Stan Barnes interview, part 1
Item
Title
eng
Stan Barnes interview, part 1
Description
eng
Former chief hydrological engineer for the Boswell Corporation. Talked about developing their water systems and farming the Tulare Lake Basin.
Creator
eng
Barnes, Stan
eng
Gray, Glenn
Relation
eng
Water Archive Oral Histories
Coverage
eng
Stan Barnes residence
Date
eng
1/7/2009
Format
eng
Microsoft Word 2003 document, 11 pages
Identifier
eng
SCMS_waoh_00009
extracted text
>> Glenn Gray: My name is Glenn Gray, and I'm with the Henry Madden Library,
California State University, Fresno. Today is January 7, 2009. And we are in
Visalia at the home of Mr. Stan Barnes whom we're going to be interviewing
today. So I'd like to ask you where and when were you born?
>> Stan Barnes: In Pasadena, California and February 9, 1926.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And can you describe a little bit, your family, where they
came from, your family background and your growing up in the state?
>> Stan Barnes: My parents were both native Californians, and educated in
California. And we -- I spent my early years in southern California. But from
kindergarten on I was in northern California, and my dad worked in San Francisco
and commuted by rail from Burlingame and later from Palo Alto to San Francisco
for his entire remaining career. Nifty guy, nifty human being.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did you go to school?
>> Stan Barnes: First three years in Burlingame interesting about that, at
kindergarten age we lived about a half-mile from the school. I think my mother
took me the first day. After that I walked. And everybody else walked and nobody
thought anything about it. Just kind of what you do. And did that for the first
three years and then we moved on down to Palo Alto, where I spent the rest of my
youth growing up. Went to Palo Alto schools and Paly High and so forth and so
on. Had a wonderful time in -- as a youngster. Had a lot of freedom too. We were
-- go any place you wanted, you could do anything you wanted. We'd take bicycles
and go out behind Stanford and just wander the hills and maybe shoot a squirrel
or two. And it was -- but every day after school we played pick-up sports and so
forth. And I -- one of my teammates in those years at Paly High was still my
wonderful friend 60 years later. So, kind of – it was a wonderful place to grow
up.
>> Glenn Gray: And you went on to Stanford, then, I believe?
>> Stan Barnes: Undergraduate to Cal Tech, and I graduated from there in 1949
after the war. And then I went to Stanford for two years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And what made -- what made you decide to study engineering,
become an engineer?
>> Stan Barnes: I liked the reality of it. Dealing, you know, not dealing just
with ideas, you're dealing with applied ideas. And it was more fun to watch
things happen than to just dream about something that might happen.
>> Glenn Gray: And of course at this time there was the various water projects
going on, Central Valley Project and the state water projects. When did you
become interested in water as a specific engineering project?
>> Stan Barnes: In grad school, in civil engineering, you're either going to be
a structural engineer or you're going to be a something else. And the something
else looked to me like it was some fun avenues, maybe with water. And so I
specialized in water in grad school. And when I got out I didn't have any
trouble finding a job in water.
>> Glenn Gray: And what was -- what was your first job, then?
>> Stan Barnes: Work for the Hetch Hetchy Water Supply of the City and County of
San Francisco. They had a dam they were building on the Tuolumne River, Cherry
Valley Dam. And they wanted to do a hydraulic model study of the spillway and
they were looking for somebody to do it. And so the team was my Stanford
professor and me. I was the kid who was kind of working on the model up on the
hill. And Dr. Bernard would come up and keep us going on the straight and
narrow. But then that job was finished in a year and I went to work for Bechtel
Corporation.
>> Glenn Gray: And where is that based?
>> Stan Barnes: All over the place, but my initial job was out of LA area,
Vernon, and I worked there for a couple of years and -- three or four I guess.
And then was transferred to San Francisco.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And how long in total did you work for them?
>> Stan Barnes: Eight years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And did you have -- was there some connection to the Miller
and Lux operation through them?
>> Stan Barnes: Glenn, that came about -- Miller and Lux had some water rights
on the Kern River. And they were different from the surrounding district, the
Buena Vista Water Storage District. Theirs are involving Buena Vista Lake. And
they wanted to -- wanted to negotiate a position on Kern River that was separate
and distinct from the district and such. And they -- they wanted to -- from
Bechtel's standpoint it was a very small job. And it just required one guy to do
most of the coordination, and that was I. And we had monthly meetings in the big
town of Button Willow. And we would -- I would meet the Miller and Lux people
the evening before and we'd chat over dinner and whatever else in the -- during
that time the J. G. Boswell Company became a tenant, farming Buena Vista Lake
lands for Miller and Lux. I met some of the Boswell people in 1958. They gave me
an offer I couldn't refuse. So I came down here to Corcoran, spent 25 years with
the Boswell Company, been in the valley ever since.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe the situation, the water situation here in the
valley, specifically the Tulare Lake and the Boswell operation. What was the
situation like when you came?
>> Stan Barnes: I arrived in February, 1959. By that time Pine Flat Dam was
completed, in 1954, actually. And Isabella dam was completed in '54 [Inaudible]
also. And there still was no regulated water supply from Kaweah River or Tule
River both of which were later regulated by Corcoran area projects. And Boswell
Company had water rights, had small water right yet undefined on the Tulare
River and the Kern River. But a pretty substantial water right on the Kings
River through half a dozen different entities. Public districts and mutual water
companies. They didn't own anything 100%; they owned a substantial percentage of
a half a dozen of these entities. So I was trying to get acquainted with some of
those things and fit into the -- there was also I should add that the dam was
completed, there were no storage agreements among the water users. There was
also no permanent agreement between the water users of the group and the United
States government. The facilities had been constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and it was -- contracts were to be negotiated with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation after quite a bit of wrangling at the determination of the
Department of the Interior. And so we were involved in those issues for the next
20 years.
>> Glenn Gray: And what -- how would you describe some of the projects that you
worked on when you were working for Boswell and how were they different from
some of the projects worked on in your previous jobs?
>> Stan Barnes: We were not building anything, we were using -- taking the
benefits for these projects, some of which were then completed, and some of
which were just a dream in somebody's eye. Not even a serious dream. There was
the -- California State Water Project had not yet been completed. It was
delivering water in the 1960s to the -- the valley and southern California. And
we and our neighbors were players in wanting to use the facilities. It was a fun
-- fun issue.
>> Glenn Gray: How would you describe the level of cooperation between these
various entities? Because you're talking about land owners, you're talking about
government entities who are, you know, trying to come to some sort of agreement.
What was that whole process like there in the early years when you first
arrived?
>> Stan Barnes: I think the best thing you could say about the Kings River Water
Association one of my senior advisors that I respected a lot was Sydney Harding.
He said when it's possible to avoid making a decision Kings River Water
Association will do so. The -- the problem was getting everybody to pull in the
same direction. The upstream units had what they called "highority" which is
effective priority. And they had -- it was -- downstream users were in a
position where you were continually pushed to your limit of your patience and
something else would do -- make something come about. Those -- the -- in 1963
after a lot of work by a lot of people, there finally was an agreement among the
Kings River Water Association member units, 28 of them. Large ones and small
ones. Some large in area with a -- farther down stream you were, you had a
higher flow water right, which meant you didn't get any water when the flow was
low, and got more than you wanted in flood times. So those things all had to be
worked into this package of agreements, though ultimately it was put together.
Fun process.
>> Glenn Gray: And how would you describe the role that you played in -- in
helping this all come about?
