
Chall:

But basically I felt that he had a good idea in the concept
of water transfers or marketing. I d heard the idea before.
Every once in a while you would read a magazinethe Economist
or some other serious magazine or even the newspaperan op-ed
piece that says the problem with California water is not the
amount but who has it, and that it doesn t make sense for the
vast amount of water to be used in one industry- -agriculture- -
where the water is up to a thousand more times valuable in a
certain industry. And, you know, those things sink in. I
mean, that s troubling. Well, I put it on the back burner-
Can I interrupt?
Yes.

What had you planned to do with the water that you were saving
in Imperial? How did you get it to MET?

Boronkay: Well, it just goes to our aqueduct when we need it. You see,
it s all a matter of Bureau of Reclamation releases from Lake
Mead. Suppose IID needs 900,000 acre-feet; they have to order
a million, because 100,000 is lost through inefficient
distribution and irrigation practices. If you line the canals
they get use of 900,000. So all they have to order is 900,000
and 100,000 is left in Lake Mead for MET.

Chall: I see. So you really didn t have to go through a leasing
program?

Boronkay: No. We didn t have to pay for water, didn t have to buy water.
It was not water marketing. I ve explained that, but some
people have difficulty with it. We were not doing water
marketing with IID, but lots of people in the world think so.
You see, to them, on the surface, we re paying lots of money to
IID and getting water, so it looks like you ve purchased water;
but we were very careful not to do that. We don t pay them; we
put money into a fund that they administer, and they have to
use it to build conservation projects which we both agreed on.
We ve agreed on how much water is saved by the project; we
jointly monitor savings so we know what s in Lake Mead that can
be diverted then to MET. So it s a matter of not changing the
federal water contracts, not changing the rights of anybody.
We re paying them to act in a way that more water is left for
us. If it s left in Lake Mead, we can order it. We order it
when we need it, that s all, just like any other water we have
in Lake Mead.

Chall: So what would Tom Graff s idea have been in Imperial?

Boronkay: I argued with him about this privately. Instead of saving

water or conserving water, which an environmentalist should do,
his program didn t cause them to use water more efficiently.
They didn t have to line any canals or anything like that.
They could continue use of the earthen canals. All they had to
do is refrain from taking an amount of water--just refrain,
order 100,000 less for ten yearsand we would pay them so much
per year for it. I believe this should be a later program.
First, water waste should be curtailed and MET was willing to
bear the costs of that program.

Another concern here that we had with water leasing and
that was never resolved, even in the CVP [Central Valley
Project], is that they re getting water at a nominal cost; it s
practically given to them. It s essentially subsidized, and
they re going to charge two or three hundred dollars an acre-
foot for water that public money produced- -federal tax money
produced- -and suddenly you re enriching them in a big way
because southern California urban areas need water. That s a
real policy question, and I think it s a problem that George
Miller had, although I won t go into that now.

So I had definite reservations about Tom s plan, but, you
know, as time goes on you figure, well, we must do what works.
In other words, it s nice to hold onto a principle, but only as
long as you can hold on. I think someday we will buy or lease
water.

Chall: But with IID, you stayed with your original plan?

Boronkay: We stayed with that, although most people don t have the total
understanding of it. They know we put up a lot of money and we
get a lot of water, but we actually get water through our
priority right because they take less, and they take less
because we ve improved their system so they don t need to take
more. They don t need to take the amount they lose on the way.
They get what they want, we get what was being lost; we pay for
the facilities that create and conserve that amount of water.

Now, once you have that, you have a payment reference
point: how much should you pay IID? Well, we pay them for what
the facilities actually cost. If you get away from that
reference point they say, "Oh, we want $500 an acre- foot."
Where s your reference point? What the traffic will bear, I
guess.

Chall: You touch, then, of what water marketing might be, although you
had a different approach to it?

Boronkay: That s right. Tom triggered that. I remembered it vaguely
from other sources , but he s the one who pushed it real hard
and caused me, certainly, to think more about it. At the time,
neither Kennedy nor anyone else were interested in that, and I
believe they thought that these other ideas are merely
distractions to get you away from fighting for the State Water
Project improvement- -whether it was the Peripheral Canal or
another onstream dam or other facilities. Certainly the
culture here at Metropolitan was to finish the state project.
When I became manager and I addressed the whole staff at our
auditorium, I was asked what my chief goal was. I said, "To
complete the State Water Project."

Chall: Oh.

Boronkay: That was the culture. It took nine years or at least seven
years before I saw that in a larger context state project
improvements really didn t have to get in the way of other
approaches, of which water marketing was one.

Organizing the California Urban Water Agencies

Boronkay: But before you get to water marketing, I have to go back just a
little. When Jerry Gilbert was the general manager of East Bay
Municipal Utility District, he and I would clash--a north-south
clashat water conference panels. As an aside, he told me
that he was not against the Peripheral Canal, but certainly the
community was .

He said, "Carl, we have a lot of problems in common- -our
urban districtsand we ought to think about what we can work
at together."

I said, "Well, that makes sense." Certainly there were EPA
standards for water quality, improvement of the state project
water quality as well as efficiency, what do you do in managing
droughts, how do you react to legislation and which legislation
we should introduce.

So we started getting other urban water agency managers
together and having meetings. He solicited two or three other
agencies in the north and I solicited three or four in the
south, and we grew into the California Urban Water Agencies

[CUWA], a voluntary association which later incorporated and
has a salaried director. I think that it became an excellent
organizationa good arena for debating ideas and for getting
support.

We put out a number of good reports. We d hire engineers
to do different studies. Some reports were controversial;
others weren t. One early report was how to improve water
quality for the state water contractors, and it concluded that
you would need some kind of canal to avoid the Delta as the
best alternative. Well, the northern guys got hell from their
boards. But, you know, this was the conclusion of an
engineering firm that was hired; no one told it what to do
other than to see what our alternatives were. Well, that was
one alternative; it wasn t the only one, but just mentioning it
caused them grief. So I admired them very much for putting up
with that. They stuck to it, though some were targets in
newspapers. So, right along, the organization was growing more
and more valuable as the statewide organization looking out for
urban interests.

Contacts with Representatives of Agriculture

Boronkay: At the same time we were working with these urban agencies, MET
also met with the ag [agriculture] people; we had worked with
them forever. They were our allies in water project
development, particularly the State Water Project. To the ag
people I d say, "You know, we need more water, and you guys
have to figure out a way of helping us get more water-
conjunctive use or use of water more ef f iciently--just like
we re pushing Imperial. We can help you with the costs of
certain things if it will make water available."

They weren t thrilled, but they said, "Yes, we ll go along
with that . " So then there were some studies as to whether
improvements could be done here or transfers made there, to the
extent, or with a bottom line that we would get water from
agriculture in some manner or another.

That activity was going on--not at a good pace, but it was
going on.

Chall: Who would you be dealing with mostly?

Boronkay: We dealt with Tom Clark from Kern County, and the Westlands

manager, Jerry Butchert, a number of the other major ag agency

managers, and to some extent [Jason] Peltier, of a CVP farmers
organization, and Steve Hall who now heads ACWA [Association of
California Water Agencies]. He then represented a group of San
Joaquin ag agencies. We used to meet with all of them and try
to do something, but they were really getting nervous that we
were also meeting with environmentalist groups. So I said,
"Well, let s all three meet," and we did that. We met at the
East Bay MUD [Municipal Utility District] facility at Pardee
Reservoir on numerous occasions.

Organizing the Three-Way Process: The Concerns of the
Environmental Community

Chall: So that was the beginning of the so-called Three-Way Process?

Boronkay: Yes. We started then discussing what we could do and what the
problems were and what solutions there were, and we all put up
some money and studies were going to be done. The governor was
very cooperative and encouraging.

Chall: Which governor was that?

Boronkay: Pete Wilson. He was very thankful for us to undertake this.
Everybody was happy if someone else--

Chall: Sure, because you re all talking.

Boronkay: Right, and because they, the politicians, didn t have to do it.
They weren t pressed into a political choice. You know, if
you re for anything on the State Water Project, the north comes
down on you, but if you don t do anything-- Well, the south
doesn t come down on you, they don t know what s going on
[laughter] until there s a drought, and then the governor would
hear from the south. So the governor and legislators were
happy that this progress was made, particularly chairmen Jim
Costa and [Ruben] Ayala. We d be congratulated all the time,
and they wanted to be kept up on it because at the very end
they knew we would propose legislation and they would get to
carry it. So that was good. In the meantime, they weren t
involved, and you didn t get into any unnecessary politics. So
this went along a long time.

Chall: Did you all get along?

Boronkay: Oh, we got along beautifully. Yes. When you get to know
people, they aren t ogres. They have a point of view, and

Chall:

Boronkay:

Chall:
Boronkay:

maybe you think it s extreme, but you know that s their
feeling. It isn t that they re evil. They have a certain
concern for the environment and they weigh it perhaps more than
you do; and you have a concern for water supply and you weigh
it perhaps more than they do. But we had gotten over a lot of
problems in personal relations and history. Suddenly, we were
moving towards some important principles we all agreed to, and
I thought we were moving toward a resolution. The concept was
to hire outside engineers of great stature that everyone could
believe in and give them a series of issues to resolve. One of
them would be what to do about more water supply to southern
California; one would be how to protect the fish and game in
the Delta; one would be how to protect or improve the water
quality; one would be how to dispose of the waste from farm
drainage. Those were the kind of things contemplated. The
approach was to agree on the problems to be studied and
consider alternative solutions without a pre-existing bias.

But as we talked more and more, it became evident that most
of the environmentalists were so concerned that once anything
were done--once you had a physical improvement programno
matter what we said, we would just take all the water. This
was very disappointing because we were considering very
inventive and elaborate legislation to give them confidence in
preventing misuse of the state project.

I see.

I knew that attitude existed earlier in the Peripheral Canal
election debates, because ultimately you always got away in
these debates from the soundness of the construction project-
was it wise, was it cost effective, what would it accomplish--
and you never could get any agreement there, and there should
have been, until you realized that their bottom line was--

No plumbing.

No plumbing, "Because then I know you can t do it. Now, you
may mean well, but I don t know how long you ll be around.
Maybe in the future someone else won t do it, but I know for
sure they can t do it without plumbing."

Well, that attitude came into this process. As we kept
going along it became clear that if any study- -and we never put
out these proposed studiesif the study came back that we
needed an improvement in the Delta and such an improvement may
be a smaller Peripheral Canal, well, they weren t going to do
it. So I said, "Well, why are we doing all this- -numerous,
lengthy meetings, drafts of position papers and proposed

legislation? We re doing this because we want all together to
do something about the Delta, but if before the studies are
made you ve already written off something, well, then, that s
not a fair study, and the original basis for these meetings is
undermined . "

Chall: Aside from the Environmental Defense Fund, perhaps--who else--?

Boronkay: NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council]. They seemed even

stronger than the Environmental Defense Fund. And I think, oh,
Save the Bay, probably, and maybe some others.

But what they did was set the tone. No other environmental
group could afford to be more easy than they, you see. They
intimidated the others by taking that position. In my opinion
the Sierra Club had a representative who was more objective.
Perhaps he could have been persuaded. I felt he could have.
But once EOF and NRDC made it clear that they were not going
for any construction, he couldn t last by saying, "Oh, yeah, we
shouldn t rule that out." I mean, the Sierra Club would lose
to these spear carriers: the editorials would say that the
groups really trying to protect the environment are these
groups that are fighting those people from the south with their
cigars. I allude to the fact that there was this terrible TV
ad by the Chronicle during one of the legislative fights with
this guy with a big cigar saying, "We don t care about those
little fishies!" [laughter] It s childish.

Chall: That s wonderful. And the octopus. You know the octopus?

Boronkay: Oh yes. All that. So I say the process really ended for that
reason.

Also, toward the end, the governor s people indicated that
whatever we get together on we had to give to them, and they
would consider it along with whatever they were doing. Well,
that was a big change and many of the three-way process people
were taken aback by that. Up until then, everyone was eager to
see what we could agree upon so it could be the basis for a
Delta solution which they would support and perhaps to get it
into legislation. But now you had the governor s people
saying, "We re going to consider it with our own stuff-
sending it down quite a rungand that was the signal that we
were no longer in charge of what was going to happen.

So all these things were coming together: a change, I
think, in the governor s office in its support of this process
and the manifestation that whatever happens it isn t going to
be constructionat least not at first.

Tom Graff and I talked about this a lot, because I have a
great regard for him. He said, "Whatever they come out with,
we want to see how the Delta could be operated for eight years
without any physical change, just by changes in the operation.
We 11 see what that does . Before we are convinced that you
need any construction, we want to do that."

I said, "Well, that s not why we all sat down together. We
sat down because we all wanted to find out what should be done
about the Delta problems and if we got an outside, competent
report saying that this is what you ve got to do, and you ve
got to do it in two years or yesterday or in five years, that
was what would be done. Now you re writing in conditions
before we get that report."

Right about that time I faded out.
but I believe Tim Quinn continued.

I stopped attending,

Gearing up for Water Marketing: The Rationale and the
Hurdles

Boronkay: At about the same time, we continued our interest in ag water
transfers or water marketing. I talked to the ag people about
it although their main interest was the SWP. We still had some
meetings with them alone and with the other urban people alone.

I said at meetings with the ag group, "You know, we re not
getting anywhere with ag water transfers, and we re going to
have to do something."

They said, "Well, we re making progress."

So then we met with the whole group.
Chall: The whole group being?
Boronkay: The Three-Way group.

And Tom Clark had-- He was on the committee for water
marketing. Tom Clark was manager of the Kern County Water
Agency. I believe it was Tom who headed that committee. He
wrote up limitations on water marketing: you had to get the
approval of this official or that agency; it couldn t be more
than that amount from here or there, under different
circumstances .

I said, "You know, I thought the whole thing here was to
sit down and try to encourage and stimulate support, to promote
water marketing as a means of solving urban problems. You ve
given us eight restrictions, eight hoops to run through. I
don t have to have any of this. We re going to go out and do
our own thing. I m not going to buy off on this. All you ve
done is make it harder for water marketing, harder for water
transfers"--we used "water transfers" in those days--"you re
making it harder. It s self-protection, and that s fine, but
there s no point in my being here, and I m not going to be a
fool and agree to that, make it more difficult than it is now.
Heck, I don t have that with IID. I don t have to agree to
something like that."

Well, they were taken aback a little, because I did feel
strongly that they were unreal about the whole problem.

Chall: So what you had were the environmentalists who you felt were
unreal in one direction, and now you had the ag people unreal
in the other?

Boronkay: Yes, to the extent that neither seemed willing to face up to
increasing urban needs. Actually, the environmentalists
weren t unreal; their political situation was just not
compatible with resolving anything in the Delta.

Chall: And the ag people?

Boronkay: The ag people- -you could say the same thing. Yes, you can say
the same thing, use the same terms, whatever you want to use.

Chall: [laughing] Well, I want you to use them. I shouldn t put
words in your mouth.

Boronkay: Well, no, those are good descriptions. I say they were unreal
in the sense that if the objective was to help us get some
water supply from the ag community, they were making it more
difficult than it was at present. So why were we having
meetings whose purpose was to promote the transfer of water if
all they were writing up were restrictions? So I faded out of
that.

Chall: It seems that at this point you were at a standstill in
obtaining water from the ag agencies?

Boronkay: Yes. And as things went on at MET, with the many millions

spent on public educational programs to use less water, putting
in homes all kinds of plumbing and water-saving devices,
subsidizing all the member agencies to re-use water, doing

substantial research on desalinating ocean water, conjunctive
use arrangementspushing everything we knew of as engineers
and otherwise--! just felt that with the population growth and
the continuing drought that we were going to suffer severe
shortages. So it occurred to me that the time had come for
water marketing, that this has been a concept that s rolled
around long enough, and you can t dispute the logic of it. The
logic of it was there, and 1 think the time had come.

I remember at about that time writing an article for a
publication that Bill Kahrl editedand I think it s defunct
presently- -but I wrote that article, and I gave the same point
in the speeches I made. I said, "If someone comes from outer
space and just looks at California s water resources
allocation, they would simply report back that there s no
evidence of intelligent life here."

Then I went into the foolishness of continuing the status
quo in water allocation. MET had done economic studies of the
amount of return you get. On a San Joaquin Valley farm growing
low-value row crops, an acre-foot of water will give you a
return of $300, perhaps $350. An acre-foot in the electronics
industry in the Bay Area or southern California will give you
about $300,000; an acre- foot accounts for nine jobs on the farm
but 2,600 in industry. Now, how long are you going to go and
worry industry about not expanding or even closing down because
of water shortages and just continue putting water into low
value crops where the water is subsidized to start with? I
mean, there is just no economic sense to it.

The next question was: is this the political time to do it?
It may make economic sense, but we all grow up in school seeing
a farmer behind a plow and something green growing, and the
farmer is symbolic of the good guy and you never want to take
on the farmer. That s how you think of it, even though many
farms are huge corporate farms, particularly in California.

It s as if someone is chopping up wood in the north for
firewood and selling it in a little town and he s doing fine,
and that same wood would bring a thousand times more for
building houses. And someone says, "Gee, I would like to buy
those pine trees and have them cut up for houses, and I ll pay
X." And someone says, "Oh, you can t do that. You ll put this
firewood guy out of work. He s been doing it all these years."
You can see that economic realities have to rule. Generally
they do eventually, but you have to get a public attitude
change .

So water marketing was not something that was going to be
an easy sell. I think we came to it because we were in a
drought, and if it was going to sell, it was going to sell
then.

Convincing the MET Board

Chall: Well, how did the MET board feel about this?

Boronkay: That was always a potential problem for me- -the question to
what extent they would support that . For some years I had
urged that we should consider water transfers. Mind you, we
don t take anyone s water. Everyone was against taking water
away from the farmer, and we never proposed that. It was
always giving them the right or opportunity to sell water,
which I believe they ll do if they can make enough of a profit
on it. All we sought was the opportunity to buy water.

Some people said, "Well, that s what L.A. did in the Owens
Valley." Well, it wasn t the case at all. They didn t take
away anyone s water, they bought up the water rights. And
anyway, we weren t going to do that; it was a totally different
situation and a different time.

So I had proposed it to the board. I listed all the things
we were doing in terms of meeting future water needs, and I had
there water transfers. I explained the various possibilities.
I don t even think we got into marketing as a full blown
program; it was just specific opportunities.

But one day--I think even before I did this listing for the
board- -one day I was in my office, and an L.A. Times reporter
came in.

He says, "I have here a copy of a letter to MET from a
farmer in the San Joaquin offering to sell you his water. Are
you interested in that?"

I was wary, recognizing that it would be a sensitive
matter.

I said, "Yes. I have seen that letter." I mean, I had the
original. "And we ll look into it and see what it s about."

He said, "Well, have you ever done that before?"

"No, we haven t done that to my knowledge,"
"What do you think of it?"

"Well, I don t think anything of it at this point. I would
have to find out more about it . "

"But you re interested in it?"

"Well, yes, we re interested in bolstering our water supply
from whatever legal source we can."

So the next day in the Los Angeles Times, on the front page
of the second section, there was a headline: "MET to Buy out
San Joaquin Valley Water." [laughter]

Chall: Oh, whoops.

Boronkay: Yes. Well, a couple of days later was the board meeting, and
the board was furious. When I say the board was furious, it s
never the whole board of fifty-one people; you have half a
dozen who are furious. That s plenty, because most of the
others don t speak.

Chall: Do most of them come, though?

Boronkay: Oh yes. Most of them come. I would say there are often forty-
eight. But most have little to say at board meetings.
Everything goes through committee meetings where they have more
of a chance to talk. So when we had the big board meeting,
there were not a lot of people who would say something. But
those that are furious speak. We had a lot of people that were
very close to farmers and very close to San Joaquin Valley
farmers and ACWA and all that, and for some their own
businesses were related to farming.

They said, "Now, I want to know who gave you the authority
to buy water. "

I said, "Well, we re not buying water. I m going to look
at the proposal and if it makes any sense, I would report to
you and you would decide whether to do that."

"Well, this says that we re buying out the valley and all
of our friends there have phoned and we ve been getting lots of
calls," and this and that and the other thing.

I said, "There s nothing I can do there. Things happen
between board meetings. This reporter walked in; someone had

given him a copy of the letter. I couldn t deny that I had the
letter, and I told him just what I m telling youthat we ve
gotten this letter and I m going to find out what it s about."

Some seemed satisfied and the majority of the board just
listened. Others just raised the roof. "We don t want to do
that. We don t want to take the farmer s water." Take, always
take. They likened it to the Owens Valley story and said this
will all hurt MET.

I said, "We re not taking anyone s water. Only if they
want to sell it would we consider it. And I don t know if it s
physically possible, legally possible, or if it s financially
desirable. We have a lot to look at."

So after time, most board members were agreeing that it s
sensible to look into it, but not all. One member from
Burbank, it seemed to me, always wanted to embarrass
management. It didn t matter what the issue was.

He stood up and with considerable emotion said, "It s
terrible, we don t want anything to do with it. I make a
motion that the general manager be restricted and directed not
to pursue purchasing water in the San Joaquin Valley or
anywhere else." Something worded like that.

So I said, "Well, now, that s not in MET s interest." Now,
here s my difficulty. You don t like to be arguing with
directors; you re the hired hand. So it s not good, but
sometimes you have no alternative. You hope that someone else
will take them on, and sometimes they did.

So I said, "You know, that isn t going to look good to the
public, that MET, irrespective of its tight water supply, just
doesn t even want to consider something." I said, "I think the
motion is unduly restrictive, not of me, but of you, because
you re not going to get to consider this program. Whatever
proposal comes, you won t get it because I won t be able to
even think about it. It s always up to you to decide if it s a
good proposal. Shouldn t you want to even listen to it?"

Well, they voted down his motion right away, but you see
the initial reaction of those who spoke against it.

Ironically, some months later some board members originally
opposed to any San Joaquin Valley water transfer were asking
how we were doing and were encouraging such efforts.

The Bradley Bill Surfaces: MET Supports Transfers

Boronkay: So this was the background. I m searching to increase our
water supplies, always receptive to water marketing by this
time, and yet there s not a heck of a lot that s out there.

I read in the paper that Senator [Bill] Bradley had a
hearing in L.A. on a proposed bill to amend the federal Central
Valley Project authorization and is going to have one in
Sacramento. So I called his office and spoke to [Tom] Jensen.

I said, "I see you had this hearing, and I m surprised that
you had one of our member agencies testify and you didn t
invite MET to testify."

He said, "Well, why do we want you to testify? We know
where you stand. We have enough people against the bill; we
don t need you to speak against it."

I said, "Well, you know, I never told you I m against it."
So he said, "Well, how do you feel about our bill?"

I said, "Well, there s a water sales provision in your bill
that I would be eager to support if I am invited to
Sacramento. "

He said, "Yes, we ll do that."

The MET board has to approve positions MET takes on
legislation, so at a board meeting I said, "There s a draft
Bradley bill that s circulating that has a lot to do with the
CVP and the revision of it, but my interest in it is that it
has a clause regarding the secretary of Interior selling water.
I know this board has taken a position in favor of water
transfers, water marketing, and I intend to go up to the
hearing and indicate that." No one raised any question, so I
went up there.

Chall: So you went up to Sacramento? 1
Boronkay: That s right.

The date of the Sacramento hearing was May 18, 1991.

Chall: By yourself?

Boronkay: By myself. It turned out that the chairman of the [MET] board
was sitting in one of the first few rows there. I didn t know
she was going to be there.

Chall: Who was that?

Boronkay: Lois Krieger. She had very close relations with agricultural
people as MET s chairman and through ACWA activities.

But, in any case, she sat there. I finally was called and
given short shrift. Bradley was interested in the environment.
His bill was roughly 80 percent environmental and 20 percent
revenue changes or financial revision of the farmers
contracts. Perhaps 1 percent said something about the
secretary of the Interior being authorized to sell some water,
and that was to create a fund to help fish and game. I said,
"Here s who we are, here s what we need, we re in trouble, and
we would support provisions of any bill that would permit water
marketingthat would allow Metropolitan to buy water."

See, I refrained carefully from supporting the
environmental part of the bill or the farmers contracts
revisions that were being proposed. I just said, "I m here to
support the idea of water marketing." And that was all, just
took two or three minutes, no questions. Bradley was probably
talking to one of the senators near him, and that was all.

I walked out of the hearing. Out in the hall it was as if
there were a fire storm. The TV people came up and said, "This
is a break with agriculture. Is that right?"

"Well, it s not necessarily a break. We take a different
position on this point."

"Well, aren t they going to fight you on this?" And
another TV cameraman set up, and radio people, and newsmen were
writing and also asking questions about a split in the historic
urban-agriculture-water alliance. I repeated that we ve taken
different positions and that water marketing was essential for
urban needs.

I knew there would be interest, but then when the media
attention died down, I saw ag people were there who I knew,
and they were just stunned. They said, "How could you do
this?"

Chall:
Boronkay:

I said, "I ve been telling you right along that we need
water and we want transfers, and we haven t gotten any water
from you."

"Well, what do you mean you haven t gotten any water?"

I said, "Nothing we ve done in this period that we ve tried
for two years has gotten us any water."

So then I left. Later I saw Peltier--! think it was
Peltier and Butchert near the Capitol. I know it was Butchert,
and I think Peltier was with him. It was maybe the same day or
the next day. I met them on the street and they said something
like: "Gee whiz, we were really shocked that you did that, and
we don t understand it."

I said, "Well, I told you no progress on transfers was
being made."

Butchert said, "Sure there has been."
I said, "Well, you tell me any."
He said, "IID."
[laughs]

I said, "Well, you just proved my case. We had the IID deal if
you never existed. You haven t been able to show anything
coming out of your group, and that s why we are here."

And that was that. They went away, and after that they
contacted us and they said, "What if we get together on our own
bill?"

I said, "Well, we ll talk about that."

"A bill that would include water marketing."

So I said, "Fine."

Helping to Draft the Seymour Bill: Support in Principle

Boronkay: They went ahead and drafted an alternate bill to the Bradley

bill. That was the bill which became the [John] Seymour bill.
That was the bill that reduced the upfront allocation of water

for the environment, for the fisheries, but had a lot of
technical environmental improvements which [David] Schuster and
others were involved in drafting and which were very sound. I
believe the draft also omitted or reduced substantially the
Bradley bill s financial obligations of the farmers. I think
it may have had some changes in their renewal contracts, but
nothing like what the initial Bradley bill was going to have.

