Water Archives · Jim Ganulin and Ken Manock interview

Title

eng Jim Ganulin and Ken Manock interview

Description

eng Ken Manock was a founding partner of Baker, Manock, and Jensen law firm and long time counsel for Westlands Water District during the fight over the 160-acre limitation, as well as the fight over the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992. Jim Ganulin is a former general counsel of the Westlands Water District during the 160-acre limitation battle.

Creator

eng Ganulin, Jim and Ken Manock

eng Gray, Glenn

Relation

eng Water Archive Oral Histories

Coverage

eng California State University, Fresno

Date

eng 3/5/2009

Format

eng Microsoft Word 2003 document, 38 pages

Identifier

eng SCMS_waoh_00006

extracted text

>> Glenn Gray: Today is March 5, 2008. My name is Glenn Gray from the Madden
Library at Fresno State and today we are going to be featuring a dialogue
between Ken Manock and Jim Ganulin, two attorneys from the Fresno firm, Baker,
Manock and Jenson. They will be discussing the events leading up to the passage
of the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982 and subsequent matters related to the
passage of that Act. So the primary purpose of today's discussion is to
determine, who will discuss what in greater detail once we get into individual
sessions with the two of you. So without further ado, I am going to turn the
discussion over to you two gentleman and for starters, I think we are going to
go to Ken, who is going to fill us in a little bit on the background to the
Reclamation Reform Act. And Ken, how far back do you want to go?
>> Ken Manock: Well I can start with Thomas Jefferson if you like.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, let's hear it.
>> Ken Manock: Oddly enough, this is either a good story or at least a good
story, because it appears that Thomas Jefferson is the one who decided that, or
during his administration, it was decided that 160 acres was just about enough
acreage for one man and a mule to clear the trees that were growing in the
eastern part of the United States. So that was the basis for the homestead law
and in various programs through the history of the United States that program
provided a means to develop the undeveloped lands as the United States expanded
across the continent. But of course, as they reached the fortieth parallel, the
trees began to give out. They got over to grassland and of course the rain began
to be less and less and instead of 40 or 50 inches every year, it got down to
maybe 10 inches like we have here or even less in the desert areas. So the only
water that was available had to be stored, had to be conveyed, had to be moved
from one place to another where the farming was valuable. And as a result of
that, individual projects begin to develop in various parts of the west,
including here in the valley and for example a canal was built along the side of
the San Joaquin River back in the 1870, 1880 periods to move water from the
source to wherever the farming took place. Well as those projects developed,
they became financially subject to a great deal of pressure, particularly in the
years where there were droughts, there wasn't much water. And so toward the turn
of the century, the federal government began to provide some assistance and
finally resulting in the Reclamation Act of 1902 during the administration of
Teddy Roosevelt. And basically that was a means by which a subsidy from the
United States or funds from the United States were made available to individuals
who qualified for the water which -- and they used some of the same principles
then that were used in the homestead law and the law started out by of course
providing that each person was entitled to 160 acres, if they wanted to receive
the federal water. In some cases, that was supplemental water, in other cases,
it was water that was absolutely necessary to the operation. And actually
converted land that hadn't been farmed into land that could be farmed, so after
1902, there were -- it became a major political issue, it finally became the
basis for the development of the Central Valley project here in California,
which had started in the ‘20s as an idea to move the water from the northern
part of the state to the southern, to the San Joaquin Valley and to southern
California. And finally, during the ‘30s, it was obvious that the water
districts, it became obvious that they could form a water district and water
districts in various parts of the valley, so the Central Valley Project
developed and it consisted of moving water from basically the Sacramento Valley
watershed, as it was stored in Shasta, moving it down to the Delta, pump from
there, south to the San Joaquin River and Mendota area and then in an
interesting exchange and quite an amazing program, the water that had flowed
down the San Joaquin River was dammed at Friant Dam and diverted to Madara and

diverted south all the way to Kern County. The water rights were replaced then
by the water that was delivered into the Mendota area from the Central Valley
Project water from the north. That was the first phase, the second phase was the
combination of California and federal funds to build the California water
project, which added the facilities that the feds built to take care of the -and actually a joint project for a reservoir above Los Banos. That was built
both for state and federal water. A new federal, a new state dam was built on
the, it was also built in the Sacramento watershed area and in order to get the
votes to pass it through, they included water delivered all the way to San Diego
and ->> Jim Ganulin: Let me go back a bit before we get into the combination of state
and federal project and what was built. A keystone of the 1902 Act was a
requirement of residency.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jim Ganulin: That the recipient of the water had to live on the land. In
1926, the law was overhauled, there was no mention of residency and I think we
want to discuss that later.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: In addition, there were some requirements to make the land owner
give up something as a quid pro quo if you will, consideration for his or her
getting water. The land had to be appraised and the land owner had to agree to
sell his land within basically within 10 years of receiving the project water,
at a price approved by the Bureau of Reclamation, which was enforcing the law
and regulating the law and if the land owner did not sell that land within the
10 years, the recordable contract which you signed agreeing to sell the land
stated that the Secretary of Interior had a power of attorney to sell the land
for and on behalf of the land owner. And that requirement is probably one of the
basic fundamental foundations of reclamation law as we move forward and deal
with the development of water districts in California, particularly on the West
side of Fresno County and ultimately leading to the 1982 Act.
>> Glenn Gray: So all that stems from the 1926 ->> Jim Ganulin: The 1926 Act was the foundation for the requirement of the
appraisal and sale of excess land as a condition precedent to receiving project
water.
>> Ken Manock: Yes that was not in the original 1902 Act.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: And interestingly enough, Congress passed that law, but it was
all informally enforced and they did not ever publish regulations and one of the
more interesting stories later on is how the regulations begin and the
litigation over whether there should be regulations began to play a role in the
1982 Act.
>> Glenn Gray: So you are saying because it was only informally enforced, the
1926 law is what eventually led to the need to have the Reclamation Reform Act.
>> Ken Manock: Yes.

>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: Uh huh.
>> Jim Ganulin: Let's go back a little bit, as we deal with the evolution of
reclamation law, as it has been applied in western Fresno County. Westlands
Water District was formed in 1952 and the purpose for that district was to
obtain a contract leading to a water supply, which supplemented the ground water
supply available in the district and as a condition precedent to receiving that
water, those who formed the district realized that they had to sign the
recordable contract, which I mentioned as in order to get the water. After the
district was formed, those folks that formed the district moved forward to
achieve the legislation, which created the San Luis Unit, which Ken has spoken
about and which ultimately created the joint use project of federal and state
facilities.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jim Ganulin: And that was adopted after the law was passed in 1960.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: The first water was delivered to the district in 1964, major
delivery started in 1968 and it was at that time that the growers and land
owners within the district had to decide what to do about complying with
reclamation law. The critics of this now 400,000 acre district and the large,
what they perceived as large land owners within the district said well the land
owners would not sign recordable contracts, water would be delivered to those
who owned less than 160 acres. Therefore, the ground water table would rise and
the large land owners would get the benefit of that importation of supplemental
water. Contrary to the critics concern, the land owners did sign those
recordable contracts and ultimately substantially all the district was placed
and made eligible under reclamation law.
>> Glenn Gray: And when were those contracts signed them, in terms of you said
the district was formed in 1952?
>> Jim Ganulin: The contracts were not signed until the land owner was to
receive water. There was no requirement that they sign that individual
recordable contract covering that particular parcel of land.
>> Ken Manock: In order to be eligible for the water, they had to sign the
contract, so the water that was supplied through the Central Valley project and
the San Luis Unit could not be delivered until there were recordable contracts.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: And the compulsion to do that is an important part of this study,
because typically the Westside of the Fresno County was very similar to the
other areas of the west, which had extremely valuable and productive soil, but
had really never been farmed. And they had a water table that was -- consisted
of perched water, which over the years had not really accumulated in the
underground, which was not really suitable for farming, because of the salts and
chemicals. So the early farmers that needed the land, the land had really been
used for grazing, but the farmers realized that and some of the pioneering
farmers realized that land could be used for very valuable crops if it had
water.

>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Ken Manock: It was compatible with the crops.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: So as a result, there were a group of farmers in the 1930s looked
at that property and realized that it could be developed in that fashion and
over about a 10 year period, they were able to eventually form Westlands Water
District. They formed the state water district initially, which was I forgot the
name.
>> Jim Ganulin: The original West Plains Water Storage District.
>> Ken Manock: West Plains Storage District. That was to receive state water and
the Westlands were to receive the federal water and interestingly at that time,
they tell me that, Russell Giffen at least told me that the reason they did that
was because they frankly did not think they could pay the full cost of the water
that was required by the state. And an important point here was that the state
project was going to be financed with the full cost of water and the federal
project was financed with what was considered to be a price less than the full
cost referred to very often as a federal subsidy and the differential could be
quite large, because the average price of the state water was around 50 dollars
an acre foot, the average price when it started was around 3 dollars an acre
foot for the federal water and of course it increased after that, but the point
was that with cotton and other real crops, they did not feel they could produce
a product with the state water and so the two districts were formed for that
purpose and Westlands of course developed first and as a result the recordable
contracts were assigned in that area, as the water became available.
>> Jim Ganulin: And then the critics said, they won't sign recordable contracts,
which they did and then they said well even though they signed them, they won't
sell their land, which they ultimately did wind up selling and so that was the
genesis, the genesis of the Reclamation Reform Act was the concern about them
not doing it, the concern about once the sales took place that they were
continuing in large land ownerships. It is important to note that land owners
like Southern Pacific, which owned over 100,000 acres, the Giffen family, which
owned 45 or 50,000 acres and at least another 45 or 50,000, Anderson Clayton
Company, Boston Ranch, South Lake Farms, all major large landowners within the
district all signed recordable contracts and they all wound up disposing of
their land as required by the law.
>> Ken Manock: One of the biggest political fights during the 30s and during the
40s as the Central Valley project developed was the opposition of the people who
opposed the federal subsidies, opposed large land holdings, who felt very
strongly that the residency requirement was an absolute requirement before you
could receive federal water, as well as the limitation on 160 acres. And they
were basically people who felt and were epitomized by what eventually became
known as the National Land for People and George Ballis was the local leader for
that, once the project got started. Those people were very active during the
‘40s and the ‘30s and a Professor at the University of California –>> Jim Ganulin: Paul Taylor
>> Ken Manock: -- Paul Taylor was sort of their intellectual leader for and did
most of the writing, did most of the analysis --