>> Stan Barnes: Every one of the 28 member units up and down the river needed a
lawyer and an engineer or -- and a strong director, president of the board or
whoever. And the more effective the three of them were, the more effective the
-- they could deal with the issues. And we had -- we were enough involved that
we had legal representation and we made sense out of the engineering situation,
the factual situation. And we had a common sense director, president of the
board of the biggest one. And persistence, I guess, is the main thing. You'd
hang in there. There would be issues come up, there would be some of the
attorneys and some of the engineers and directors would find a difficulty for
any solution that was one of the maximum requirements of an astute attorney is
he must be able to find a difficulty for every solution. And they -- ultimately,
everybody had so much to gain by having the thing worked out that it overcame
these prejudices, and what -- what our group of people did was to focus on maybe
one of the issues would include half a dozen elements. Seepage, river seepage,
how to handle the high flows. The basic water rights under a natural stream were
all agreed to in 1927 and again later in 1949. But none of it applied to water
storage. Storage was the name of the game in -- after the dams were built. So it
was a fun issue. --
>> Glenn Gray: Is there any way that you can describe what a typical day for you
would have been like back in those years.
>> Stan Barnes: It's interesting. We had -- in addition to having sort of a
chaotic situation on all these rivers, especially the King, in terms of
importance, especially the Kings. But you also had to deliver water to the farm.
And the water was either from wells or from the natural flow of the river or
from stored water under some kind of a permissive agreement. So with -- I think
the key to Boswell Company's success and ultimately the whole group, they would
have operational people that would be very effective, willing to work long
hours, drive long miles, and keep track of the water. See that somebody else
doesn't steal your water, while you take two or three days to get down from Pine
Flat to Tulare Lake and in that time a lot of people along the way, and we used
to say they dip their beak and take a little of the water along the way. But
anyway, it was -- we had an older fellow about my dad's age when I went down
there. And he was very, very good. Not afraid of work and he was smart. And he
had a younger fellow working under him who was named Glen Jorgensen [Assumed
spelling]. He was -- he loved work. He loved working with people. And if it was
something that was going to get the water to the land, he could do that under
any circumstances. He had a -- a -- he would tease the foreman, the farming
foreman, and one of his gags I thought was pretty good was he'd -- he'd want to
meet with the guy and he'd -- he'd tell him he wanted to meet with him. And
[Inaudible] meet at this -- by this gin. An so they [Inaudible] certain time,
and they'd get there, Glen had a watermelon. And he said Clarence, I want to
share my watermelon with you. And what had happened was Clarence had a little
home up along the [Inaudible] canal, along -- between Pine Flat and the lake. We
had a little 80-acre parcel there, and he had some watermelons growing on it.
And Glen asked his wife if he might have a [Inaudible] so he took this
watermelon, went down there, and Clarence said, oh Glen, it's wonderful of you
to share your watermelon with me, he said. This is really terrific. He said you
know, I've got some up on my place there, they have the same kinds of seeds as
this one does. Why, you son of a bitch, he said. But he'd -- he'd build working
relationships out of these kinds of situations. And they were always pulling gag
on somebody or other. But anyway, Glen and I could see the importance of the
other guy's job. And he was not only competent, he was also essential from my
standpoint. Because the more he could do with his team of operational guys, why,
the more freedom that gave me to work on some of these broader issues of
becoming a contractor for the state project water or working out kinks for water
storage agreements, or working out agreements with the United States. And so we
were -- we were very, very fond team for 25 years.
>> Glenn Gray: About how many people were working for Boswell in those years?
>> Stan Barnes: Totally, I can't tell you. But we probably had a couple of
hundred salaries employees and a similar number of hourly employees. Maybe a few
more hourly.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were your impressions of Boswell, personally, in the
interactions that had with them.
>> Stan Barnes:[Inaudible] personally?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, he was -- he was a monumental character. He was -- he -- if
you were in trouble and he knew it, he'd turn the world upside down to help you
out. And he'd do anything for you. And if he thought you were getting a little
kind of uppity, kind of pedal a canoe all by yourself, he'd find out somebody to
pull your pedal. See? So you couldn't pedal so much. My own take on him was that
I owe my success of 25 years with the company and never getting fired to the
fact that I never agreed to work in Los Angeles next door to Jim Boswell. I just
didn't have the personality to weather it. I watched kind of a trail of corpses
drift in and out of the LA office, and I decided it was much better to me to
work where I felt I was useful.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, can you talk about some of the -- what you would consider
to be the most significant issues or events related to water in this area where
you worked over the course of the 25 years? What are the things that stand out
in your mind?
>> Stan Barnes: Probably, the first thing that we -- it was so obvious that we - how can you operate a river without any agreements on how you're going to
operate it. No agreements with anybody. No agreements with the operator or the
owner of the dam, no agreements with your neighboring districts, no agreements
with anybody. So we worked pretty hard in defining what was not known and making
kind of parenthetical engineering studies, something you could do on the back of
an envelope, or at least over a weekend. And so we have on the Kings River as an
example, we'd have a meeting among the engineering representatives of the river.
And they would include from the upper river and the middle river and the lower
river, and there would eventually turn out to be half a dozen or eight people
that would be willing to put in the time and effort to be a player in developing
some of these agreements. And they also had to have a client willing to pay for
it. We got pretty well acquainted, and I remember one incident, we were quite a
ways apart on having an agreement up and down the river as to how to operate
storage. And so we –- the first thing we did was define the issues. Like, river
seepage. How many were the losses from Point A to Point B to Point C, and what
are you going to do with it -- what happens to the water that someone's entitled
to take under the old schedule, natural flow schedule. How much of that can they
store and how much -- what you used to not be able to divert, how much of that
in later years would you be required to let pass so that the down stream users
who historically used the excess could also share in it. And so the people that
were up stream said we can take all we can use and store whatever we want. And
we'd say, just a minute here, let's look at what the equities are. Anyway, we'd
-- we'd divide these issues. We'd articulate what they were. And then we'd agree
that, well, we should be able to solve one, two, and three if we just have -we'll divide up whom ever -- somebody would volunteer to prepare a paragraph on
how you do that. And then you'd finally run out of people who were willing to
provide paragraphs that would do anything except satisfy their client. So we'd - but however, by talking about it and working about it, and then agreeing, say
we –- out of these eight or ten issues -- we'd have three or four solved almost
immediately. We'd get them articulated in engineering language. All have to be
doctored up for the attorneys, of course. Then we'd review those same things
with the boards of directors of at least the key people on the boards. And make
sure you're -- everybody's comfortable with what you're doing. And then we'd
tackle some of the more complicated issues, and less certain. And we'd -- over a
period of a year-and-a-half or two, we'd -- were able to put together a report
on all of the issues. And the -- we had an agreement among the engineers on the
physical plan, but some of the up stream engineers couldn't get approval of
their attorneys. They would -- attorneys would be of a certain mind, you know,
if we have -- there's nothing in law that says we can't continue to divert all
we're entitled to, even though we never diverted under natural flow before the
dam was built. So anyway, that sort of went on for a while and I remember there
was one key meeting, one of the key attorneys on the upper river was holding
forth at one of the key meetings, a key meeting, on the Kings River Water
Association, some kind of a -- whoever the chairman was, was not capable of
conducting the meeting in a way that wasn't really just like turning it over to
the attorneys. And so that became, you know, some time where you have to stand
up for what you believe in and talk about what's really right. And so we -- we
had this one meeting and Jay Thomas Crow was the spokesman for Elder Irrigation
District [Assumed spelling]. He determined what the policy of the board of
directors would be. And if you think I'm kidding, I'm not. And that ultimately
was responsible for his demise. Literally. And very sad. Because Tom was a great
guy, great guy. And very capable. Any event, he, on this one occasion, he -- he
-- he had been shown a copy of this engineer's report, and we had all signed it,
we all had our names on it, including his own engineer's. His own engineer.