So I dealt with them, and the difficulties we had. Tim
will come in on this, because right about now he was involved.

Quinn and I decided that the farmers had to be able to sell
water, not the districts. If the districts could sell, you not
only reduced competition right off because there are only so
many districts instead of hundreds of farmers, but politically
they won t want to sell or will sell at an exorbitant price.
To them it s political power, and for us to be able to deal
with their farmers was something that they weren t putting up
with.

That became the ma lor, ma lor fight, and we wouldn t go
along with them. We held out on that. We met at one point at
a convention in San Diego. Lots of water stuff goes on at
conventions because everyone is there. People say, "Oh, that s
a boondoggle." Nonsense. Everyone is there. You save ten
trips if ten parties are there. So we argued it out. Tim and
I stayed firm that it has to be farmers and not the districts
who could sell, and they finally gave in.

Chall: Jason Peltier said, "We had hours and hours of gut -wrenching
meetings and a lot of conflict, and a lot of tension but
finally we got through it and cut a deal with MET and part of
that deal for us was, Well, this is good, we ll have now an
alliance with the Metropolitan Water District to fight the
Miller-Bradley bills, and they ll get with us and get behind
Congressman Cal Dooley...and Senator Seymour... " 1

Boronkay: Oh, that s plain wrong, perhaps a misunderstanding. At no time
did we undertake to fight anybody s billsat no time. We
merely agreed to work with them on the Seymour bill. I was not
in a position to judge the likelihood of success of that bill
and never cut my ties to the Miller-Bradley efforts.

Jason Peltier, The Passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement
Act. 1991-1992. Regional Oral History Office, University of California,
Berkeley, 1994, p. 40.

They were going to fight these bills, and did and never
called on us to do anything on that front. They knew we never
agreed to fight Bradley or Miller or anybody else. In fact I
later recommended the MET board support a bill by Senator
Bennett Johnston, essentially the Bradley bill.

I can tell you why that s so and why it s so clear in my
memory, because I went to Washington and worked with [Stuart]
Somach--and maybe [Dave] Schuster, but certainly Somach--and we
put together a bill where we finally said, "Yes, we can go with
this." But I also said, "Hey, you know, this part isn t clear;
we ve got to change that. This should be amplified; this is an
error. But, as a whole, this looks good." Somach agreed that
the draft would be modified to reflect our negotiations. We
were going to be allies on the Seymour bill but we never talked
about MET fighting the Miller-Bradley bills and were never
asked to.

Then the next morning I was advised that Seymour had
already introduced our bill the way it was. I was surprised
and said to Somach, "We had a bunch of things we had agreed to
change. Some of those things aren t right, some are ambiguous,
and some are misleading."

"Oh," he said, "Don t worry about that. We ll take care of
that by amendments, but it s important that we get moving."

Well, it was done, but I made a big note here [puts finger
on head]: "Don t always trust these guys." I had no reason to
expect them to get that bill filed before we made those agreed
corrections. They didn t tell me they were going to do it.
So, now, it s a Seymour bill. Okay, the die is cast there. So
1 went back to MET and asked the board to support the Seymour
bill.

Chall: In principle, I noticed. 1

Boronkay: In principle, and specifically the water marketing provisions.
Yes. I didn t want to get into saying we re for or against
environmental or economic changes. So I said, "We support it
in principle or we support particularly the provisions for
marketing. "

Report to the Board of Directors from the General Manager, re the
Central Valley Project Fish and Wildlife Act of 1991, (S. 2016), November
26, 1991.

Chris [Christine] Reed, a now-deceased former member of our
board from Santa Monica and very liberal and very much a
Democrat, said--

Quinn: She was a Republican.

Boronkay: Oh, was she a Republican?

Quinn: Yes, she was.

Chall: This is Chris Reed?

Boronkay: Chris Reed, former mayor of Santa Monica.

So she says at the Water Problems Committee meeting or
Executive Committee meeting, "Well, Carl, this man Seymour is
in a race for the Senate, and we don t want MET to get involved
in party politics."

I said, "Well, we re not going to do that, but here s a
bill that we want to support, and it s his bill."

Then someone else said, "Well, this may not be the only
bill that we like and may want to support . "

1 said, "Indeed, it probably won t be the only bill, and
we re not saying we won t support another bill."

So I had in mind very clear sentiment of the board members
that we were not married to any particular bill, but we were
married to the position that we want to support a bill that
comes out the way we want it on water marketing. That s why I
say the portion you read to me about Peltier saying we made a
deal to fight the Miller and Bradley bills was total
imagination if not bad memory- -because we never agreed to fight
those bills and didn t.

Chall: He said, "We ll have an alliance with MET to fight the Miller-
Bradley bills "

Boronkay: Never. Our only alliance was to support the Seymour bill. He
may have thought that if you were supporting the Seymour bill,
automatically you re against the others. If so, that s his
mistake. I never said that to him or anyone else. I tell you,
I rode two horses as long as I could in that legislative fight,
and ended up on the winner.

INTERVIEW WITH TIMOTHY QUINN

II TIMOTHY QUINN: DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER, METROPOLITAN WATER
DISTRICT, 1993-PRESENT (1998)

Education and Career Path to the Metropolitan Water District

Chall: What I want to know from you today is something about your
personal background, your education and career path to the
Metropolitan Water District, starting with where you were born and
when and where you went to school and college. I didn t get a
resume from you, so I don t really know these answers.

Quinn: All the way back then?
Chall: All the way back then.

Quinn: I was born in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska [1951] and grew up in an

agricultural area. My father worked for a sugar refining company,
and we were bounced from small town to small town.

Chall: Sugar factories?

Quinn: Yes, in Nebraska and eastern Colorado.

Chall: Sugar beets?

Quinn: Sugar beets. The company that my father worked for was the Great
Western Sugar Company. Great Western bought the beets from the
farmers and refined them.

Like a lot of the people who now live in the urban west, I
grew up in the agricultural west. Eventually, I went to Denver
and started my studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Major Field of Study: Economics, 1970-1983

Chall: What time was that?

Quinn: I started college in 1970 and graduated from Boulder in 1974.

Chall: In what field?

Quinn: In economics. Actually, my affinities were for history and

philosophy, but I had a conversation with my father who said he
once knew a philosopher who starved to death. And I had six hours
of economics at that point in my life, and it felt like it was
kind of a mix of something you could supposedly make an income at,
and yet could keep me alive intellectually.

So I wound up as a major in economics and was awarded a four
year fellowship at UCLA to go to graduate school. It was quite
astonishing to me--the notion that you could actually get paid to
go to school. I had a $6,500 a year stipend. I had a wife, and
we had one small child at the time.

Chall: You started early to have your family. You were still in school.

Quinn: I have four children now. The youngest just graduated from high
school this year, and I have a second granddaughter expected in
about a week.

At UCLA I really started to develop my professional interests.
I received a master s degree in 1976 and a Ph.D. degreeboth in
economics from UCLA--in 1983.

Chall: You went straight through.

Quinn: Well, sort of. I mean, if you add that all up, I was in graduate
school a long time, but then by the time I was done I had four
kids, a mortgage, and a couple of pets. I wouldn t recommend this
as a way to get your Ph.D. to anyone else.

Chall: Did your wife work?

Quinn: No, she raised the family. When our youngest went to grade school
she went back to college. The proudest day of my lifenothing
else comes close was the day that my wife graduated from college.
She now teaches.

Chall: Is that right? So you were raising a family on an income from
being a teaching fellow?

Quinn: For the first few years that was the bulk of our income, and then
I went to work at the Rand Corporation.

Chall: Oh, I see. While you were still at UCLA?

Quinn: While I did my graduate work at UCLA, which is one reason it took
so long: I was working full time. Again, it s another thing that
explains my particular perspectives on public policy issues. Even
back when I was going through my academic life, I was researching
and had a foot in the real world as opposed to being totally in
academia. In 1976 and 1977 I went to Washington, D.C.

The President s Council of Economic Advisors, 1976-1977

Chall: With Rand?

Quinn: No. I left Rand. I took a leave of absence from Rand and from
UCLA, and I served on the staff of the President s Council of
Economic Advisors [CEA] . I was originally hired by the [Gerald]
Ford administration, but the tradition in those days was that the
staff of CEA, as it was always called, was that you were there for
your analytical expertise, not for your partisan politics. So, by
tradition, they kept staff over when an administration changed.
When Ford was voted out of office in November of 1976 I retained
my position. Actually, I wound up with a better job under the
[Jimmy] Carter administration than I had under the Ford
administration. I was there for a little over a year, which is
the standard appointment.

It was in Washington where I realized that I probably never
was going to be a professor, which had been my ambition in life up
to that time.

Chall: What made you realize that?

Quinn: Watching real world policy get formulated. Economists can be

fairly strong elitists, intellectual elitists. We are taught a
very rigorous way of looking at the world and what kind of policy
constitutes good policy, and I became quite fascinated by the fact
that politicians rarely adopted the solutions that economists said
were the perfect answers to social problems.

I ve mentioned that my father worked for the sugar industry.
One of the things that was going on in the mid- seventies in
Washington was legislation to eliminate sugar subsidies, which had
been a way of life in the American agricultural economy for some

time. In fact, they did get rid of the sugar subsidies. The
economic case for getting rid of sugar subsidies was compelling,
but at the same time I had a father in that industry and knew a
great many growers in that industry and I could see the
implications for them of what seemed to me to be a perfectly
rational, economically efficient public policy.

It was the juxtaposition between the sound economic arguments
and the real impacts of public policies in the real world that
captured my intellectual interest, and I wound up writing my Ph.D.
dissertation on water politics in California and why politicians
don t do what economists recommend that they should do.

The Ph.D. Dissertation on Groundwater Law

Chall: Is that right? And that s at UCLA?

Quinn: Yes, at UCLA. And I made the great mistake of thinking that I was
solving the problems of the world in my Ph.D. dissertation. It s
350 pages long.

Chall: That s 1983, right at the--

Quinn: Right at the height of water politics. At the time, there was a
fellow at the Rand Corporation. His name was Chuck Phelps. He
was the manager of the newly created regulatory program at Rand.
Chuck was working on water issues, doing what turned out to be a
fairly influential study by Rand on the topic of water marketing.
I was not directly involved in those studies, but I had a good
relationship with all of the people who were.

Phelps one day approached me when I was looking for a field to
apply my dissertation ideas about how the political system
operated, and he said, "You should think about water." And that
was how I got involved with California water.

My Ph.D. was on the topic of groundwater law in California and
how it evolved in different parts of the state where you were
essentially solving the same technical problemoverdraft,
resulting in seawater intrusion, subsidence, and other problems.
The problems are not all that different from one area to another,
but there are economically radically different public policies
that have been implemented to respond to that problem. So I set
about the task of trying to figure out how the political system
was balancing its different considerations and why that led to
different decisions than what economists would advocate. It

changed me forever. I learned things writing my dissertation that
still guide me as a consensus builder and a coalition builder in
the world of water resources in the West.

Chall: Meaning that you understand there are reasons for these
differences?

Quinn: Very good reasons. It turns out that there s a reason that they

don t always do what economists say, which doesn t mean that there
aren t powerful reasons to look hard at the economic side of
public policy issues. I wrote a dissertation on these water
issues, although I could never get any funding to do water. I
tried hard, but nobody would pay me to do policy analysis of water
resources. Again, water politics was probably never more fierce
or more divisive than it was in the early 1980s, and I didn t have
the maturity back then to understand the political context that
was going on out there. And to have an independent mind from the
Rand Corporation come in and say, "I m going to analyze the
politics and economics and help you figure out what good public
policy might be"--it wasn t a formula that was going to sell, and
it didn t.

My phone rang one day, and it was the assistant general
manager, Myron Holburt, who worked with Metropolitan at the time--
very close with Carl Boronkay.

Myron was a feisty water engineer, a person that I continue to
respect greatly. Carl had brought him over from the Colorado
River Board. I d never met the man, but I was popular on the
speaking circuit in those days, and I used to give a speech that
said what California needs is to fix the Delta and allow the
market to function. I understood the Delta enough to realize that
it was an unstable environment and that the transportation system
for water was "broken"--the popular phrase these days--I don t
think we used it back then. My pitch in those days was that you
needed to fix the Delta--! was a supporter of the Peripheral Canal
at the timeand you needed a water market. I don t think Carl
had ever heard that particular combination of arguments. I had
never met him.

Metropolitan Water District; Economist. 1985

Quinn: Myron called me and essentially offered me a job over the

telephone one day. I was quite astonished. I was quite happy at
Rand. I was doing research for EPA on other natural resource
topics. I was developing strong expertise at the time in global

warming issues and stratospheric ozone depletion. I was a project
leader at a relatively young age and bringing in the better part
of a million dollars a year in grants from the federal government.
So I had a successful career at Rand. But there was the
Washington experience, and I knew I was writing reports,
essentially, that most people wouldn t pay much attention to.

I went to lunch with Carl and Myron a couple of days later,
and they said they wanted to hire me as an economist at
Metropolitan Water District. Frankly, I didn t really understand
who or what the Metropolitan Water District was at the time, and
my immediate response was no. I said, "I m not even the slightest
bit interested." But I said, "Let me help you search for someone
who will fit your organization well." Because I had particular
ideas of how an economist could be effective within the political
world. I mean, the traditional classroom economist was going to
come into this world and fall flat on his face because he didn t
understand the political balancing that had to happen, and
desirably needed to happen, from a social decision-making
perspective. So I offered to help them on a search committee of
some sort, but Carl later told me that he became determined at
that lunch that he was going to hire me. It took several months.
It was about five months before I actually agreed to come to work.

Chall: How did they convince you?

Quinn: Well, I knew I was taking a big risk. At the time, Metropolitan

had an actual policy not to hire economists. [laughs] Economists
were at the time quite critical of what was going on in the water
industry. Metropolitan had hired an economist some years prior,
and it had not been a happy experience for them. They had no job
description that fit economic talents. So they didn t have a spot
for an economist and they didn t want to create one, but they
wound up creating a job especially for me when I came to work
here.

And you know, back in those days I had a number of strikes
against me. I was from Rand, and the Rand reports which advocated
water marketing and a different way of managing California water
were not well received by Metropolitan at the time. I was a Ph.D.
economist, and I was an outsider. Yet Carl Boronkay had decided
at the time, I believe but didn t bother telling methat he
really wanted to head the organization in a fundamentally
different direction. He felt that the marketing concepts were
powerful and important for Metropolitan, but he knew he didn t
have staff resources that could help him do what needed to be
done. So, he wanted to hire an economist, and an economist who at
least had made an effort to understand how politics work and how
you meld political and economic issues.

It was not surprising to me now that Carl found me an
attractive potential employee, and I have never looked back or
regretted it. My friends at Rand were very perplexed. Rand is
world class, and better in those days, I think, than it is today.
They couldn t believe I would leave a world-famous research
institute and go work for a utility.

Chall: And now this utility has a certain world-class reputation.

Quinn: Yes, and I can remember vividly explaining to them that I wanted
to try my hand at having my hands on the policy levers themselves
--instead of just writing about them, actually going out and doing
it. That s what I ve been allowed to do at Metropolitan.

Chall: They give you a free hand here.

Quinn: Well, never a free hand. [laughter] Never a free hand.

Analyzing Carl Boronkay s Vision: The Need to Change Historic
Water Alliances

Chall: How was Mr. Boronkay as a head officer--! mean to work with?

Quinn: Well, Carl was the general manager. Carl is a very sharp

strategist and understood the role of politics in some ways and
didn t understand the world of politics in some ways. I now have
a lot of the responsibility for making political strategic
decisions that rested with Carl when he was here. But I realize
what courage he had and the vision that he had and the leadership
qualities that he had to try and recognize that we needed to head
in another direction. It s like changing the direction of the
Queen Mary. It takes a long time, and it doesn t surprise me he
didn t tell me.

I m not sure he knew fully what he was planning on back in
1985 when I walked in the door. Carl had a vision of where he
wanted to go, and he was willing to go through hard times and to
hang onto the rails of the boat as it rocked to get there. I have
tremendous respect for Carl. He was instrumental in changing the
direction of California water, not only for the commitment to a
new set of management toolsto looking more toward market forces
--but towards realigning some of the traditional politics in
water.

This played itself out in the CVPIA debates. The extent to
which Carl actually enunciated it to himself, I ll never know.

But he understood that the old political axis of southern
California and San Joaquin Valley agriculture against everyone
else had run its course. It petered out in 1982, that view of
north versus south. Carl was one of the leaders in creating the
California Urban Water Agencies [CUWA] , for example.

When historians write the history books with decades of proper
perspective on this time, the creation of CUWA, as we call it,
deserves a chapter or two. It was a fundamentally important
event, quite apart from all this marketing and important aspects
that were going on. The creation of CUWA was a fundamentally
important event in California water that created relationships
that hadn t existed in the past.

It was the first real outreach between north and south.
Always before, provincial differences had separated us. CUWA
didn t allow us to be as provincial as we had been. We came to
realize it wasn t north versus south, it wasn t that the water was
in the north and we needed it in the south; it was the northerners
and the southerners relying on the Bay-Delta watershed, relying on
the same resource bundle, essentially, and we had common problems,
and we had to come up with common solutions together.

Agriculture was very perturbed by that alliance. As we were
moving closer to CUWA, as we were establishing working
relationships with the environmental community- -which we had never
had--it was Carl who was thinking through and making decisions.
One of the things which he did relatively early was he sent me up
to meet Andy Moran and Tom Berliner, who both were with Hetch
Hetchy in those days. They are now running the Public Utilities
Commission of the city and county of San Francisco. Carl sent me
up to meet the people that were running the East Bay Municipal
Utility District. I was one of the people that worked on
developing those relations under Carl s direction.

I got to meet and know and like Tom Graff and Zach Willey at
the Environmental Defense Fund. Those were relationships we had
not had prior to Boronkay realizing that we needed to have them.
I can remember some pretty tough sessions with representatives of
agricultural interests who were bitter about the fact that we were
establishing those relationships. They felt betrayed.

In my mind at the time, I was not in a position to understand
the politics the way that Carl did. I didn t see it from his
broader umbrella perspective. From my perspective, I ve always
approached everything in my life with openness and saying, "I
respect where you re trying to go; I want you to respect where I m
trying to go. Let s try and find common solutions." To do that
with the environmentalists, to do that with the Bay Area seemed

very natural to me. I didn t have the history of the old
political alliance. I wasn t part of that.

Chall: So did that make it easier for you?

Quinn: It made it easier for me to do it, but it made it harder for me to
see the consequences and to understand the reaction that was going
on in the agricultural community, because I hadn t shared those
old relationships. So establishing the new relationships, which
seemed a natural, positive thing to do--I never apologized for it
and still don t today, but I didn t appreciate the degree to which
that would be viewed in a negative fashion by some of the people
that we did have the historical relationships with. All that was
sort of setting the stage as we moved into Miller-Bradley, where
those old relationships were stressed to the breaking point.

From a bigger picture perspective in the politics of
California water, the simple fact is that the system was operated
for the benefit of the water users. For decades upon decades the
environment was neglected. Again, I wasn t a part of that
history, so it was easier for me to disassociate myself from it,
and very natural for me to realize that we had to have a new set
of rules in the future. I come from a fairly strong environmental
ethic in my own family and have passed that on to my children.

The water business from the late-eighties into the mid-
nineties was going through a cathartic change. Carl knew it was
coming. He knew this change was coming along. One of its peaks--
or valleys, depending on your perspectivewas in 1992 with the
CVPIA. I believe that Carl understood that the water industry had
to go through cathartic change as a result of the environmental
revolution and the fact that we all needed to have a new set of
environmental values .

We didn t get involved in the environmental issues in CVPIA
until fairly late in the game. I wanted to. I argued we should,
in his office, privately, but he was focused on the water
marketing provisions. I can remember, one time Carl took me aside
and said that we had to understand that we had more flexibility- -
things like creating markets, different ways to manage resources--
we had more flexibility than the environment does. Carl kind of
accepted that, but it was not the kind of thing you could say at a
water meeting in the 1980s. It would not have been well received.
We went through this adjustment period from 1987-1988. The first
real sign of it in our world was the listing of the winter-run
salmon in 1989.

Chall: Oh, tell me about that.

Quinn: Well, the Endangered Species Act had been passed years before, but
never really affected the operations of our water projects until
the winter run was listed in 1989. It s a run of salmon in the
Sacramento River; its populations had gone to alarmingly low
levels. It was listed. It didn t affect the operations of our
projects. You can still argue maybe it should have, maybe it
shouldn t have, because the evidence that we actually suck these
fish up in the pumps is weak at best, but it was the first real
definitive action that the rules were changing.

The Delta smelt got listed in 91 or 92. The Central Valley
Project Improvement Act was passed in 92. We re now looking at
several other species for listing. This all culminated in our
world seemingly slipping through our fingers from a water
manager s perspective until 1994 with the Bay-Delta Accord. What
was happening over this time period and CVPIA was the critical
step if you ask me--was that we were having to make adjustments,
revolutionary adjustments, in how we manage our world and how we
think about our world to accommodate the degrading environmental
resources that were going on in the system.

CVPIA was a critical part of that, and as that pie was
shrinking for water interests, the status quo was being changed
fundamentally. A lot of consensus building which has occurred in
recent years and has given us the opportunity to solve long-term
problems never could have happened without CVPIA. CVPIA was a
fundamentally important part of a shift in the status quo,
especially for agriculture.

Much to Carl Boronkay s credit, the urbans understood that the
status quo was changing, that the old methods were not going to
work. You weren t going to go out and get somebody to build a big
project and pay for a big chunk of the costs and give you the low
cost water. We were entering a very different world where we
needed to look at things like water marketing, investments in
reclamation and conservation on a scale unfathomable in 1985 when
Tim Quinn became an employee for the Metropolitan Water District.
Carl could see that. I don t think agriculture could see those
changes .

Chall: You think he saw that far ahead? He saw marketing ahead.

Quinn: He saw marketing ahead. Marketing was where he chose to focus his
energies, but I think he saw marketing as part of bigger changes
that were going on. I mean, earthshaking changes in the world
around us and that we needed to break out of the old political
relationships, look at new management tools. Part and parcel of
that was a great deal of decay and deterioration in our

relationships with the agricultural community, which we have been
rebuilding since the passage of CVPIA.

Chall: In the latter part of our interviews, I d like to get into the
whole CALFED process.

Quinn: Oh, so let s save that topic for that time then.
Chall: Yes.

First Assignments with MET: Water Transfer Initiatives

Chall:

Quinn :

What then were your earlier assignments here?
that far back?

Can you recall them

Chall:
Quinn:

Well, I ll tell you the first two assignments I got. They were in
the first week that I came in. Again, I did not have the maturity
to understand quite what was going on in my professional life at
the time. Carl made me the chief negotiator for Metropolitan on
two major water marketing transactions. One in the Palo Verde
Valley on the Colorado River, and the other was the Arvin-Edison
Water Storage District in the southern San Joaquin Valley near
Bakersfield.

The Palo Verde Irrigation District is one of the oldest
irrigation districts in the western United States. They have, I
think, the second most senior rights on the Colorado River.
Arvin-Edison Water Storage District is a CVP contractor. So Carl
was interested in maybe making water transfers, water marketing,
real to Metropolitan. We had discussions ongoing at the time with
the Imperial Irrigation District, and I was an advisor to that
process. These were two new initiatives that were launched as I
walked through the door. And this was another strike against me
as far as the organization was concerned. I was in my early
thirties at the time.

As far as the Metropolitan Water District staff?

Yes. And, again, my attitude was, "I ll be honest and I ll be
open with you," but I had never worked in a bureaucracy quite like
Metropolitan at the time.

Those were my first two jobs, and it was baptism by fire.

50
The Palo Verde Irrigation District

Chall: Tell me about Palo Verde. Tell me about each one of them a
little.

Quinn: Well, actually, both of them were extremely positive growth

experiences for me, professionally. In the Palo Verde deal I went
out and started negotiating with Dana Fisher, who was president of
the Palo Verde Irrigation District board of trustees at the time,
and Virgil Jones , and several other folks . The general manager
was Jerry Davison, who is the general manager today. It was a
very interesting experience. I went about my job by looking at
how much money I thought these guys were making farming, which as
an economist I understoodyou know, cost plus, competitive rate
of returnthat was my target.

Again, I suffered from naivete in those days that I don t
suffer from necessarily today. It was the first place I learned
to negotiate, and I discovered I m not a bad negotiator. My job
has evolved where I have been Metropolitan s chief negotiator in,
at this point, dozens of very complicated negotiations. Carl
mentioned that when CVPIA got to serious negotiating, he let me. I
knew Carl trusted me when he allowed me to talk at meetings . For
quite a while, when Carl was at a meeting you understood your job
was to shut up. [laughter] I started knowing that there was a
relationship of trust being built when all of a sudden Carl would
look at me and I would realize he wanted me to carry a lot of the
discussion at meetings as the CVPIA unfolded.

On Palo Verde I learned to walk away from a negotiating table.
This negotiation was occurring in 1986 and 1987

Chall: Was this a marketing transaction?

Quinn: Yes. We were asking them not to grow as many crops, to fallow a
portion of their fields.

Chall: Really? Had they come to you with the suggestion?
Quinn: Actually, we approached them.
Chall: All right.

Quinn: We approached them. More than probably any other place in

California, the farmers out in the Palo Verde Irrigation District
were willing to look at this as a business transaction. Generally
water market ing --and I don t fault others for thiswater
marketing has got very strong emotional and social issues tied to

it. Those didn t tend to be attached to the issue as far as the
Palo Verde Irrigation District was concerned. They were willing
to approach it as a business transaction.

We negotiated for a year or so, off and on. We were
purchasing water for about a $135 an acre-foot in the case of the
Imperial Irrigation District conservation program. That was the
cost we calculated. Actually, it s a fairly high estimated cost
for the Imperial Irrigation Conservation Program. I had looked
hard at farm economics. My judgment was: If we purchase this
water at $135 an acre-foot, that would be an extraordinarily
handsome return, indeed, for a grower in the Palo Verde Valley.
That s what we offered.

Eventually there was a complicated negotiating process. At
the time we were trying to put together a long-term transaction--
thirty-five years, I think is what we were looking for--and price
indices and all these sorts of things. But the essence of it was
that in the end we were willing to offer about $135 an acre-foot.
The farmers out there thought the water ought to be worth closer
to $300 an acre-foot, and we parted company, friends. At least
from my perspective, it was actually amicable. We said, "Well,
we re not able to get there now. Let s part friends and come back
at some point in the future."