>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh
>> Ken Manock: -- background and the biggest issue of all in this whole
Westlands situation was the Southern Pacific Land Company, because they were by
far the largest land owner. They had been awarded the land, as part of the
subsidies that were used in before the turn of the century for the development
of railroads in the west, so they had roughly every other section in the area
where their railroads passed and they had traded them and had various parcels
and still retained in the Westlands area, where there was no irrigation from any
of the federal sources, this large land holding and the opponents said they
would never sign the contract and they were very reluctant to sign the contract.
Southern Pacific had never taken a position that it was going to dispose of that
land and yet it was included within Westlands and it was -- could not receive
the water, but the adjoining landowners could. So with a combination of pumped
water and federal water, by tenants of Southern Pacific, this would be -- it was
interpreted by the opposition as a big subsidy. And so they held out, whereas
all the families that owned property and by the way one of the big issues we
fought during that period was corporate landowners. Well the only real corporate
landowner that was in the sense of a publically held corporation was the
Southern Pacific Land Company, the rest of the corporations were large, but they
were all family owned. And as a result, the families did in fact sign the
contracts as the water became necessary. Russell Giffen was the largest
landowner, also the largest tenant from Southern Pacific Land Company and
through his efforts with the management of Southern Pacific, they eventually
signed the contract, but that’s really getting ahead of our story from a
chronological standpoint.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, at some point, we are going to need to define the terms. We
spoke about that earlier and I don't know if you want to do that now, but one
thing that occurs to me that would be helpful for one of the two of you to talk
about is; what was the rationale for the requirement to sell after, after
signing the contracts and I think you said that there was a 10 year, but what’s
the back story for that.
>> Jim Ganulin: I think Ken touched on it when he compared the price of state
water project water –>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- which was at full cost ->> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- and the price of federal reclamation water ->> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- which was at a fixed contract rate, which was substantially
below full cost.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Jim Ganulin: So in order to get the water at the cheaper price ->> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.

>> Jim Ganulin: -- the law required –>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- that you agree to sell your land within the 10 years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: So that was the consideration for getting water at the cheaper
price.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and eventually West Plains got subsumed into Westlands ->> Jim Ganulin: West Plains is an area to the west of what is now the San Luis
Canal, some 200,000 acres, which was merged into the district to make a 600,000
acre district and that was done in order to provide a more efficient water
supply system.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jim Ganulin: And, and that was the reason that West Plains was merged.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, okay. Let's I don't know to what extent -- you did a good
job, I think started with Thomas Jefferson and bringing us up. To what extent do
you feel the need to address the State of California's adoption of English
common law in 1850 and any of the rights that were adopted at that time? Is that
part of the story or do you think that you have covered the bases?
>> Ken Manock: It is definitely part of the story, because part of the, part of
the structure of the Central Valley Project is the acquisition of the water
rights by the Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Interior to supply the
contracts, which it eventually entered into to deliver the water. So as I
mentioned, you have the dams, collects the water, the water flows through the
Delta, it then is delivered to the San Joaquin Valley on the east side, excuse
me on the west side and on the east side, it is delivered from the Friant Dam.
And so in order to, in order to have the ability to deliver the water, the
Supreme Court through various decisions, which would be another subject actually
to get into, determined that state water law controlled the delivery of this
federal water and those were issues that were fought out during the ‘30s and
‘40s and into the ‘50s and some of the cases were finally settled in the ‘60s,
but basically what the Supreme Court and what the Bureau was required to do was
to get from the state the -- first of all, they had to acquire the water rights.
In acquiring the water rights meant that they had to have the riparian rights
and the appropriative rights and the difference there of course is that the
riparian right is based upon the ability to take water from a river by the
landowner adjoining the river within the land holding that has never been
severed from the river. So in order to, once you establish, once you retain that
right, you are then able to use that water for all beneficial uses that you can
put it too and the only people that can take that water away from you are the
downriver appropriative rights, which are obtained by adverse use of the river.
Prior to 1914, you could do it just by simply using the water adverse to the
upstream users, rather they were appropriative or whether they were riparian.
After 1914, you could do this only with the approval of the state, it became
much more complicated, so the state imposed a water rights administered by the
state, which in effect recorded these rights and maintained these rights and
determined whether or not there was any excess river water available for either
the appropriative, for the appropriative rights, because remember the riparian

rights continued. Well part of the process then was to in order to obtain the
water for the west side, they, the appropriative, there had to be a state
approval of the place of use, where it could be delivered, how it could be
delivered, so all of the federal water was still subject to the state water law.
>> Glenn Gray: Also if you could give a little more background, I don't know if
you want to do this Jim about the 1926 Adjustment Act. I am just curious as to
why that wasn't enforced I mean what is the story behind that, because if it
took another 50 odd years to get around to doing the Reclamation Reform Act,
what was it about the 1926 situation that didn't get the job done.
>> Jim Ganulin: I think, I think from our perspective it was enforced.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: In other words, there were requirements of signing a recordable
contract before you get water. There was a requirement to have a contract with
the water district, which incorporated the requirements with respect to land
ownership as a prerequisite to getting water. There was no reference to
residency. It, from the critic standpoint, there concern was that basically the
law's enforcement was not consistent with its spirit, that residency was not
required, which led to a dispute as to whether or not the residency requirement
of the 1902 Act remained in effect, not withstanding that the ‘26 Act was
silent.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: And in 1974, ‘75, ‘76, I think it all came to a head in three
different venues if you will. First of all, the land -- National Land for
People, which Ken mentioned, brought a lawsuit in the federal district court in
Fresno, requesting that the Court issue an injunction creating a moratorium on
the sales of excess land, which were in a recordable contract unless and until
the Secretary of the Interior issued rules and regulations requiring and
implementing the requirements of the acreage limitations provision of the law.
The Court only issued an injunction and created a moratorium, which we will talk
about in a moment –>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- but that was one venue. The second one was in Imperial
County, where the critics again brought a lawsuit against I think Imperial
Irrigation District, Yellen versus Hickel, Hickel was the Secretary of the
Interior in which they challenged the enforcement of the law on the grounds that
the Department of the Interior was not requiring residency.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: And that proceeded through the courts. And the third was a
hearing, which happened to take place at Fresno City College, in which two
United States Senators, Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin, who had always
been a critic of the project and concern about how the law was being applied and
Floyd Haskell from Colorado held a hearing and took testimony from George Ballis
and Paul Taylor of the National Land for People, as well as landowners and
representatives and people who represented the district on how the law is being
enforced, and those three things I think converged and I think Congress, I think
the landowners, the critics said let's resolve it, let's go back and let’s

revisit all these issues and let's get some certainly, because certainly the
landowners and their bankers for example needed the certainty.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: And that period is fascinating because as Jim mentioned, all of
those things began to happen at the same time, so the result was that the
political issues became major and of course the critics followed the words you
used, this law was not being enforced and this fight over residency was an
ambiguity in the law and as a result, there was also legislation, there was also
the question of whether the Tulare Lake and the Kings River project, the Core of
Engineers projects, which is another story in itself as to why the Kings River
is subject to the Core of Engineers, not to the Bureau of Reclamation. It is a
fascinating story, and but nevertheless one of the issues that came up then was
whether or not the Reclamation Law of ‘02 which had the residency requirement
would apply to all federal water delivered throughout the country, including the
Kings River. So the Kings River case was also moving forward at that time. So
all of these issues having to do with reclamation law were now significant
enough, receiving enough publicity that even Jerry Brown decided to get involved
and showed up at the hearing at Fresno City College, while he was governor –>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Ken Manock: -- which of course, again brought the spotlight on this
particular project.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: He was a firm believer that the law was not being enforced, so he
added credibility to Paul Taylor, George Ballis and their efforts, which by that
time had become nationwide and had actually stirred up these senators from
outside of California, outside of the west to spend that much time and effort on
this particular issue. So it was now a major national issue,
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: After 1974.
>> Jim Ganulin: I want to add two more things that happened that helped create
the back drop for the Congressional effort to ultimately wind up in the
Reclamation Reform Act. Interior proposed some rules and regulations, as the
critics had requested and the landowners and the districts were very concerned
about the scope of those regulations. They had leasing restrictions, there were
residency requirements, there were a number of things that we felt were not
within the law. Five different lawsuits were brought, all by different areas of
the state and also from Colorado in which they, they challenged the issuance of
those rules and regulations without the issuance of an environmental impact
statement dealing with the environmental impacts of the application of those
rules and regulations. Judge Crocker heard all of the lawsuits in Fresno,
because, that was, one of the suits was here and ruled that an EIS was required.
A second thing that happened was that in 1977, the authorization to build the
internal distribution facilities for Westlands Water District was, we, there was
no more money left, we had met the ceiling. Congressman Sisk and his then
assistant, ultimately Congressman Coelho worked out a provision of the law which
amended the San Luis Unit Act, which authorized the construction of those
facilities and increased the ceiling by some 31 million dollars. As a part of
that law, in order to get it passed, the critics required, in Congress required

the creation of the San Luis Unit Task Force and that task force looked up how
Westlands was operating on a number of different issues, one of which was
acreage limitation and how that was being implemented and the task force
ultimately concluded that the Department of the Interior had not been properly
implementing and applying acreage limitation, rules and regulations required by
the statute. So you had these five things going on and it all came to a head as
Ken said and Congress was asked to do something.
>> Ken Manock: The chronology here needs to be straightened out a little bit.
After the ‘74 hearing, which brought all this political contention to the issue
and it became sort of a nationwide issue, the National Land for People filed a
lawsuit as Jim mentioned which, and this was before the events that Jim just
described now, so it is important to fit that into the chronology. The National
Land for People case was filed in Washington DC and as a result of that the
farmers on the Westside decided that they needed to be part of that lawsuit,
because it was aimed at their requirement to have residency. It was aimed at
their requirement to approve the, as to what the price would be under the plan
that they sold under the recordable contracts and it was literally aimed at an
effort to force residency, which was the primary issue and of course if that
occurred and also that you could only farm 160 acres and they objected to the
right to lease anything larger than that, so there's would be a very restrictive
kind of farming operation, which was not suited to the western agriculture that
as it had developed. So as a result, here was National Land for People filing in
Washington DC where they hope to get a favorable judge saying that the
Department of the Interior had to issue regulations. It was an administrative
law type issue and so the argument that was made by the Westlands people and we
were involved in that litigation and by others who had then began to support us
was that the regulations were not required. That the statute itself was clear
enough that the Department of Interior had the authority to do it, they were not
too anxious to support themselves in that area and so the farmers got involved.
We had a hearing in Washington DC before Judge Barrington Parker and, where all
these issues were brought to bear and the Judge said he thought there should be
regulations. Well the regulation process then began and the department issued
regulations, which are the ones that Jim mentioned, which were very restrictive
and they were, the Department had failed to get an environmental impact report,
even though they were in fact operating on behalf of the environment, the
environmentalists and so those regulations were held to be invalid by Judge
Crocker here in Fresno. In the meantime, the lawsuit still was going on and the
Judge had issued a regulation that they had to issue regulations so the
political pressure then built up to a point and particularly on the issue of
residency to the stage where we could now propose legislation to solve the
problem and the residency issue, if it applied to all projects throughout the
country would then affect Florida. It would affect Mississippi. It would affect
the Mississippi River and all the states involved in that. There were
reclamation projects in Texas, Colorado, they were throughout the west, all the
western states had these, but then you also had these major projects in the
south, which had been built by the Core of Engineers.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Ken Manock: So as a result, the national, the California Westside farmers
made contacts with these people, they made contacts with Gordon Nelson, who had
worked for Bernie Sisk. We made contact of course with Bernie Sisk, who became
our big supporter and Tony Coelho, who was at that time an administrative
assistant. Gordon, who had been Bernie Sisk's administrative assistant had gone
on to other activities; he was available as a lobbyist to help organize this
effort, so during that period, after the Judge issued the regulations and after