Anyway he held fourth at -- he was describing his report. He said this is just
poppy-cock. He says, it's a bit like looking up somebody's ass to see if his
hat’s on straight. And so after a little while I stood up and Tom says, “Stan
I’m not through talking.” I said Tom, I'm just letting the chairman know when
you are through I'd like to say a few words. And so he ultimately wound it up
and so I was talking out of my head. But really so clear in my mind that I had
all the dates down. I described what it was the group of engineers had begun to
work together over a year before, gave them the month and date, and I gave a
synopsis of the subsequent meetings we had had, and how there were times for
drafting information that would go into this report and how it was -- then the
different information was discussed in specific, and some changes would be made
in the earlier drafts and the document before you is what we all agreed on. And
I said “Tom, I'll submit that there's a lot more to this report than a
hemorrhoid inspection.” I got a better laugh than he did. [laughing] Anyway,
that was really sort of the -- that was the beginning of a time when I didn't
have to take any nonsense off the attorneys. They were a little more careful how
they talked to me.
>> Glenn Gray: Now this area that you're working in, the Tulare Lake area is
subject to flooding?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: And why don't you talk some about that, and specifically about
the 1969 flood which I understand was a pretty major one.
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. It was.
>> Glenn Gray: And just describe the situation generally and then maybe that
flood more specifically.
>> Stan Barnes: In 1969 and in such mammoth times, mammoth flood times, there
were flood waters coming into Tulare Lake from all major streams, and some of
the ones that are not even major in a normal year. But certainly, the Kings,
Kaweah, Tule and Kern would be flood inflow all the time, all major flood time.
And so we really had to have two ways to fight the flood from my perspective. On
the ground you could build your levy higher and do whatever you could
physically, but in terms of things I could relate to and do whatever you could
to decrease the flood flows by increasing the irrigation divergence up stream.
And on the King's it's further complicated by the fact that the flood criteria
Corps of Engineers has a manual that -- how they operate in flood times. And
even though there were no agreement among all the users and the government,
while still there was a document the Corps operated under, it said that you take
the non-damaging flows to the extent of safe capacity of the Kings River North
Fork from Riverdale to Firebaugh and you'd divert -- you'd maximize the
diversion north of the Kings River and minimize the flood inflow south. If you
were a water user along Kings River that didn't give a damn about flooding
Tulare Lake, why you'd encourage the Corps as much water as they could south so
you didn't hurt anybody's feelings up north. Little contentious issues would be
discussed with the Corps of Engineer personnel, and the Corps always maintained
control of the -- of the valve on the dam. They weren't going to let too much -they weren't going to let anybody get hurt that didn't have to get hurt. The dam
was constructed to minimize flood damage on the Kings River. So they would do
what they could to maximize safe diversions and minimize flood diversions. And
so we would have a Kings River water master would be involved and engineers
along the river be involved, and talking about and studying how much water could
safely be diverted north an how much must be diverted into Tulare Lake. So we
would -- the way the spring run off is, you know ahead of time that there's so
much snow up on the hill and some of it's got to come off some time. The key
question is at what rate will be come off in the critical months, April, May,
June. And so we'd look at history and how much it could be diverted and so
forth, how much was forecasted by the snow surveys to come off, and we would
divide each month into ten-day periods. And then we would work with
hydrologists, state forecast people, and our own view of history and what this
year might bring. And we would share those thoughts with the Corps staff. And
they would be doing the same thing. And we would make sure that they were aware
of everything we were aware of. And the result was that they made a point -–
they would have done this anyway, but we -- this way we at least had our
forecasts looked at. And then we would -- there would be meetings with the Corps
in Sacramento. And we'd make sure that they had our studies before them, or by
the telephone. And not do anything imprudent, just trying to do the best we
could with what we had to deal with. And so I remember one key meeting in 1969,
the meeting included the key civilian staff people headed by a person by the
name of Malleo Gomez. The -- I remember we had -- had this meeting, and they put
numbers up on the board as to how much water was going to come off and where it
was going to go. And sometimes the weather can influence how it's going to come
off quite a bit. And so we'd show it both ways. And then we'd, you know, I think
we'd say gentlemen, we don't have to make the final decision right now, but we’d
urge you to do delay flood diversions into Tulare Lake until we know more about
how the river is really responding to whatever temperatures it may be facing.
And basically it was the -– from our standpoint, the key was don't decide before
you have to decide. If you can delay deciding for two weeks or another 10 days
or 20 days, you'll know more than you do today. And so let's not -- let's not
put any water in there that we don't have to. And they were really amenable to
that concept. And I remember that Malleo at one point says give us some time to
discuss this and we'll call you back in. So they excused us to go down the hall
and get a glass of water or something, and they met and called us back. And I
can still remember Malleo looking over at the colonel and he says, colonel,
there is a chance. There is a chance, he says, perhaps if we are right, perhaps
we -- well, we'll get a congressional medal. If we are wrong, we will be hung by
the balls. [laughing] So the -- but then he sort of focused on this timing
aspect and said we recommend we defer making a final decision on sending water
south for two weeks or some other date, whatever date it was in the near future.
And the whether blessed us and we were successful in not taking any more Kings
River water in the Tulare Lake. But what did come in plus all the water from the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, there was over a million acre feet in there. And over
100,000 acres were flooded. It was a very severe flood.
>> Glenn Gray: Is it safe to say that that '69 flood was the biggest in your
time?
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, it was the biggest up to that date. 1983 was a little
bigger.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. You mentioned earlier the -- someone serving as a water
master. Can you explain a little bit about what that person does, what their
role is?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. The Kings River Water Association is an unincorporated
association of 28 member units, public districts, and mutual water companies who
represent all of the users, except the riparians along the river individuals.
All of the people who use water from the Kings River. And in 1917 the -- there
was no water association. But they -- they requested -- these water users
requested the state of California to send down some engineering type person to
measure the water that goes to this person or that person. There was an
engineering committee of three gentlemen that had worked up an engineering
report on the allocation of these waters among the units. He came down, his name
was Charles Coffee [Assumed spelling]. He came down stayed for 40 years, and he
became the first water master of the Kings River. And he was very effective
until the dam came along. And then he -- neither he nor his counterparts on the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, all competent men, all well respected, were effective
with an unregulated river and couldn't mentally transfer to being -- having the
field that we all, with a regulated supply. And so they all had to be replaced
or were replaced. But he is the -- he's the administrative entity. He serves at
the pleasure of the board. And sometimes after the -- after the dam was
completed Mr. Coffee had his views about how things should be, and they were
favored by the upper river and not by the middle or lower river. So he wasn't
revered quite as much by us as he was by them. They tell about one time that
they were trying to get everybody together and they had an inspection by the
Corps of Engineers of conditions along the river and what they were going to do
here and there and the other thing. And they had the consulting engineer from
Berkley, Mr. Harding come down representing Tulare Lake, and had other people
along the river. But they had Coffee representing Kings River Water Association.