Quinn: In 1991, California was facing an extraordinary crisis with a very
deep drought. Nineteen ninety-one went off the hydrologic charts.
In December, January, and February- -that water year- -it was truly
a scary and extraordinary experience. The governor s Drought
Water Bank was created at the time. Myself and Tom Clark had come
up with the basic concept and the basic structure of the bank,
sold that concept to Dave Kennedy and Bob Potter at the Department
of Water Resources, and the bank was launched. I can remember
sitting in meetings in February 1991 when people scoffed at the
notion of water transfers and water marketing. They said, "You
won t be able to buy any water. Maybe you ll get 100,000 acre-
feet. This is a very dry year. Nobody s going to be willing to
sell you water because it s just too dear. If you buy water it s
going to be what we call paper water. 1 That is, not real stuff.
It s when Harry sells you Dick s water and gives you a low price
because he s not doing anything to make it available."

But, lo and behold, in the water bank, through no particular
magic, a price was established at $125 to the farmer. The next
thing you knew, within less than a two-month window, at the price
of $125 an acre-foot, the water bank purchased 800,000 acre-feet
of water, gross. It was an extraordinary statement about the

power of market forces, if you ask me. The bank wasn t perfect.
It was a highly contrived market experiment, but it undeniably
spoke to the power of market forces, and it also said $125 was not
a bad price for water. I think that was one of the factors that
caught the attention of the decision makers out at Palo Verde, and
$135 didn t look so bad to them, after all.

Chall: Oh, so that had them hanging on.

Quinn: I had personally been the negotiator during 86 and 87. I did
not finish the negotiation, but we did a short-term arrangement
with them. We stopped talking long-term. We wound up with what
we called a land fallowing test program. So we paid them,
essentially, to increase the amount of fallowing in their crop
rotations for two years, got everybody to agree how much water
that would save, because they weren t growing as many crops.

Chall: What crops were they growing up there?

Quinn: Mostly they fallowed low value field crops. Fallowing has become
the f-word in California water marketing; fallowing is just not
something that is supposed to be politically correct. In point of
fact, we fallow crops for financial reasons all the time in
California. Eventually, I think, farmers will be able to make the
decision in response to water market forces; how much they want to
grow in that year. Right now it s something that the state is not
entirely ready for.

But this deal was built around the notion that for two years--
1992 and 1993--they would increase the amount of fallowing in crop
rotation. They fallowed approximately 20,000 acres of land.
Virtually every land owner in the valley of any size participated
in the program. It created 186,000 acre-feet of water. We
secured agreements with the federal government to allow us to bank
the conserved water in Lake Mead- -the first time that had ever
been done.

Chall: Is Palo Verde part of the CVP?

Quinn: No, Palo Verde--they have ancient water rights. It s their water,
as they will quickly point out to you. They are beholden to no
government for their water.

Chall: Yes, so that s why you were able to deal with them.
Quinn: As a legal matter, good question.

So we were experimenting with this water transfer stuff, and
it felt pretty good. I mean, the Palo Verde thing had worked

well, the IID thing had worked well, and here was the largest
block of water in Californiathe Central Valley Projectwhich
was declared by law as being out of bounds. You couldn t go
develop mutually agreeable transactions with CVP contractors.

The Arvin-Edison Water Storage District

Quinn: Let me mention briefly the Arvin-Edison transaction, which was
quite a different transaction. We were proposing with Arvin-
Edison to pay them for essentially banking storage services. We
wanted, at that time, to take state project water that we couldn t
use, bank it in Arvin-Edison, and they would give us their water
back at a later time during dry periods. So it was: get the water
out of the system while it s wet, put it into storage, the storage
services would be provided by Arvin-Edison, and then later on
Arvin-Edison would transfer their water supplies to us in exchange
for the water that we had previously banked underground in their
service area. That deal fell apart because of Delta politics.

Just by a huge coincidence, before I came up for this
interview, my board of directors today approved a new program with
Arvin-Edison which is structured with the same basic concept:
paying an agricultural district for storage service and receiving
transfer water during later drought years.

There s a lesson here for would-be water marketers. I
remember Myron Holburt one day. We worked forever on the first
Arvin project which eventually died. About four years into the
process, Myron Holburt took me aside and said, "When are you going
to get this done?"

I said, "Well, it s very complicated."

He said, "You know, Tim, we fought World War II in less time
than it s taken to put this water marketing transaction together."
[laughter]

And really, that s not a bad description of my early years at
Metropolitan. I was going through this torturous experience where
it was not a popular thing to be doing in the first place. We
constantly were questioning if this made sense. The rest of the
world was up in arms about these transactions.

Chall: A lot of articles were written opposing it.

Quinn: I now realize that it must have been a weekly occurrence where

Carl Boronkay would step in and protect me, and I didn t even know
I needed protection. Really. I m absolutely convinced that
there--

Chall: Protecting you against what?

Quinn: Oh, against people that wanted my job because, "What are this

guy s crazy ideas? You ve got to get rid of him." I mean, change
is a hard thing to accomplish. I have much more sophistication
about how I approach change today than I did a dozen years ago
when I came to work here. I mean, I ve got a lot of battle scars
from a lot of change that I have been a part of. I realize now
that on a regular basis Carl came in and protected me from
detractors. Carl was a man who had a vision. I believe that
vision was sound, and he carried it out, and he rode out the
storms that had to be ridden out to cause change to happen.

I learned a great deal about Colorado River politics,
negotiating a water transfer. I learned a great deal about
Central Valley water politics by negotiating a transfer. One was
eventually successful, and one was not successful until almost
twelve years after the first time I sat down with the
representative of the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District. 1

Water Marketing: An Accepted Concept Today

Chall: What s changed in the eleven years?

Quinn: Certainly, eleven years ago it was heresy to stand up and say,

"Water marketing must be an important part of California s water
future." We never believed at Metropolitan that marketing was the
only part, just that it was an important component of a long-term
water policy for California.

One of the first things I did professionally at Metropolitan
was something I had started organizing before I left Rand in late
1985. Myself and Nancy Moore--who was one of the Rand crowd who
had an interest in water issuesNancy and I had developed the
concept of a conference on water marketing, which we were doing in
cooperation with the UCLA public policy extension program. The
whole conference was at UCLA. LeRoy Graymer was very active.
That was the first time I got to know LeRoy. We worked with LeRoy

More on Arvin-Edison on page 132 ff.

Graymer and UCLA to structure a water conference. This conference
was a fairly big deal. It was held in February of 1986, and I
remember it like it was yesterday. These ideas were just coming
in western water that water marketing was something that made
sense.

I remember Dave Kennedy spoke. I don t know that anybody knew
or realized that Dave was still going to be the director of the
Department of Water Resources on December 9, 1997. It s almost
twelve years later; he s been there a long time. Dave spoke
there. We had what we called "the Daves" at the time: Dave
Kennedy, Dave Schuster who was the head of the State Water
Contractors, and Dave Houston who was the regional director of the
Bureau of Reclamation in those days. Three Daves were on the
panel. It was the first time I saw the three Daves together.

And let s just say water marketing didn t get received very
well by the water community in those days . That is one of the
profound changes. Nobody can argue that water transfer is not an
important part of California water policy today. Many of the
people fighting it in those daysthe CVP contractors, for
examplethey re now the biggest buyers in the market. I mean,
nobody buys more water than the Westlands Water District these
days.

Chall: From each other?

Quinn: They re buying from other agricultural entities.

There were three profound changes in California water in the
last decade. One is the realignment of relationships. There is
much more coalition building going on today. The coalitions are
much more sophisticated and they are much bigger. We have broken
down north versus south. Within the professional water community,
north versus south does not exist. I think that s a strong
statement, but I would be prepared to defend it.

The second change has been the rise of the market. We are
just at the beginning of that change, but in terms of allocating
water supplies , the market is much more important today than it
was ever conceived to be twelve years ago.

Chall: Is that so?
Quinn: Oh, absolutely.
Chall: It s really working?

Quinn: Well, again, working is a relative term. It is evolving. We have
a lot of history to unfold on this, but nobody thinks they re
going to push marketing back into obscurity. CVPIA was a terribly
important step along that process. The other change has been the
rise in environmental values within water management. I think
probably the environmental movement hasn t even begun to recognize
the depth to which environmental values have taken seed and rooted
themselves in the minds of the people managing California s water.

Those three things make the water industry today a very
different place than where it was in 1985.

Chall: I see. So it s been exciting for you.

Quinn: You can tell? [laughter] I like the job, even though I pull out
a little more hair every day. If you like challenging public
policy and trying to manage change, California water is not a bad
place to be.

John Wodraska: Current MET General Manager, 1993 to Present
[1998]

Chall: Now, what about working with the new general manager? I don t
know anything about him.

Quinn: Mr. [John] Wodraska. We call him Woody. Woody is a strong
internal manager. I mean, Woody pays attention to what s
happening in the organization; to how much it s costing you to
push the water through your water treatment plants. On those
scores, Woody has very strong capabilities as a public agency
manager, but he s less interested in the vision side of the
business.

Carl was a visionary who basically delegated the day-to-day
operations of the organization to assistant general managers.
Dick Balcerzak was the assistant general manager that basically
ran the day-to-day operations of Metropolitan. So the treatment
plants, and moving water through the system and worrying about
what was going to be happening in the operations of the State
Water Project next yearall of that was handled by Balcerzak.
Carl clearly had an interest in the efficient operation of the
organization and provided guidance, but his primary energies were
directed at changing the policy direction of Metropolitan, rather
than in directing day-to-day decisions.

In those days, Metropolitan was less cost conscious, but we
were still relatively cheap up until the environmental revolution
started to catch up to us and surpass us. To make enough water
available we built these magnificent engineering feats which were
things to marvel, but once you got them built, all the costs were
fixed costs and we had substantial contributions from property
taxes to pay the bills. The system more or less hummed along.

In that environment, we weren t nearly under the competitive
pressure that we are today. Nobody ever thought of competing with
us, for heavens sake, to go out and get their own water. Nobody
was talking about privatizing treatment plants in the water
business .

Carl looked to the long-term vision and was less involved in
the day-to-day operations of the business. Woody tends to be the
reverse. So Woody and Carl have very different styles.

With all respect, if Woody had been the general manager in
1985, I suspect we would have evolved very differently. You had
to be willing to take the lumps and sacrifice the old
relationships. That s a hard thing to do. Not very many people
had the courage or foolishnessagain, depending upon your
perspectiveto follow through and actually do it.

Chall: So, actually these two came at the right time. They were sort of
in place at the right time.

Quinn: I would argue that each has attributes that fit their situation
relatively well. We needed a person of vision at the time of
Carl. We needed to realign politics. A number of times I had
conversations with Woody where he recognized that Carl was able to
do things that were hard to do and which we are glad were done.

Carl recognized a need for change, but in the world of
politics, you need to be a consummate coalition builder and
consensus builder if you want sustainable change --change that will
last over time. Carl retired when acrimony within the water world
was at its peak. Carl retired in early 1993 right after the CVPIA
was passed, and that was probably the point of the greatest
divisiveness. You ve got to go back to 1982 to get to a period
where the water community was more at war with itself. It turns
out that my own skills tend to head off in the direction of
negotiation and consensus building. That s what I think I m
fairly good at.

Assessing the Need for "Revolutionary" Changes Within the
Urban, Agricultural, and Environmental Communities

Chall: So now we re where we re going to be at the end of next week when
I want to talk to you about the plans for the new arrangement with
CALFED [California Federal Bay Delta Process].

Quinn: I firmly believe that we had to go through these times. We had to
go through revolutionary change. Revolution by naturewell,
political revolution by its natureyou are winning something that
you can t win by consensus. I have an anecdote that drives this
point home. I had a conversation with Jerry Butchert [General
Manager of Westlands Water District] in the spring of 1992 while
all this CVPIA stuff was going on. We had been through a process
we called the Three-Way Process in California at the time. I was
one of the people heavily involved in that Three-Way Process.
Carl and I were the Metropolitan representatives most of the time.

I believed in my heart of hearts that there were consensual
ways to deal with the problem. We were talking about dedicating a
million acre-feet of water to the environment. We were talking
about other actions that would be required to right some of the
wrongs that had been done to the environment. That was part and
parcel to the Three-Way Process.

Jerry Butchert was heavily involved in that process as well.
I remember pleading with him in the spring of 1992 at an ACWA
conference in the Palm Springs area that we needed to do it by
consensus in California. Otherwise, if we didn t deal with the
forces of change that were upon us, it would happen in Washington
and it would be much worse- -on them and on us. Jerry said
something to me, and it was like it hung in the air. He said,
"Tim, you have to understand this. Some things you can give away;
some things have to be taken away."

And the CVPIA was part of a process in which the
environmentalists were essentially saying, "Okay, we understand
that political dynamic; we ve got the power to take it away." And
in the CVPIA change was happening that was revolutionary. I was
working for consensual outcomes at the Three-Way Process. I think
Carl understood that we had to go and fight this fight in
Washington and wasn t having as negative a reaction as I was. I
was disappointed at the time that we couldn t take command of our
own destiny and work this out in a stakeholder negotiation.
Again, you live, you learn. But what happened in 1992 was that
agriculture lost something that they couldn t give away. It was
revolutionary change, and the status quo was so dramatically
changed that all of the sudden, going into 1993 and certainly by

1994, agriculture realized that they also had to become change
advocates. That s a common interest that we now have. We both
need changenot just the urban interestsand that has been very
powerful stuff in terms of rebuilding relations over time.

Now, in the aftermath of the environmental revolution,
California has to decide which direction to go through the CALFED
process. Ultimately, revolutions are judged not just by winning
the revolution, but by the answer to the question, "Can you govern
what you have won?" We went through revolutionary change from 89
to 94 in California water. The CALFED process puts the challenge
to us: can we now govern that revolutionary change?

Chall: And that hasn t been easy.

Quinn: And that has not been easy and its success is still to be
determined. So I have been at a fascinating place at a
fascinating time in California water.

Chall: It certainly is.

I think then that we ll start next week with the writing of
the Seymour bill which we ve already begun to discuss, and then
we ll go into some of these other items about the passage of the
CVPIA which are on this chronology. Then I ll talk to you about
CALFED .

INTERVIEW WITH CARL BORONKAY AND TIMOTHY QUINN

III PASSAGE OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT IMPROVEMENT ACT: THE
METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT STAYS FOCUSED ON WATER
MARKETING

[Interview 2: December 19, 1997] ##

Drafting and Introducing the Seymour Bill. S. 2016

Chall: Mr. Boronkay, I m going to quote from your article with Mr.
[Warren] Abbott. You said, "A trek through both houses of
Congress in achieving this legislation was itself an
intriguing, emotional adventure too lengthy and diverting for
this article." That s what we want to get into today, the
intrigue and the emotion. "In summary, key agricultural
representatives invited urban agencies to support a substitute
bill... [which] included an acceptable water marking section." 1

What I wanted to ask you was how did you get invited? I
mean, when you say water agencies, who besides you were in on
that? I know that David Schuster and [Stuart] Somach had
written drafts of several bills before Senator Seymour came
into the picture. So, how and when were you invited, and why?

Boronkay: Well, we were invited because I appeared at a hearing of

Senator Bradley in Sacramento and said we support the marketing
provisions of his bill, or the water transfer provisions of the
bill, which were relatively minor. I mean that bill was a mass
of economic reform and even more on environmental restoration
with a throwaway line that the secretary can sell some water.
Well, that was an opening. I had been thinking of water
marketing for years, but it really was in the back of my mind.
We had projects to build. Then with Tim Quinn coming aboard, I

Carl Boronkay and Warren J. Abbott. "Water Conflicts in the Western
United States," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 20: 137-166, 1997. p.
144. On deposit in the Water Resources Center Library.

had someone I could talk to occasionally on the soundness of
water marketing from a broad policy level, a broad societal
level. I would talk to him because he was a brilliant
economist and had a very broad outlook.

So, once I appeared there at the Bradley hearing, and I
believe I filed a written statement as well, the ag
[agricultural] representatives were just shocked. They
shouldn t have been; we were workingTim and Iwith them in
meetings with agricultural agencies and urban agencies for a
long time pursuing means of getting some transfers of water
from ag to urban use direct transfer or conjunctive use, or
whatever; he could tell you more on specifics. There were a
number of potentials, none of which came to fruition by this
time.

So, when I did that, suddenly, I was a player in
Washington. I didn t think of it that way. I mean I wasn t
seeking to be a personal player, but suddenly the age-old
agriculture /urban alliance was shattered, maybe not
irreparably, but shattered. People were surprised and
identified me as the one to deal with.

Chall: Do you mean it was shattering or shattered at that point?

Boronkay: Well, it was shattered but not necessarily a complete break.
It s like an earthquake; it shakes up things and if it keeps
shaking, it gets even further apart. So, they started out and
they were shocked at this , but that s the way it went . I was
convinced that the time had come for other reasons that I ve
indicated in that article that we at MET had to make some
changes in the state s ag water use, as an urban entity, with
projections of serious water shortages, but also all urban
entities that were subject to growth or in the process of
growth .

We hadn t earlier looked to significant transfers of ag
water; but now, the huge amount of developed water in this
state that s devoted to irrigation had to be considered to some
degree as a source for urban supply, and I made that pitch. I
had developed this alternative at board meetings in the two
years prior to that by saying, "We re trying to work out deals
with ag agencies . " Tim was out there working with Arvin-
Edison, I think, at around this time, and perhaps others that
he ll tell you about.

So, the board had gotten used to our idea of a transfer of
ag water. That didn t come easily to them. They were very
close to the ag community. They didn t distinguish themselves

Chall:

Boronkay :

from the ag community. There were water users, ag and urban
together, and on the opposite side were the environmentalists;
there were just two sides. By appearing in Sacramento before
the Bradley committee, in effect, I created a third side.

I say "I" a lot, and it s rather immodest, but I took the
lead in the effort to do that. No one was there pushing me;
the board certainly didn t push me. I had to persuade the
board and at all times maintain support of the board. It s a
large board; they had a lot of people who were influenced by
agricultural friends and associates. Also, a lot of people on
the board could be influenced by Governor Wilson and the
administration, and others who were close to agriculture. So,
I had to be very wary.

So, when you said, "How did you get to Seymour?" We very
carefully kept our interests in these Miller bills that had
been around for years, and now the major Bradley bill, which is
a colossal taking of water--! mean seemed colossal--away from
ag use to environmental use. I had to restrict carefully
everything I said. "We re supporting water marketing. We re
supporting water transfers." I d never go out and say, "Oh,
we re for all these other things." We stayed away from that.

I felt that independently of my own views on those things
that I was much safer with regard to the board by saying,
"Well, here s MET s particular interest." I didn t want to get
into an argument with board members that we are supporting the
environmental changes here, or the economic changes, and the
renewal contracts for the farmers.

So, did Senator Seymour, himself, or the people who had been
writing the previous bills invite you in?

Well, this is where Tim will come in. But what happened first
was I was contacted by various ag leaders. I think it was
Somach, but it probably, at the initial part, may have been
[Jason] Peltier and others, and maybe Steve Hall, all the top
ag people. They were saying they want to have their own bill
to make some of the environmental changes and improve the
situation in the Delta. They said they would put in some
marketing or water transfer provisions that were satisfactory
to us, "Do we want to talk about them?" I said sure. I mean
our policy at MET was that we wanted to advance the cause of
water marketing. We weren t going to pick at this point any
particular author, if Seymour was to be an author, well, that s
fine. So, I went and spoke to them, and eventually we had a
meeting with all of them, Tim and I, and he really was the main

one negotiating the specific language for us,
Diego at one of those conventions.

This was at San

Quinn: It was the climax of several months of activity.
Boronkay: Yes, why don t you explain it?
Chall: Writing S. 2016.

Quinn: Carl was working very closely particularly with Somach in my
recollection. He was on the phone with Stu a great deal. At
the same time, we were having the so-called three-way
discussions, which eventually became a casualty of the Miller-
Bradley legislative war. At the time, we were getting
togethersometimes ag and urban and other times ag, urban, and
environmentalists fairly frequently. I can remember a key
session between ag and urban interests around a swimming pool
in some hotel or motel up in the Bay Area. I think it was one
of the ones near the Oakland Airport.

It was Jerry Butchert, Jason Peltier, [Stu] Somach, and I
think probably [Tom] Clark, and some of the state water
contractors, but they were very quiet in this. Why Schuster
was so active when he worked for Clark at the time was always a
mystery. There were a lot of discussions at that time that led
to the negotiations down at the Del Coronado, where we finally
got closure on what would be the water transfer provisions of
S. 2016.

Boronkay: At San Diego, was it Coronado?

Quinn: It was at the Hotel Del Coronado; I remember which room.

Boronkay: I recall that meeting and Tim was doing the negotiating. I was
doing a lot of other things at those conventions; there were
lots of other activities that go on. Then, he found me. One
thing that Tim and I felt certain about, the line in the sand,
was that the farmer had to be permitted to sell water, within
certain restrictions, a limited amount in each area. A number
of reasonable restrictions, but it had to be the farmer. If
it s the district, which was the other argument, the district
politically may find that undesirable, the districts being
fewer, you don t have as good a competition. For a lot of
reasons, and Tim probably will remember more, we just felt we
had to have that .

So, he came out and found me and said, "We re pretty close
on everything, but they don t want to give us farmer-initiated
transfers. They re holding it to the district." So, I talked

to him before we went in, and I said, "Well, we re holding out
there." So, I went in and I said, "No, that s something we
have to have. We re not interested in pursuing this any
further without that . "

Chall: Did they give it to you? I ve forgotten.
Boronkay: They did.

Chall: They did, and that s why Peltier says that these were gut
wrenching sessions? Were they gut wrenching from his
perspective or were you all feeling it?

Quinn: Very, very tense. It was very tense. Carl, do you remember
kicking me under the table? [laugher] We had developed a
relationship by that time. In the early days of one s
employment when you re in the room with Carl and Myron
[Holburt], staff didn t speak, Carl and Myron spoke. But by
this time, we had developed a level of trust that Carl would
let me negotiate. But when he thought I was being a little too
talkative--. I guess four or five times at that sessionyour
foot and my shin collided.

Boronkay: It was just a matter of tactics there, reading the other
fellow.

Quinn: We were very close, and we knew it.

Boronkay: Personally, Timwhatever he did was okay. However it came
out, I know that we couldn t have done better. But to the
extent that he used to call me in, I simply could not
subordinate [chuckles] my natural lawyer instincts. So, I
would judge how they re going and the likelihood of their
giving in. But that s all on the side; we worked extremely
well together and accomplished what we sought .

After that, I flew to Washington to meet with Somach.
Actually we had submitted language, and they had submitted
language, and we had gone over it. So, we had what was the
last draft, and they wanted my signature or agreement. I think
I was there alone with Somach.

Quinn: Yes.

Boronkay: Because I remember this happened. We went over a few things.
You and I went over how far we d could go on this , what we
would do here. We argued some more, Somach and I, and pretty
much negotiated everything out, but things were unclear, and
this or that had to be added. We all came to those conclusions

that this was a good basis and we ve got to make these changes.
Well, the next morning, the bill was introduced by Seymour with
no changes. I called him [Somach] and he said, "Oh, well,
those are all going to be made," but they feel that it had to
start. Well, one thing it did, from then I didn t completely
trust them. Who expected a bill in a form like that to be
introduced?

Quinn: They were very keen to get Carl s support, and therefore
Metropolitan s support.

Boronkay: And then, they paraded that all over the Hill that Boronkay s
gone with us, this is MET s bill. I thought we were taken
advantage of at the start, but it was a good learning lesson.

Quinn: But it did start that series of events when we were perceived
to be supporting particular politicians, and political views,
when all we were supporting was our interests in achieving some
sound policy in the form of water transfer provisions in a
bill.

I would like to take a minute to clarify things about what
S. 2016 was and some conversations that were happening between
us and the agricultural interests down at Del Coronado. When
Carl agreed to S. 2016, he agreed to support the bill in
principle, since we had wanted changes that never got made that
were important.

If you stood back and looked at S. 2016, it was a huge
breakthrough for the CVP ag interests because they could parade
Carl s name around, and they wanted very much to do that. They
did it in ways which were not altogether ethical from our
perspective, but that was the prize they were seeking. We had
the best water transfer language, I think, that could have been
worked out at the time, and we had agricultural interests
actually saying they supported water transfers. That was a
huge step forward at that time. But, it was in the context of
S. 2016, which became very controversial and strongly opposed
by the environmental community.

But if you look at the provisions that were in S. 2016, on
the whole it was not a bad draft bill. It was incomplete. The
environmentalists had an all-water, no habitat improvement
approach to the environment: S. 2016 was all-habitat and no
water for the environment; neither of those polar extremes was
going to work. S. 2016 had water transfer language in it that
was very desirable from our perspective. It was very rational
for us to say that it was a vehicle that looked attractive to
us.

oy me ooaca o Lmtt.u s -
Tho Metropofitsr. Watftf Dittn
65a of SoisNsro r.?: : .i:v&lt;:a

8-6

METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFMm

November 26, 1991

(Executive Committee Action)
Board of Directors (Water Problems Committee Action)

General Manager

The Central Valley Project Fish and Wildlife Act of 1991
(S. 2016)

Report

Recently, federal legislation was introduced by
Senator Seymour which proposes far-reaching reforms for the
uses of Central Valley Project (CVP) water. The Central Valley
Project Fish and Wildlife Act of 1991, S. 2016, would, for the
first time, expressly permit the transfer of water outside the
CVP service area. The bill also contains substantial
provisions to protect, enhance, and restore Central Valley fish
and wildlife resources.

The water transfer provisions of S. 2016 would
facilitate a variety of different types of water transfers.
The bill would encourage projects like the Arvin-Edison/
Metropolitan Water Storage and Exchange Program and water
conservation programs that could make water available for use
outside the CVP service area. In addition, the legislation
would permit landowner-initiated transfers involving the short
er long-term fallowing of land. Fallowing-based transfer
agreements would be limited to 20 percent of the total water
use within a CVP contractor s service area. The bill provides
that 80 percent of the water made available by fallowing could
be exported for use outside the CVP service area. The
remaining 20 percent would be divided equally, 10 percent for
use by the local water district and 10 percent for
environmental uses.