the failed effort to issue the regulations by the Department, legislation
started and by having the legislation actually underway, the Judge did not
enforce the regulations, although there was an appeal taken. The ninth circuit,
the federal circuit held a hearing for us, required a settlement conference for
us, we went back and explained to the ninth, to the federal circuit that this
legislation was pending, so they never heard the appeal.
>> Glenn Gray: Huh.
>> Ken Manock: And they literally allowed the legislation to go forward, because
it was very active at that time, so that combination of political, legal and
economic needs all concentrated on that, in this period between 1974 and 1982.
>> Glenn Gray: So you are talking, this is under Secretary Andress that a lot of
this is happening.
>> Ken Manock: Yes, he was the Secretary who issued the regulations initially.
>> Glenn Gray: One thing I am curious, there is a lot going on here to this
story, there is a lot of little pieces.
>> Ken Manock: There is a lot of little pieces.
>> Glenn Gray: But I am just trying to figure out, who is really driving this?
Is it the fact that National Land for People is getting involved and it is
agitating and that people are responding to what they are doing or is it just,
is it not really one single entity that is moving this along, is it just a
combination of things?
>> Ken Manock: Well it was sort of the perfect storm, because there were so many
elements that came together within a four or five year period, because on the
one hand you had the environmentalists. You had these groups that had always
argued that the reclamation law wasn't being enforced and they were considered
by the farmers to be real radicals and land reformers and people who felt as a
matter of fact, George Ballis at one time argued that and some of this
supporters of which, they were really active, very good propagandas, very good.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ken Manock: They argued that you could have a 40 acre ranch and that the
limitation should be 40 acres and they argued that cherry tomatoes would be a
very worthwhile product for that. Well of course, if you had 600,000 acres of
cherry tomatoes that might have an effect on the market.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ken Manock: So of course, people, they would make these arguments back and
forth you see and it became and everybody, it is like politics is now, you carry
an idea to the extreme and try to make the other side ridiculous, but that was
one element which was very strong. You had the pressure to develop the San
Joaquin Valley after all the unions, the banks, all the economic forces in the
valley had supported these projects, because it meant jobs, it meant changing
the economy from literally in the west what had been simply range land into very
productive property and at that time cotton prices were such that in some years
they made huge amounts of money and it was extremely vital to the economy of the
San Joaquin valley. So locally, the issues were very big and then when this
residency issue spread around the country, you had a district for example in

Colorado that specifically had been exempt from acreage limitation, but they
didn't mention residency and because residency, after the ‘02 Act had just been
considered even by Congressman as not a factor, but it wasn't really repealed.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: So they got interested and so they by that means, those people
were pushing and were assisting. And then you had, as I mentioned, all the
projects along the rivers that had been developed by the Core of Engineers and
whether residency would apply to those. So for example, the litigation involving
the Kings River was also going forward at that time and or course one of their
arguments was that if you had a residency required and you were required to live
on your 160 acres in the bottom of the Tulare Lake, what would you do when it
flooded, which happens regardless it still happens, despite of the dam that has
been built at Pine Flat. So all of those kind of arguments, all these various
interests, the state of Washington had a very, had very large reclamation
projects. Oregon had those projects, Utah, Wyoming, all of them had some
interests. So all of the farmers from those various areas were all interested in
this issue and so Gordon Nelson became kind of the center of the effort to make
sure that all these people were aware of what they were faced with, if these
various lawsuits, these regulations, these government efforts, one way or the
other were heard in a way that was adverse to their interest.
>> Jim Ganulin: Let me add just a couple things to that. The California Westside
farmers, which Ken mentioned was a group of growers within basically Westlands
Water District, which formed itself into an informal association to deal with
these issues, because the growers and land owners were under pressure for their
very survival. And it was more of a landowner issue than a district issue, so
while we at the district work with the group, John Wagner, who was their
executive secretary and with Ken who was their counsel and work with a national
organization, it was basically a grower's issue. The other thing is that Ken
really articulates very well the very different interests throughout, well
throughout California, the interests of the east side with respect to how
acreage limitation was going to be applied were different than the west side.
There was a different interest in the Sac Valley as to what their concerns were.
Similarly, there were different interests throughout the United States. Those
very differences created a whole set of problems in terms of getting, being on
one page and getting legislation which everybody could be satisfied with and I
think that is important to recognize that, those tensions.
>> Glenn Gray: That is a very interesting important -- thread there and I am
wondering if one of you can talk about that a little bit more, because you are
talking about it’s a local issue. It becomes an issue that takes on national
importance. You mentioned Gordon Nelson as sort of being the big man in
Congress, who has helped usher this thing through, but at what point, who was
it. Was it people here getting in touch with people in the South with these Core
Engineer projects, was it you guys, was it growers to growers or was it
Congressional district to Congressional district, how was this whole thing
marshaled?
>> Jim Ganulin: From my perspective and then I will let Ken talk, from my
perspective, it started in Westlands because Westlands was the big, bad district
in which all these alleged violations were occurring. So when our growers formed
California Westside Farmers and retained Ken, they started that process of we
have to get something done. They then started, in my judgment, started getting
people from other areas in the country, because the allegiances helped us in
terms of telling the story and getting support throughout the west and then they

created the farm water coalition. So I would say the Westlands growers started
it and the Westlands growers had a big part in what the farm waterlines did, but
ultimately it was the 17 western states.
>> Ken Manock: Yes, it is important to know that Westlands, because of its size,
after all it was the largest water district in the world. It was the size of
Rhode Island. It was 600,00o acres. It required the largest amount of federal
water of any project in the country. It was the subject of national publicity;
60 minutes for example would often run stories about it. These were reoccurring;
this went over a long period of time. The national press would certainly cover
it. It had the National Land for People in that whole group that opposed
Westlands concentrated on Westlands. They developed all kinds of individual
information and the district was limited in what it could do politically, so the
farmers were constantly being the subject of attack by name in the newspapers,
in the press, outside of Fresno. At any hearings for example, a hearing in ‘74,
at which the farmers were not organized at all, the only testimony I think came
from Westlands. There was no farmer organization of any kind. So it was after
that hearing that they realized they had to do something to take care of
themselves and the manager of Westlands at that time, Ralph Brody of course was
a very able politician, had been very successful in organizing Westlands, doing
the lobbying, getting the water contracts, all of that. He encouraged the
development of Westside Farmers and so it was interesting that the Westside
Farmers themselves selected as their first President, Bill McFarland who did not
live and did not farm in the Westside, except he was a member of a partnership
that did. He was an east side farmer in Clovis area and it was always recognized
in this publicity and all this fight that went on that the east side was the
model of how federal water should be used to develop communities and they would
point to towns like Orange Cove or Sanger, small with small farms, tree fruit,
nice operations and then they would compare that with a town like Huron, where
it was all just farm laborers and they would say that is what is happening on
the west side. This is politically bad. This is a terrible thing that is
happening. They are not, they are violating the law besides, so the result was
for example, at one point when Russell Giffen sold some of his land, he took
back a deed of trust to secure the purchase price. He sold it to a party who had
no more interest in his land whatsoever and the Fresno Bee ran a story attacking
him for not selling his land, because he had a deed of trust and I had to sit
down one day with Lanny Larson, who is not retired and go over with him the
basics of a deed of trust, which everybody signs on their house.
>> Glenn Gray: Yes.
>> Ken Manock: When they borrow money and the Bank of America that loans you
money doesn't own your house anymore than anyone else, they just have a claim if
you don't pay. Well that is all Russ Giffen had, but the Bee had accused him of
violating the law and the example I gave of Russell Giffen just was -- and
whether or not he had actually retained an interest in the land in violation of
the law, which is what the Fresno Bee had implied was typical of the kind of
problems we had. After I reviewed that with Lenny Larson, the Bee did print an
explanation of a deed of trust, but the headline that had been at the top of the
front page when the accusation was made, when the retraction and explanation
that was down at the bottom of the page in smaller headings.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Ken Manock: So that was the political force we were involved in and we had
this regulation going on, in this lawsuit in Washington under which the
Department of the Interior was compelled to issue regulations and so the

Westside Farmers group and we really get all the names of all those initial
people, but certainly Jack Wolf and Jack Stone and Bill McFarlane, they were
kind of the center of it and there was a whole Board of Directors. And they
hired John Winert [assumed spelling] who had been active in the, had a
background in public relations that kind of thing and I was hired as the lawyer.
So basically, we developed this concept that we needed, if we were going to get
anywhere at all, we had to have a national program, if we were going to have
legislation. And of course, Bernie Sisk was encouraging us to do that, along
with and at that time, as I mentioned Tony Coelho, was now his administrative
assistant and Tony having come from the Valley, Los Banos, the background, was
more than anxious to help us, so he developed his full efforts to this, as did
Bernie Sisk. So we all developed this idea that we needed to have kind of a
national face, different from Westlands, because Westlands frankly at that time
had a terrible reputation as being, as in effect violating the law. So Gordon
Nelson had been with Bernie when Tony came into the picture, he had left, so he
was available in Washington as a lobbyist.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: And had a lot of contacts, knew the valley, so the Westside
Farmers along with interest from Arizona, Colorado, Washington and various other
states and Idaho was very big in this as well, they were able to form an
organization, which Bernie Sisk had asked for. As a matter of fact, Bernie
called a session in Phoenix, Arizona of Senators and Congressman and the water
districts and their representatives and the farmers and we had, we met and
decided that there needed to be the Farm Water Alliance is the name that was
assumed and Gordon Nelson was the --to be the Executive Director of that. And so
as a result of that, he then had the funds and the ability to -- and all these
people contributed to the costs of it, none of them were water districts, so
there was no problem about tax money being used for any of the lobbying efforts;
it was all contributions from various parts of the country. And he was
responsible then to organize, make the contacts; develop the support from every
area that had Core of Engineers projects or federal reclamation projects.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and does the Farm Water Alliance still exist or does it have
another name?
>> Ken Manock: No, well the name is gone, it has really been taken over by a
similar organization of Western types, but it doesn't have the Washington focus
that the Farm Water Alliance had. It was designed for the reform of the
Reclamation.
>> Glenn Gray: So Gordon Nelson was sort of the go to guy as a lobbyist to help
usher this through? But ->> Ken Manock: He was really more than a lobbyist, he was also the manager and
the contact person not only for Congress, but for all the people who needed to
be contacted.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and in terms of sitting members of Congress at that time,
who were very active and involved in the passage of the Act, who are some of the
people you would name, people that really stand out in their involvement?
>> Ken Manock: The Senator from Idaho.
>> Glenn Gray: Church?