It was on a Saturday, I guess. And -- oh, Mr. Harding told me this story about
how Mr. Coffee was, would –- he showed them where the points of diversion were
until they got down to Highway 99, then he excused himself. He said gentlemen,
I'm going have to excuse myself, I've got go back to Fresno and mow my lawn. So
that didn't win him any friends below Kingsburg. So anyway, those are the things
that happen periodically, and people like to remember them. Different people
like to remember different things.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, we've been talking about the situation in the '60s, and at
this time there are some things that are set in motion that continue through the
1970s to percolate. And that ultimately you end up with the Reclamation Reform
Act in 1982. Do you have any comments at all about this process and how this
became the law that it is?
>> Stan Barnes: I was -- the early '60s were topsy-turvy times on all the
rivers. And before we could have permanent agreement among ourselves -– I’m
really phrasing that wrong -- but it was essential to have a long permanent
agreement between the water users in the United States. And the Kings River
people had been more actively involved in dealing with the United States, even
though non successfully up to that time than the Kaweah, Tule and Kern. Kern
stayed active through these years, but not effectively, I mean the United States
chose to put the priority on the Kings River. And so anyway, that's where it
stood. And the United States would not give a contract to the river that did not
include the Acreage Limitations Provisions of reclamation law. Which included
160 acre limitation. And the -- that was unacceptable to the Kings River.
Finally, in the late '60s, I believe, the local people were successful in
getting the government to agree that the Acreage Limitation Provisions of
Reclamation Law could be litigated and they would not impose sovereign immunity
on the non-federal interests to decide the issue, the reclamation issue. And so
that wasn't really a victory, but if you looked at our three avenues potentially
administratively, that exhausted the administrative issues. And then legislative
would be through the congress and judicial would be through the courts. And so
that was the end of the administrative element. And there were -- that did not
prohibit execution of storage agreements between the United States and the local
people. But it -- it left that issue unresolved. But at least you had a chance
to have a permanent agreement on -- on the -- with the United States and all the
Kings River interests, which was a major step. And we then proceeded to pursue
the legal issues. And that started out in Fresno District Court, Judge Crocker
[Assumed spelling]. The local people won. One of the reasons that we won was
that during this period of litigation before it came to trial and during -while it was in trial, but before the decision came down, the 1969 flood
occurred. And Judge Crocker was flown over the Tulare Lake area, and Bob
Knowles used to -- was fond of saying it, very seldom that you get a chance to
show the judge the crime taking place. So here was a flood taking place and
pretty obvious it was going to be impossible to put a 160 acre operator in that
situation. So anyway, we were -- we did win. And then the things taken -- it was
taken on appeal by the United States and after a lot of time and bother, matters
taking place, why the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco came down, reversing Judge
Crocker and the matter was taken up by appeal on the water user's side. And
ultimately became -- it was -- it was -- well, I'll leave that on hold for
discussion here for just a moment. But in the meantime, there were also major
legislative activities on this -- on acreage limitation. And why is it that the
poor southern -- southern part of the San Joaquin Valley is singled-out among
all Corps of Engineer projects throughout the United States as the only one
where they have this intent to apply acreage limitation. There were other large
Corps projects in Florida and these other states, I can name all for you in a
minute. But there were no similar efforts by the United States to apply any -any kind of registration -- any kind of restrictions. And they weren't even -they weren't even on the map, you might say. That -- that issue, we reformed
groups of water users from throughout the west mostly, Western States Water
Council. 17 western states, or reclamation states, those are the ones that have
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects. And we'd meet and look for legislation to
correct this evil, that we thought. And it on was some of those things that I
met your friend Mr. Manock. But we would meet and see how to address this common
issue. In the meantime -- in the meantime there were other irrigation projects
in California and elsewhere, where the acreage limitation was applied and was
sometimes policed and sometimes not. And so the -- the -- our friends on the
legislative issue were the Westlands Water Distinct and the Friant Water Users
and others. The ones that they were really after were the big boys in the
Westlands Water District. And that's where Mr. Manock came into play. His client
was Westland. But anyway, you had an issue which effected different people
different ways. And so what would satisfy one would satisfy not everyone. And so
during that process -- I'm trying to think. I'm quite sure Chip Pashayan was the
congressman from representing these -- most of these Kings and Kern County –
Kings and Tulare. Then Mr. Cuelho represented Westlands. And -- but anyway,
these -- these were -- and seemed like endless meetings. My wife wondered why I
had so much business in Denver, you know? But I said Honey, that's where the
discussions are. But anyway, that whole legislative process was going on, and
there became more and more pressure on more and more people to apply this thing
in different ways and different ones. And anyway, I became a player -- we -- we
-- the suggestion was made, I don't remember who made it initially, but it
certainly hit welcome ears -- to documenting, where Corps of Engineer projects
throughout the United States were being operated every day for -- with no
suggestion of acreage limitation. The one that sounds, it might be clear to you
from your experiences since you've been here anyway, was that on the Columbia
River, the Oregon and Washington border. You had people near the town of
Boardman, Oregon. There had been these whole series of dams constructed in
Bonneville Power Administration states. They -- they had very favorable power
rates compared to your other utilities. And so we put two and two together and
took a trip up to -- to Portland to get some reports on -- from the Corps on
these different reservoirs and so forth. And then we flew over more than one
location, but the one that struck me the most was the one in Boardland -- near
Boardman, Oregon. This major group of fellas were pumping out of the lake behind
the dam. And I can't remember if it was the John Day Dam [Assumed spelling] or
which one. But -- and then you could sort of imagine, might be a little easier
to be pumping from a still pond, however it might be fluctuating a little bit in
pump lift. But it would be much easier to pump than it would be from raging
canyon of widely fluctuating levels and difficulty of keeping your pumping plant
in place and so forth. And then if you compared the power rates of this
Bonneville power rate structure compared to Portland General Electric or
somebody, you had a pretty big advantage on your power. I think it -- on
balance, it turned out to be less than half, much less than half, the cost to
irrigate by the controlled river than it would be out of a non-controlled river.
So we found -- we did a number of these things which I have summarized on a
little report here. But it was very easy to document all these projects along
different rivers, and the people that were being benefited were just delighted
to show us how they could do all this. And so we were polite enough to take all
their literature that they do these reports on how much money they were saving
and so forth, had to buy two new briefcases to haul all of this stuff home.
Anyway, in congress the -- our lobbyists would chat with some of the senators
and congressmen from these other states. And they'd say, gentlemen, here's the
situation. You know, we think that your people are -- our people are getting
unfairly treated. We think there should be an exemption for Corps of Engineer
projects in California from application of reclamation law. And that was a -that was a wonderfully easy sell. And it was -- I think one of the terms of
maximum satisfaction per minimum input, that was one of my easiest engineering
assignments over the years, I think. We had a lot of fun. We had, you know, the
MO we had was you can only do this if you have a certain level of enthusiasm.
But Mr. Tomkins, Steve Tomkins and I would take off on a Sunday and we'd fly to
central city in the area of where we were going to look and we'd get quarters
and stay there. And we'd charter an aircraft from, like a Cessna 182 or whatever
was available. Steve was a competent pilot. So we'd go flying and I'd take
pictures. And then we'd do this service area thing with -- if there was a local
agency, that made things easier. But if not, why, we could –- at least you have
the county. And we'd look for the areas where they were. And the county
recorders office would have a list of people, and there would be, you know, you
don't raise sugar cane in southern Florida on 160 acres. There was a great
expanse of wonderful crops, and it tells a very compelling story. And so we –
well that’s one place I thought we got more -- more credit and accolades than we
perhaps deserved, but it was a lot of fun doing it, anyway. And effective.