The fish and wildlife provisions of S. 2016 include an
extensive set of proposed projects to protect, enhance, and
restore fish, wildlife, and other environmental resources in
the Central Valley. The bill requires the implementation of a
variety of initial environmental actions, including the
installation of fish screens at the Tracy and Contra Costa
County delta pumping facilities, a temperature control
structure at Shasta Reservoir, and numerous other near-term
actions to improve fish and wildlife resources.

Over the longer-term, the bill requires the

implementation of 13 specific actions by December 31, 2000, to
protect and restore fish and wildlife habitat. These actions

65b

-
Board of Directors -2- November 26, 1991

include developing adequate water flows, hatcheries, and other
programs and facilities to protect salmon and steelhead
fisheries in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers; providing
water for wildlife refuges; and measures to help improve
populations of striped bass. Other provisions of the bill would
create the Central Valley Project Fish and Wildlife Task Force
to identify and recommend the implementation of additional
environmental actions, including the development of additional
flows and habitat restoration to protect, enhance, and restore
Central Valley fish and wildlife. S. 2016 also calls for
federal and, in some cases, state funding to pay for the
proposed environmental program. Finally, S. 2016 contains
provisions to promote water conservation in agricultural areas.

Nearly identical legislation was simultaneously
introduced by Congressmen Dooley, Lehman, and others in the
House of Representatives (H.R. 3876) . The only difference in
the Senate and House versions of the bill is that the House bill
contains a provision related to the construction of facilities,
such as the Mid Valley Canal, to increase exports from the
Delta, if sufficient water is available after considering the
needs of the environment, as specified in the Act, and the needs
of existing CVP contractors.

We believe that the basic approach in S. 2016 is
sound. However, negotiations regarding the bill s specific
provisions are expected to continue and amendments may be
incorporated to make the bill more effective in encouraging
water marketing and improving the environment.

Board Committee Assignments

This letter is referred to:

a. Water Problems Committee for action because of its
authority to make recommendations regarding water policies,
pursuant to Administrative Code Section 2481 (a) ; and

b. Executive Committee for action because it is in regard
to policy and procedures to be considered by the Board, pursuant
to Administrative Code Section 2417 (e) .

Recommendation

It is recommended that your Board support in principle
the Central Valley Project Fish and Wildlife Act of 1991;
(S. 2016).

THQ : kmk

... Act of 1991, and encourage all parties to continue negotiations
with all members of Congress and other interests who have been and
are making efforts to resolve water issues in California.

I don t remember if you were there, Carl. I had lunch with
[Jason] Peltier and [Jerry] Butchert the day after we closed
the negotiations. I think you had gone to Washington, and I
was trying to work through relationships with the agricultural
interests at the Hotel Del Coronado. We had lunch across the
street from the hotel. I said, "Do you guys understand we re
not done?" I analyzed the situation then just the way I just
did now. "The environmentalists have got an all-water, no
habitat bill; you ve got an all-habitat, no water bill; that s
not going to get you to closure.

"You have to be prepared to move." Metropolitan wanted a
successful bill to get through that would have to have all of
those elements if our transfer provisions were going to get
through. I m not sure if the ag interests agreed with the need
to negotiate at the time. I think they were still very much in
a state of denial, thinking that somehow the United States
Senate never rolls a home-state senator. I don t think they
appreciated the power and the brilliance of Miller s strategy
of wrapping this thing up in the omnibus bill.

Carl Boronkay s Single Interest in Water Marketing Confuses
Seymour Bill Proponents

Boronkay: One thing you have to realize about Tim is that he always saw a
bigger picture than other parties. Even today, although I
don t always agree with him, he has a knack of seeing the
interests of the other side. He ll make a legitimate effort to
see the agricultural interests and that helps him formulate a
bill that should be suitable for them and, of course, he knows
our interests. But even though he s able to do that, he s not
always able to convince them of what s in their interests.

Chall: Can anybody?

Boronkay: Well, sometimes you can if you try. I certainly make that

effort or have made that effort where I think there s an open
mind or the potential is there, but sometimes you find that
they re not really listening, that they re somewhere else.

I can illustrate that here. After the board supported this
Seymour bill, I went to Washington on a number of occasions and
attended meetings with Tom Jensen, that s Senator Bradley s
aide, and with them were the chief aides on the Republican
side. They were bitter, hostile, terrible meetings. You never

realized, if I don t say anything, he ll be misled. So, I
said, "Metropolitan is not opposed to those bills." Well, he
jumped out of his chair, six-foot-six of him, just jumped,
literally shocked.

He just jumped up in the air; he could have dunked a
basketball at about that point. He s very nice about it. He
said, "Carl, I have to know where you are. I mean there s a
lot I can do, but I have to know where all of us are. If
you re not with us, I have to know that." I said, "Well, I m
in favor of the Seymour bill, but I cannot say that we re
against other bills." Well, the meeting ended. He was cordial
and everything but not happy, and I was a little nervous, but
that was it. Outside, I looked at Bob Will, and he said, "I
guess you had to tell him," and that was that.

But again, you see I was just trying to get a bill through.
I didn t know, at that point, whose bill would get through, or
if any bill would get through. Then, I ll give you a third
example.

Analyzing Senator John Seymour s Understanding of the Dynamics
of the Debate

Boronkay: I met time and again with Senator Seymour, time and again about
how the bill was going. I asked him on one occasion, "Where is
the governor on this? I thought he d be supporting the bill,"
and he d say, "No, he s not yet."

Then, another time I saw him and said, "You know, this
looks bad. We re supporting a bill for California, and
California s governor isn t supporting it. There are even
people from the governor s staff that say the governor doesn t
feel he needs any bill. Now, that s not exactly opposing a
bill, but it s damn close." He said, "Carl, I spent two hours
with the governor last week in California and I can t get him
to come out for it, but you shouldn t care if we don t have a
bill because the governor just said he will be taking over the
Central Valley Project."

This really gave me pause because here I am dealing with
the senator and it s sensitive, and it s major, and I am
realizing that he doesn t understand the importance to MET of
such legislation. I said, "Senator, I haven t any good reason
to believe that the federal government is going to give that
project to Governor Wilson. There are certainly Democrats that

have indicated they re against it." At this time, I didn t say
this, but I learned subsequently even the federal farmers
didn t want it. They were getting a huge subsidy, which they
didn t think they d get from the state.

So, here is the senator telling me suddenly while I m
working to get his bill passed, "Well, even if it doesn t pass
--" Now, that s suddenly a state of mind that I never saw
before. He s already able to concede that his bill won t go
anywhere and is telling me that it s okay because the governor
will get the CVP transferred to state control. I said, "Not
only won t he get it, in my opinion, I don t have any reason to
think the urban users will be any better off if CVP was in the
governor s authority rather than where it is now." He stopped
there and he just nodded and we went our ways.

Chall: Well, the environmentalists say that Seymour never came to the
table, as it were; he never made any offers of amendments.
There are others, Mr. Golb for example, who feel that he did;
at times he would offer something, but it was never defined. 1
What was your take on Seymour? Did he think that it wouldn t
matter if a bill didn t pass, or that it wouldn t pass, because
California ag would always have the other agriculture senators
behind them?

Boronkay: Well, Tim is going to contribute more to this, but have in mind
that the ag community never did unite behind Seymour s bill.
He knew that.

Chall: Or any bill.

Boronkay: Or any bill. In fact, it occurred to me one day that the best
thing for ag was not to pass the Seymour bill, but simply to
have no bill. I foresaw at one point that they were going to
fight to have all those bills defeated, and that s the biggest
victory for ag.

Chall: Those bills, meaning which bills?

Boronkay: The Seymour bill and the Bradley-Miller bill. If neither one
made it, that s the biggest victory, rather than a Seymour ag
bill, because they re better off with what they have. So, I
was more and more concerned about identifying totally with the
Seymour bill, which I tried never to do, but people were

Richard K. Golb, "Passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement
Act," 1991-1992. Regional Oral History Office, University of California,
Berkeley, 1997, pp. 30-32.

thinking that because I heard in Washington that I was strongly
behind the Seymour bill. I d have to tell them, "Well, when
another bill comes up with good water marketing provisions I
would probably support it," and they hadn t come out yet. I
finally did testify before Miller s committee on his bill.

There was another occasion where I met Seymour; the
prospect for his bill wasn t looking good anymore. He couldn t
get the governor s support, ag was split. I went to the Los
Angeles Times and talked to this editorial writer who was the
new fellow who replaced [Bill] Burby, I believe. I think he
replaced Burby. It was Frank Del Olmo who writes now on a lot
of minority, and civil rights, and societal issues, but he
started out writing some water editorials for the Times.

I explained Bradley "s bill and Seymour s bill, and he wrote
an article a day or two later, and it said, "Both of these
bills have merit, and they both ought to pass and be settled in
a conference committee." I thought I had done Seymour a great
service, because the Times might have opposed his bill as being
short on environmental concerns .

Boronkay:

Chall:
Boronkay:

So, the Times , in effect, supported what MET was doing; get
both bills through and work it out in committee. I saw Seymour
after that in Washingtona day or two after thatand he said,
"Did you see that article?"

[Richard] Golb was there; Golb was always there. The
senator said, "Gee, we were really disappointed in that." I
said, "Why would you be disappointed? It supports your bill."
"Well, it s supporting the Bradley effort." I said, "To them,
they just want the substance. They want the legislation. It s
not a political matter, or an election thing
didn t buy that. They were unhappy with the article,
number of occasions, they would press me "to come out
forthright for Seymour only," and I never would,
always a little disturbed with me.

Well, they
On a

Golb was

Was your relationship with Seymour then unpleasant or hostile?

Oh, no, no, very pleasant, very cordial. His manner was always
friendly. When we got down to issues, I just didn t move the
way he wanted. He wanted me totally on his side, and he wanted
a great effort to defeat the other bills. He really undermined
my confidence in him when he said, "We really won t be hurt if
there s no bill, because the governor is going to get the CVP."

When he told me that, I realized how important and wise it was
that we stayed on both sides of this legislation.

Carl Boronkay Moves to Realign the Politics of Western Water
Interests

Chall: All right, now I want to go back just a bit on this matter of
the lobbyist, which you brought up, because Robert Will was
your lobbyist; he was also a lobbyist for the Westlands Water
District. Is that correct?

Quinn: Yes.

Chall: And that s more than a conflict of interests, that s a real
conflict. Isn t it? I mean how could he do both?

Quinn: It s an excellent illustration of the dilemma that Carl found
himself in. If you stand back and look at the bigger picture
of what was going on in those days, the agricultural and the
environmental interests were doing what always came natural.
The environmentalists were being deeply critical of the water
industry, especially agriculture. The agricultural interests
were being very defensive, trying to protect the status quo.
It was the urbans who were changing their traditional role,
although that s a big stretch, because it wasn t the urbans in
those days; it was Carl Boronkay pretty much alone.

Chall: Yes, because the urbans were also divided.

Quinn: It was Carl who was trying to redefine some of the

relationships and move to a different place. Historically, the
fact that Bob Will was comfortable being Westlands 1 lobbyist
and Metropolitan s lobbyist, that was a reflection of the past.
If Carl had been willing to go to the comfortable historic
place, he would have simply done what everybody was urging him
to do, but his instincts told him that he couldn t do that.
The urbans at this time were emerging as a force for change,
primarily around the water marketing issue, but on other issues
as well.

Eventually, I may want to talk about the May testimony that
Carl delivered, because it was not just water marketing. It
was strategically positioning usurban interests--much more
towards the middle of trying to stand up for a future that had
more balance in it, because the status quo was too heavily
weighted toward agriculture.

Boronkay: What hearing was that in May?

Quinn: I think it was Miller s bill. [H.R. 5099]

Boronkay: Miller s bill, oh, yes. I agree with you, go ahead, you
finish.

Quinn: Carl was breaking all the rules. Nobody had ever seen somebody
go to Washington and do what Carl was doing at the time. My
impression was Carl was going totally on instinct, and I was
getting bits of the story, but most of the weight Carl was
carrying on his shoulders.

Boronkay: Don t forget where you are right now [in the story], but you ve
caused me to remember that Ray Corley, our lobbyist in
Sacramento, told me that there was a meeting up there and Doug
Wheeler told everybody, "We ve got to keep Boronkay out of
Washington." [laughter] I just thought that was as funny as
can be. How can you do that? He was very serious. He said,
"Our problem is we ve got to keep Boronkay out of Washington."
I guess I was flattered but basically thought it was
ridiculous.

Quinn: Eventually, as it turned out--and we ll get to the end of the
story later--CVPIA was the first time that the urbans spoke
forcefully independently of the agricultural community on a
political matter; they didn t like that. It started with Carl.
Carl carried the weight of the world on his shoulders for
months upon months.

In the end, though, the Western Urban Water Coalition was
formed that year and that allowed Carl and Metropolitan to
approach it from two angles. We took up positions ourselves,
but we were also part of a recently formed Western states urban
water coalition. Urban interests had always been stifled
within the NWRA [National Water Resources Association] , which
was an agriculture-dominated organization that spoke for
western water in Washington, D.C. I don t know the extent to
which Carl was rationalizing or thinking about it in his head,
but what he was doing was very forcefully realigning the
politics of western water. It started with CVPIA.

Boronkay: WUWC was a continuation of the concept of CUWA in California,
and they testified--.

Quinn: CUWA didn t testify because CUWA was a nonpolitical
organization under California law.

Boronkay: No, but the common interests of urbans passed also to the
urbans of the western states, and they did testify before
Miller. I remember a lot of the ridicule of Western Urban
Water Association, when it started from ag people in
Washington.

Quinn: WUWU, they called it, W-U-W-U.

Boronkay: They were derisive that these urban people in the West are
moving away from these ag states, but they were definitely
significant and helpful at that point.

Quinn: The Western Urban Water Coalition was formed in 1992. WUWC

hired as its national representative Guy Martin, who had been
assistant secretary at a very young age in the Carter
administration and was very well connected to the Democrats.
He was a long time personal friend of Miller, knew all the
Democrats on the Hill. From the perspective of the
agricultural community in California, these were very ominous
events because they did represent change.

They couldn t count on the great and powerful Metropolitan
Water District anymore to line up in their corner. The urbans
were voicing an independent view, which we continue to do
today. Today, we assert ourselves very much as an independent
voice. A lot of the partnering with agriculture is determined
by common interests. In "92 we were just breaking away. 1
think it will go down as one of the most important times in
natural resource politics in the West.

Boronkay: Let me mention another thing. Tim may be able to fill in
because I was gone when it came to the board.

Quinn: This is when you became "Kenya Carl."

Boronkay: Another trip I made to Washington, always generally at Bob
Will s arranging. Bob was in between. I think I had moved
ahead of him in seeing Metropolitan as more independent of
other water users in the West, particularly agriculture. I
think he came to that understanding, but it was a slow process.
It s not a reluctance; it s not deliberately saying I don t
want to be there; it just takes some maturation, breaking old
habits. I think he had to catch up to me, and eventually he
did. But Quinn will tell you more there.

Senator Bennett Johnston s Mark Stirs the Water-Agriculture
Communities

Boronkay: So, on one trip to Washington, Bob arranged a meeting, a very
useful meeting, with Senator Bennett Johnston, chairman of the
whole energy committee [Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources] , and a very powerful man in the Senate. At this
time, they re having a lot of trouble moving the Bradley bill.
Suddenly, that night at dinner, Bob hands me a Bennett Johnston
bill, which was like the Bradley bill in favoring the
environment, maybe even more. They went definitely into big
time reduction in ag water use, and was a very heavily
environmentally leaning bill. 1

Chall: That s the mark-up?

Boronkay: Yes.

Quinn: The chairman s mark.

Chall: Well, how did you think that came about? Did you have any ideas?

Boronkay: Well, I ll just say how it first struck me. I never heard of
it; I didn t know anything about it. I m meeting Bob for
dinner. I just got in late, I m meeting for dinner; we re
going to see Bennett Johnston in the morning. He hands me a
thick bill, and he says, "Johnston put this bill out there." I
said, "What? Why would that be? How would that come about?"
He says, "I don t know." We look at that bill and, of course,
it s a stronger bill than anything dealing with these issues so
far. We knew there was going to be a major fight over it.

I have, on top of that, a morning meeting with Bennett
Johnston to support the Bradley bill and support the Seymour
bill. I go to that meeting and now I have his own bill. Well,
I met him and he says, "What do you think of the bill?" I say,
"Well, Metropolitan certainly supports water marketing at this
point." [chuckles] He says, "Well, I hope you ll be able to
support the bill." Then there s a roll call ring; he s gone.
Everyone is out on the Senate floor to stop a filibuster; your
time has expired and you don t see him again.

So, now I have to come back to MET. I ve supported the
Seymour bill. I told them we re in support of Bradley too,
though I think I didn t have a [board] vote on the bill, but
our whole attitude was we re going to ride whatever horses

Senator Bennett Johnston distributed his mark February 20, 1992.

there are and do the best we can. A lot of people said, "Well,
Bennett Johnston s bill will be the worst thing we could have."
I mean everyone is upset. The ag community that we ve been
dealing with on the Seymour bill was very upset with his bill.
Johnston s bill really surprised and upset everyone.

I said, "I don t see logically how we could not support
that bill. Our policy is to support any acceptable water
marketing bill. That s what the board determined originally
when I asked about the Seymour bill." I said, "Let s support
the Seymour bill," and board members said, "We don t want to
get political. We don t want to just tie ourselves to Seymour.
He s in an election and we want to be careful we re not branded
as being on one side or the other." I said, "No, we ll support
any bill that moves Metropolitan s interests."

So, here comes a bill that upsets the entire California
agricultural community and the people we re dealing with on the
Seymour bill. I thought hard about it and said to Tim,
"There s no way I could fail to support this, as a matter of
logic. How would I explain not supporting it?" People were
telling me, "You re really going to get in trouble on this
one." I said, "People have been telling me I m going to get in
trouble right along." I said, "The logic of it is compelling.
I don t have any reason not to."

So, I drafted a board letter to support the Johnston bill. 1
But, as circumstance had it, six months earlier I had paid a
big amount of money to go to Cairo and Kenya--my wife, and I,
and the Holburts--my assistant general manager, Myron Holburt,
and his wife. So, that letter was submitted to the board. But
before the board meeting, I left. I asked my very talented
assistant general manager, Duane Georgeson, to manage it. Of
course, Tim would be the person it was turned over to because
he was the one who knew it all. Duane being at a higher level
would substitute for me in my absence but didn t know our
legislative activities to this extent. So, I ll stop here and
let Quinn tell you what happened.

Solving the Lobbying Dilemma

Chall: Okay now, but we have to go back because you really didn t

finish answering the question that I have about Robert Will,

Report of February 25, 1992 on deposit in the Water Resources Center
Library.

whether it was possible for him to be your lobbyist and the
Westlands Water District s lobbyist.

Quinn: We re getting there.

Chall: The reason I ask you that because I wanted to find out about
your whole lobbying project. I mean how you lobbied?

Boronkay: Well, it s bill by bill, though. You see, there was no time
that he was representing Westlands fighting the Miller bill.

Quinn: Let me jump ahead a little bit in time and then we can come

back because it s important. Carl came to the conclusion that
Bob could not serve both masters. It was a very hard decision
for Carl. This was after you came back from Kenya, Carl.

Boronkay: Right along when we took the position on these bills, firstly
on the Seymour Bill, well, that was consistent with Westlands,
so it was no problem. But as we got away from that as the only
legislation we supported, it became manifest that he s in an
impossible position.

Quinn: It really started coming to a head when the chairman s mark
came out.

Chall: Right, okay.

Quinn: During that month, when Carl was gone, Duane and I had some
pretty serious wrestling matches with our Washington
representative. Quite frankly, Duane went back and did the
lobbying for Metropolitan during that month because Bob had
been pushed to a point where he was really out of sorts. We
simply weren t on the same wavelength. We ought to keep in
mind, the changes here were tremendous. Bob was being asked to
go against everything he had done in his entire career.

When Carl came back, we talked. Carl, as friendly as he
could, confronted Bob and made Bob choose. Carl was the one
that did it so he needs to talk about it.

Chall: Oh, I see.

Quinn: Bob had been the general counsel, his roots were deep with
Metropolitan. I think financially, he probably had more at
stake with Metropolitan, and Bob chose Metropolitan and dropped
Westlands as a client.

Chall:

Oh, is that right?

Quinn:
Boronkay :

Quinn :

Chall:

Boronkay;
Chall:

Boronkay:
Quinn :

It s another good illustration of what was going on between the
two communities at the time.

He then dropped all ag people, Arizona too. He felt the
appearance, at the very least, was unsatisfactory. Tim is
correct, I did give him that option. When we did the Seymour
bill, that was okay; Westlands was one of the supporters. Or,
it was consistent with Westlands 1 position. I m not sure
Westlands ever voted to actually support the Seymour bill.

I don t think they did. Westlands wanted to kill anything that
moved; they did not want a bill, and we did want a bill, and
that was the fundamental difference. I don t think we
appreciated it at the Hotel Del Coronado. To Bob Will s
credit, he works for Metropolitan today and helps us develop
progressive positions. I ll never be able to understand fully
what he was going through because it was his experience, but he
must have been going through maybe the hardest time of any of
us given the changes in relationships that were demanded by
what was happening out here in California.

Jason Peltier says, "The lobbyists from the west side," this he
discusses with respect to the Somach-Graff , which we ll get to.
He said, "The lobbyist from the west side opposed any
legislation from the start," which is just what you said. 1

Westlands, he said, hired

All right, so now let me see.
their own lobbyist.

Because they lost Bob.

Were you also in touch with the lobbyist from the environmental
people like Dave Weiman? Did you all have any contact with
them? Or, were you just out there saying, "I support whatever
bill supports water marketing"?

No, there were meetings, and certainly Tim was more involved.

I was in the very earlier stages of developing a relationship
with David. Weiman now works for Metropolitan part time.

Jason Peltier interview, p. 53.

How and Why the Seymour Bill Passed Out of the Senate Energy
and Natural Resources Committee onto the Senate Floor

Chall: Well, was it only Senator Seymour who refused to come to the

table, as it were? I have a lot of questions here with respect
to 2016. The Los Angeles Times said, when the bill came out on
November 21, that Seymour dragged the state s urban water
agencies and agribusiness over the Rubicon. Although, they
claimed they liked the Bradley bill better. I guess a great
break had been made at that point.

To go back a bit. Senator Seymour claimed, apparently when
he introduced the bill, that it was a beginning, and he was
willing to consider any ideas from Californians on how to
improve it. It is the product of California s groups: urban,
agricultural, conservation interests all working together. It
was written for California by Californians. 1

Boronkay: May I ask you a question, Mrs. Chall?
Chall: Yes.

Boronkay: You say it represents the conservationists, and the urban
people, and the ag people?

Chall: That what Seymour said.

Quinn: That s what Seymour said, and he did say that.

Chall: I m quoting from his November 21 statement.

Boronkay: I m not sure what conservationists he might have been referring
to.

Quinn: Yes, I m puzzled.

Chall: Well, I think Golb, in his interview, points out all the

conservation people Seymour had contact with, so he calls them
conservationists . 2

Boronkay: Okay, and just what the nature of their support was, I don t

know. In our dealings, it was with the ag people and us making
up the Seymour bill, improving it. I never felt that the

Congressional Record. Senate, November 21, 1991. pp. S 17465-17466.
2 Richard Golb interview, pp. 17-20.

Chall:

environmentalists did other than want to distance themselves
from it, and defeat it, move only their own bill. I don t
think they were interested in the Seymour bill.

I think that we have to separate your term environmentalist
from his term conservationist.

Quinn:

Boronkay:
Quinn:

Conservationist, yes.
today.

People in the Congress do that even

Well, for what it s worth, I can only report the impression
that I had at the time, of someone who was close but not in the
rooms in Washington at the time. My impression was that
Seymour was in fact trying to establish an anchor as a
negotiating position and that he was prepared to deal with the
issues. Certainly, the rumor flying around at the time was
that Governor Wilson was not prepared to engage.

Wilson did not want the federal government passing a bill.
He had been persuaded by the west side interests that was the
case. They would, from time to time, report somewhat sketchily
about sessions that their growers were having with the
governor.

I think, actually, one has to feel somewhat sorry for the
position that Seymour was in. He had been maneuvered to try
and structure a negotiating position, but no one in California
was prepared to support him. He made this an important part of
his re-election campaign, but he had absolutely no grassroots
support, even the guy that appointed him, Governor Wilson, was
not willing to support what he was putting on the table. He
must have felt like the loneliest man in the United States
Senate.

But at the beginning he had some ag support,
of money in the valley.

He raised a lot

At the beginning, Carl, in retrospect, I think it s fair to say
the support was fairly disingenuous for the most part.

Oh , okay .

He certainly had our support because we were prepared to move
forward and use the Seymour bill as a negotiating platform to
deal with the environmentalists, and with Miller, and with
Bradley. The lunch that I mentioned that I had with Butchert
and Peltier. 1 told them in no uncertain terms, this is the
beginning, it s not an end, and these are the major areas that
we re going to have to resolve. They were agreeable to some

Boronkay:

Quinn :
Boronkay:

extent because they so wanted us to be there, but they were
certainly not showing us all their cards at the same time.
Everything started to come to head with the chairman s mark.

The most important thing about the chairman s mark was when
he dropped his bill and moved the Seymour bill out of
committee. I didn t understand it at the time but at one level
Johnston was saying that there was going to be an omnibus bill;
CVP is going to be part of the omnibus bill [H.R. 429]. When
Johnston moved Seymour s bill out of his committee, onto the
Senate floor, and out of the Senate, he knew very well that
Seymour s bill wasn t going to survive any conference
committee. What he had done was hitch CVPIA inextricably into
the bigger omnibus package, which was part of the Miller-
Bradley political strategy from the beginning, and that was
huge. That s why Seymour must have been extraordinarily
unhappy when he saw his bill moving out in the Senate to be
attached to the omnibus bill because that meant he was about to
get eaten alive. For a senator to lose something like that,
which affects his home state amazing! 1

Let me just add this though. I m not sure everyone saw it at
the time, though.

I think Miller and Bradley saw it at the time.

Yes, they may have. But at the time that Bennett Johnston just
moved Seymour s bill, people were shocked. Environmentalists
were shocked.

Chall: That s right.
Quinn: They were.