>> Ken Manock: Yes, Church originally was involved in this, he was active at the
beginning, but then I think as I recall he lost his election during that period.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: But he was one of those who came from a state, which was
benefitted greatly from reclamation law, but he was a liberal who really thought
that there were violations of the law that should be corrected and that it
should be designed for family farmers, but he was friendly and wanted to assist
this to some degree, but not all out. The Senator from Idaho that really helped
us more than any others was a Republican who let's see.
>> Jim Ganulin: McClure.
>> Ken Manock: Yes and Senator McClure, as a matter of fact told me one time, he
said because he wanted to support the reclamation law in his state and the
projects were not under attack. There was no political effort to get them and he
told me one time when we were talking privately, if I could get you guys exempt
in Westlands, I would do it in a minute, because he didn't want to have to deal
with this Westlands problem.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: But typically, he had an administrative assistant who helped him,
I will have to get her name, who he in effect said help these people any way you
can. And when we were working the Senate side, their office was available to us,
as though we were constituents from Idaho. And it was -- it was that kind of
relationship that developed that Gordon developed a lot that made all that
possible. There is just all kinds of stories –
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Ken Manock: -- as we go through the events in Washington.
>> Glenn Gray: It sounds like things really started picking up after 1974, when
that hearing.
>> Jim Ganulin: Late 1970s.
>> Ken Manock: It was the Court order of Judge Barrington Parker that really
forced everyone to face the problem.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you –- and were you increasingly going to Washington then
and making the rounds then as the years picked up between them, late ‘70s and
1982.
>> Ken Manock: It was amazing. Gordon would organize, there would be separate
events that this would occur, because remember it went over a period of almost
six years, which is typical for major legislation of this sort. And so each one
of the states that were very active had individuals who would be tapped to come
back. He would, and of course there were people from Westlands that would go
back. And they each would be assigned to talk to various, various Senate or
House offices, depending on which side we were in and of course, it was a
California issue, so George Miller who represented a district at the mouth of
the Delta, Contra Costa County was totally against us and he was the primary
force on the other side. And even though he and Tony were old friends, this was

one issue that I think they enjoyed fighting for this entire period and his
administrative assistant at that time was.
>> Jim Ganulin: John Lawrence.
>> Ken Manock: John Lawrence, right, who is now the administrative assistant to
the Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was ideologically the leader of the opposition, the
detail person who really knew all the details and of course the National Land
for People and that group were feeding him with all the information possible.
>> Glenn Gray: Right, do you want to talk about some of the other local
Congressman and their efforts, even if they may not have been so important
players. I am talking like Krebs and Pashayan.
>> Ken Manock: They all played a part.
>> Glenn Gray: Yes, so at some point, we will need to cover that with you. Also,
I wanted to get your reaction to the part of this story that is touched on in
the King of California book by Mark Arax, so I don't know if we want to do that
today or if you need a chance to review that and we can do that when we talk to
you individually, but there are some nuggets in there I think that ->> Ken Manock: He particularly has a good analysis of the efforts by the Kings
River interests.
>> Glenn Gray: Yes.
>> Ken Manock: And how they got themselves out from under residency ->> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: -- and also, and of course the story there goes back to 1944,
Roosevelt and Ickies and how that became a project for the Core as opposed to
the Bureau.
>> Glenn Gray: I want to go back just a minute, are we missing anything from I
guess the ‘60s through the early ‘70s. Was there much going on at that time, I
think we may have jumped ahead there and I don't know if there is anything in
our chronology that really talks about that, those years or was that just sort
of a percolation period when things were.
>> Ken Manock: I sort of stopped when I said about the Westside, what happened
before Westlands was formed was the start of the Central Valley Project and that
was promoted in the late ‘30s and then actually was continued to be built during
the war and it was a project, which was supported by the Roosevelt
administration like the works project that was going on at the same time to
support labor, to support jobs, to support the economy, farmers, everybody would
benefit from the Central Valley Project. There is a whole history of how that
and the politics of how that developed and how there was tremendous opposition
by the farmers against the Bureau of Reclamation, frankly because they didn't
want residency and they didn't want acreage limitations, but they wanted the
water. So there was that whole dynamic, finally Congress authorized that during
the ‘40s, so Shasta Dam was built during the ‘40s, Friant Dam was built and
finished in the 50s, the Friant Kern Canal was constructed during that period of
the ‘50s and ‘60s, and so what was happening and why the reclamation law wasn't
as big an issue is because of the breakup of land holdings was not required
until the water actually got there and then you had 10 years before you had to

sell, so that took care of the period of the ‘50s, ‘60s and why it came to a
head in the ‘70s.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, we will probably want you to talk about that in a little
greater detail when we get to that point.
>> Jim Ganulin: A couple things happened in the ‘60s and ‘70s, which weren't
directly related to reclamation law, but were the foundation for some of the
things we were talking about. The contracts between the district and the United
States, which provided for water and drain service contained the provision with
respect to acreage limitation so those contracts were put in place in 1963 and
in 1965 and those contracts were the ones that got us water and started building
the facilities.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: And so in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, as Ken says that is when the
water started being delivered, people started signing recordable contracts and
if we just, we really had no issues at that time, until basically the early
1970s.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, okay, we did talk about the ‘70s some, does one of you want
to address the impact that Secretary Watt had on any of this?
>> Ken Manock: Well he succeeded Andruss. He was an extreme right wing party,
who maybe it is fair to him, maybe it isn't, but this is what we thought at the
time, which is of some interest. He was a right wing evangelical type
politician, who I believe and this was what was said at the time that the earth
really wasn't worth saving; we could use it as much as we wanted to, because
when the rapture came, you wouldn't need the earth. So therefore, you could use
it the way you want, what was ever was best for whoever was using it at the
time.
>> Jim Ganulin: His impact on Westlands in 1979 the district negotiated a
settlement basically with the United States to provide for an increase in water
rates and a new contract for the West Plains area. The deal was almost signed,
almost put to bed. In 1979, when Watt put it into power basically, our Board
said wait a minute, he is conservative, sanctity of contract is really
important, let's go back and let's talk to him about the importance of our
contract and the importance of contract rights. We got back to Washington and we
found that yeah that was important, but it really wasn't as important as getting
the full cost for water and they took that position and that led all the way to
a whole bunch of litigation, which really didn't deal with acreage limitation
but led to litigation.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: Watt was during that period when the legislation was developing,
he didn't issue regulations, because the legislation was going, so he didn't
really have that much impact on the reclamation law as such.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, I
People. It sounds like
or dispersed. Was that
or what is the part of

also want to pick up the thread of National Land for
at some point, they just kind of, I don’t know, went away
in response to the passage of the Reclamation Reform Act
the story there, what happened to them?

>> Ken Manock: Well it is an interesting story because they were so active
during the ‘70s, before the Act was, particularly in the initial phases of the
work in Washington, whenever there were hearings, of which there was hearings
almost, every Congress had a hearing, every two years at least there was a
hearing on these bills, because they wouldn't get passed in one Congress and had
to be reintroduced and depending on whether the Republicans were chairman or the
Democrats were chairman depended on the type of hearing. So if the Democrats
were in charge, of course, George Miller would and Frank Church would run the
hearings in the Senate and the State and you would have National Land for People
as the principal witness.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: And George had, as I say was a marvelous propagandist. And I
don't know if you have seen pictures of him, but he ->> Glenn Gray: I am not sure.
>> Ken Manock: He portrayed himself as a small farmer, not necessarily a small
family farmer, but a small farmer, because his lifestyle was, it was very much
in those days, it was very much the hippie and was very attractive to the
liberals and that side of it, the Haite Ashbury scene and all that, although he
was not part of that, but on the other hand, he was a delightful guy and you
liked to talk to him and carry on a conversation, he would give you antidotes
and he had prepared a series of charts, which described all of these means by
which the law was being evaded by these corporate farmers who were raping the
land.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: Which was his pitch and it would show how the farmers would sell
their land to individuals, but they still controlled it, which of course was
perfectly legal, because they could lease the land back from the 160 acre
owners, but he presented it as a vast right wing conspiracy to use that phrase
and certainly a vast corporate farmer conspiracy. And these charts were very
complicated and over the years, he didn't really make any new ones so as the 80s
rolled around, they were getting a little dog-eared, but they were still part of
his presentation.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: And he was dogged, absolutely and very successful and when we had
the hearing in Washington before Judge Parker, he was there and he was very much
involved, talking to the press about it, making sure his points of view got
across and then after the Act was passed, I don't think he was active at all in
the regulations, because they were being administered by Republicans, and so as
a result, he got into I think food for poor and developing, a lot of good ideas
and things that were appropriate for people who were poor who needed ways to get
fed, and food, grow their own food that kind of thing. I think now he lives up
in the foothills, so we can go in there is a whole history of that as well.
>> Glenn Gray: I read,
>> Ken Manock: Which is almost better to have him do that.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, we should talk to him too.