>> Glenn Gray: What do you suppose in your opinion is the answer to the question
of why did the Corps of Engineers want to impose the 160 acres limitation in the
San Joaquin Valley?
>> Stan Barnes: Well the Corps of Engineers, of course, is under the Department
of Defense or whoever, and not with the Department of the Interior. So they
don't -- what the -- the issue -- certain people within the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Interior, Mr. [Inaudible] and others, wanted
the -- they were urged by, you know, liberals here and there that -- that the -this project should be under -- under the Department of the Interior. It was
debated in the '40s, 1940s, as to who would be constructing these different dams
here and there. There were big projects, and big agencies like to build things.
So there was a dispute as to -- in the '40s the local people went to Washington
and said we would rather have no dam than have one constructed by the Bureau of
Reclamation. It was fought after very seriously in those times. And ultimately,
it was decided that the Corps of Engineers would have these four rivers of the
southern San Joaquin Valley. So the Army was just sort of taken out of their
hands administratively by the United States. I don't know how -- I don't know
how it -- I don't know how those decisions are made. But it was entirely
political. But somebody determined that -- that the proper agency would be
exercising these storage agreements, implementing storage agreements, would be
the Department of the Interior and not the Corps of Engineers.
California State University, Fresno. Today is January 7, 2009. And we are in
Visalia at the home of Mr. Stan Barnes whom we're going to be interviewing
today. So I'd like to ask you where and when were you born?
>> Stan Barnes: In Pasadena, California and February 9, 1926.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And can you describe a little bit, your family, where they
came from, your family background and your growing up in the state?
>> Stan Barnes: My parents were both native Californians, and educated in
California. And we -- I spent my early years in southern California. But from
kindergarten on I was in northern California, and my dad worked in San Francisco
and commuted by rail from Burlingame and later from Palo Alto to San Francisco
for his entire remaining career. Nifty guy, nifty human being.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did you go to school?
>> Stan Barnes: First three years in Burlingame interesting about that, at
kindergarten age we lived about a half-mile from the school. I think my mother
took me the first day. After that I walked. And everybody else walked and nobody
thought anything about it. Just kind of what you do. And did that for the first
three years and then we moved on down to Palo Alto, where I spent the rest of my
youth growing up. Went to Palo Alto schools and Paly High and so forth and so
on. Had a wonderful time in -- as a youngster. Had a lot of freedom too. We were
-- go any place you wanted, you could do anything you wanted. We'd take bicycles
and go out behind Stanford and just wander the hills and maybe shoot a squirrel
or two. And it was -- but every day after school we played pick-up sports and so
forth. And I -- one of my teammates in those years at Paly High was still my
wonderful friend 60 years later. So, kind of – it was a wonderful place to grow
up.
>> Glenn Gray: And you went on to Stanford, then, I believe?
>> Stan Barnes: Undergraduate to Cal Tech, and I graduated from there in 1949
after the war. And then I went to Stanford for two years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And what made -- what made you decide to study engineering,
become an engineer?
>> Stan Barnes: I liked the reality of it. Dealing, you know, not dealing just
with ideas, you're dealing with applied ideas. And it was more fun to watch
things happen than to just dream about something that might happen.
>> Glenn Gray: And of course at this time there was the various water projects
going on, Central Valley Project and the state water projects. When did you
become interested in water as a specific engineering project?
>> Stan Barnes: In grad school, in civil engineering, you're either going to be
a structural engineer or you're going to be a something else. And the something
else looked to me like it was some fun avenues, maybe with water. And so I
specialized in water in grad school. And when I got out I didn't have any
trouble finding a job in water.
>> Glenn Gray: And what was -- what was your first job, then?
>> Stan Barnes: Work for the Hetch Hetchy Water Supply of the City and County of
San Francisco. They had a dam they were building on the Tuolumne River, Cherry
Valley Dam. And they wanted to do a hydraulic model study of the spillway and
they were looking for somebody to do it. And so the team was my Stanford
professor and me. I was the kid who was kind of working on the model up on the
hill. And Dr. Bernard would come up and keep us going on the straight and
narrow. But then that job was finished in a year and I went to work for Bechtel
Corporation.
>> Glenn Gray: And where is that based?
>> Stan Barnes: All over the place, but my initial job was out of LA area,
Vernon, and I worked there for a couple of years and -- three or four I guess.
And then was transferred to San Francisco.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And how long in total did you work for them?
>> Stan Barnes: Eight years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And did you have -- was there some connection to the Miller
and Lux operation through them?
>> Stan Barnes: Glenn, that came about -- Miller and Lux had some water rights
on the Kern River. And they were different from the surrounding district, the
Buena Vista Water Storage District. Theirs are involving Buena Vista Lake. And
they wanted to -- wanted to negotiate a position on Kern River that was separate
and distinct from the district and such. And they -- they wanted to -- from
Bechtel's standpoint it was a very small job. And it just required one guy to do
most of the coordination, and that was I. And we had monthly meetings in the big
town of Button Willow. And we would -- I would meet the Miller and Lux people
the evening before and we'd chat over dinner and whatever else in the -- during
that time the J. G. Boswell Company became a tenant, farming Buena Vista Lake
lands for Miller and Lux. I met some of the Boswell people in 1958. They gave me
an offer I couldn't refuse. So I came down here to Corcoran, spent 25 years with
the Boswell Company, been in the valley ever since.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe the situation, the water situation here in the
valley, specifically the Tulare Lake and the Boswell operation. What was the
situation like when you came?
>> Stan Barnes: I arrived in February, 1959. By that time Pine Flat Dam was
completed, in 1954, actually. And Isabella dam was completed in '54 [Inaudible]
also. And there still was no regulated water supply from Kaweah River or Tule
River both of which were later regulated by Corcoran area projects. And Boswell
Company had water rights, had small water right yet undefined on the Tulare
River and the Kern River. But a pretty substantial water right on the Kings
River through half a dozen different entities. Public districts and mutual water
companies. They didn't own anything 100%; they owned a substantial percentage of
a half a dozen of these entities. So I was trying to get acquainted with some of
those things and fit into the -- there was also I should add that the dam was
completed, there were no storage agreements among the water users. There was
also no permanent agreement between the water users of the group and the United
States government. The facilities had been constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and it was -- contracts were to be negotiated with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation after quite a bit of wrangling at the determination of the
Department of the Interior. And so we were involved in those issues for the next
20 years.
>> Glenn Gray: And what -- how would you describe some of the projects that you
worked on when you were working for Boswell and how were they different from
some of the projects worked on in your previous jobs?
>> Stan Barnes: We were not building anything, we were using -- taking the
benefits for these projects, some of which were then completed, and some of
which were just a dream in somebody's eye. Not even a serious dream. There was
the -- California State Water Project had not yet been completed. It was
delivering water in the 1960s to the -- the valley and southern California. And
we and our neighbors were players in wanting to use the facilities. It was a fun
-- fun issue.
>> Glenn Gray: How would you describe the level of cooperation between these
various entities? Because you're talking about land owners, you're talking about
government entities who are, you know, trying to come to some sort of agreement.
What was that whole process like there in the early years when you first
arrived?
>> Stan Barnes: I think the best thing you could say about the Kings River Water
Association one of my senior advisors that I respected a lot was Sydney Harding.