Boronkay: We were shocked. I think a day or two later, Bob explained
much of what you just told me, but at first we were quite
concerned.

Quinn: I learned this from Bob Will.

Boronkay: The night it happened Bob was puzzled; he was still puzzled by
what was going on there until the Johnston strategy was
realized. I don t believe Seymour, at the time, realized that
it was negative. He had gotten his bill out of committee! I

The Seymour bill moved out of the Energy Committee and onto the
Senate floor on March 19, 1992. It passed the Senate April 10, 1992.

thought he, at the moment, was flying high, but just for the
moment. Does Golb say otherwise?

Chall: Yes, well, Golb feels that Seymour felt that it wasn t a great
victory. I guess the question I have is that Golb says that in
the committee, as it was being discussed- -that they went
through all kinds of computations and figures to realize that
nothing considered by the bills was going to work well. It was
too complicated, or too expensive, that Seymour was willing to
make quite a few changes in his own bill that would have come
closer, perhaps, to the environmental side, but Senator
Johnston would not allow any amendments. Therefore, no matter
what Seymour might have wanted to change , he couldn t . 1

Everybody s bill had to go out exactly as it was. Of
course, there was only a mark so that wasn t a bill, so it was
only 2016 and Bradley s S. 484. I asked Golb, well, even if he
had made the changes, would agriculture have accepted them, and
he said he didn t know; Seymour was taking a chance.

Quinn: I strongly suspect that they would not, and everybody knew
that, which took the air out of Seymour s sails. With the
benefit of five years of hindsight, one strongly suspects that
Bennett Johnston, and Bill Bradley, and George Miller had cut a
deal. They didn t want to mess with 2016; they wanted to get
to the real stuff, which was going to be using Miller-Bradley
as a foundation, because you had the House side to deal with.
Nothing was going to happen until then.

George Miller had bottled up water projects all across the
western states for a decade, however long he had been chairman.
Miller had everything bottled up, nothing was going to happen
without Miller s stamp. It just seems to me, in retrospect,
it s hard to explain it any other way than Miller and Johnston,
whatever their differences might have been, got together and
said CVPIA was going to be part of the omnibus bill period and
it wasn t going to be on the basis of Seymour s bill, it was
going to be on the basis of Miller s bill. Normally, Miller
could never roll a home state senator. But the planets had
lined up and they were not going to line up again for a lot of
years, which is one of the reasons why it was so intense.

Golb interview, pp. 31-33.

Chall: That s what Dan Beard said, that everything had lined up. 1 When
Miller produced his H.R. 5099, which was like the mark, now you
had a House bill to argue.

Quinn: Well, if we might go back to... I m not sure where you want to
go, Malca--.

Chall: No, you go back to wherever you want.

The Effect of the Johnston Mark on MET s Stance on the
Competing Reform Bills; Setting Forth the Principles

Quinn: Well, to the mark, and what was happening here in California,

particularly at Metropolitan. As I look back on it, that month
was a critical month of maturing of the Metropolitan with
regard to these issues. The mark came out, Carl felt strongly
that we couldn t not support the mark. I don t know if you
remember it Carl, but I was trying to draft the board letter
for you, it was not writing itself well, and you and I spent a
lively couple of hours at your home the night before you left
for Africa and finally came up with a draft.

When 1 read the letter preparing for this interview, it
seemed a rather schizophrenic letter.

Boronkay: We were schizophrenic.

Quinn: The answer was we support both; people weren t used to hearing
that you could support guys on two sides of the aisle who are
in such opposition. The mark had water marketing language in
it; although, it was very poor marketing language. It did not
do what we needed it to do, but what it signified was something
was going to move and we wanted to be part of the process that
moved.

Boronkay: In addition, a lot of pressure was put on the board including

personal calls to influential board members and officers by the
ag people and their supporters to withhold support of the mark.

Quinn: The significant thing that happened while Carl was away was we
moved from saying we support this bill or that bill to very

Daniel Beard, Passage of the Central Valley Prolect Improvement Act.
1991-1992. Regional Oral History Office, University of California,
Berkeley, 1995. pp. 18-20, 47.

clearly saying we support a particular set of principles. We
called a special meeting of the board on February 28. I don t
remember for sure, Carl, if you were back for that special
meeting or not. Instead of saying we support this bill and we
support that bill, we said, we support provisions of CVP
legislation only where legislation would promote the following.
We listed the things that we were looking for in legislation,
which allowed us from that point in time to dodge the question
of do you support this bill or that bill.

Quinn: One of the youngest members of our board at the time was Alf
Brandt. Alf was extraordinarily valuable that week as a
courier between me and the board. He was young but he was a
board member, and the board tended to respect any of their
fellows. Alf was progressive and was willing to take risks
that maybe some other board members weren t. Alf and I were
shuttling back and forth between committee rooms and my office
trying to get down on paper a set of principles that would put
us in good stead for whatever was left in Washington, D.C.

We were also having some problems in Washington. Bob Will
was just out of sorts with what was going on. He was very
uncomfortable, which was part of the conversation we were
having a while ago. The board finally wound up in this
February 28, 1992 revised board letter 8-11. I think you have
a copy; if you don t, I have one for you.

The list of provisions that we said we would support
included the following: water transfers, which was at the top
of the list; fish and wildlife improvements, including water
for the environment- -a big change for Metropolitan; water
management reforms, including water metering and changes in
water pricing; appropriate federal actions to pursue needed
facilities; and other provisions consistent with Metropolitan s
objectives. There were a couple of bombshells for the
agricultural interests.

What was happening in February, setting the stage for
Carl s May testimony, was a broadening of our position to try
and create something in the center, a middle ground that
represented more balanced policy. Nobody else was doing that
at that point in time.

Boronkay: Do you want to explain how that came about, your ability to get
you and Alf Brandt working on a board action that adopted a set
of broad principles as opposed to voting in favor, or not in
favor, of the Bennett Johnston letter, which was before then.

ot Soi"~sr i C*. ; i;sn
a: .TS :-.-...- ~i

MAR 10 1992

^ // REVISED

""" U EXECUTIVE SCCR|TJ(RY

M *i METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

February 28, 1992

Board of Directors (Water Problems CommitteeAction)
General Manager

Support in Principle for Central Valley Project Reform
Legislation

Report

At their special meetings on February 28, 1992, the
Executive Committee and Special Committee on Legislation
revised the recommendation in the General Manager s letter of
February 25, 1992, on the above subject to read as shown below.

Recommendation

WATER PROBLEMS COMMITTEE FOR ACTION.

That the Board:

1. Support efforts of the State of California to
transfer the Central Valley Project (CVP) to the State of
California;

2. Authorize the General Manager to support
provisions of CVP reform legislation that promote: water
transfers; fish and wildlife improvements, including water for
the environment; water management reforms, including water
metering and changes in water pricing; appropriate federal
actions to pursue needed facilities; and other provisions
consistent with Metropolitan s objectives to increase the
quantity, quality, and reliability of Metropolitan s water
resources ; and

3. Encourage all parties to continue negotiations
with all members of the State Legislature, the United States
Congress, the Governor of California, and other interests who

84b
Board of Directors -2- February 28, 1992

have been and are making efforts to resolve water issues in
California, recognizing the need for balance among
environmental, agricultural, and urban uses of the State s
water supplies.

FV:db

8- 11 rev. bd

Quinn: You may be thinking of something particular. By the way, Carl,
Duane at the time didn t understand the specific issues as well
as I. I was living this day in and day out, but Duane was
nothing short of spectacular, couriering back and forth between
southern California and Washington, and sitting down and
working with board members. At that time, I worked on these
bills, Duane had the skills then that I have tried to develop
in the five years since. We were afraid we were going to lose
it while Carl was in Kenya.

Chall: With whom was Duane working? Your board members?

Quinn: When he went back to Washington it was all staff contact; he

was not meeting with the committee members, but he was meeting
with various staff people trying to explain what our positions
were. In California, Mike Madigan was a member of our board of
directors very close to Governor Pete Wilson. There were a
number of people very close to Governor Wilson. In the
governor s office, a key goal was to keep Boronkay out of
Washington and stop Metropolitan from interfering with their
strategies to kill this legislation.

To save the proactive position Metropolitan was trying to
create, we switched to supporting a set of principles. Then,
some of the environmentally progressive members of our board
were very persuasive as to broadening that set of principles
that would allow us to play a role in the larger legislation;
although we continued to focus 95 percent of our energies on
the water marketing provisions, which was what was of primary
interest to us.

Boronkay: Let me supplement that, consistent with what Tim said. I

believe that after I got back, I had a meeting with Brandt who
explained what happened, what you said, but why it came about.
By that time, the governor had called people on the MET s
board.

Quinn: He was calling our entire executive committee.
Chall: That s what I understood.

Boronkay: And the chair, Lois Krieger, was always questionable on this
fight with ag. Mike Madigan was his lead man. Mike had been
one of his aides when the governor was mayor of San Diego, so
they go back a long ways. Mike is a very capable fellow
politically in his own right. Mike lead a charge against the
Bennett Johnston bill. The Bennett Johnston bill simply scared
everybody, and here I had asked the board to approve it,
logically. Brandt said in order to end the fight--that it was

Carl Boronkay, "...The relaxed me (perhaps enjoying the recent
Congressional victory) ," 1992.

a fight lead by Madigan against it, and Brandt and maybe Mike
Gage, who was on the board then, for it- -that they should
compromise by saying, "Well, we won t take a position on the
bill, but we ll pass principles." Principles were even better.
When I read that I said, "Well, now I can support any bill."

Chall: You had always been saying, "We support, in principle."

Quinn: He had been saying that, but we hadn t gotten it to where the
board was taking a position that gave him the protection.

Boronkay: But when I said that I support in principle, that s kind of
vague. Here, the principles were very specific. I could
support environmental enhancement. I could support financial
changes on the project, other things as well as water
marketing. So, this was a find. Even though they didn t
support that board letter, it was better than that letter. A
neat twist that I can t resist telling.

Quinn: Duane and I were so glad you felt that way when you came back,
[laughter]

Boronkay: Oh, you guys were stunning. You did an amazing job there.
Frankly, had the letter been rejected, I wouldn t have been
surprised because that was a lot to push on the MET board. I
think the compromise worked very well and you guys totally get
the credit for that.

There s an interesting twist. San Diego has always felt
the need for more water, more reliability in water supply. San
Diego was, years back, one of the earliest supporters of my
efforts for water marketing, for water transfers. I mean years
ago, marketing was just a theoretical concept. We were just
taking the first steps with ag agencies to develop transfers.
Mike was always out front with water marketing. Now, he is put
in the position by the governor where he has to oppose the
water marketing bill, and that I think kind of took something
away from his standing.

In other words, he didn t come in with total credibility
because he was a water marketing person, and now he was
fighting a bill that would promote marketing. I think that
helped in the compromise. I think he saw that he had to
compromise. Now, that s all conjecture on my part. I did see
the irony of Mike being a real pusher for water marketing
suddenly representing the governor who didn t want any
marketing bill, or any CVP bill.

Chall: There was another part of this February 28 compromise and that
came, of course, after the governor had called all of the
members of the executive committee, is that it? Because, in
Number One, they support the efforts of the state of California
to transfer the Central Valley Project to the state of
California. Now, I realize that meant that he got what he
wanted in there somewhere, since that s Number One on the list.

Boronkay: But that s apple pie.

Chall: Well, I know but at least it was part of that so-called
compromise.

Quinn: Well, it was and that was definitely the hand of Mike Madigan.
It was something that we worked out so Mike could take it back
to the governor; that was the governor s main initiative. My
recollection, at this time, though, while many people thought
that buying the CVP was a legitimate position, others felt the
governor s primary goal was to defeat the CVP bills--"Don t
talk about this legislation, we re only going to talk about the
CVP transfer."

By the time you got to February, March of 92, that
strategy clearly wasn t going to sell. I think we had Miller-
Bradley drafts out on the table, which included provisions to
study the transfer of the CVP to the state, so you could look
yourself in the mirror and pass a straight face test at
principle one, here, and principle two. The first principle
was to support the transfer to the CVP; the other principles
looked an awful lot like supporting the stuff that was in the
chairman s mark because a lot of this stuff was not in
Seymour s S. 2016.

Boronkay: You know, when I told Seymour that I didn t think the state

would get it [CVP], or if the state got it, I had no assurance
it would help urban people, that was true. I also felt
politically, we had to support the governor wanting a federal
project, wanting to take over a project that s all California
water for all California users, we could not in anyway refuse
to support that.

If I had been here, I would have supported that as a part
of this same board letter, or board action. I would merely
have made a great effort to get the commitment of the governor,
or get into the congressional legislation for the federal
government transferring it, that a certain amount of water has
to be left for urban use. I would make the best I could of it.

But, I think Tim is right. When the governor first raised
that, it was a red herring. It was just, "We don t need any
legislation, we re getting the project; we can take care of our
own water problems," as trumpeted by the governor s aides.

Chall: I was under the impression that in one of his meetings in
California when the Energy Committee staffs came out, that
Johnston said, "Why don t you just take it over?" Was it one
of his ideas that suddenly surfaced?

Quinn: I don t know.

Boronkay: I don t know, but doubt it.

The MET Board and Its Committee Structure

Chall: You don t know, okay. I want to ask you about your working

with the board since you were always having to do that. Your
letters always ended with referring the matter to committees
because they had certain responsibilities. With a fifty-one
member board, you can really divide committees pretty well, but
some of those water policy committees and special committees
looked as if they had overlapping jurisdictions. Did they
always agree with each other?

Boronkay: I ll give you my picture of it.

Quinn: And, then you ll get the picture from the person who is still
employed by this board. [laughter]

Boronkay: Most of the time, there was agreement. There always has been
overlap, engineering and finance, for example. A lot of it
turned on personalities. If someone was on an engineering
committee and didn t like a project and it went through, if he
was also on the finance committee, he d try to scuttle it
there.

Chall: Oh, so there was overlap of committee membership?

Boronkay: There was board member overlap as well as subject matter. Most
of the time, the staff would be convincing enough to get
everything through committee, and then the diehards might
attack it at the board. But if it got through the committees,
the board seldom turned it around. Whether that s still the
case, I ll leave to Tim.

Quinn :

Chall:
Quinn :

Personally, I think, then as now, the committee structure,
while imperfect, works pretty well for Metropolitan. It s such
a large board that it needs to break itself down into some
workable manner. At the time, the Water Problems Committee was
the one that dealt with this issue almost exclusively so that
committee had jurisdiction. Also, it was the most important
policy committee that we had at the time. Its successor, the
Planning and Resources Committee, the same thing can be said
about that today. The Water Problems Committee has always had
a strong chairman. I think Ibbey was the chairman of the Water
Problems Committee during the Miller-Bradley fight.

Who

was? What s the name of that person?

E. Thorton Ibbitson. He s about to retire, Carl, about to
leave the board after thirty-eight years.

Boronkay: Is he really, did he announce that?

Quinn: Which is a topic for another conversation, but we will miss
him. We call him Ibbey, I-b-b-e-y. Ibbey was arguably the
most respected member of the board at the time, and one of the
most respected today, a strong chairman. So, we didn t have
much of a problem getting the facts out and letting the debate
happen.

Another significant thing that was happening at the time
was the creation of a Legislative Committee, which we had never
had before. I recall Carl being less than thrilled at the
prospect of having a Legislative Committee. I think [Mike]
Gage was the committee s first chairman.

Gage was one of the stronger personalities on the board.
There was a strong view by board members to create a
Legislative Committee, which the board did in 1991. While
upper management might have had misgivings about it, I ll tell
you, that committee was a lifesaver when we got to February and
March of 1992 in terms of fashioning those principles, which
sort of allowed us to dodge some very large bullets and regain
our balance. All of that was happening in the Legislative
Committee at that point, so you had some structural change at
Metropolitan, where Water Problems and the Legislative
Committee both became active at that point in time.

Chall: I see because I know you sent these measures to them. Now, one
other thing I wanted to ask you. Number three on the list, you
wanted to "Encourage all parties to continue negotiations with
all members of the State Legislature, the United States
Congress, the Governor of California, and other interests who

have been and are making efforts to resolve water issues in
California, recognizing the need for balance among
environmental, agricultural, and urban uses of the State s
water supplies." Now, when you say encourage all parties, what
do you mean by that?

Quinn: There were a lot of relationships going through hard times in
those days . We had board members that were very close to the
environmental community. We had board members, a large number
it s fair to say, were close to the agricultural community.
They were getting phone calls. The governor was calling the
Executive Committee. Tom Graff had appeared at the
Metropolitan board, I think, prior to all of this happening. I
think it had been at the January board meeting.

Boronkay: It was after we supported formally the Seymour bill.

Quinn: I remember Seymour came--.

Boronkay: Seymour came and Graff was there the same day; they both spoke. 1

Quinn: So, there were a lot of relationships out there. Frankly, the
commitment to work with others was a way of assuring our board
that we were not going to turn our back on any of these
interests. It was part of the emerging role that the urbans
play still today. Well, it sounds like a lot of fluff, that
last recommendation said we re going to be for balance, and
we re going deal with all the parties.

So, we were, I think unwittingly, moving ourselves into a
mediator role. Frankly, thank goodness because if you left it
to the agricultural and the environmental interests, we would
still have the California water wars raging without an end in
sight. And, this was the beginning of the rise of urban
California, and even of the urban West, as a centrist force in
national water politics and natural resource politics. Again,
when we start to get to the end of the story, the role the
Western Urban Water Coalition played in preventing a
presidential veto, which I think to this day is undervalued,
for the letters that Carl had Lois sending to Secretary
[Manuel] Lujan, and I ve forgotten the secretary of
agriculture s name. [Clayton Yeutter]

I ve got it in the files here somewhere. Again, this is
part of the urban center rising to say, balance is what we
need. We were the only entity acting different than we ever

Graf f-Yardas interview, pp. 65-66.

had before. The aggies were doing what they always had done;
the environmentalists were doing what they had always done. It
was the urbans that were being forced to change what they had
always done, tag along with ag.

The Bradley Bill Changed the Agricultural, Urban, and
Environmental Relationships

Boronkay: The major change was the fact that instead of there being two
sides to water issues, users and conservationists, or
environmentalists if you will, there were now three sides. The
break over this bill made it very clear to everyone that there
were three sides and should be three sides. In the West, urban
interests were politically always an appendage of irrigation
districts because the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902 started
the water projects for irrigation, and towns were an essential
part, but a minor part. Well now, urban interests and the
economics of it just compel you to move water to urban areas.
It just doesn t make sense to do otherwise.

Bradley s legislation allowed the distinctions to be drawn.
They were in the heads of a number of people who thought about
it, but not in the heads of agricultural people, and not in the
heads of most urban people. It was just some of the urban
leaders who could see that we really didn t have the same
interests uniformly, and at all times, with agriculture.

Now, why weren t we being recognized and treated
separately? The governor didn t have to deal with
Metropolitan, and didn t to a great extent, as he did with the
ag community. Over the years, it was the ag community that
came out on top when there was a dispute. It was the urban
people that gave up the compromise, usually financial, but
that s the way it went. Now, there s more of a separate
identity. We re able to do more to look out for urban
interests.

Agriculture s Strength in Congress and the Need for Equity
Among the Sectors

Chall:

You talked about three sides, is that an equilateral triangle?

Boronkay:

Quinn:

I think it varies. The ag people are the most organized,
politically. They have lots of money that they raise in
politics. Their organization in California is very thorough
and comprehensive, and it extends throughout the country. You
get bills in Washington and you get senators from Alabama and
Minnesota; it didn t matter which party they were in, they were
on the ag side, and lots of money is raised in that way.

So, they still are the strongest. I think, in large part,
from history, in large part from the ability to raise and
donate money, and in large part because they re damned smart.
The committees that matter for water are run by ag senators, ag
representatives. The city folk in Congress are on education
committees, and welfare committees, and the post office, and
all the things that you think are urban problems, and they
don t regard water as an urban problem because water has always
been there.

When you go back to Washington to get somewhere with
legislation for lining the Ail-American Canal, to conserve
water that drains away, to get a bill through, a bill that made
all the sense in the world but the Imperial Irrigation District
opposed it, who did you get to be your fighter? It was
[George] Miller, from northern California, a strong opponent of
transferring water south. Miller was chairman of that
subcommittee, and he was doing southern California s bidding.

We had one southern Calif ornian on that committee, another
guy in our favor and that was [Mel] Levine, and he got briefed
and was helpful for the moment, but to tell you frankly, that s
not where his interest was. He was into foreign policy. It
was Miller who knew water. You look around in California.
Who s chairman or active members of these water committees?
It s generally ag people, Westland s people, Fresno,
Bakersfield.

So, you get a bill where you
legislators because there s a lot
away when votes are traded. See,
about a water bill, but that bill
strong, political bill to them so
watch when the Fresno people want
bill; your guys are gone. I don
strongly about this, but that was

line up southern California
of them, and watch them fade
they re okay when you talk
really isn t an emotional,
they re with you. But then
to trade to win their water
t know, maybe I feel too
my experience.

You asked does it have to be an equilateral triangle. The fact
is, to sustain change, it does. I think, these days, as the
urban community matures it needs to figure out how to handle a
position of its own and overcome some of the natural deficits

Chall:
Quinn:
Chall:

Boronkay:
Chall:

that we face in the world of water politics, where water is not
the number one issue for the businesses that count politically
in the urban community.

It is the number one thing, politically, on many of the
businesses that count in the ag community. Over time we re
learning that unless it s an equilateral triangle, unless all
three entities and their interests are represented and are
being dealt with, you can t sustain change. We re learning
that in the implementation of this act today. And not all the
corners of the triangle fully appreciate and understand that, I
might add. Back in 92, there was to some degree a ganging up
of two other sides of the triangle against the third. We
joined league with the northern urbans, and with the
environmentalists; the agricultural interests by and large
refused. I mean, they were denying that change was necessary.
We felt change was absolutely essential, so did the
environmental community so we fought for change against those
that wanted to retain the status quo and we won.

We won, and that was fundamentally important because it
changed the whole status quo in agriculture, something we
mentioned in our session together a week ago, that has given
agriculture today an incentive to desire change. We would not
be making the progress today that we are, if Miller-Bradley
hadn t happened, if we hadn t gone through that terrible
conflict that took place in those days. We needed to
restructure the status quo to recognize the imbalance of the
old regime, and the immediacy of establishing balance between
the sectors. Miller-Bradley took you a big step towards that,
although certainly not the perfect bill, but it took you a huge
step in that direction of creating the equilateral triangle.

The governor was not in the loop? He was out of it, I guess.
Of his own choice.

Of his own choice. What about the Department of Water
Resources? Now that s the state water peopleDavid Kennedy
and [Douglas] Wheeler. They wanted you out of it.

There is no distinction to be drawn between the governor and
the department, and that includes Wheeler, who s cabinet, not
just the department, but of a larger authority [State Resources
Agency] .

And, you say, basically, that there was a denial among the
staff that this would ever go through?

Quinn: There was certainly denial that change needed to be made. Once
again, I ll mention the conversation that I had with Jerry
Butchert. I think it was May, it was about the same time you
were delivering your testimony before Miller s committee, which
again shook them up because it really put Metropolitan much
more towards the type of change that was being contemplated in
the bills that they didn t like.

Jerry said something that has always stuck with me, he
said, "Some things you can give up in negotiations, some things
have to be taken away." In that statement he wasn t denying
that something was going to be taken away. He wasn t denying
that the change was going to happen. He was just saying, "As
the general manager of Westlands Water District, I can t give
this up at a negotiating table and go back to my board of
directors and tell them what a great deal I just cut for them."

If the environmentalists want this kind of change, pricing
reforms, reallocation of water away from ag to urbans, they
were going to have to fight ag to get it. Butchert made it
very clear, "Stop talking about compromise to us. We re not
going to compromise. We re going to go to war." Since that
was their perspective, change required the war. Although the
agricultural interests had agreed to user-initiated transfers
in S . 2016, I question what we really got at the time because
it s one thing to have it written down in the bill, it s
another thing to have the district cooperating in the passage
and implementation of that law.

Boronkay: Let me give you an earlier part of the same story with
Butchert. To begin with, although MET is a large board,
generally they are together and have a lot of confidence in
their management. They raise a lot of questions but
ultimately, you re the manager, and they meet once a month,
they are from all walks of life, and rarely, except a few, have
anything to do with water. So, they ultimately get to size up
management and develop confidence in it. Now, contrast that
with agricultural districts, where the farmers know all about
water.

They know the history of it. They know the need. They
know every dollar it costs . They know what the market is .
They re heavily involved in the politics of it. So, now, you
take management of those districts and they re at a
disadvantage as opposed to Metropolitan because their five-
person board, or seven-person board will second guess them on
anything. It s not a matter of merely their deciding they have
confidence in management; they may feel they know better than
management, at least as much and probably more.

So, when young managers they re younger than the board
members --Butchert and many others I talked tosometimes wanted
to come along with us, their boards often wouldn t let them.
Butchert was particularly able and I m told did propose
compromise on the Seymour bill. I think it was Borba on his
board that--.

Quinn: Mike Borba.

Boronkay: Yes, before a vote on the Seymour billwhat I was told is just
coming vaguely now a vote on the Seymour bill which management
was proposing, at least informally, to negotiate and support,
Borba called the governor, and he came back to the meeting and
said in effect, "The governor says they can kill any bill."

Quinn: That was particularly the case, we were seeing--.
Boronkay: Am I wrong in that recollection?

Quinn: We were seeing signs of that in 2016. It was very prominent
when Somach and Graff tried to negotiate.

Chall: Yes, yes, and we do want to take that up, that s when the whole
thing fell apart.

Quinn: We want to talk about Somach-Graf f , too.

Boronkay: But, I wanted to leave you with the idea that a lot of younger
people who were managers of these agricultural districts, I
think, personally leaned toward getting along, negotiating,
compromising, but they d also be fired. Their board members
hadn t ever lost; they didn t lose any big bill in Congress.

Quinn: Never had, never had happened before 1992.

Boronkay: So, they couldn t accept the idea that they may not win.

Chall: If it hadn t been for H.R. 429 having been bottled up for so
many years that all the other western senators wanted, maybe
the CVPIA wouldn t have passed?

Quinn: Unquestionably, it would not have passed.

Chall: It was a Miller ploy that worked.

Quinn: A brilliant stroke of strategy. It truly was.

Boronkay: Yes, and one that he d been using a rather long time. He
didn t just invent this.