>> Ken Manock: You should.
>>
he
if
if

Glenn Gray: But we do want to get your perspective on things, because I know
talked something about, he made the claim of there being paper farms and 960,
you want to talk about 960 acres and the significance of that. I don’t know
that’s --

>> Ken Manock: Well that is a whole story in itself. The development of -- that
is in a section that would show the development of the law and depending on how
much detail you want to get into.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: Because each year the Reclamation Reform Act in its various
drafts were introduced, they would all have some variation on whether it was
1260 or 960 or whether it was -- that was the range, but then there were also
ideas about residency, there were ideas about all the issues we had been dealing
with all were dealt with at various times by various proposed laws that either
started in the Senate or the House.
>> Jim Ganulin: And I have a suggestion, you might at some future time take,
excuse me, each one of those topics, trust, leasing, etcetera and go through
them topic by topic, because I think Ken could give you some background –>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- on how that particular. For example, trusts how that got to
be what it was and what the transformation was and what the law is now, as a
separate.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: Separate.
>> Glenn Gray: We can develop a list of those and when we are talking to you.
>> Ken Manock: Yeah, ‘cause each subject was treated a little differently –>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: -- as the law developed.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: It is so typical of major national legislation that affects a
particular industry.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: But affects various parts of the United States, it is a classic
example of how specialized legislation has developed in Washington.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah. Every little Congressional district has their own little
thing that they need to add to the bill.
>> Ken Manock: Exactly.

>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, um ->> Jim Ganulin: I want to go back to one item; a lot of what we talked about has
been the result of defensive action because of what the critics were doing and
the court decision and so on. One of the things which we felt was a problem with
the law and the way it was applied was the Anti Speculation Provision, which
said that if you sold your land, as an excess land owner, if your land was under
recordable contract and you sold your land, you had to sell it at an approved
price and that approved price could not include any accumulated value
attributable to the project. So they appraised land at fair market value,
appraised the value of the project benefit and you could receive the net amount.
But when you sold your land to a land owner and he had to be a non-excess land
owner, he couldn't own more than 160 acres; he could then turn around and sell
it for whatever price. So there was a significant windfall, and the folks at the
district and the land owners at that time said wait a minute that is just not
right and we went on the offensive and tried to work out something with
Congressman Krebs to carry some legislation dealing with that specific issue
that ultimately got built into and was made part of the Reclamation Reform Act,
but there was an area where the district said the law is just not right, there
is this windfall profit and that is not fair.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, getting back, I think another one of the criticism that was
made by National Land for People is that when these large landowners sold these
excess land, a lot of it just went to other members of the family, so in effect,
these people were just hanging on to their land. Wasn’t it, is there a response
to that?
>> Jim Ganulin: Well from my perspective, the district we always felt if a
landowner owned land and wanted to sell it to his children and it was an arm's
length transaction and the children did in fact own the land, the landowner
didn't own it, so what that is something that we all do. We all want to hand our
assets down to our children at the end, so as long as it was at arm's length.
>> Ken Manock: That was a major issue that we had to deal with. That is worth a
subject in itself, because it is true and that is what the National Land for
People objected to was that this land was sold to children who simply leased it
back to the corporation and/or the farmer, whoever it was who was previously
farming it and so then we had to deal with all of that ramification of holdings
and how they held it and how large the farm could be, all of those were then
worked out as part of the ‘82 act.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, um, is there more that we want to touch on about the
development of the act or the act itself right now or do you want to move into
some of the impact that the act has had. I leave that up to you where we go.
>> Ken Manock: Well I think the idea of separating the act by the subject matter
would be a very good way to handle it, because then we can trace that through,
like, like the issue of anti-speculation, we could trace that all the way
through and all the ideas that were applied to it and what it finally turned
into.
>> Glenn Gray: This is a very big,
>> Ken Manock: And it also continued on to the regulations afterward.

>> Glenn Gray: I was just going to say this is a very big act there is a lot in
there, so if we break it down, it would probably be easier than just to kind of
tackle it head on.
>> Ken Manock: And remember that after the act was passed, there was so much
detail about how the bureau was to enforce these compromises that the
regulations took at least a couple of years to develop finally themselves.
>> Glenn Gray: I think it was like 1984 at least according to the chronology.
Well we need to talk the Hammer provision, Peterson, who wants to address that?
Is that, I assume that is an important part that we need to ->> Ken Manock: I will have to think about that a minute, but go ahead.
>> Jim Ganulin: There was a section 203B that said by a certain date, you had to
elect to come under the act as I recall you were subject to certain penalties
and there was a fair amount of concern about the acceptance by our people of
that provision being in the law. And as a matter of fact, Tony Coelho got a fair
amount of pushback from San Luis Water district and Jess Telles on that
particular issue. On the other hand, in order to get this act passed, I think
Tony and McClure, who were the main drivers of the act felt it had to be
included. So they made a policy decision that it had to be included within the
act.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: I think the Peterson case, if I recall, came along and there was
an action that said wait a minute if you, if you, if you impose the Hammer
Clause on us as land owners, you are violating our water service contracts and
impairing our contracts. I think the Court said no that is not an impairment and
in the excise of police power, the Congress can do that.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And I don't mean to be jumping around here too much, but
you did mention several things that were going on in the mid ‘70s among them
being Yellen versus Hickel so at some point, we will want to get -- have that
flushed out a little bit, so one of you may want to think about talking about
that when we get around to determining who is going to talk about what. But what
would you say in terms of the impact, the significance of the Act, we basically
we are at; it has been a quarter of a century since the Act was passed. Where
are we today? Do you, do you want to talk about right here right now and the
impact of the Act or do you want to talk about any specific details that have
happened between now and then?
>> Ken Manock: Well the big picture in my mind is that the result of all this
now is that these reclamation projects around the west are fairly stable and we
have almost complete compliance with the act itself. I am not aware of any
political efforts to make any changes at this point. I am not aware of any
allegations of violations of the Act. If anything, it seems to have worked very
well. And one of the things that, of course, this was an argument we always made
with Congress was that and particularly in Westlands that you started out with I
think it was something like 15 landowners, farmers, not landowners, 15 farmers
and there are now at the latest count, do you have a figure?
>> Jim Ganulin: 6 or 700 of them.
>> Ken Manock: Yes, it is in that area and when you realize that those are 6 or
700 independent businesses, which before were only about 15 –-

>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock -- that is an amazing change. Now some of those are partnerships
with each other and that kind of thing, but the result is that you have, you
started with this idea that the landowners would never sell and that was the
basic reason for all of the political activity and that they would use
subterfuge to get the federal water and would never sell and part of the reason
that Hammer Clause was included for example, a carryover from that idea. But the
overall result is a land reform in which land has been moved from a few owners
down to a point where you now have multiple owners and then as those families
change and grow older, it will become even more broken down.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: And so instead of having land reform as occurred particularly
following the second world war in various countries that were being, went from
colony to private ownership or the communist areas really simply took away the
land forcefully as part of a revolution or as part of a social change or as part
of a political change, this was all accomplished within the framework of the
law.
>> Glenn Gray: So you are saying it has been a successful piece of legislation
in that regard, are you saying that there is no longer this perception out there
that there are these large land holders who are really wealthy that are getting,
benefitting from this government subsidy.
>> Jim Ganulin: The perception is still there, but it raises its head and
becomes an issue in other areas. I mean there still is the perception that
Westlands Water District is a group of corporate agri-business giants, farming,
using subsidized water to farm subsidized crops and have poor drainage water and
kill the fish.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: And that is really a foul and that every time an article is
written and they press Westlands Water District that sentence appears –
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- and so in whatever the district is trying to do, whether it
is solve a water supply program or deal with a drainage problem or deal with
other kinds of legislation, because of water shortages created by the
environmental drought –
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: -- in the Delta, that is always there. It doesn't come up, I
don't think and I agree with Ken in the reclamation law context.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: See before reclamation, before the ‘82 Act, it always came up in
the reclamation, the environmentalists were pushing it and they of course felt
there was overuse of water and all that, but their main effort was to show this
was all illegal and that the government was not enforcing the law and that was
the concept. That has now stopped. What is now the force is the use of water.

That of course will always be a problem as to whether they are using too much,
too little, whether you should use it for farming, whether you should use it for
environmental purposes or for urban uses. All of those things that is the fight
now, as opposed to whether or not reclamation law is a factor and it is because
the ‘82 act worked, it stabilized the whole reclamation law area.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And you don't perceive anything on the horizon then that is
going to necessitate a need to tweak the provisions in that act. It’s stable and
it’s worked and it is going to keep working and there are just some other areas
that aren't really related to the act itself that need to be addressed.
>> Ken Manock: I think that is right.
>> Jim Ganulin: The National Land for People and the critics like them have been
replaced by the environmental organizations who are dealing with the water
issues that Ken mentioned.
>> Glenn Gray: Right, okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: Central Valley Improvement Act is a prime example of just that.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, I believe you brought a list of names of sort of important
players in this, now might be a good time for us to kind of run through those
and maybe identify them or if there are other things that you want to ->> Jim Ganulin: I think the list in the outline, the chronological outline,
which I did for you, is probably a little better list than Ken's list.
>> Ken Manock: Oh it is, that is where we ought to start.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay:
>> Ken Manock: The others I would have to go through and identify that.
>> Glenn Gray: Thanks, oh okay, well let's start at the top then, number one is
Senator Bill Bradley, what role did he play? I mean I think of him as a New
Jersey guy, a basketball player.
>> Ken Manock: Oh yes nice guy, except that he didn't like Westlands and didn't
like the farmers in Westlands and what they were doing, he was, personally he
was okay. And he came to town for a fundraiser at one time and part of all this
effort was to make sure that we were politically active, but you have to be in
order to have any kind of access in Washington and of course, Tony was a master,
Tony Coelho was a master at that sort of thing, so he would help to arrange for
these people to come to town and Bradley for some reason, I could never really
figure it out, got interested in this subject on behalf of the opponents of the
bill and was very active, as long as he was in Congress as a Senator to cause
the negatives to be brought out and someone who had to be dealt with, with
respect to the legislation, but ultimately was not a factor, it was finally
resolved.
>> Glenn Gray: And of course, Coelho worked very hard to help Al Gore be the
democratic nominee, as opposed to Bill Bradley in 2000, so I guess there is a
little bit of,
[ Laughter ]