He said when it's possible to avoid making a decision Kings River Water
Association will do so. The -- the problem was getting everybody to pull in the
same direction. The upstream units had what they called "highority" which is
effective priority. And they had -- it was -- downstream users were in a
position where you were continually pushed to your limit of your patience and
something else would do -- make something come about. Those -- the -- in 1963
after a lot of work by a lot of people, there finally was an agreement among the
Kings River Water Association member units, 28 of them. Large ones and small
ones. Some large in area with a -- farther down stream you were, you had a
higher flow water right, which meant you didn't get any water when the flow was
low, and got more than you wanted in flood times. So those things all had to be
worked into this package of agreements, though ultimately it was put together.
Fun process.
>> Glenn Gray: And how would you describe the role that you played in -- in
helping this all come about?
>> Stan Barnes: Every one of the 28 member units up and down the river needed a
lawyer and an engineer or -- and a strong director, president of the board or
whoever. And the more effective the three of them were, the more effective the
-- they could deal with the issues. And we had -- we were enough involved that
we had legal representation and we made sense out of the engineering situation,
the factual situation. And we had a common sense director, president of the
board of the biggest one. And persistence, I guess, is the main thing. You'd
hang in there. There would be issues come up, there would be some of the
attorneys and some of the engineers and directors would find a difficulty for
any solution that was one of the maximum requirements of an astute attorney is
he must be able to find a difficulty for every solution. And they -- ultimately,
everybody had so much to gain by having the thing worked out that it overcame
these prejudices, and what -- what our group of people did was to focus on maybe
one of the issues would include half a dozen elements. Seepage, river seepage,
how to handle the high flows. The basic water rights under a natural stream were
all agreed to in 1927 and again later in 1949. But none of it applied to water
storage. Storage was the name of the game in -- after the dams were built. So it
was a fun issue. --
>> Glenn Gray: Is there any way that you can describe what a typical day for you
would have been like back in those years.
>> Stan Barnes: It's interesting. We had -- in addition to having sort of a
chaotic situation on all these rivers, especially the King, in terms of
importance, especially the Kings. But you also had to deliver water to the farm.
And the water was either from wells or from the natural flow of the river or
from stored water under some kind of a permissive agreement. So with -- I think
the key to Boswell Company's success and ultimately the whole group, they would
have operational people that would be very effective, willing to work long
hours, drive long miles, and keep track of the water. See that somebody else
doesn't steal your water, while you take two or three days to get down from Pine
Flat to Tulare Lake and in that time a lot of people along the way, and we used
to say they dip their beak and take a little of the water along the way. But
anyway, it was -- we had an older fellow about my dad's age when I went down
there. And he was very, very good. Not afraid of work and he was smart. And he
had a younger fellow working under him who was named Glen Jorgensen [Assumed
spelling]. He was -- he loved work. He loved working with people. And if it was
something that was going to get the water to the land, he could do that under
any circumstances. He had a -- a -- he would tease the foreman, the farming
foreman, and one of his gags I thought was pretty good was he'd -- he'd want to
meet with the guy and he'd -- he'd tell him he wanted to meet with him. And
[Inaudible] meet at this -- by this gin. An so they [Inaudible] certain time,
and they'd get there, Glen had a watermelon. And he said Clarence, I want to
share my watermelon with you. And what had happened was Clarence had a little
home up along the [Inaudible] canal, along -- between Pine Flat and the lake. We
had a little 80-acre parcel there, and he had some watermelons growing on it.
And Glen asked his wife if he might have a [Inaudible] so he took this
watermelon, went down there, and Clarence said, oh Glen, it's wonderful of you
to share your watermelon with me, he said. This is really terrific. He said you
know, I've got some up on my place there, they have the same kinds of seeds as
this one does. Why, you son of a bitch, he said. But he'd -- he'd build working
relationships out of these kinds of situations. And they were always pulling gag
on somebody or other. But anyway, Glen and I could see the importance of the
other guy's job. And he was not only competent, he was also essential from my
standpoint. Because the more he could do with his team of operational guys, why,
the more freedom that gave me to work on some of these broader issues of
becoming a contractor for the state project water or working out kinks for water
storage agreements, or working out agreements with the United States. And so we
were -- we were very, very fond team for 25 years.
>> Glenn Gray: About how many people were working for Boswell in those years?
>> Stan Barnes: Totally, I can't tell you. But we probably had a couple of
hundred salaries employees and a similar number of hourly employees. Maybe a few
more hourly.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were your impressions of Boswell, personally, in the
interactions that had with them.
>> Stan Barnes:[Inaudible] personally?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, he was -- he was a monumental character. He was -- he -- if
you were in trouble and he knew it, he'd turn the world upside down to help you
out. And he'd do anything for you. And if he thought you were getting a little
kind of uppity, kind of pedal a canoe all by yourself, he'd find out somebody to
pull your pedal. See? So you couldn't pedal so much. My own take on him was that
I owe my success of 25 years with the company and never getting fired to the
fact that I never agreed to work in Los Angeles next door to Jim Boswell. I just
didn't have the personality to weather it. I watched kind of a trail of corpses
drift in and out of the LA office, and I decided it was much better to me to
work where I felt I was useful.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, can you talk about some of the -- what you would consider
to be the most significant issues or events related to water in this area where
you worked over the course of the 25 years? What are the things that stand out
in your mind?
>> Stan Barnes: Probably, the first thing that we -- it was so obvious that we - how can you operate a river without any agreements on how you're going to
operate it. No agreements with anybody. No agreements with the operator or the
owner of the dam, no agreements with your neighboring districts, no agreements
with anybody. So we worked pretty hard in defining what was not known and making
kind of parenthetical engineering studies, something you could do on the back of
an envelope, or at least over a weekend. And so we have on the Kings River as an
example, we'd have a meeting among the engineering representatives of the river.
And they would include from the upper river and the middle river and the lower
river, and there would eventually turn out to be half a dozen or eight people
that would be willing to put in the time and effort to be a player in developing
some of these agreements. And they also had to have a client willing to pay for
it. We got pretty well acquainted, and I remember one incident, we were quite a
ways apart on having an agreement up and down the river as to how to operate
storage. And so we –- the first thing we did was define the issues. Like, river
seepage. How many were the losses from Point A to Point B to Point C, and what
are you going to do with it -- what happens to the water that someone's entitled
to take under the old schedule, natural flow schedule. How much of that can they
store and how much -- what you used to not be able to divert, how much of that
in later years would you be required to let pass so that the down stream users
who historically used the excess could also share in it. And so the people that
were up stream said we can take all we can use and store whatever we want. And
we'd say, just a minute here, let's look at what the equities are. Anyway, we'd
-- we'd divide these issues. We'd articulate what they were. And then we'd agree
that, well, we should be able to solve one, two, and three if we just have -we'll divide up whom ever -- somebody would volunteer to prepare a paragraph on
how you do that. And then you'd finally run out of people who were willing to
provide paragraphs that would do anything except satisfy their client. So we'd - but however, by talking about it and working about it, and then agreeing, say
we –- out of these eight or ten issues -- we'd have three or four solved almost
immediately. We'd get them articulated in engineering language. All have to be
doctored up for the attorneys, of course. Then we'd review those same things
with the boards of directors of at least the key people on the boards. And make
sure you're -- everybody's comfortable with what you're doing. And then we'd
tackle some of the more complicated issues, and less certain. And we'd -- over a
period of a year-and-a-half or two, we'd -- were able to put together a report
on all of the issues. And the -- we had an agreement among the engineers on the
physical plan, but some of the up stream engineers couldn't get approval of
their attorneys. They would -- attorneys would be of a certain mind, you know,
if we have -- there's nothing in law that says we can't continue to divert all
we're entitled to, even though we never diverted under natural flow before the
dam was built. So anyway, that sort of went on for a while and I remember there
was one key meeting, one of the key attorneys on the upper river was holding
forth at one of the key meetings, a key meeting, on the Kings River Water
Association, some kind of a -- whoever the chairman was, was not capable of
conducting the meeting in a way that wasn't really just like turning it over to
the attorneys. And so that became, you know, some time where you have to stand
up for what you believe in and talk about what's really right. And so we -- we
had this one meeting and Jay Thomas Crow was the spokesman for Elder Irrigation
District [Assumed spelling]. He determined what the policy of the board of
directors would be. And if you think I'm kidding, I'm not. And that ultimately
was responsible for his demise. Literally. And very sad. Because Tom was a great
guy, great guy. And very capable. Any event, he, on this one occasion, he -- he
-- he had been shown a copy of this engineer's report, and we had all signed it,
we all had our names on it, including his own engineer's. His own engineer.