Quinn: The plan was well conceived, and it was being exceptionally
well executed.

Boronkay: Yes, it was a good textbook examples of how to accomplish

things. You mentioned Somach and Graff, and perhaps you want
to get into that now?

Carl Boronkay Testifies at Hearing on H.R. 5099: Suggests
Modifications to S. 2016

Chall:

Quinn :

Chall:

Quinn :

Chall:

Quinn :

Chall ;

Yes, well, we were just finishing up with 5099, so we should
discuss your testimony in Washington on May 1A, 1992. 1

It was actually before Miller s committee. [Subcommittee on
Water, Power, and Offshore Energy Resources of the House
Interior Committee]

You said here as you had in other places, that, "On balance, we
prefer the more specific provisions of Senator Seymour s
bill..." So you never negated your position on Senator
Seymour s bill, but you always said that it needed to be
modified. Then you went on in your testimony to itemize what
changes needed to be made, and said that you hoped that 5099
"would join S. 2016 in the form of Title XXXIV..." Of course
2016 was already in the conference.

The May testimony indicated that we were certainly amenable to
2016 moving forward; but if you read the heart of the
testimony, it says to Congress: "Move something forward." This
is what Carl was referring to earlier about the strategy we
were promoting was move something to the conference committee
to force it to the next stage, and we could get a bill out of
it.

Although, you did suggest certain revisions,
requests for certain revisions.

I mean, you had

We listed, I don t know, six or eight things, but they were not
focused on any particular bill. They were focused on the
policy that needed to be established from our perspective.

Just get it in, any bill.

On deposit in the Water Resources Center Library.

Boronkay: And Tim drafted those. When I went to Washington to speak in
support of the Miller bill, that was an exciting meeting. I
was there with Bob Will. There were whole rows of people
there. Firstly, I am there the night before alone in my room,
and at eleven at night I got a call--. And I won t identify
the caller.

Quinn: Oh, you should.

Boronkay: It s not fair. But I got a call that night from a rather grand
person of intimidating stature.

Chall: On your board?

Boronkay: No, in Congress. He said, "We expect you to do the right thing
tomorrow." I said, "Well, yes, I m going to testify." "No, we
expect you to come out four square on the side of the Miller-
Bradley bill." I said, "Well, we re going to support those
bills, but basically our interest is going to be marketing,
though, we re going to support the rest." Then, I was left
with this: "If this fails, everyone is going to know who s
responsible." Hang up. [laughter]

So, I m a little intimidated. Even that night, I m looking
again at my statement that I drafted. I don t plan to read it;
I knew what I would say. I m wondering what I could change to
make something a little stronger or a little weaker, and then I
said, "You know, Quinn and I went over this. We know what we
want to say; I can t pay attention to that call." So I didn t.

So, I went to the hearing the next day and the rows are
set. First, Miller calls up Bradley. He gave a nice, strong
statement, very pro-environmental statement. Then there are
rows of environmentalists, probably two rows worth. Then some
urban people, and last, ag. Well, there s a lot of ag people
in the room. It s a big crowded room there; I believe there
were media people, too.

After Senator Bradley spoke for ten or fifteen minutes
very, very strong, a lot of applause. I m sitting two rows
back, and he starts to leave. He walks over to me, puts his
hand over two rows and shakes my hand. Throughout the room,
you heard, "Ahhhhhhh." [laughter] I mean really like that.
It was like a wave, you know, the wave at football games.
People looked away and started murmuring, and others got up to
talk to each other in the back or outside.

I don t know what they thought I was going to do
differently than I d been doing, but it seemed to shock people.

Quinn:
Boronkay:

Quinn:

I guess an impression was intended that I m not independent any
longer; that I m completely over with environmentalists.
Eventually I spoke, and there were a lot of questions from some
of the valley people on the committee-- [Richard] Lehman, Cal
Dooley. They asked me questions, but they were easily handled.
I said, "We don t want a lot of water, very little. You are
going to be paid more than you get through growing certain
crops. And it s voluntary; no one has to do it."

I mean, they had no questions that put us on the spot. And
then, the water district manager, a woman from Las Vegas, Pat
Mulroy, was called.

Pat Mulroy.
Coalition.

She testified on behalf of the Western Urban Water

She just said in a broader sense, "This is a key bill. It s
the beginning of what all of us urban areas are going to need
in the West. We re all for this marketing, and that s what
we re going to need in all these other states." She was very
impressive. The environmentalists had already spoken, and by
then, in reality it was all over. I mean I guess some ag
people spoke, but the tenor of that meeting was all one way.

Mulroy was the founding chair of the Western Urban Water
Coalition. She was appearing, as I recall, at the hearing as a
representative of the Western Urban Water Coalition, of which
we were one vote out of seventeen or eighteen member agencies.
I don t remember if it happened in May, but eventually the
Western Urban Water Coalition was unabashedly pushing for the
passage of the Miller-Bradley bill. On the one hand, it was
desirable; on the other hand, it created an even more
complicated situation for us here in California where we were
trying to stay on this tight rope.

Carl, go back to the February board letter. I mean, we do
take seriously what parameters our board gives us. Carl
couldn t go out and pick a bill. That had been the deal that
he cut with his board. He couldn t go out and say, "I support
this bill. Vote yes on this bill; vote no on that bill." We
were supporting a set of principles.

But if you looked at those principles, it was a clear
signal that Metropolitan was going to support a pro-environment
bill that came out of the conference committee. We were going
to support a bill that had water for the environment . We were
going to support a bill that restructured financial
arrangements. So, I don t know what Bradley and others were

Chall:
Quinn:

Boronkay :

thinking, because they had pressed Carl unmercifully on the
issue of picking sides.

At the time I remember thinking, politicians are odd people
indeed. I mean, they were given a statement that made it very
clear they were going to have Metropolitan where they needed
Metropolitan when it came time to get a bill out. Why were
they so insistent that we play the personality politics? Pick
this guy not that guy, when both of them had elements in their
bills that were consistent with where we wanted to go as a
matter of principle. Frankly, this organization still has that
problem when we deal with politicians.

I guess they wanted the Democrats to win, is that true?

Sure, of course, there s always partisan politics in
Washington.

Can I just say, during this whole legislative battle, I d meet
with Miller a lot, all along. I have mentioned meetings with
Seymour, but I d see Miller whenever I could when I was there,
whenever he had time. We had an excellent relationship. He
never was demanding. He had suggestions on helping to move the
bill along. He never said he was against water marketing. I
read that somewhere, but it never came up at the time I worked
with him or his staff.

Chall:

But he was .

The Interest of the Business Community in Water Marketing

Boronkay: I know, I read that, but he never told me that because he was
satisfied that was necessary for MET to support his bill. So,
he got over that. I mean, I ve read statements of others that
said he was against marketing, including, maybe, Dan Beard. 1

Sometime after the hearing I met Miller in his office.
Apart from just general conversation, I asked him, "Well, what
else could we be doing." He said, "Get some support from other
entities, from businesses, things like that." A lot of the
things that Tim eventually accomplished, including getting
major businesses in California to sign a letter in support, was
really the result of our wanting to continue an active role,

Dan Beard interview, pp. 21-23.

100

not merely await the outcome. At this point, we ve already had
all the hearings and everything else. So when he said, "Bring
in some support from others, other agencies, businesses, other
cities," that s where Tim went to town.

Quinn: That s right. At that time, I established a relationship with
Mike McGill; it was early in 1992. Mike, at the time, was the
executive director of the Bay Area Economic Forum. Mike had
become fascinated with water issues. Today he s Senator
[Dianne] Feinstein s chief of staff. He s fascinated even
today with water issues. We started working very closely with
Mike generating North-South business support.

It turned out, not all that surprisingly, that the business
support would rally around the water marketing provisions of
the bill, but not necessarily the other stuff. I mean, today
the environmental community talks like the business community
supported the environmental reforms. I tell you, I was pretty
close to it and that s not true. At least, it s not true from
my perspective. They were supporting water marketing. They
were choking pretty hard on what looked like a pretty heavy
hand from the federal government coming in and taking resources
away from businesses in California.

Boronkay: Not only businesses, but those businesses like banks were all
close to the ag people. I mean, they made them all their
loans .

Chall: Right, Bank of America.

Boronkay: So, it was a big thing, but let me add an anecdote here. There
was a fellow at the [L.A. ] Times . who has since retired, he was
a vice chairman. His name was Phil Williams. I encouraged
Phil in terms of outreach to the business community. I would
speak at chambers of commerce, trade organizations, and unions.
One person that showed a lot of continuing interest was Phil
Williams. He had a lot to do with bringing the [Business]
Roundtable, or business people together in support of this
bill. He d backed this right along, but he was on the business
end, not the newspaper end. He was a corporate officer.

What he told me once, and that s what really helped, "You
know, when Rosenberg--." Is that Dick Rosenberg?

Quinn: Yes, he was at the time chairman, CEO of the Bank of America.

Boronkay: He said, "You know, I was having a meeting up in San

Francisco," and Dick Rosenberg was the chairman of the
Roundtable, and he had just got back from New York and he said,

101

Quinn:
Boronkay :
Quinn:

Chall:

"You know they re constantly asking me what about California s
water drought. What about California s water supply?" He
said, "Dick is definitely going to support us, because he feels
the finance community back there have a concern about water
reliability in southern California, indeed of the urban areas
of the state."

So, I think that concern of the Bank of America, or that
issue raised there, helped with Rosenberg, and he helped get a
slew of others on board. Eventually, that helped kill any
veto, but it also helped get the bill through. Was that while
the bill was still being voted on that you got that letter of
support?

I don t have a copy of the letter. My recollection is it was
in the summer, so the bill was still active.

Yes, I think you re right. The letter was pushed again on the
veto effort of the governor.

And, again, Mike McGill was probably the central player in the
business community because of his situation. He had a lot of
businesses that were part of his organization. And Mike
actively engaged issues going back and forth over important
details and questions. Mike would ask, "What about this, what
about that?"

That s right, that s what Graff and Yardas stated. 1

The Environmental Community and Water Marketing

Boronkay: I m going to intrude here with a comment, because 1 don t want
to forget it. All the years past, it was EDF, particularly Tom
Graff, pushing water market ing --that was the future, that would
get MET and other users off the Delta. When this whole concept
came along, the Bradley bill and everything else, they said
nothing .

They spoke only on the environment . They left water
marketing to Metropolitan. I talked to Tom about that. I
said, "You know, I got this idea from you fifteen years ago."
Then he said, "You re doing fine." They never got out front on
water marketing, and they take a lot of the credit for it.

Graff -Yardas interview, pp. 56-57b, 81, 98.

102

They never pushed water marketing. They limited themselves.
Just as we limited ourselves, they limited themselves to
environmental matters .

I just thought that was interesting, because I thought,
"Hey, you know, I d like you to say something in support to the
board, or something like that." He said, well, he ll do that,
but he took no lead. None of the environmentalists took a lead
on marketing. Of course, environmentalists, themselves, were
split, not down the middle by any means. The Sierra Club
always had questions about whether marketing was a sound thing
for an environment. The other thingperhaps you will get
there now- -was the Tom and Somach later effort, and we could
speak to that.

The Somach-Graff Negotiations

Chall: Well, yes. I would like to talk about that because it looked,
apparently, as if even H.R. 5099 wasn t going to go anywhere.
Is that why they finally decided to bring Somach and Graff
together to see if something could be worked out on both sides?

Boronkay: Who brought them together?
Chall: Well, that s a good question.

Quinn: We, frankly, didn t know at the time, and I don t know today,
but we know they came together. We were like everyone else
when the Somach-Graf f--or the Graff-Somach draft, depending
upon what the perspective is--came out, we were as surprised as
anybody was .

Chall: Jason Peltier says G4 brought it up. His side worked with a
group called G4. That was Somach, and Mark Atlas, Gary
Sawyers, Diane Rothmann, and Peltier. 1

Quinn: They were representing the four units of the Central Valley
Project Water Association.

Chall: And then, there were sometimes, Kim Schnoor, and Greg--I don t
know whether it s Wang or Wong. I think they were their
lobbyists.

Peltier interview pp. 54-59.

103

Quinn: Wang. Greg is the technician here in California; Kim was the
lobbyist.

Chall: Okay. Now, he said that G4 decided that they should get Somach
and Graff together, that, apparently, they or no one was going
to be satisfied with 5099 and 2016, and maybe nothing was going
to pass. I don t know what they were thinking about at that
point. Tom Graff claims that he was called by Joe Raeder of
Dooley s staff. Cal Dooley, is that it? Graff claims they got
together, they met four times, and they completed their draft
on June 15, as you all know. They worked by themselves,
primarily. Once in a while, Dave Yardas would come in, and
once in a while, somebody would come in on Somach 1 s side. Most
of the time, it was just the two of them alone in a room.

Boronkay: The cabin, at Somach s cabin.
Chall: Oh, really?

Boronkay: Yes. Not necessarily all meetings took place there, but some
did.

Chall: At least, they were alone most of the time. They had decided,
and they had made arrangements that they would present their
draft to the committee on June 16, but on the night of June 15,
apparently, Mike Borba got to Wilson and Somach was pulled out.
So, it was Graff who went alone and presented the draft to, I
guess, Miller s committee. There it is. [Shows draft of
Somach-Graff report] Now you can talk about it because that
created a lot of flack in and of itself, right?

Boronkay: Let me first give my experience on it, and then Tim you may do
that. Is that all right to go in that order?

Quinn: Sure.

Boronkay: My speculation is that the ag people thought they were going to
lose. Peltier and those people who were used to never losing
didn t call Tom in to make a deal because they wanted a bill.
You know, you said that they may have thought that no bill
would go through; that s exactly where they wanted to end.
They felt a little nervous. I think Tom misjudged the
situation.

I think we had them beaten, and that Tom had a few other
things that he liked. I m speculating he thought it would be a
wonderful thing if, suddenly, the ag people and the
environmentalists could write a bill, and he assumed, perhaps,

104

that we d be dragged along kicking and screaming. I regarded
it as a betrayal, a knife in the back.

I remember, at the time, being extremely exercised by it,
feeling that we d have to explain to the board that all this
effort with the environmentalists has been for nought, and the
board would go back to earlier thinking that we simply can t
trust those people. I really thought that Tom was undoing a lot
of what we had done in the last couple of years of showing that
environmentalists can be responsible, and we can work with them.

So, I was simply shocked at what I saw in their draft and
by the whole secret process. What I saw just confirmed that
they just simply added another billion dollars that southern
California was going to have to pay for water by inserting an
access fee. Well, why was there an access fee? Someone asked,
"Why shouldn t Metropolitan pay a big amount for this?" The
answer was because Metropolitan wasn t being made part of the
Central Valley Project.

If we were part of the Central Valley Project, or made so
in that bill, we could have debated what share of anything we
should have borne. Rather than that, farmers were going to be
able to make a lot of money on cheap, subsidized, federal
water, and we d have to pay for it. On top of that, Tom and
Somach were willing to put a huge added cost on purchasers that
would simply discourage the water marketing. The water
marketing provisions would have been meaningless if we had to
pay that.

So, it was all negative. It was a lack of trust. It was
betrayal. It was undoing the success of the water marketing
support, and it was very upsetting. I called Miller, and I got
Dan Beard on the phone. I said how troubled we are with that.
Indeed, as far as we re concerned, we ll probably have to
withdraw from the support, and he laughed. He said, "Don t pay
any attention to this. Miller saw it and has just laughed at
it and threw it out. Don t worry about it."

By that time, I had talked to a few board members who I
thought were politically connected well or adept, including
Mike Gage. Well, Mike got red. Mike, if you know him--he
worked for [Tom] Bradley as deputy mayorwhen he gets mad, his
neck gets red. 1 I keep reading stories of people like that.
I ve heard of it, but I ve never seen anyone s neck get red.
[laughter]

Thomas Bradley, mayor of Los Angeles.

105

Well, I saw Mike s neck redden. He s a big guy, and he
just held his hands, and he said, "I ll take care of this." He
was a board member, and he was on some important committees.
He just started calling. He had good credentials in the
environmental community; he called environmental groups and
probably others. Before you knew it, that draft was dead, and
you had to get over a very unhappy, and unpleasant relationship
with the authors .

Well, at that time, I was called to meet with Somach and
Tom about some modification of the Miller bill. I went up to
Sacramento; I think it was Somach s office. Were you with me?
I think Corley was .

Quinn: I don t think I went.

Boronkay: Yes, well, I got there and I just told Tom and Somach what I
thought about this, just as I ve told you. I told them and
they just looked, and looked, and said nothing, Tom in
particular. He just took it. Then, when I stopped, he said,
"Nothing you ve said has come near to the flack that I took
from the environmental organizations, the coalition that I m
speaking for." So, he was chastened by this. I don t know
what provisions that he had wanted eventually found themselves
in. He feels they did.

Chall: They did.

Boronkay: But the manner that it occurred was detrimental to the process,
frankly. I still have the highest regard for him and from time
to time discuss things, but one flaw I find in him is his
fundamental belief that southern California can afford
anything .

Quinn: And should have to pay.

Boronkay: If there s a problem that has to do with money, and he could

shunt it to southern California, he does so without hesitancy,
and without any regard to equity, fairness, responsibility.
You re seeing it from my view, but I m not sure he d deny it.

Chall: That s right. I want to see it from everybody s point of view.

Boronkay: He s an extraordinarily effective person and should be very

proud of the success in his career. I have high regard for him
in that, but in particulars, I ve been very much on the other
side. I m done.

Chall:

And how about you and Somach-Graff ?

106

Quinn: It was an eye-opening experience. The politics of Somach-Graff
seemed pretty clear. The chairman s mark was out, Seymour s
bill had gone out of the Senate, and the linkage between CVPIA
reform, and the omnibus bill, all those water projects that
western senators wanted had been established, so--.

Chall: H.R. 5099 was out. 1

Quinn: Earlier in the year, the CVP guys could believe that they could
beat this thing. At that point in time, it s really hard to
figure out how they thought they were going to beat this thing
just by continuing the strategy of denial. It was logical to
me that they would put themselves together with the
environmentalists to try and come up with a negotiated
solution.

While much of Somach-Graff wound up in the final bill, Tom
gave a great deal. There was a quote in a Bill Kahrl editorial
in the Sacramento Bee. I think the exact quote was, "Stuart
ate Graff s shorts." 2 Kahrl was quoting from a Dave Schuster
memo that had analyzed the Somach-Graff proposal. The way I
read it, no wonder Tom had gotten so much flack from the
environmental community. He had given up an awful lot of
ground with Somach on the environmental provisions of the bill.
Of course, the only thing that we focused on was this, quite
frankly, ridiculous economic strategy of the fifty bucks a
head.

Boronkay: And the way it happened.

Quinn: And the way it happened, which was revealing on a couple of
accounts to me then, and continues, quite frankly, to create
lack of trust today. I don t mean particular provisions of the
draft, but what it generally reflected: this attitude that MET
must pay. Here was Carl Boronkay, doing what I regard, then
and now, as a courageous thing with his May testimony, breaking
from the entire water community.

I mean, you can get away with it if you re a small agency.
A small agency can break away from the water community, nobody
pays attention. This was Carl Boronkay, the general manager of
the great Metropolitan Water District, going out there saying,

H.R. 5099 passed the House on June 18, 1992, two days after Somach-
Graff surfaced.

2 William Kahrl, "California s Biggest Water Swindle," McClatchy News
Service, Sacramento, in the Oakland Tribune. July 27, 1992.

107

Boronkay:

Chall:

Quinn:

Chall:
Quinn:

"We are for water for the environment. We re for taking away
water from existing users and dedicating it to the environment.
We re for pricing reforms that make rational sense." That was
a courageous thing for Carl and for Metropolitan to do.

We were taking great risks with relationships that we had
taken strength from for decades. Later on in 94, we were
doing it as a strong force working for more dedicated water for
the environment as part of the Bay-Delta Accord, and in the
back of your mind you were thinking the environmental community
ought to be doing something to provide a little bit of
protection for you, at least understand the enormity of the
change that you re willing to embrace.

Most of the stuff that was in Carl s May testimony was not
narrowly defined in our interests. Taking water away from
existing users was not in our interests. Letting the Congress
define pricing reforms was not in our narrow interests. We
were doing that out of a vision that you had to have your
equilateral triangle, and we didn t have that under the status
quo.

Can we take a short break? Here are the sandwiches.
Do you want him to finish with his thought here?
Yes.

So, the feeling of betrayal was enormous on our end. What it
told you about the attitude, at least of EOF, in the
environmental community was disturbing. I read your interview
with Tom where he admits that Somach-Graff was not the smartest
thing that he ever did. When you pressed about why, his answer
is that he thought it would provide incentive to break up
Metropolitan, and that we ought to pay. 1

That s right.

In an ominous close to that portion of your interview, Tom
said, "We thought that we should make them pay," and Dave
Yardas said, "And we will." Then you moved on to a new topic.

[Interview ceases for lunch break]

Graff -Yardas interview, pp. 88-90.

108

The CVPIA; Interpretation and Implementation ##

Quinn: In some sense, in my heart of hearts, I believe the future of

California water is at stake here. There has been a remarkable
shift in the agricultural community from when Carl was general
manager. I mean agriculture was absolutely glued to the old
status quo. They refused change. I earlier used the phrase
that they were in denial for the need for change. Their
attitude about change changed a whole lot when the status quo
was upended on them.

Since the passage of CVPIA, with the listing of the winter-
run salmon, the Delta smelt, the prospective listings of the
spring run, and even the fall run of Chinook salmon, our world
has been turned upside down as water users. Now, I happen to
believe that s not inappropriate because we had to make
adjustments for the environmental degradation of the past.
Affirmative action for fish, if you will.

The agricultural community, in the late eighties, was king
of the hill- -king of the mountain; they didn t need any change.
The system was biased heavily toward their objectives. That
changed with CVPIA, and they have, in the intervening years,
become advocates of change.

Chall: Well, then, what, within the last month, in late November,

caused [Dan] Nelson, the executive director of the San Luis and
Delta-Mendota Water Authority, to file suit in the U.S.
District Court in Fresno? I think it s against implementation
of the CVPIA.

Quinn: Mr. [John] Garamendi mainly, and the Department of Interior

for their announced plan to establish guidelines for the CVPIA.

Chall: Right, it s against the Garamendi plan.
Quinn: Yes.

Chall: All right, so now we ve got the agriculturalists fighting for
their water. I mean they re not accepting the Garamendi
opinion at all, are they?

Quinn: Not in those legal documents, they re not.

Chall: We are now getting ahead into implementing the CVPIA which I

want to discuss later. So, before we do that is there anything
else you want to say about the passage of the bill? I don t
know if you have said everything you want to say about aspects

109

of the passage of the CVPIA before we go on. Did you make
notes about that history that you want be sure get covered?

Quinn: I do. Let me just make one sort of summary overview of what

CVPIA did. It was part of that realignment of the politics of
water, the creation of the equilateral triangle. Again, it was
truly something that was an absolutely essential stepping stone
for the future of California.

Now with that said, a lot of people today are transitioning
to CVPIA implementation. Many who worked on the bill believed
that CVPIA is the framework for the future of California water.
In point of fact, while it was a critical stepping stone, it
was only a stepping stone. The [Bay-Delta] Accord, in 1994,
was a larger framework than CVPIA was, if you ask my opinion.
The CALFED process that Calif ornians are going through as we re
going through this interview here today, it is truly the
comprehensive framework of which CVPIA implementation is a
part. 1

Part of what California water professionals wrestle with
each and every day is that a lot of people in the environmental
community believe CVPIA is the framework and everything else
must be hammered into the CVPIA mold. At the same time the
rest of us are trying to make the CVPIA work and implement the
law the best you can because there is a great deal of ambiguity
and uncertainty in the words that actually got put down on
paper and signed by the president. To get CVPIA implemented we
have then to move on to the bigger picture, which is CALFED.

Reviewing the Bumpy Ride to Passage of the CVPIA from MET s
Perspective

Boronkay: In answer to the same question, is there anything more to say
about the passage of the Miller-Bradley bill, I hope I didn t
give the impression that it was a smooth effort. From day-to
day, from month-to-month, from hearing- to-hearing, from speech-
to-speech, from board meeting to board meeting, there was

CALFED. Acronym for California-Federal (The California Water Policy
Council and Federal Ecosystem Directorate), a group of state and federal
water and environmental agencies whose aim is to reach final decisions on
improving the San Francisco-San Joaquin Bay/Delta system, within parameters
established by the interim 1994 Bay-Delta Accord, the CVPIA, the EPA, and
other regulations and concerns of the stakeholders. Its alternative
solutions were being debated during 1998.

110

Quinn:
Boronkay:

uncertaintywhether the Seymour bill is going to go anywhere,
whether the Bradley bill will go anywhere.

I thought I found less willingness in the Bradley people to
modify their demand for big up-front water for the environment;
that was an anathema to the ag people. That was something I
was staying out of at that time, and that s why I think Jensen
was unhappy with us. I didn t know where the Bradley thing
would go. Then there seemed to be a problem in the Senate
committee, and there s a surprise Bennett Johnston bill. I
didn t know what that was going to do to our strategy. And all
the while the governor s people are saying in California and
Washington, we don t want any bill.

We re all sitting back today and saying, "Gee, that was a
brilliant move." At the time moving the Seymour bill to the
full Senate, everyone thought they lost. No one knew what the
heck was going on. You say the probability was that even
Seymour was in doubt, but I m not even sure about it at that
time. He may have been in doubt, but he didn t think he d
lost. I mean, on the face of it, his bill made it. So, I
think it was a heck of a rough ride. You d hear from Tim.
You d hear from these other guys. You d have another meeting-
Schuster, Somach--other proposals, other modifications right
down to the Miller hearing. [May 14, 1992]

By then, we thought we were okay, and I don t know when the
Somach-Tom Graff effort occurred along that line. But the fact
that it even could occur, even that late, and with such close
working together for so long, I was never quite confident with
either side after that.

I want to tell you one last thing that I withheld from
everybody because, personally, it s a little embarrassing.

Do you know who Deep Throat is? [laughter]

I don t think there is any. Bob Will, or someone, told me the
vote on the conference committee bill coming back to the
Senate--! guess it s the vote on the conference committee
reportwill be on TV at a certain time that night. I tuned
in, and I m late, and I hear one senator and another arguing.
Each senator says, "I feel this way. I think it s terrible,
but I m going to vote for it." Then, the next guy would speak
and say, "This is an outrage, and I m against it," and he d go
back. I m counting and counting and the damn bill loses. I go
to bed, and I say, "We ll have to do it all again. We ll try
again next year, but how disappointing."