>> Ken Manock: There could be some carryover.
>> Glenn Gray: We already talked a little bit about Frank Church, is there any
more you want to say about him?
>> Ken Manock: Well he was again a party who was unlike Bradley, he had
reclamation law constituents so he was a person who we could at least talk to,
get to through his constituents in Idaho and but again during this period, he
lost his election and was not a factor in the ultimate bill.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah. Okay we did talk about George Miller and John Lawrence, is
there anything else you would like to say about them now?
>> Ken Manock: Well George was and is the biggest opponent of Westlands on all
issues.
>> Jim Ganulin: And that opposition is not only, was not only on reclamation law
issues, but on water supply issues and drainage issues. You name the issues,
George was a constant opponent.
>> Ken Manock: And the interesting part was that the water that doesn't flow
south flows by his district and I remember particularly with the drainage issue
regardless of the pollution that occurs in the Bay from the industrial sites
along the river in his district and along the estuary of the Sacramento River,
he was nevertheless always opposed to anything that would benefit Westlands
including the drainage, he was a big factor later on against the drainage
program.
>> Glenn Gray: And he has never wavered over the years.
[ laughter ]
>> Ken Manock: Oh no, he is very outspoken, he is personally a very engaging
person, but he also feels very strongly about his views and I think he simply
felt that this was a violation of the law and Westlands were a bunch of crooks.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: And during most of that time, he was chair of the committee with
jurisdiction in the House and therefore a particular problem.
>> Glenn Gray: Right, okay and John Lawrence has sort of carried on that.
>> Jim Ganulin: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Congressman John Rhodes of Arizona.
>> Ken Manock: He was one of those who helped Bernie organize the meeting, which
started the National Land for People, Arizona, excuse me, the ->> Glenn Gray: Farm Water.
>> Ken Manock: Farm Water Alliance, Arizona had major reclamation projects, the
city of Phoenix wouldn't exist without the reclamation projects that supply
water to farming, as well as to the urban uses. So Arizona was always a very
positive supporter of our projects.

>> Glenn Gray: Okay. Now Congressman Sisk, I am sure you could both go on at
great length. We know who he is of course is there anything more you want to say
about him, right now, in context of this particular project.
>> Ken Manock: Well I think that he and Tony, basically Bernie supported the
project and Tony did the detail work and that was, and then of course remember
that he left before the ‘82 act was finished and then Tony did finish up on the
act, became instead of as administrative assistant, as the Congressman.
>> Glenn Gray: So at the time that this, the need for this reform was proposed,
you are saying that Sisk pretty much delegated that to Coelho from the get go or
Sisk was involved in the beginning.
>> Ken Manock: Well he was always involved as the Congressman and he did his job
and he was very, very effective, because he was serving on the Rules Committee
at that time and was considered by there were 9 on the Rules Committee and every
bill in Congress at that time had to go through the Rules Committee, so
literally he had leverage over every bill that would get through Congress. He
had to be party in one way or another, either voting for or against it and
anything the administration wanted, anything that an individual Congressman
wanted, they had to deal with Bernie along with other members of the Rules
Committee obviously and so as a result for those things which he wanted, if
afforded him the opportunity to use that leverage for the benefit of the
district, which he was willing to use and he and Tony, Bernie would have the
votes, would understand it and Tony would make the other contacts generally
speaking, as his administrative assistant. And that is why the state water
project and the federal project were put together in the 19, see that was,
>> Jim Ganulin: 1960.
>> Ken Manock: 1960, it wouldn't have happen but for Bernie and it wouldn't have
happen, but for Pat Brown from the state, they both supported that and of course
it only passed by, the bond issue which required two thirds only passed by less
than one percent and without that, I don't know where California would be today
without that water.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah. Well and just curious in terms of Tony’s being active on
this, where there particular members of Tony's staff that you think we should
mention or maybe we should talk to at some point. I don't know if it would be
Archie Nahigian or some of these other people or was it mostly just Tony that
you worked with directly.
>> Jim Ganulin: Two names that come to my mind are Jean Marie Almond, now Jean
Marie Peltier, P-E-L-T-I-E-R and Kim Schnor [assumed spelling] are two people
that as my recollection came on the scene and worked for Tony.
>> Ken Manock: After he was Congressman.
>> Jim Ganulin: After he was Congressman and worked on probably reclamation law
stuff.
>> Glenn Gray: Because this is pretty early in Coelho's elected career, we were
talking about ->> Ken Manock: His first.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.

>> Ken Manock: His first issue.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: First major issue that he was involved in.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, then we have some overlapping people here, Pashayan.
>> Ken Manock: Well Pashayan became very important when the Republicans had the
majority and he was always a supporter of the program and he would, he did
whatever he could, made his office available to us, would always coordinate
things. He would do really literally anything reasonable that we would ask and
his office was very helpful and his staff were helpful to us and he liked the,
he understood and liked the California Westside Farmer types in his district and
so to the extent he could help he helped.
>> Glenn Gray: And John Krebs?
>> Ken Manock: John had his own attitudes about the Westside farmers and about
farmers generally and about federal water. I don't think he believed anything
was illegal was going on. He never felt that, but he felt from a policy
standpoint that there shouldn't be subsidies. That there shouldn't be any
special treatment, that the farms shouldn't be too large, he just generally did
not like what was being proposed by -- and was never very helpful.
>> Glenn Jones: Do you think that is ultimately what sunk him?
>> Ken Manock: Well what I found out, because John was an old friend of mine and
I could talk to him, we both were about the same age. He was a little older, but
both lawyers in Fresno, so I always enjoyed talking to him, still do. And he was
very firm about his ideas and it turned out that after two terms, he had turned
so many people down that we were one, one group, the farmer group and the water
group was another, was a group. People who were in the timber industry were
another group, there was a whole series of people who had interest in Washington
that he had not cultivated or worked with. If you were opposed to John, then he
didn't have any, if you didn't vote for him, then you disagreed with him, so he
was not going to be helpful to you. Whereas Bernie, if you opposed him would ask
that opposition to contribute money to him in his next campaign and be part of
his campaign.
[ Laughter ]
>> Glenn Gray: Ah ha.
>> Ken Manock: And so John couldn't bring himself to that, even though I like
him personally, he is a really great guy, but his -- he was not a natural San
Joaquin Valley politician.
>> Glenn Gray: Right, yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: Mineral King.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: Mineral King is what really killed him, a major issue in his
district.

>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: Yes, because that meant jobs, development that kind of thing for
Tulare County and the water issue was mild compared to that issue.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. Senator Alan Cranston, I guess his involvement was more
with the Pine Flat, Core of Engineers.
>> Ken Manock: Well yes, it was that too, but he was one of the unsuccessful
reclamation law efforts he was involved in and then of course he was involved in
the final passage. And he had been in opposition, Roy Greenway was from Fresno,
understood the problem. Roy I think had been like student body president out of
Roosevelt. He was of contemporary of mine and also my wife's. He was a personal
friend and so Gordon and I worked on Cranston and Greenaway, because they were
naturally supported the National Land for People and that whole liberal
Democratic Party aspect of it, but through our efforts with him; he eventually
became a supporter of a compromise.
>> Glenn Gray: Well that is a story we definitely want to document that whole
process.
>> Ken Manock: That was very important.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> And Roy played a very important part, but Alan on the floor of the Senate
actually helped to get the legislation passed, the compromise.
>> Glenn Gray: So your personal connection, your personal and local connection
to Roy, I can see paid some dividends.
>> Ken Manock: Was a factor.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Scoop Jackson.
>> Ken Manock: He was there part of the time. He was there in the early parts.
He was such a powerful Senator from the state of Washington that the Washington
water interest worked with him very closely and he was always very helpful.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Dominici [assumed spelling]?
>> Ken Manock: He was from New Mexico. They had a few projects, water projects
along the El Paso, along the Rio Grande River and was always helpful whenever we
needed assistance in that area.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Gordon Nelson you have already talked about, do you want to
say ->> Ken Manock: Yeah Gordon is really, if anybody had the ability and the skill
to put together a coalition, which is absolutely necessary for any national
legislation, Gordon had it. And it was amazing really to me how he was able to
reach out to all the states that were effected and was able to organize, make
contact with and arrange for each state that had a water interest in the bill to
participate, and then those states then, those representatives would then make
contact with the senators and the congressmen. The Senate was very important in
this, because of the number of senators from the west and so and the House was a

much more difficult problem, because most of the House had no relationship with
water deliveries at all, federal water deliveries, but the Senate did. So as a
result, Gordon was very active in all of these state organizations.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, John Widert you mentioned.
>> Ken Manock: He was the local manager of the Westside Farmers.
>> Glen Manock: Okay and I don't think Cam Pauldon [assumed spelling] we have
talked about.
>> Ken Manock: He was a lawyer who died in Bakersfield who had been active in
all of the reclamation activities, because Kern County, southern part of the
valley has a large number of water districts that were subject to reclamation
law.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Bill Baker.
>> Ken Manock: Was a lawyer in Arizona, who was also represented water
districts, was very active in making contact with the Arizona delegation in
Congress.
>> Glenn Gray: Ok, is he still around, do you know?
>> Ken Manock: I think he is, I haven't run across him in quite awhile.
>> Glenn Gray: Now Stan Barnes, he was the engineer for Boswell.
>> Ken Manock: Yes and Boswell because of their interest in the Kings River and
their interest in not being subject to the residency requirements was, he and
Gordon, were the principal contacts with the Core of Engineer projects. As an
engineer, he would make contact with the engineers in the various Corps areas,
the private engineers, the farmer engineers and he developed a network with his
counterparts all over the country, and would participate whenever was necessary
in Washington to help organize that, be a witness, help prepare testimony, just
do all of the things that were necessary and was available, through Boswell was
available any time he was needed.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay
>> Ken Manock: And became a real expert in the various projects around the
state, around the country.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Jim Sorenson.
>> Ken Manock: He was an engineer who represented several of the east side
districts and was a really friendly outgoing guy who again had developed
relationships with all of the congressmen, senators’ offices, had the kind of
personality that the staff and all liked him a lot. He was always very
knowledgeable, again was always available for testimony, was always available to
keep the east side interest. Remember the politics of the east side; they were
favored because they were the small farmers.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: And Westlands and the bigger farmers, so called on the west side,
needed people like him and their contacts to assist in getting this whole