Anyway he held fourth at -- he was describing his report. He said this is just
poppy-cock. He says, it's a bit like looking up somebody's ass to see if his
hat’s on straight. And so after a little while I stood up and Tom says, “Stan
I’m not through talking.” I said Tom, I'm just letting the chairman know when
you are through I'd like to say a few words. And so he ultimately wound it up
and so I was talking out of my head. But really so clear in my mind that I had
all the dates down. I described what it was the group of engineers had begun to
work together over a year before, gave them the month and date, and I gave a
synopsis of the subsequent meetings we had had, and how there were times for
drafting information that would go into this report and how it was -- then the
different information was discussed in specific, and some changes would be made
in the earlier drafts and the document before you is what we all agreed on. And
I said “Tom, I'll submit that there's a lot more to this report than a
hemorrhoid inspection.” I got a better laugh than he did. [laughing] Anyway,
that was really sort of the -- that was the beginning of a time when I didn't
have to take any nonsense off the attorneys. They were a little more careful how
they talked to me.
>> Glenn Gray: Now this area that you're working in, the Tulare Lake area is
subject to flooding?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: And why don't you talk some about that, and specifically about
the 1969 flood which I understand was a pretty major one.
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. It was.
>> Glenn Gray: And just describe the situation generally and then maybe that
flood more specifically.
>> Stan Barnes: In 1969 and in such mammoth times, mammoth flood times, there
were flood waters coming into Tulare Lake from all major streams, and some of
the ones that are not even major in a normal year. But certainly, the Kings,
Kaweah, Tule and Kern would be flood inflow all the time, all major flood time.
And so we really had to have two ways to fight the flood from my perspective. On
the ground you could build your levy higher and do whatever you could
physically, but in terms of things I could relate to and do whatever you could
to decrease the flood flows by increasing the irrigation divergence up stream.
And on the King's it's further complicated by the fact that the flood criteria
Corps of Engineers has a manual that -- how they operate in flood times. And
even though there were no agreement among all the users and the government,
while still there was a document the Corps operated under, it said that you take
the non-damaging flows to the extent of safe capacity of the Kings River North
Fork from Riverdale to Firebaugh and you'd divert -- you'd maximize the
diversion north of the Kings River and minimize the flood inflow south. If you
were a water user along Kings River that didn't give a damn about flooding
Tulare Lake, why you'd encourage the Corps as much water as they could south so
you didn't hurt anybody's feelings up north. Little contentious issues would be
discussed with the Corps of Engineer personnel, and the Corps always maintained
control of the -- of the valve on the dam. They weren't going to let too much -they weren't going to let anybody get hurt that didn't have to get hurt. The dam
was constructed to minimize flood damage on the Kings River. So they would do
what they could to maximize safe diversions and minimize flood diversions. And
so we would have a Kings River water master would be involved and engineers
along the river be involved, and talking about and studying how much water could
safely be diverted north an how much must be diverted into Tulare Lake. So we
would -- the way the spring run off is, you know ahead of time that there's so
much snow up on the hill and some of it's got to come off some time. The key
question is at what rate will be come off in the critical months, April, May,
June. And so we'd look at history and how much it could be diverted and so
forth, how much was forecasted by the snow surveys to come off, and we would
divide each month into ten-day periods. And then we would work with
hydrologists, state forecast people, and our own view of history and what this
year might bring. And we would share those thoughts with the Corps staff. And
they would be doing the same thing. And we would make sure that they were aware
of everything we were aware of. And the result was that they made a point -–
they would have done this anyway, but we -- this way we at least had our
forecasts looked at. And then we would -- there would be meetings with the Corps
in Sacramento. And we'd make sure that they had our studies before them, or by
the telephone. And not do anything imprudent, just trying to do the best we
could with what we had to deal with. And so I remember one key meeting in 1969,
the meeting included the key civilian staff people headed by a person by the
name of Malleo Gomez. The -- I remember we had -- had this meeting, and they put
numbers up on the board as to how much water was going to come off and where it
was going to go. And sometimes the weather can influence how it's going to come
off quite a bit. And so we'd show it both ways. And then we'd, you know, I think
we'd say gentlemen, we don't have to make the final decision right now, but we’d
urge you to do delay flood diversions into Tulare Lake until we know more about
how the river is really responding to whatever temperatures it may be facing.
And basically it was the -– from our standpoint, the key was don't decide before
you have to decide. If you can delay deciding for two weeks or another 10 days
or 20 days, you'll know more than you do today. And so let's not -- let's not
put any water in there that we don't have to. And they were really amenable to
that concept. And I remember that Malleo at one point says give us some time to
discuss this and we'll call you back in. So they excused us to go down the hall
and get a glass of water or something, and they met and called us back. And I
can still remember Malleo looking over at the colonel and he says, colonel,
there is a chance. There is a chance, he says, perhaps if we are right, perhaps
we -- well, we'll get a congressional medal. If we are wrong, we will be hung by
the balls. [laughing] So the -- but then he sort of focused on this timing
aspect and said we recommend we defer making a final decision on sending water
south for two weeks or some other date, whatever date it was in the near future.
And the whether blessed us and we were successful in not taking any more Kings
River water in the Tulare Lake. But what did come in plus all the water from the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, there was over a million acre feet in there. And over
100,000 acres were flooded. It was a very severe flood.
>> Glenn Gray: Is it safe to say that that '69 flood was the biggest in your
time?
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, it was the biggest up to that date. 1983 was a little
bigger.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. You mentioned earlier the -- someone serving as a water
master. Can you explain a little bit about what that person does, what their
role is?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. The Kings River Water Association is an unincorporated
association of 28 member units, public districts, and mutual water companies who
represent all of the users, except the riparians along the river individuals.
All of the people who use water from the Kings River. And in 1917 the -- there
was no water association. But they -- they requested -- these water users
requested the state of California to send down some engineering type person to
measure the water that goes to this person or that person. There was an
engineering committee of three gentlemen that had worked up an engineering
report on the allocation of these waters among the units. He came down, his name
was Charles Coffee [Assumed spelling]. He came down stayed for 40 years, and he
became the first water master of the Kings River. And he was very effective
until the dam came along. And then he -- neither he nor his counterparts on the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, all competent men, all well respected, were effective
with an unregulated river and couldn't mentally transfer to being -- having the
field that we all, with a regulated supply. And so they all had to be replaced
or were replaced. But he is the -- he's the administrative entity. He serves at
the pleasure of the board. And sometimes after the -- after the dam was
completed Mr. Coffee had his views about how things should be, and they were
favored by the upper river and not by the middle or lower river. So he wasn't
revered quite as much by us as he was by them. They tell about one time that
they were trying to get everybody together and they had an inspection by the
Corps of Engineers of conditions along the river and what they were going to do
here and there and the other thing. And they had the consulting engineer from
Berkley, Mr. Harding come down representing Tulare Lake, and had other people
along the river. But they had Coffee representing Kings River Water Association.