Ill

Bob calls me in the morning. He said, "Well, pretty good."
I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, it passed." I
said, "No, I listened to it." He said, "Oh, no, that was the
vote on motion made before the vote to do something else, and
that was defeated." I had turned it off, so when the vote came
I wasn t listening. [laughter] I went to bed feeling
terrible.

Quinn: I never knew that, Carl.

Boronkay: I went to bed feeling terrible, but I didn t want to let
everyone know, but now they ll all know.

Quinn: That s just like Pat Brown in 1960.

Boronkay: Tim is referring to the governor s belief on the night of the
November election that JFK had carried California but the SWP
bond authorization had lost. The opposite was the case.

Quinn: As we transition to the post CVPIA era, I know that I will

always remember this fight with agriculture. I wasn t a young
kid at the time, but certainly had a lot less political mileage
on me than I have today. I had gotten wrapped up in a bigger
fight than I could have imagined. But, if you re going to be
in a fight, you had better be committed to win the fight. Carl
retired not long after. You retired in March of 93?

Boronkay: Yes, in fact, April 1, 93.

MET Sees Need to Maintain Relationships with Agricultural and
Environmental Interests: Accords May Vary

Quinn: Carl took me aside and gave me some advice as he was leaving.
One of the pieces of advice he gave me--I remember, at the
time, it surprised me, but when I thought about it, of course,
it made a lot of sensewas that we had to immediately start
rebuilding our bridges with agriculture. It never made sense
to pick one side and then be two against one. You had to
protect your interests, but you had to protect your
relationships .

He understood that the relationships had taken a real
beating. His parting advice to me, as he was leaving
Metropolitan, and of course leaving us to deal with the
relationships that he had changed. His parting advice to me as
he left Metropolitan Water District professionally was that we

Ilia

MWD

METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

October 8, 1992
All Directors
General Manager
Passage of The Central Valley Project Improvement Act

In an historic action, on October 8, 1992, the
United States Senate overwhelmingly approved H.R.429,
which includes as Title XXXIV the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act (Act) . This legislation had been
previously approved by the House of Representatives on
October 5, and is now before the President for signature.
The Act addresses three main issues: fish and wildlife
restoration, including water for the environment; CVP
water contract renewals and reform; and voluntary water
marketing. A substantial summary of the Act is attached.

The passage of the Act represents a major
breakthrough in California water policy. It will create
the opportunity for voluntary water transfers to
Metropolitan and others from a potential market of supply
totaling 7 million acre-feet. This legislation was
passed after a threatened filibuster and considerable
debate. Based on the debate in both houses, the water
marketing provisions of the Act were noncontroversial and
widely supported. However, the fish and wildlife
provisions and contract renewal and reform provisions
were highly controversial.

The compromise bill before the President for
signature is consistent with all of the legislative
criteria established by your Board. Staff will continue
to work with others to assure that the bill is signed
into law.

THQ:ajs
Attachment

SUMMARY OF CVP REFORM LEGISLATION
APPROVED BY THE CONGRESS

On October 8, 1992, the United States Senate overwhelmingly
approved H.R.429, which includes as Title XXXIV the Central
Valley Project Improvement Act (Act) . This legislation had been
previously approved by the House of Representatives. The
compromise bill now before the President provides a technically
sound approach to CVP reform that is consistent with all of the
legislative criteria established by the Metropolitan Board.
Following is a brief summary of the compromise legislation,
highlighting changes relative to the September 15 House proposal.

WATER TRANSFER PROVISIONS

Like the House proposal, the compromise bill contains strong
provisions to promote the voluntary transfer of CVP water.

Transferrable Water. The compromise bill for the first time
incorporates language which specifically authorizes the voluntary
transfer of all CVP water, including water delivered to CVP
contractors and "prior rights" water delivered under water rights
settlement and exchange contracts. This broadened provision will
promote a potential water market that includes all 7 million acre
feet (AF) of water normally delivered by the CVP and not just the
nearly 4 million AF of CVP contract water.

Approvals. All transfers of CVP water would be subject to
approval by the Secretary of Interior based on specific
conditions identified in the bill. District approval would be
required for transfers that affect more than 20 percent of a
district s CVP supply, but approval would be required if the
transfer met the specific conditions identified in the Act. The
compromise bill requires a final decision by the Secretary or
district within 90 days of receipt of a written transfer
proposal. If the Secretary or district fails to act within 90
days, then the transfer is deemed approved.

Transfer Surcharges. The compromise bill eliminates the 15
percent environmental surcharge on water transfers contained in
the House proposal, as well as the "unreasonable profit" tax. In
place of these provisions, the bill requires a $25 per acre-foot
(adjusted for inflation) environmental surcharge on transfers of
water to a nonCVP contractor.

Area of Origin Provision. Like the House proposal,
transfers of water outside the legally defined area of origin are
subject to a "real water" test. Within the area of origin,
however, the bill essentially allows "paper water" transfers,
which under some circumstances could be harmful to other water
interests.

lllc

Environmental Protections. The bill retains a provision
requiring that no transfer may significantly reduce the quantity
or quality of water supplies currently used for fish and wildlife
purposes, unless other offsetting benefits occur.

Other Transfer Conditions. The compromise bill also retains
several conditions on transfers from earlier drafts. These
include the requirement that transferred water be repaid to the
federal government at full cost, f irst-right-of-refusal
conditions, groundwater and water rights protections, and
protections for the finances, operations, and water supplies of
involved districts.

Sunset. Selected conditions governing the approval of
transfers would be sunsetted effective September 30, 1999.
Notably, the $25 environmental surcharge and the area of origin
provision noted above remain in effect after that date.

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROVISIONS

The fish and wildlife provisions of the compromise bill
incorporate many of the changes suggested by Congressman Vic
Fazio. These changes are intended to help assure that the bill
accomplishes its environmental objectives with minimum impacts on
existing water users.

Reauthorization. The bill retains language that
reauthorizes the CVP to make the "mitigation, protection,
restoration, and enhancement of fish and wildlife" an explicit
purpose of the project. However, the bill contains numerous
protections to assure that this reauthorization does not unduly
reduce supplies available to existing CVP water users.

Dedicated Environmental Water. The compromise bill reduces
the amount of CVP yield dedicated primarily for environmental
purposes from 1 million acre feet in the House proposal to
800,000 acre feet annually. The bill further incorporates
protective language clarifying that this quantity of water is the
maximum that may be lost for fish and wildlife purposes under the
Act. The bill retains language under which the CVP will receive
full credits against this environmental water for any
requirements imposed by the State of California or by actions
taken under the Endangered Species Act. Because of these
provisions, the amount of water involuntarily reallocated as a
result of the Act itself is expected to be minimal. The primary
means of making water available for environmental purposes under
the Act will be through the development of conjunctive use
programs, voluntary water transfers, and other means designed to
minimize impacts on CVP water users.

Habitat Restoration. The compromise bill requires more than
20 habitat improvement measures, based largely on the actions

Hid

originally included in S 2016. Like the House proposal, the
compromise bill generally requires the state to pay for at least
25 percent of the costs of habitat restoration.

San Joaquin River. The compromise bill requires the
development of a plan to restablish adequate fishery flows on the
San Joaquin River, but only to the extent "reasonable, prudent,
and feasible". The bill further protects the Friant water users
against any releases of water from Friant Dam for fishery flows
unless Congress specifically acts in the future to do otherwise.
Until a plan, if any, is implemented, the bill requires annual
payments from the Friant contractors, but these payments are
reduced from a maximum of $12 per acre-foot plus adjustments for
inflation in the House proposal to a maximum of $7 per acre foot
with no inflation adjustment in the compromise bill.

Restoration Fund. The Act creates an environmental
Restoration Fund with total payments of up to $50 million
annually, adjusted for inflation. The new provisions reduce the
contributions by CVP water and power users from $50 million
annually to $30 million annually. The water transfer
environmental surcharge and other payments required by the Act
would also be covered to the Fund. At least two-thirds of the
Fund is to be used for activities related to the development of
additional environmental water. No more than one-third of the
Fund may be used to finance physical habitat improvements.

OTHER REFORM PROVISIONS

Contract Renewal. The compromise bill would allow the
renewal of CVP contracts for a term of 25 years (increased from
20 years) following completion within 3 years of a programmatic
environmental impact statement analyzing the direct and indirect
environmental impacts of implementation of the Act.
Significantly, the Secretary may renew such contracts for
successive periods of up to 25 years each.

Economic Reforms. With relatively minor modifications, the
compromise bill requires implementation of several economic
reforms upon contract renewal. These reforms include: (1)
metering of all surface water delivery systems within CVP
contractor boundaries; (2) implementing increasing block rate
prices for CVP water such that price equals the full cost of
delivery for quantities above 90 percent of the contract amount
(previously 80 percent in the House proposal) ; and (3)
establishing water conservation best management practices.

New Urban Contracts. The compromise bill strikes a
provision authorizing new contracts for municipal and industrial
water in the amount of 100,000 AF annually to be made available
to the highest bidder.

112

had to be mindful to start rebuilding those relationships. We
did start a process.

Gage was the chairman by that time, and we were going
through a blue ribbon panel. The blue ribbon panel was going
out everywhere to talk to people about what they liked and
didn t like about the Metropolitan Water District. Let s just
say, when you got into the Central Valley, the list of names on
our fan club was exceedingly short. The feelings were not only
negative, they were extraordinarily negative.

When the people who had been doing the survey on behalf of
the blue ribbon panel came back, we were looking at an
inventory of just how people felt now that we had been through
the fight and won the fight. Mind you, I believe that was a
fundamentally important realignment of the political
relationships, but it became apparent that we had a lot of work
to do to get back to the concept of an equilateral triangle
where all three parts could be getting their objectives met and
could work together. We started earnestly working towards that
path, and we have gone a substantial way down it.

Today, if you could get the opinions of the agricultural
committee, we re probably in better shape now with those
relationships. The environmentalists are going to be the ones
that are unhappy with us, and largely around, oddly enough,
CVPIA implementation issues. We helped pass the bill. We felt
in our heart of hearts, and still do, that it was fundamentally
important reform, important for California, important for water
resource management, but you have to transition to a situation
where everybody can live with what you re trying to do.

You can t sustain the situation if every time there is a
new Congress, the CVP contractors want to go back and pass a
bill to get rid of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
The urban community is once again trying to define a workable
and sustainable solution. We have been trying to develop
implementation strategies on CVPIA that can be supported by CVP
agriculture. That s what will be required to maintain the
integrity of the bill over the long run.

Little of this has to do with water marketing provisions
because, as a matter of law, they re not controversial. We
might want to talk a little bit about our efforts to try and
use the water transfer provisions after the passage of the act.
It turns out getting the bill passed and using it are two
different things, but the urban community has been working
hard. This is December, 1997, and I m spending easily half
plus of my time trying to work out centrist compromise

113

positions for the implementation of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act.

Both the agricultural and the environmental interests , from
time to time, are unhappy with us but the urbans are trying
hard to create a centrist position; that is, good policy and
supportable.

Boronkay: May I add one thing. I understand the desirability, the

ultimate goal, is to get three parties working together to
compromise positions, but what I see that has happened at least
for the present, or the immediate period following the Central
Valley Project Improvement Act, is that there are three players
instead of two.

There are times when we ll be with the ag people, say, on
the new facility in the Delta. There will be times where we re
with the environmentalists, say, on fisheries restoration,
because we re an urban area and so we re concerned with the
environment, and our board is concerned with it. Our
constituents to a great extent are environmentaliststhey re
the ones that voted environmental protection. I think East Bay
Municipal Utility District became independent of its
constituencies, so that board was voted away.

So, I think Tim works always toward the right goal--a
suitable compromise, but of three parties. But there are times
when a compromise can t be attained, and then you can t allow
the third party to simply veto any action. So there are times
it will be two against one. But the major change that has
happened is that instead of assuming urban water people are
always with ag water people, and the fight is with the
environmentalists, or conservationists, no longer can that
assumption be made. There are now three independent parties at
the table. With that, I m going to ask to be excused.

Chall: Thank you very much for your time and interest.
[Mr. Boronkay leaves]

113a

PUBLIC AFFAIRS CLIPSHEET

Jes

^ a . - - PUBLICATION Press-Enterprise

MWD

METROPOLITAN wAr-aDismc Cr s:. -: -. ;-. -:-v/j n A jr March 29, 1993

Guiding the MWD in modern time

Carl Boronkay, general manager since 1984, retires this week

By Douglas E. freeman
The Pnt-EnJrprise

Carl Boronkay. a former trial attorney, bas spent the last
nine years arguing his case before some oJ the toughest
jur.es around: 51 water board directors, a baodful of
environmental groups and 15 million Southern Califor-
nians.

Boronkay is retiring this week as general manager of
tne Metropolitan Water District His original objective
the controversial Peripheral Canal to divert more North
ern California water around toe Sacramento-San JoaquJn
delta still is unrealized.

But the agency Boronkay is leaving behind Is remark
ably dlfferenl from the one he Inherited In 1984.

Back then. Metropolitan was hide-bound, still stunned
that voters two years earlier rejected the Peripheral
Canal, still certain that the only way to slake Southern
California s thirst was to build more dams and canals in
far-off regions.

Bsck tbeo, environmentalists were The Enemy they
killed the Peripheral Canal, didn t they? And if you wanted
to burst a few veins, suggest Metropolitan do something
really wiJd. like buy water from farmers.

Continued.

MWD

ME ~ : 0Ci TA ,V rt 4 TER DlS " ." " CF SOU THERN 4( IF C"?,V J

These days. Metropolitan is
working with environmental
groups on a number of issues,
including water marketing. It is
paying Palo Verde Valley farmers
to fallow fields in exchange for the
water. It has lined Imperial Valley
canals to prevent seepage, also in
exchange for the water saved. It
has set up nature preserves in
Riverside County for endangered
and threatened spedes.

Although opinions vary, nearly
everyone agrees that Boronkay
deserves at least some of the credit
lor this turnaround.

Boronkay "certainly brought us
into the modern century," said
Franceses Krauel, one of San Die
go County s representatives on
Metropolitan s board.

A more skeptical observer
agreed. "I think he moved Metro
politan Water District not by
himself, but with others a sub
stantial distance from where they
were when he began," said Thom
as Graff, a senior attorney with the
Environmental Defense Fund.

V.Boronkay, who earns $189.000 a

year, navigated the district through
one of the worst droughts in the
modern era. He presided at a time
When the district began expanding
its water storage capability with
the Domenigonj Valley Reservoir
near Hemet, and when bis own
Board was becoming more conten
tious and more likely to challenge
tftp staff.

; At 63, Boronkay looks like the
tired man he says he is. His face is
lined and his slight stoop and
mannerisms suggest a man in
search of an easy chair. Boronkay
says that after nine years as gener
al manager, he s ready to do
something else. Just what, he says,
he doesn t know.
&lt; "I feel that If I did something
else, it would be Invigorating," he
said.

It was his search for something
invigorating that led Boronkay
from the state attorney general s
office to Metropolitan as assistant
general counsel in 1976. Four
years later, he was named the
district s top lawyer. Four years
after that, he became head of the
district.

. He took over Metropolitan at a
difficult time In its history.

Porvoars Mptronol (tan s orima-

113b DATE
ry goals were to pour more con
crete for canals and aqueducts and
other facilities to Import and dis
tribute water from the Colorado
River and Northern California.
The agency now supplies about 60
percent of the water used by some
15 million Southern Calif ornians.

But In 1982, California voters
decisively rejected a key element
of the State Water Project a plan
to build a canal around the periph
ery of the Sacramento-San Joaquin
river delta to move more water
south. Large numbers of voters
accepted environmentalist con
cerns about potential environmen
tal harm. It became clear that
similar proposals weren t going
anywhere, either.

Boronkay said that when he was
interviewed for the general man
ager s job. he told Metropolitan
board members his primary goal
would be to push for completion of
the State Water Project

"I was a traditionalist My view
was, we were defeated on the State
Project, particularly the Peripher
al Canal, but our cause was just and
we just have to do better fighting
for the cause," Boronkay said.

Gradually, though, he began to
realize that his goal was an elusive
one. With Southern California
growing rapidly, and no new water
projects foreseeable, the agency
had to try something else,

"We were driven to be more
imaginative, " he said.

The agency began talking to the
Imperial Irrigation District about a
previously unheard of Idea: Metro
politan would line with concrete
Imperial s leaky earthen canals in.
exchange for the water saved. It
took years of wrangling. At several
points, the deal appeared to unrav
el. But it didn t Metropolitan ex
pects eventually to obtain enough
water to supply about 200,000
households.

Metropolitan began exploring
other ideas, as well It expanded
programs to dean up contaminat
ed ground water basins in Southern
California, figuring that the more
local water Southern CaUfomians
used, the less imported water they
would need.

It expanded conservation pro
grams, much as electric and gas
utilities did in the 1970s. It support
ed programs to recycle water for
non-drinking purposes. It devel
oped programs to bank water in
underground basins in wet years to
meet demand in dry yqars.

Tf h*ean nurrhasinc watr frnm

March 29. 1993

farmers through water marketing
programs. It was a concept ibng
supported by environmentalists,
but one Metropolitan resisted.

And Metropolitan began talking
about water problems with envi
ronmental groups.

Boronkay said the turnabout
came in part because the argu
ments of environmentalists
"seeped through."

"The environmentalists were no
longer the enemy and their argu
ments could not be dismissed out of
hand. Just as the arguments ap
pealed to the public, they appealed
to me."

Graff of the Environmental De
fense Fund said the Peripheral
Canal rejection was the "first sub
stantial defeat" of Metropolitan
and the old way of doing business.
The old way just didn t work," he
said. "They were up against it.
They had to try some new things."

Those new things did not always
come about smoothly. The board
that hired Boronkay was mostly
older and accustomed to Met s old
way of doing business with con
crete and dams. They sometimes
were reluctant cohorts.

"He didnt really bring the board
along with him." contends Robert
Gottlieb, a former board member
and critic "His role was to humor
the board." Gottlieb said the board
membersdidnt really understand
where Boronkay was taking them.

Gottlieb s view is not universally
held, but some board members
said Boronkay did strike out ahead
of the board at times.

"Cart tends to advocate positions
rather than approaching things
strictly as a manager (who did as
the board directed)." said Krauel,
the San Diego board member.

Boronkay said he may have
interpreted his ability to act more
broadly than some board members
would have liked. But he said all of
his actions were rooted iifgovern-

Contir.ued.

- -- DISTRICT Of SOL THEM CALIFORNIA

113c

DATF March 29, 1993-

ing board policy.

"Of course, I never do anything
without (board) approval But it s
at a broad level," he said.

At the same time, Boronkay
admits to some missteps. One time
a reporter asked Boronkay about
one Kern County fanner s offer to
sell his land and water rights to
Metropolitan. Boronkays answer

that he was interested In any
deal to secure water for the district

ignited a contentious debate
among board members who feared
the district was being tarred as
another Los Angeles, out to strip
whole regions of their land and
water.

Board members wanted to pass
a measure restricting MWD from
ever buying land for the property s
water rights. Boronkay argued
with board members that such a
move would unnecessarily tie the
district s hands. Although there
was much support among board
members, he won his case.

"Because of his convictions
because of his forcefulness ...
he can come across very, very
strong," said Burton Jones, another
former director. Boronkay, he add
ed, "definitely is a vigorous gener
al manager."

And bright, arbitrary, witty, ar
rogant, a visionary, and very cre
ative. These are the words used by
people outside the district to de
scribe Boronkay.

Inside the district a few other
words are used.

He is known as a tough Inquisi
tor, always asking questions, al
ways pushing his staff.

"I have seen people crumble
under a Boronkay questioning,"
said Richard Clemmer, an asso
ciate division director at Metropol
itan. "He acts like a trial attorney.
He wants answers."

At the same time, demmer and
others believe Boronkay has done
much for the agency, steering it
toward a greater appreciation for

conservation, a willingness to try
innovative ways of getting water,
and an increased sensitivity to the
environment. Boronkay also
changed the face of the district s
management, promoting more
women and minorities than in the
past

Boronkays leadership extended
beyond the district s confines.

"He s not universally liked, but
he s respected for his abilities,"
said Steve Hall of the Association
of California Water Agendas. He
added: "Frankly. I think he s done
a lot to move California water
more in the direction it needs to be
in the future."

One of his biggest successes, by
most accounts, was the reform of
the Central Valley Project, a feder
al water project built in the De
pression years mainly to supply
farms.

Boronkay was one of the key
players in promoting water mar
keting provisions in the reform bill
that will permit cities to buy feder
al water from Central Valley fann
ers willing to sell

His and Metropolitan s support
for water marketing further alien
ated the agency s traditional ally,
agriculture. Fanners there were
opposed to reforms that would take
water from them and give it over to
the environment and urban users.

"He definitely has got some
adversaries, if not enemies, in the
(San Joaquin) valley," said Graff,
the Environmental Defense Fund
attorney.

"There have been, particularly
in the last two years, a lot of hard
feelings," said Tom dark, general
manager of the Kern County Water
Agency.

Clark said, however, that al
though he has differences with
Boronkay, they have been able to
work cooperatively on other
projects, such as a plan to store
excess Northern California water
in Kern County s groundwater ta
ble.

Farmers haven t been the only
contentious players in the world or
water. Metropolitan s own board
has changed, as veteran directors
leave and younger, more activist
directors take their places.

This was underscored by the
election last year of Mike Gage as
chairman. Gage, an aggressive,
sawy former assemblyman, for
mer deputy mayor of Los Angeles
and a newcomer to the board,
outmaneuvered Riverside ^ Lois
Krieger for the chau7r=oship.

Former ooara member Burton
Jones said he believes the change
over has strained relabons be
tween Boronkay and the board in
recent years.

Boronkay said having a more
activist board, and particularly a
more activist chairman, was "no
bother whatsoever, but it to some
thing you adapt to. It s new."

He said Gage Is much more
involved in overseeing the district
tfran previous chairmen have
been, much more likely to suggest
ideas and directions. Boronkay
said Gage s election as chairman
was not a factor hi his own decision
to retire.

Gage, while praising Boronkay,
acknowledged that relations be
tween the manager and the board
were strained at times in recent
years.

"I think it is fair to say the board
of directors wanted and wants
a stronger role in setting direc
tions," Gage said.

Christine Reed. Santa Monica s
outspoken representative on Met
ropolitan s board, said she wished
the agency s staff had been less
cautious and less resistant to
change. But despite her differ
ences with Boronkay, she praised
his tenure:

"He dealt with the big problems
in 2. way that, when you look back,
you can say, "We did a good job "

Conclusion

114

INTERVIEW WITH TIMOTHY QUINN

IV IMPLEMENTING THE CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT IMPROVEMENT ACT AND
ATTEMPTS TO LINK THE BAY DELTA ACCORD AND THE CALFED PROCESS

"We Want to Get Better Together" ##

Chall: Let me ask you a question. Why is the San Luis and Delta-
Mendota Water Authority now taking the lead against
implementation? I don t see too many others involved. First,
it was Westlands Water District and their suit, and that was
dismissed. Then, there was Congressman Doolittle s reform bill
that lost. 1 Now, we ve got this suit. Are agriculture /water
users trying various ways to negate the CVPIA?

Quinn: I think the only fair answer to that is no, not at this time.
Let me give you some background information on this lawsuit.
This is an uneasy partnership going on between the ags and
urbans on this particular score. Would agriculture like to get
rid of Miller-Bradley? Of course, they would. But do they
think they can? No, they re past that; they know that they re
never going to be rid of the Miller-Bradley bill.

I think at some level they know that. Here I m stretching
considerably, but I think a lot of them know that at its core,
it s not bad policy, that we had to do more by the environment
than we were doing before. In essence, Miller-Bradley was a
re-balancing of the objectives of the project. When the
Republicans took the Congress and came into office in "95, they
went after the bill, and they found out they couldn t get rid
of the bill. Even with a strong Republican majority in
Congress, they couldn t get rid of the bill.

1. R. 2738, introduced by Representative John Doolittle, 1995.

115

In no small measure, because the urbans were absolutely not
going to cooperate in the strategies they were trying to
implement. Over time, these were people that delivered water
to farms. They run businesses. They have got bottom lines to
meet. They can t afford to rest on their laurels and do a lot
of mindless position negotiating. Agricultural interests are
out to solve some problems here because they have to.

The key to CVPIA implementation is to implement the CVPIA
within a broader policy framework, such as CALFED, so that as
we improve habitat and the fisheries, we are able to improve
the situation for water users as well. The essential strategy
which the urbans have promoted is to support additional
environmental protections under CVPIA as well as actionswe
call them "tool box" measuresto increase the capacity of the
system in the near term so that all the interest groups can
improve their situation. Typical tool box measures include
actions to increase pumping flexibility in the Delta and to
increase groundwater storage capacity south of the Delta. In
other words, CVPIA can be implemented with far less
controversy, if we also invest in system capacity and
flexibility.

In recent years, the fish are getting better, but the
additional flexibility allows us to make water available for
the fisheries for enhancement relative to the 94 Bay-Delta
Accord baseline. In addition, a modest amount of water needs
to be left over so that the water users can go back and say for
the first time, "We ve started to recover from where we were in
92 and 94; we re on the road to recovery just like the fish."
Our mantra in the water community has become, "We want to get
better together." You have probably read that quote in some of
these newspaper articles that you re referring to.

"Better together" means to support a packaged policy
approach that implements CVPIA within a broader framework that
constitutes more of early phased implementation of CALFED so
that not only is the environment improving its situation, but
the water users are sharing in some of the gains as well. The
CVP contractors are, privately anyway, quite supportive of that
concept. They are not opposed to environmental enhancement.
Quite the contrary, they see it as the only way they will
realize any improvement in their situation. They are deeply
mistrustful that if they don t really protect their strategic
legal position that we will wind up with an outcome in which
the environment takes another step forward while they take
another large hit. They can t sell that at home.

116

Now, [Department of] Interior has also been endorsing as a
policy outcome that we all "Get better together." Here is some
background future historians may find interestinga small
anecdote: Last year, Interior proposed a set of eight new Delta
actions to be implemented under CVPIA. These actions were
expected to cost a fair amount of water. Nonetheless, the
water users were coming very close to an agreement with
Interior on October 30, 1997, to support a package that would
implement the actions, even though it was going to be really
hard to sell many in the ag community.