program and they would be directly again affected by residency. They would be
affected by, although at that time, most of the eastside districts had already
gone into compliance with reclamation law. In other words, nobody owned much
more than 160 acres, but they could farm with 160 acres.
>> Jim Ganulin: One of the issues, recall that the multi district rule, west
wide rule, the law said that you could own 160 acres and get water for the 160
acres in each district. And there was concern that on the east side where there
were smaller districts and districts adjacent to one another that a farmer could
farm in three or four districts and have 160 acres in each district. The attack
by the critics and I think probably the proposed rules and regulations was that
no, you could only have one 160 acres west wide, and that was an issue
particularly on the east side and brought them into the coalition if you will
and joined with us in terms of getting the act.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: See what happened is once all of these interpretations, possible
interpretations, all of these fights that the Bureau had been handling prior to
this proposed legislation, all of those issues then had to be dealt with or
could be dealt with in this legislation. So everything was on the table, all the
issues were on the table.
>> Glenn Gray: Alright, Gary Ellsworth.
>> Ken Manock: He was the Republican who worked with Senator ->> Jim Ganulin: McClure.
>> Ken Manock: -- McClure, we don't have McClure on this list and he and Jim
Bernie, actually the two of them were the staff people who when the Republicans
were in charge could get things done for us and were very supportive, but were
on the outside when the Democrats were in charge, they were then the loyal
opposition that would help us develop legislation, develop strategy, make our
contacts with the majority staff. So they were fortunately both majority and
minority staff during this time, which was critical to the development of the
law in Senate. They helped write the law actually, because they were in that
position.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, why don't you say something about Senator McClure now? I
mean you have earlier, but we want to get him down as well.
>> Ken Manock: Yes, McClure was extremely vital and these two worked for him,
because he was subcommittee chairman and so he was the one that actually had to
put the bill together and deal with the other senators and make sure that it
came out. He had to make, these guys would assist him through the staff level to
work out the details and then McClure would have to be the person who dealt with
the Senators to make sure it was on the Senate to Senate level, because all
these things are done at the staff level and they are also done at the
senatorial personal level.
>> Glenn Gray: So at the Senate level, he was the most important player?
>> Ken Manock: Yes, at the end, right.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and Jim Bernie, you mentioned.

>> Ken Manock: He was a staff person with Gary Ellsworth.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, okay. Alright, so Dave Houston?
>> Ken Manock He would have been the, well he came in more, he was more
important in the rules and regulations.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: After the Reclamation Reform Act, he was not a player on the act,
because frankly the Department of Interior never played much of a role in
drafting the legislation.
>> Glenn Gray: He was with the Interior.
>> Jim Ganulin: Dave Houston was the regional director and Dave Lingren [assumed
spelling] was the regional solicitor of the Department of the Interior and they
played an active role, as Ken says in the drafting of the rules and regulations
and very constructive in their approach to those rules and regulations,
understood some, all the issues that we were dealing with, weren't pushovers,
but were constructive in trying to solve issues and get rules and regulations
that comported with the law and that we could all live with, both the Bureau and
our growers.
>> Ken Manock: And he was an assistant to Bob Broadbent before he was regional
director, so he was very critical in the regulations along with Bob. Bob was
really the most involved, as he was the assistant, see he would be the Assistant
Secretary.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: He was the highest ranking member of the administration who took
a really personal interest in making sure that the rules and regulations were
appropriate –>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: -- and was very fair about it. He was tough to deal with from our
standpoint.
>> Just out of curiosity were any of these guys from the west?
>> Ken Manock: Yeah, Bob Broadbent was from Las Vegas.
>> Glenn Gray: Ah, okay.
>> Ken Manock: And had been a county supervisor who had been responsible for the
development of the Las Vegas Airport –>> Glenn Gray: Ah.
>> Ken Manock: -- when it became, you know from when it became just a local –>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: -- airport or regional airport.

>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Phil Dough?
>> Jim Ganulin: Phil Dough, he worked for the Department of Interior, Bureau of
Reclamation perhaps and he was probably directly in charge of the rules and
regulations, the drafting and he was not particularly constructive. He had his
own way of doing things and even though we could at a policy level deal with
Broadbent and Houseden and reach some general agreement with respect to what a
rule and regulation ought to be on a particular issue, he fought us all the
time.
>> Ken Manock: Wasn't he a carryover from the Andruss days?
>> Jim Ganulin: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: Oh okay that is an interesting chunk of the story that we have
only just briefly touched on today, but want to go into more detail about the
rules and regs.
>> Ken Manock: Yes that was an important detail.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Jess Telles.
>> Ken Manock: He was a very colorful, local farmer on the west side in the
cantaloupe business. His brother was also a big operator on the west side and he
was also a lawyer who took a real personal interest in all of the developments.
He usually came with us to Washington, had a lot of contacts, was always
helpful, very positive, a lot of fun to work with and.
>> Glenn Gray: He is no longer around?
>> Ken Manock: He died.
>> Jim Ganulin: He’s gone. He was counsel for the San Luis Water District and I
mentioned 203B of the Reclamation Reform Act, I was not there, but they tell me
the confrontation between Tony Coelho and Jess Telles over 203B was something
to, that you wanted to be at.
[ Laughing ]
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: He was very, very unhappy with Tony.
>> Ken Manock: He would be a supporter and ->> Jim Ganulin: That’s right with respect to that particular ->> Glenn Gray: I want to get that story for sure. Okay, Ken Cooney [assumed
spelling].
>> Ken Manock: He is a lawyer in Tulare, represented most of the east side
districts, was helpful because again he brought in the influence, he and Bob
Monck both represented eastside districts, Tulare County, I think I don't know
if he was in Kern, I think mostly Tulare County districts. So he was very
helpful with respect to making sure that those districts also supported.

>> Jim Ganulin I want to tell a little story about Ken Cooney and Bob Monck
[assumed spelling].
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: When we were faced with what we thought were Draconian proposed
rules and regulations by the Andruss regime in the ‘70s, we had a meeting in Los
Angles at a very large law firm called Melvy and Meyers in Los Angeles and we
had representatives of districts and landowners from five different areas:
Westlands, the east side, Colorado, Kern County and Imperial. And we had all
kinds of arguments as to where the suit should be filed, there were some that
said well the appellate decisions in the case in Washington DC, in the Court in
Washington DC are much more favorable and so on and Ken Cooney and Bob Monck
said well we represent the east side and we are not going to tell our
constituents that we are filing a suit in Washington DC. We are filing in
Fresno.
>> Ken Manock: They didn't care what the rest of us were doing.
>> Jim Ganulin: They didn't care, that is where they were going to file.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: And the attorney for Imperial who was with a large law firm, of
Melvy and Meyers said well I can understand that, we all have to be together, so
that is where we will file.
>> Ken Manock: And it couldn't have worked out better, because the result of
that lawsuit that it went before a local judge from Chowchilla in a water
district that gets water from the San Joaquin River and he heard the arguments
and understood that the environmental laws applied. There should have been an
environmental report. There wasn't, to issue the regulations, heard the
arguments back and forth and literally ruled from the bench, which judges very
rarely do and that was that.
[ Laughs ]
>> Ken Manock: It then went on to an appeal and it was the best possible judge
we could have had.
>> Glenn Gray: Huh, wow.
>> Ken Manock: Judge Crocker, Byron Crocker.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: Who ought to be on this list.
>> Glenn Gray: Anything else you want to say about him now.
>> Ken Manock: Well that was his contribution and at that point, it could have
been more dramatic. We will have to look back at those regulations, but they
were pretty bad. They of course required residency. They also -- no leasing and
they were at least Draconian would be a word to use for farmers, but it applied
to and the National Land For People of course felt it was a complete victory and
it was and although they wanted 40 acres, but as it turned out, the irony of
course was that the environmental laws were used against them, just as they had

used the environmental laws against the others. Because always the environmental
groups were always supporting National Land for People, so that was one of those
ironies we all like to enjoy.
[ Laughter ]
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, we are on to Jean Marie Almond.
>> Ken Manock: Jean Marie, she was a valley girl, who from Fresno actually,
Fresno State who started with Tony and of course I worked very closely with her
and she is now Jean Marie Peltier and she was Tony's assistant, just as he had
been Bernie's assistant and became very knowledgeable about reclamation law and
did a lot of the work that we needed done when you are lobbying back there.
>> Glenn Grey: Alright and same thing with Kim?
>> Ken Manock: Yes, Kim replaced her; she is also a valley girl. She was from up
in the Chowchilla area and she was again became a real expert in the project and
was very helpful and eventually went to the Department of the Interior and then
I think retired with her family, had children.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and then Bren Forhan [assumed spelling]?
>> Ken Manock: Same thing, she was also in Tony's office and she I think during
her period, things were not quite as active, but she assisted during that
period. She was there when Tony quit, so she was the last of that group.
>> Glenn Gray: Alright, John Leshie [assumed spelling]?
>> Ken Manock: He was one of the intellectual lawyers on the other side all the
way through, he worked for the Department of the Interior, but before that he
had been one of the leading environmental lawyers in California, was fully
familiar with the reclamation law problems and with Westlands, but from an
environmental standpoint, and of course fully embraced the thoughts and ideas of
the National Land for People and of course he was appointed under Andruss as the
solicitor.
>> Jim Ganulin: He was the assistant solicitor in charge of this project, so we
knew when he was appointed that we were going to have trouble with Secretary
Andruss.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, Joe Meredith?
>> Ken Manock: Joe was one of the more funny characters in the local situation.
He was a stockbroker, but a real amateur wanted to be professional politician
fundraiser, so whether he actually raised a lot of money, he certainly made
people think he was raising money and he attached himself to Tony's interests
and he would contact us of course to make sure that he was being recognized and
he accompanied us on some of the trips to Washington, the classic of which of
course was when Tony in his first year decided to raise money and told us that
we were going to have, I think then it was like 50,000 dollars, it is like
nothing now and at any rate that was a huge amount of money at the time and Joe
was part of that and to this day, I don't know how much he raised independently,
but I know that collectively we raised quite a bit out here and enough to be
invited to the celebration of the Democratic Party in Washington DC after they
had won the election. And the speaker of course was from Boston.