We were meeting with Mike Spear and Roger Patterson. John
Garamendi came in, felt that he couldn t defend it with the
environmentalists, was worried about it politically, and
scuttled the deal. The next day, on Halloween, there was a big
public unveiling of a draft proposal for implementing CVPIA,
which even from a centrist urban perspective was very bad for
water users.

Even the urbans could not support what John put on the
table, and we told him so. Unfortunately, the episode
reintroduced some mistrust into the system. I mean, we were
close to a deal; the guy from Washington comes and upsets the
apple cart. I wish that John hadn t done that, quite frankly.
You know I have a very good relationship with him and high
regard for John.

Then, on November 20, they came out with a new plan, which
was substantially revised from the old Halloween plan. In no
small respect, it was revised in response to a lot of comments
coming from the water community. The environmentalists were
about to file suit. They didn t like it. It s a hard world
for everyone to be absolutely happy in. It s quite clear to me
that strategically the CVP contractors had decided they were
going to file a suit no matter what happened on November 20.

I called Dan Nelson and Dave Orth. Dave Orth is the
general manager of Westlands Water District.

Chall: Dave?

Quinn: Orth, 0-r-t-h. I, frankly, wasn t thrilled that they decided
to file suit. I would have preferred them to wait and give
this thing a chance to come to more closure and see if they
needed to take legal action. Strategically, they felt they
needed to protect their legal position. So, my words to both
of them, in a nutshell, were, "Go to court, but don t go to
war." We still need an amicable, equitable, equilateral
triangle solution to this stage of CVPIA implementation.

117

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same?

Quinn: The environmentalists, of course, were outraged that CVP

contractors would file a suit against the implementation of
CVPIA. They re playing it that these guys are once again
trying to get rid of the whole act. I can tell you, as
somebody who works with them on almost a daily basis right now,
that is a grossly inaccurate characterization of where they are
coming from. Indeed, right now we have the agricultural
interests wanting to talk settlement along the lines of a
policy that would allow the environmental actions to be
implemented as long as it s part of this package we ve been
talking about for six or nine months.

I will spend much of the coming months with the other urban
representatives and ag interests to try and develop a balanced
settlement agreement with the Feds. I m not sure exactly where
the environmentalists will come from. The environmentalists
right now are the wild card in California water politics from
an urban perspective. It s very strange. This may launch us
into sort of a new topic. What the Miller-Bradley bill did was
it stole the old status quo away from the agricultural
interests, giving them a reason for change. They no longer
like the status quo.

All change happens in the middle; no sustainable change
happens out in the radical extreme. So, agriculture, out of
necessity, has been moving to more centrist positions. Oddly
enough, as the agricultural entities have been moving to more
centrist positions, the environmentalists are alarmed that the
ags and urbans are getting together, and they re moving out to
more extremes .

I ve never seen the environmental rhetoric sharper. I ve
never seen the rhetoric more irrational. Right now, that is
causing me great concern. If you look back at the historical
trends, agriculture is embracing environmental objectives,
realizing that it has to. Rather than having the
environmentalists say, "Wow, that is good. Now, let s get some
real meaningful stuff done," they re afraid of the urbans and
ags together in the middle and seem to be trying to
counterbalance us by being way out on an extreme on a lot of
these issues.

Chall: So, nobody really trusts each other.
Quinn: Not yet.

118

Chall: There s a three-way balance of mistrust.

Quinn: Well, you know, a lot of relationships are that way. Some of
our interests are in conflict; we are trying to find ways to
make our interests more compatible. I do think some of the
things that have happened since Carl left, as general manager,
are very powerful lessons about the power of successful
coalition politics. The accord was the first example. We were
all then, and we still are, enormously proud of what we did
under the accord.

Senate Bill 900 Becomes Proposition 20A 1

Quinn: In the old world you would never have had the politics of S.B.
900, Senator [Jim] Costa s bill in 1996, which provided funding
for the environment. Senator Jim Costa is the chairman of
California s Senate Water Committee. This is worth a little
time.

Chall: I don t know about that one.

Quinn: Well, as part of the CALFED process, the water community

accepts without any equivocation that CALFED must incorporate a
massive ecosystem restoration project. It has been in the
newspapers recently that a $100 million appropriation for
environmental restoration was just announced by Governor
Wilson. Well, you might ask where that money came from. Well,
that money came from the power of coalition politics within the
water and the environmental community.

Costa conceived the notion of a water bond that he wanted
to move in 1996. He started really talking about it seriously
in early 1995. In its early manifestations it looked a lot
like a 1982 Peripheral Canal bond. In that form, it would have
been born dead. To Jim s credit, he showed himself through
this process to be a statesman of considerable skill. He was
previously thought of as a Central Valley legislator with
fairly narrow agricultural perspectives.

In the S.B. 900 experience, he demonstrated he could be a
statesman with a very broad perspective on what needs to be

Proposition 204, The Safe, Clean, Reliable Water Supply Act. Would
generate nearly one billion dollars to finance key water quality and
environmental improvements, especially in the Delta. November 1996.

MWD

METrCFOLlTAN WA TER DISTRICT OF SCI "rf.W CALIFORNIA

118a

PUBLICATION
DATE

$100 Million to
Begin Bay-Delta
Restoration

By FRANK CLIFFORD

TIMES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER

Officials of the Clinton and Wil
son administrations on Wednesday
announced the first major fund
inga JlOO-milHon down pay
mentfor the long-promised envi
ronmental restoration of the San
Francisco Bay -Delta estuary and
the rivers that feed it

Billed as the largest ecological
restoration yet undertaken in the
United States, the project, with an
ultimate price tag of $2 billion, is
designed to repair 100 years of
damage caused by man-made
erosion, pollution, dams and diver
sionsin the watersheds that pro
vide 60% of California s fresh wa
ter.

The project came about as part of
the 1994 Bay Delta Accord, which
was supposed to end the Bay -Delta
water wars that had raged for
years among agricultural, urban
and environmental interests. But
those groups are still at odds over
key issues including how much
water will be permanently avail
able for environmental needs in
ihe delta and, until Wednesday,
little money had been allocated for
the restoration work.

The $100 million will pay for a
first phase including the rehabili
tation of marshes and wetlands, the
replanting of riverside forests, the
construction of fish ladders to help
migrating salmon and the installa
tion of screens to prevent fish from
being drawn into irrigation canals.
Through a proposition. Congress
and California voters have ear
marked an additional $720 million
to be spent on the restoration over
the next 25 years. The remainder of
the funding still must be found.

The boundaries of the project
extend from Fresno 350 miles
north to Redding, and from the
headwaters of the San Joaquin
River in the Sierra Nevada to the
origins of the Sacramento River in
California s Cascade Range.

The ultimate goal is to repair the
damage, including a dramatic de
cline of fish and wildlife, caused by

the diversion of massive amounts
of water for agriculture and urban
use. The hope is that a restored
delta will mean cleaner drinking
water, a healthier habitat for fish
and wildlife and better flood con
trol.

The $100 million in federal and
state funding, which will pay
for 50 separate projects, was an
nounced by U.S. Interior Secretary
Bruce Babbitt. Commerce Secre
tary William Daley, Environmen
tal Protection Agency Administra
tor Carol Browner and Gov. Pete
Wilson. At the same time, the
officials granted a one-year exten
sion of the 1994 agreement, which
was to expire this week.

"The extension of the historic
accord gives us the chance to craft
a long-term plan that works for
everyone, including business inter
ests, farmers, environmentalists
and communities," Browner said in
a statement.

The optimistic pronouncements,
however, masked official concern
over the continuing discord be
tween environmentalists and the
other interest groups over how to
.divide the water that flows into the
delta from the Sacramento and San
. Joaquin river systems.

Many government officials,
along with representatives of agri
business and cities, believe envi
ronmental conflicts could be best
avoided by building a 60- mile long
diversionary canal that would cap
ture most of the water for Central
Valley agriculture and Southern
California cities before it flows
; through the delta.
- Environmental groups, however,
.see the canal, which could cost $3
; billion or more, as an opportunity
fgr rival users to take even more
water from the rivers without
having to justify the increased

diversions, as they must do now.

"The environmental community
still supports the principles of the
accord, but we think there has
been serious backsliding on the
deal." said Ann Notthoff of the
Natural Resources Defense Council

"Over the past year," Notthoff
said, "the Wilson administration
and Central Valley water users
undermined the agreement by re
laxing water-quality standards
agreed to in the accord, by trying
to authorize massive new agricul
tural diversions and by continuing
to attack the federal legislation
that underpins the accord."

Los Angeles Times

December 18, 1&gt;97

The intent of the accord was to
lay the groundwork for a long-
term, equitable apportionment of
the state s largest fresh water sup
ply. With the agreement, urban
and agricultural interests for the
first time acknowledged that the
environment was an equal partner
in negotiations over delta water
allocation.

It was also an acknowledgment
of the delta s value as the largest
wetland habitat in the Western

United States, the home of nearly
120 species of birds, mammals,
reptiles, amphibians and fish. By
the time the accord was signed,
more than 20 other species of
native plants and animals once
found there had become extinct.
Nine more were endangered.

According to environmentalists,
up to two- thirds of the delta s
natural flow was being diverted for
farming and other uses in some
years. The reduced flows, in turn,
were allowing salt water to move
upstream from the ocean, ruining
freshwater habitat. The reduced
amount of water also cost the delta
some of its ability, to dilute chemi
cal pollutants, they said.

Meanwhile, higher up in the
river systems, erosion from defor
estation and development filled
streams with sediment that de
stroyed salmon spawning grounds.

Leading up to the 1994 accord,
environmental groups forced a
showdown by invoking the Endan
gered Species Act in a series of
lawsuits that disrupted diversions i
of water out of the delta. The
interruptions led business leaders
to warn that California s economy
would suffer if the state could no
longer count on reliable deliveries
of delta water.

That is still the case, according
to Timothy H. Quinn, deputy gen
eral manager of the Metropolitan
Water District, the primary sup
plier of water to Southern Califor
nia communities. "The ominous
warnings are as relevant today as
they were three years ago." he
said.

The water district gets one-third
of its water from the delta the
rest comes from the Colorado
River and can ill afford disrup
tions in the delivery systems. The
city of Los Angeles receives most
of its water from the eastern Sierra
Nevada, but in dry years has
turned to the water district for
50% of its supply.

MWO

METROPOLITAN WA TER DISTRICT Of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

The future course of the envi
ronmental restoration hinges on an
amicable division of the delta s
freshwater supply.

Quinn is among those who say
the best way to do that is to build
the diversionary canal, which
would bypass most of the delta and
link up with the aqueducts that
move water south.

The canal, which would be
funded separately from the envi
ronmental project, would increase
the reliability of water deliveries,
he said, and improve the quality of
water shipped south, because wa
ter taken from above the delta is
less polluted.

But Quinn said that any pro
posed fix will fail if any one of
the interest groups does not en
dorse it

"In this case, environmentalists
have to have the assurance that
the facility would be operated in an
equitable fashion. The challenge is
to incorporate environmental val
ues as part of the day-to-day
governance of water in California."

Environmentalists see the issue
in mathematical terms. The accord
guaranteed an additional 1.1 mil
lion acre -feet of water to improve
water quality in the delta. But it
left open the question of how much
more water would be needed to
revive declining fish species, such
as Chinook salmon, steelhead and
delta smelt.

For the extra water, environ
mental groups now look to the 1992
Central Valley Project Improve
ment Act, which redirected 800.000
acre feet of delta water from agri
culture to fish.

But one of the largest Central
Valley water authorities last
month fifed a lawsuit to stop the
federal government from allocat
ing any more water to the environ
ment.

fUbLIU AI-rAIM5 CLirSHttl

118b

PUBLICATION
DATE

Los Angeles Times

December 18, 1997

2/2

Restoring the Delta

An initial $100 million from state and
federal sources will start restoration of
the San Francisco Bay -San Joaquin
Delta, the heart of which is shown here.
The project eventually will be the largest
of its kind in the United States. .

SAN

PABLO

BAY

Key points of the plan:

Estimated total cost: $2 billion for the purchase and
rehabilitation of thousands of acres of wetlands, marshes, islands
and other wildlife habitat.

Construction of fish ladders to help migrating salmon make
their way past dams.

Installation of screens to prevent fish from being sucked into
the giant pumps that divert water out of the delta for agricultural
and urban uses.

Replanting of trees along streams to help prevent erosion.

The goal: To restore conditions that fish and wildlife need to
again thrive in the delta and the rivers that flow into it.

, John Garamendi, the deputy
secretary of the Interior Depart
ment who tried unsuccessfully to
broker a compromise over the
contested water, said that dispute

Los Angeles Tir

could imperil the delta accord.

"If the federal government
should lose the suit over that
800,000 acre -feet, I think the ac
cord is in serious jeopardy." he said.

119

happening. The concept emerged that S.B. 900 should become a
major financing bill for ecosystem restoration through CALFED.
The bill had been languishing in the legislature, no meaningful
money for the ecosystem in the Bay-Delta watershed, no
reclamation money.

It was a pork bill, primarily, for urban water districts.
Small reclamation projects would then get funded, and water
treatment problems would then get taken care of. But nothing
meaningful for CALFED or the bigger picture Bay-Delta
situation.

The urbans strongly felt that it needed to be transformed
into a vehicle to provide major funding for ecosystem
restoration. We weren t getting very far. I think it was May,
or so, of 1996, I went to visit Tom Clark and Tom Hurlbutt. We
became referred to, in this process, as the Tim and the Toms.
The Tim and the Toms spent two and a half hours in Kern County
Water Agency s offices in Bakersfield. Tom Clark is the
general manager of the Kern County Agency, and Tom Hurlbutt is
with Boswell Corporation, major water player in California
water.

At that meeting, I was working to convince the agricultural
interests that their most important legislative objective that
year should be money for the environment --not money for them,
not money for water, not money for a facilitymoney for the
environment. It took maybe six minutes for Clark to realize
this was a good strategy. Clark is a very savvy guy, and also
a very strong leader in California water. It was the oddest
thing. It tells you something, though, about water politics in
California today, that that became the top legislative priority
at the Kern County Water Agency- -getting money for the
environment .

Tom Clark became the champion of that bill. I mean, that
needed to happen because Tom and the aggies were much more
influential with the water leadership in the legislature than
the urbans were. It was crazy beyond imagination when we
approached the environmentalists and said, "Work with us. We
want to get a billion dollars for the environment." At first
they said no. We had long, frustrating conversations with Tom
Graff and Dave Yardas, and others. They simply refused to
participate initially. I think, in part, because they were
afraid of some of the changes that this could be a part of.

Chall: Undo the restoration?

120

Quinn: Absolutely, they may have been concerned about undoing the
progress of the past. But, S.B. 900 never could have done
that . They may have also been concerned that we were taking
CVPIA and making it look small. But, S.B. 900 was legitimate
money for the environment; there were no games being played.
From our perspective, we wanted to do this because we thought
it needed to be done as part of an overall comprehensive
package that solves our problems too. The pain mentality in
some places in the environmental community is so powerful that
I think their reaction was, "Wait a minute, if we partner with
you and get a billion dollars that might be part of a package
in which you guys don t have as much pain anymore, we don t
know if we want to do that."

Chall: So, Peltier is probably right when he said that they wanted to
cause pain? I mean the objective of the CVPIA was to cause
pain?

Quinn: I think that is an element in the environmental community, but
it s too easy to dismiss the whole thing that way. No, I don t
agree with that.

Chall: I see, but you think there still is that aspect?

Quinn: There is that aspect that you measure environmental gain by
water user pain. Quite frankly, we need to defeat that mind
set if we re ever going to move forward. It is the enemy of
your equilateral triangle.

Building the Coalition for Proposition 204

Chall: Oh my. Well, Proposition 204 seemed to provide an avenue for
everybody to come together.

Quinn: Eventually, we did. One of the morals of the story here is we
did come together on Prop. 204. Although, it took several
months for us to convince the environmentalists that they
wanted to join us. Eventually, they did join us in Prop. 204.
This was a major initiative in the Delta.

Chall: Yes, it is.

Quinn: Every other legislative effort related to the Delta has been
World War III in the California legislature. But, S.B. 900
sailed through. I think it had a total of a half of a dozen
no-votes in both houses combined. It overwhelmingly passed.

121

Chall:
Quinn:

Chall:

Quinn :
Chall:

The voters passed it 65 percent to 35 percent; it was nearly a
two to one margin of voter approval. One of the main reasons
for that success was that the list of supporters was
incredible. The coalition that had been built to support S.B.
900, which was before the voters in November of 1996 as
Proposition 204, was simply unprecedented.

We went to Washington, D.C. with that coalition. We
created a thing we now call the California Bay-Delta Water
Coalition. Twenty-five organizations which jointly fund
lobbying activities in Washington, D.C. related to getting
funding for the Bay-Delta. It includes environmental
organizations, urban, and agricultural organizations.
Everybody pays money into a fund to finance joint lobbying
activities.

We went to the Congress in 96. It was an election year,
so election politics was a big player here, but this was
something where the Republicans in the Congress could look
green and not get a negative counterlash because the
agricultural interests were supporting this green initiative.
So, much to our surprise, the Speaker of the House, Mr. [Newt]
Gingrich, picked this up and within less than a month, we had a
$430 million authorization bill for the Bay-Delta.

We got forty-nine out of fifty-two California congressional
representatives to sign a letter supporting this money for the
Bay-Delta. Our congressional delegation doesn t get along
about anything, let alone the most contentious issues that
there are in California water. All of this was the power of
coalition politics. That was an authorization bill, hard to
get, but a heck of a lot easier to get than an appropriations
bill, that s when you really get the money in your pocket.

Did you get it?

We got $85 million appropriated through activities of the
California Bay-Delta Water Coalition for the Bay-Delta. We got
it by telling a story of better government where all three
sides were willing to try and manage their differences and come
up with consensual solutions.

You think we re not ever going to go back before CVPIA to true
water wars?

Oh, I think there s real risk of that.
You do think that?

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Quinn: If I thought it was easy, I wouldn t spend so many hours

worrying about it. There is so much more to be gained through
consensus. The rewards of consensus are extraordinary. The
cost of conflict are no less extraordinary, but it s hard to
bury some of these hatchets. I gave a speech not long ago to
the environmental community, and I ought to give the corollary
speech to the agricultural community. The theme of the speech
was to the environmentalists, "You ve won the revolution."

Truly, I believe the environmental revolution is a lasting
legacy. Any day now, I m going to be a grandfather for the
second time. I mean, the environmental revolution is one of
the lasting wonderful legacies that the last half of the
twentieth century is going to pass on to future generations.
The revolution has been fought and won. Now, the question is
can we turn to governance? It s a hard thing, though, because
right now the environmental movement is peopled largely with
revolutionaries .

The true test of CVPIA is not did you win the revolutionary
war. They won it, and the product that was produced, we were
all discovering, was far from perfect. It certainly was an
astonishing victory of the revolutionaries, but the question
now is: You won it, now can you govern it? Can you actually
make it turn out and produce ecosystem restoration? Unless we
do that together, it is not going to happen.

Chall: So, it s still up in the air?

Quinn: It is still up in the air. Success is not assured, but I am

optimistic that the powerful lessons of what consensus politics
can deliver that we ve learned in the last few years will, in
the end, overwhelm some of our instincts to keep fighting the
revolution after it has already been won.

The Metropolitan Water District, the CVPIA. and Water Marketing

Chall: I want to ask you now about the report you sent to me about

Central Valley Water Marketing Strategies, April 27, 1993. You
were apparently concerned about some of interim guidelines for
water transfers, which did not appeal to you, or to the

Report from John R. Wodraska, to the MWD Board of Directors and
relevant committees, April 27, 1993, re implementation of the CVPIA and
water marketing. On deposit in the Water Resources Center Library.

123

Metropolitan Water District. So, this is a problem you have
with implementing the CVPIA. Do you want to talk to me about
that?

The Failed Areias Dairy Farm Transaction

Quinn: Well, I think, probably the most useful tack is to talk about
the Areias Dairy Farm transaction, because that was the first
time when we really tried to go out and do it. You have a
board letter, I think, on that as well. 1

Chall: I do, that s the Areias, right?

Quinn: Yes. I will try and be brief here. Not long after the act was
passed, I was approached by Rusty Areias, who was, amazingly
enough, the chairman of the California Agricultural Committee
in the California Assembly. I had memories of Areias drilling
me on water marketing when I was known as a promoter of water
marketing, and he was an arch foe of water marketing back in
some of the legislative hearings that occurred in the early
nineties. Here was Rusty Areias offering to sell water under
the user-initiated transfer provisions of the Central Valley
Project Improvement Act.

We negotiated the deal. It was a pretty attractive deal
for both sides. Then, we went about learning the hard lesson
that passing a bill is one thing and then actually using it is
another. It s part of those bitter feelings that you ve picked
up when talking to agricultural interests, to some degree. I
don t know how much forethought there was, but it certainly
looks a great deal as though the agricultural entities were
saying, "Well, okay, we ll give Boronkay his water marketing
provisions, but by God we re going to shoot everything dead
that he tries to do actually using those water marketing
provisions. "

Chall: Oh, is that so? You think so?

Quinn: Again, I m going to be careful here. I don t have the evidence
to make a conspiracy case. I m not sure if there was
forethought, but there was plenty of afterthought. There was
bitterness about these things, user-initiated transfers in
particular were bitterly fought by agricultural interests in

Report to the Board, John R. Wodraska, October 20, 1993. On deposit
in the Water Resources Center Library.

124

the state legislature. We were able to get it on the federal
act only because they were in such a desperate situation given
that the planets were lining up for Miller, and they felt
desperate.

When we went out with the Areias transaction, which, quite
frankly, could have been handled a lot better with the benefit
of hindsight. I wish we would have done a better job of
rolling the transaction out. There were meetings in Los Banos
where the agricultural interests were able to turn out about
2,000 concerned citizens. In Los Banos, I mean, that s half
the town.

Chall: Right.

Quinn: That really gave us pause. I mean, we sat there, knowing we
wanted to make water marketing work and looking at this
overwhelming grassroots political opposition. As I sat down
with Rusty at the time, we said, "Look, we can get there, or we
can be dead." So, we agreed that we would try and reformat the
proposed program. One of the desirable things about the act
was it had forced the contractors, which had the waterthe
guys that supplied Rusty his waterto develop a water
marketing policy.

It wasn t designed to be terribly friendly to water
marketing, but it was something that would pass the straight-
face test. They never would have done that without CVPIA.
They were sending out very strong signals that they would go
down to the last man. The last man would fall on his sword on
the barricades to stop this individual from transferring water
around the control of the district. So, we went about the task
of trying to renegotiate the deal so it would conform to the
district s policies.

Quite frankly, I think, to this day, Graff and others think
that we re selling out the water marketing provisions of the
CVPIA. I certainly don t feel that way. The fundamental thing
the bill did was allow the water to be moved, because legally,
you couldn t move it before. One of the lessons I have learned
is I don t care what the bill says, you can t roll over the
agricultural districts like a steam roller and expect to get
away with it, even if you re the great and powerful
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

With the Areias transactions, we started to work very hard
to maintain benefits but try and make it comply with the
policies of the agricultural districts. By law, we did not
have to have their permission. But, the local politics were

125

clear that we had to develop better relationships with the
agricultural districts, which, as I noted earlier, was one of
Carl s parting recommendations to me as he left Metropolitan.

Unfortunately before we could get that job done, the dairy
economy had turned very sour. The Areiases ran a dairy farm,
and they ran into serious financial problems. In the end, the
Bank of America decided they were more valuable to the bank
dead than alive. My assessment at the time was the attorneys
working on this were Central Valley attorneys that worked for
the Bank of America.

I think they could reach out and touch the politics, and
they felt that the deal could never be approved even if
revised. I still don t believe that to this day. You can make
it happen if you engage the other side, understand their
interests, and try to structure your objectives in ways that
promote theirs. Bank of America wound up, basically, killing
the deal even though, to this day, Rusty blames us. I think
even the environmental movement blames us.

Chall: So, they took the land. In other words, there s no water?

Quinn: Yes, so Areias lost control of his operation, and the bank

wasn t going to wait around for the approval of this transfer.
They wanted to liquidate assets now, and poor Rusty is still
going through that several years later.

A happier story is that at long last this afternoon my
boss, [John R.] Wodraska, will execute an agreement with the
Arvin-Edison Water Storage District.

The Successful Arvin-Edison Partnership Plan

Quinn: This is CVP water. We re investing money in a partnership with
a CVP contractor to invest in additional water-management
capabilities. They can get more water into underground
storage, start to pull it up during dry times, and both Arvin
and Metropolitan will share the benefits of that investment.
That gives us a very economically attractive 75,000 acre- foot
dry-year supply that is independent of the Delta politics.

The Areias transaction had the possibility of fallowing
some land to make the water available. The Arvin program was
not built around the notion of fallowing. It was built around
the notion of Metropolitan becoming a partner investing in

126

infrastructure in a local area, expanding the pie and then we
get a share of what we have invested in. 1

Continuing Analysis of the CVPIA: Problems with Implementation ##

Chall: Do you think that Douglas Noll s analysis of the Central Valley
Project Improvement Act and what s going to be involved with
implementation is pretty much on the mark? 2

Quinn: It s been a while since I ve read the article, but on the

whole, I remember thinking it was a pretty objective overall
assessment of what s in the bill and the enormity of the task
of actually implementing it.

Chall: Now, you re trying to implement it. There seems to be so much
involved with this. The secretary of the Interior; there was a
commissioner of reclamation, Dan Beard, and there s now another
commissioner of reclamation who is? I don t know.

Quinn: The new commissioner of reclamation has virtually nothing to do
with implementation of CVPIA. Beard was very hands-on, and now
CVPIA implementation is handled through the chain of command in
Interior that doesn t tend to involve the commissioner of
reclamation. One of the key players involved is Roger
Patterson, who s the regional director of the Bureau of
Reclamation mid-Pacific region; heavily involved. Right now,
Roger generally reports directly to John Garamendi, who s the
deputy secretary of the Interior.

The bill was hugely controversial, but the Clinton
administration embraced it right away. They could have treated
it like the Bush administration s dead cat, but they didn t.

The Clinton administration immediately embraced the
objectives of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act even
though they had had little to do with its passage. The
demonstration of that is that the responsibility for