>> Glenn Gray: O'Neill.
>> Ken Manock: Tip O'Neill and he invited, because it turned out that Tony had
raised the most money outside of the Chairman of the Ways and Means committee
which of course always raises the most money, because they deal with taxes. So
we were invited, along with Joe and I think John Harris and his wife and those
of us who had been involved in raising the most money invited into the speaker's
chambers and of course that was a great honor for a first term Congressman, just
elected, who had raised more money than anybody else in Congress, but one. And
so Tip and Bernie had really not gotten along that well, they were kind of
competitors and there is probably a lot of good stories about that, but it
wasn't exactly the same.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah well Tony and Tip had their own difficult relationship as
well, so.
>> Ken Manock: That is right, but at this point, it was at the top of their
relationship, because he was the bright, young first term Congressman who had
raised a lot of money, much like Lyndon Johnson had when he went back, who also
raised money because of reclamation projects in Texas.
>> Glenn Gray: Very interesting.
>> Ken Manock: So he of course welcomed us in and I remember his first comment
after we had the pleasantries was what is wrong out there, you got a drought or
something?
[ Laughter ]
>> Ken Manock: He thought it was just a short term deal, because it hadn't
rained that year, but that is as far as he ever got in reclamation law I am
sure.
>> Glenn Gray: One of the names on the list, Corny Gallagher.
>> Ken Manock: Yes that is there mainly because of the interest of the banks.
Corny was assigned by the Bank of America to oversee this project from the
Bank's standpoint, because the bank had a lot of loans out on reclamation land
and they wanted to make sure that they were protected, particularly as it
related to foreclosures, so that if they foreclose they wouldn't be limited by
the 160 acre limitation or whatever limitation was imposed. So he was the link
to the banking industry.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah okay, this is very helpful for me to have these names,
because it really helps to flush things out.
>> Ken Manock: There is some that we will add to that as well.
>> Glenn Gray: One thing that occurs to me though and maybe this is natural,
because you are on the winning side if you will of this effort, but one thing
that occurs to me is we don't really have a lot of names for the opposition. I
mean we have got, you just mentioned Leshie and obviously Andruss, National Land
for People, George Miller, there may have been another name or two in there, but
I guess that is only natural, because you would be dealing with, you have got
your circle of people you are dealing with and you’re going up against some of
these other folks, so you are just going to be going up against, the leaders of
that. To what extent, to what extent did you ever really sit down and talk maybe

with, you mentioned like George Ballis is somebody you could sit down and talk
with, but to what extent did you have dialogues with some of these people that
were opposed, just to see if you could come to some kind of consensus on
anything.
>> Ken Manock: No, there was no real dialogue, because George was friendly and
outgoing and, but never on a confidential basis that I was aware of with myself
or anyone else. The lawyer that represented National Land for People in the case
was Mary Louise Frampton and she was always suspicious that we were simply
representing the bad guys and there was absolutely no compromise from their
standpoint in terms of the litigation, even when we had the settlement
conference in Washington with the Court of Appeals for the federal district and
Congress was then actively involved in the legislation, they wanted, they really
didn't want that case to be delayed. Although, the Court was pretty well
indicated that there was no reason for them to proceed with briefing and
argument, if Congress was going to solve the problem, but at that time, we were
far enough along so it looked like they would. But there was never any real
compromise from their side.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, because in talking to Tony and this isn't talking
specifically about your issue here today, but in talking with other issues, he
walked us through some situations where you know they would go directly to a
member of Congress, a representative or a Senator and they would lobby them hard
to get them to change their vote on this or that. So was there any of that going
on, were you sort of brought in to convince some of these propel to get their
votes?
>> Ken Manock: Yes that was done by, of course individually, my job when I was
working back there was to explain the detail of the language, but the farmers
that came back and were organized through either the California Westside Farmers
or through Gordon and his crew all were assigned specific Senators to talk to or
their staff, usually you wouldn't get to see a Senator from another state, but
you would always see their staff. And I remember one session that we had with
Ted Kennedy's staff in which they were very suspicious and they were, I think
Bill Coight and I and his wife met with them and Bill and his wife are very
friendly, sympathetic type people and they were friendly to us in a way, but it
was distant.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: Because they had been lobbied by the National Land for People
types and the others.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: George and his group and we really ought to get the names of all
of that group that he used, there were maybe 10 people or so that would actually
follow him around and be part of their efforts to lobby on the other side. And
most of the liberal democrats were, they were open arms to them. They were glad
to talk to them, because they could use that as a liberal cause that didn't
affect their state.
>> Glenn Gray: Right, okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: It was not an issue Glenn where you could sit down with the
other side if you will, even if you were able to do it, even if they wanted to
do a deal, you still had to go to Congress. So the game was at the Congressional

level and there was some effort to meet with opposing Congressman and their
staffs and try to convince them, but basically that responsibility wound up
being that of the Senator or the Congressman.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Jim Ganulin: And so they were our spokespeople.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Ken Manock: That is the way it works, once you get at the level of Congress,
any compromise has to be worked out at the Congressional level and with the
staff and the individuals, the parties even if they came to an agreement, you
would have to sell that agreement to the staff, and then to the Congressman. So
it wasn't like even the lawsuit that we had even involved the government and the
rules and regulations, it didn't involve anything that we could agree on.
>> Glenn Gray: Right. Well is there anything else in our chronology that we
haven't touched on today or there is something else that maybe isn't in there
that occurs to you, as you are sitting here today that we should touch on.
>> Ken Manock: Well of course, we have got the whole issue of rules and
regulations, which is an entirely separate effort that was, as it turned out was
much more complicated and much more contentious I think than we thought at the
beginning.
>> Glenn Gray: Well how many years does that cover approximately?
>> Ken Manock: A couple years.
>> Jim Ganulin: The Hammer Clause went into effect in 1984, April 1, 1984, so it
was almost a year and a half two years.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: And the rules and regulations had to be done by then.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. Yeah that is definitely something we can go into, anything
else or do you feel like we have sort of covered the basics from the beginning
to the end there and, and we have got enough, we have talked about them enough
that we can go back and now that ->> Ken Manock: I think we have got the outline.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, okay.
>> Ken Manock: We have definitely got the outline.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: Because for example, there would be if you wanted to we could go
through the key lawsuits that were filed, some of the background –>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: -- on those, by which the Supreme Court got involved.

>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Ken Manock: For example, the Ivanhoe case was very critical, because as the
districts began to enter into contracts for the delivery of water, the whole
question of whether the 160 acre limitation applied, whether a person could be
compelled to sell his land in order to get a federal benefit was a
constitutional issue. It was the equivalent of a taking, and so that case
eventually got to the Supreme Court. Another fascinating area is the history of
the San Joaquin River, particularly from a local standpoint and how that was,
that took years to get through the Courts and was finally resolved by the US
Supreme Court and created water rights along the San Joaquin River are unique
but, but reclamation law doesn't apply to, which is another fascinating little
twist.
>> Jim Ganulin: You are going to have to decide what you want this thing to look
like.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Jim Ganulin: Because we have talked about a lot of things that are not really
Reclamation Reform Act, on the other hand, how do you separate them.
>> Glenn Gray: Yes, it is still helpful as a background.
>> Ken Manock: Not only that, but you see provisions of that act are the result
of all the things we have been talking about –>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Ken Manock: -- because it for the first time after 1902, literally dealt with
all the issues that had developed for over 80 years.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Ken Manock: 70 years by that time.
>> Glenn Gray: Well this certainly has been helpful for me today and I think
that I kind of, I have a better sense now of what we will be talking about when
we meet with you one on one and in terms of divvying up the chunks of the story,
I am going to go based on the responses that you gave, although there may be
certain parts of the story that you really want to talk about, so if there is
anything that really jumps out and it is screaming at you like that is mine,
obviously you can both talk about some of the same things that is not going to
be a problem, because it is good to get different perspectives on that, but you
know, I think for our next step, I am going to have to sit down and look through
these notes and flush out the outline a little more with some of the names and
details you have provided and I will say okay it looks like this chunk over here
is something that Jim can talk about and this part over here is sort of Ken's
story and we can kind of go back and forth on that, maybe over email or however
you want to do it, but that is kind of what I am getting out of this so far
today, so.
>> Ken Manock: Well you know and so much of it, as I think about this, there was
almost always a district perspective and a Westside Farmers perspective and so
to me at least it has been helpful to have Jim here to talk at the same time.
That maybe a more efficient way to do it, I would not object to having the whole
thing done jointly if you want to, it is up to you.

>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, and ->> Jim Ganulin: Well my thought is and we talked about this earlier, it seems
one of your next focuses might be the act.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jim Ganulin: And I would say not only the act, but maybe the rules and
regulations.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Jim Ganulin: In terms of the particular subjects, because I think there is a
lot of, there might be some interest in how the trust provision got to be what
it is.
>> Ken Manock: And then how it was dealt with in the statute –>> Jim Ganulin: Yeah, right.
>> Ken Manock: -- and then how it was dealt with in the regulations.
>> Jim Ganulin: Right and there are six or eight different topics that I have
listed in the outline that I did, which are subjects of the Reclamation Reform
Act.
>> Ken Manock: And if you divide them up by subjects, then the logical way to do
it is to give the history of that subject, why it was important, how it was
dealt with, the alternatives that were thought about in Congress and then how we
dealt with it in the rules and regulations and Jim and I were both involved in
the rules and regulations. Jim was probably more involved there than he was in
the legislation, where I was involved in the legislation.
>> Glenn Gray: Right.
>> Ken Manock: So that is how I think these things fit together.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Ken Manock: So it may be that when we discuss that particular subject, it
would be well to have us both because it seems to me that a researcher would be
more interested in one subject at a time rather than jumping from one to the
other.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, but just making clear that we are still okay with the idea
of talking to you both, sort of like what we did today in trying to go over
chronologically how things happened and you can fill in some background and
detail, especially with regards to the act, you can talk about your involvement
as well and then maybe once we get to the point, at which we are talking about
the Act itself, we can bring you both together and that is where we break it
down topically, where you will then go back chronologically for each of the
little topics, but at that point, I understand what you are saying about a
researcher approaching it by a topic, but somebody else who is interested in
just the whole chronology of it will then already have sort of the basic
background down and then you can go into it.

>> Ken Manock: Yes, because see the political story is really quite different
from the detail of the act and the regulations.
>> Glenn Gray: Right, right and then you have that all bolstered by the
historical background, so it is a very multi-faceted story and it is just a
matter of how do we capture all the different angles of it.
>> Jim Ganulin: My recommendation would be you put together how you want to do
it and let us see it and if we disagree, either or both of us will tell you.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, definitely.
>> Jim Ganulin: And that way we will have the benefit of your discipline and you
will have the benefit of our reacting to that.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, that sounds good, is there anything else either of you
would like to add to this discussion today?
>> Ken Manock: Oh well we can talk for hours more.
[ Laughing ]
>> Glenn Gray: Well we will talk for hours more.
>> Ken Manock: So it is whenever you want to cut it off.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, if there is nothing else, we can cut for today.
==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====

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