It was on a Saturday, I guess. And -- oh, Mr. Harding told me this story about
how Mr. Coffee was, would –- he showed them where the points of diversion were
until they got down to Highway 99, then he excused himself. He said gentlemen,
I'm going have to excuse myself, I've got go back to Fresno and mow my lawn. So
that didn't win him any friends below Kingsburg. So anyway, those are the things
that happen periodically, and people like to remember them. Different people
like to remember different things.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, we've been talking about the situation in the '60s, and at
this time there are some things that are set in motion that continue through the
1970s to percolate. And that ultimately you end up with the Reclamation Reform
Act in 1982. Do you have any comments at all about this process and how this
became the law that it is?
>> Stan Barnes: I was -- the early '60s were topsy-turvy times on all the
rivers. And before we could have permanent agreement among ourselves -– I’m
really phrasing that wrong -- but it was essential to have a long permanent
agreement between the water users in the United States. And the Kings River
people had been more actively involved in dealing with the United States, even
though non successfully up to that time than the Kaweah, Tule and Kern. Kern
stayed active through these years, but not effectively, I mean the United States
chose to put the priority on the Kings River. And so anyway, that's where it
stood. And the United States would not give a contract to the river that did not
include the Acreage Limitations Provisions of reclamation law. Which included
160 acre limitation. And the -- that was unacceptable to the Kings River.
Finally, in the late '60s, I believe, the local people were successful in
getting the government to agree that the Acreage Limitation Provisions of
Reclamation Law could be litigated and they would not impose sovereign immunity
on the non-federal interests to decide the issue, the reclamation issue. And so
that wasn't really a victory, but if you looked at our three avenues potentially
administratively, that exhausted the administrative issues. And then legislative
would be through the congress and judicial would be through the courts. And so
that was the end of the administrative element. And there were -- that did not
prohibit execution of storage agreements between the United States and the local
people. But it -- it left that issue unresolved. But at least you had a chance
to have a permanent agreement on -- on the -- with the United States and all the
Kings River interests, which was a major step. And we then proceeded to pursue
the legal issues. And that started out in Fresno District Court, Judge Crocker
[Assumed spelling]. The local people won. One of the reasons that we won was
that during this period of litigation before it came to trial and during -while it was in trial, but before the decision came down, the 1969 flood
occurred. And Judge Crocker was flown over the Tulare Lake area, and Bob
Knowles used to -- was fond of saying it, very seldom that you get a chance to
show the judge the crime taking place. So here was a flood taking place and
pretty obvious it was going to be impossible to put a 160 acre operator in that
situation. So anyway, we were -- we did win. And then the things taken -- it was
taken on appeal by the United States and after a lot of time and bother, matters
taking place, why the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco came down, reversing Judge
Crocker and the matter was taken up by appeal on the water user's side. And
ultimately became -- it was -- it was -- well, I'll leave that on hold for
discussion here for just a moment. But in the meantime, there were also major
legislative activities on this -- on acreage limitation. And why is it that the
poor southern -- southern part of the San Joaquin Valley is singled-out among
all Corps of Engineer projects throughout the United States as the only one
where they have this intent to apply acreage limitation. There were other large
Corps projects in Florida and these other states, I can name all for you in a
minute. But there were no similar efforts by the United States to apply any -any kind of registration -- any kind of restrictions. And they weren't even -they weren't even on the map, you might say. That -- that issue, we reformed
groups of water users from throughout the west mostly, Western States Water
Council. 17 western states, or reclamation states, those are the ones that have
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects. And we'd meet and look for legislation to
correct this evil, that we thought. And it on was some of those things that I
met your friend Mr. Manock. But we would meet and see how to address this common
issue. In the meantime -- in the meantime there were other irrigation projects
in California and elsewhere, where the acreage limitation was applied and was
sometimes policed and sometimes not. And so the -- the -- our friends on the
legislative issue were the Westlands Water Distinct and the Friant Water Users
and others. The ones that they were really after were the big boys in the
Westlands Water District. And that's where Mr. Manock came into play. His client
was Westland. But anyway, you had an issue which effected different people
different ways. And so what would satisfy one would satisfy not everyone. And so
during that process -- I'm trying to think. I'm quite sure Chip Pashayan was the
congressman from representing these -- most of these Kings and Kern County –
Kings and Tulare. Then Mr. Cuelho represented Westlands. And -- but anyway,
these -- these were -- and seemed like endless meetings. My wife wondered why I
had so much business in Denver, you know? But I said Honey, that's where the
discussions are. But anyway, that whole legislative process was going on, and
there became more and more pressure on more and more people to apply this thing
in different ways and different ones. And anyway, I became a player -- we -- we
-- the suggestion was made, I don't remember who made it initially, but it
certainly hit welcome ears -- to documenting, where Corps of Engineer projects
throughout the United States were being operated every day for -- with no
suggestion of acreage limitation. The one that sounds, it might be clear to you
from your experiences since you've been here anyway, was that on the Columbia
River, the Oregon and Washington border. You had people near the town of
Boardman, Oregon. There had been these whole series of dams constructed in
Bonneville Power Administration states. They -- they had very favorable power
rates compared to your other utilities. And so we put two and two together and
took a trip up to -- to Portland to get some reports on -- from the Corps on
these different reservoirs and so forth. And then we flew over more than one
location, but the one that struck me the most was the one in Boardland -- near
Boardman, Oregon. This major group of fellas were pumping out of the lake behind
the dam. And I can't remember if it was the John Day Dam [Assumed spelling] or
which one. But -- and then you could sort of imagine, might be a little easier
to be pumping from a still pond, however it might be fluctuating a little bit in
pump lift. But it would be much easier to pump than it would be from raging
canyon of widely fluctuating levels and difficulty of keeping your pumping plant
in place and so forth. And then if you compared the power rates of this
Bonneville power rate structure compared to Portland General Electric or
somebody, you had a pretty big advantage on your power. I think it -- on
balance, it turned out to be less than half, much less than half, the cost to
irrigate by the controlled river than it would be out of a non-controlled river.
So we found -- we did a number of these things which I have summarized on a
little report here. But it was very easy to document all these projects along
different rivers, and the people that were being benefited were just delighted
to show us how they could do all this. And so we were polite enough to take all
their literature that they do these reports on how much money they were saving
and so forth, had to buy two new briefcases to haul all of this stuff home.
Anyway, in congress the -- our lobbyists would chat with some of the senators
and congressmen from these other states. And they'd say, gentlemen, here's the
situation. You know, we think that your people are -- our people are getting
unfairly treated. We think there should be an exemption for Corps of Engineer
projects in California from application of reclamation law. And that was a -that was a wonderfully easy sell. And it was -- I think one of the terms of
maximum satisfaction per minimum input, that was one of my easiest engineering
assignments over the years, I think. We had a lot of fun. We had, you know, the
MO we had was you can only do this if you have a certain level of enthusiasm.
But Mr. Tomkins, Steve Tomkins and I would take off on a Sunday and we'd fly to
central city in the area of where we were going to look and we'd get quarters
and stay there. And we'd charter an aircraft from, like a Cessna 182 or whatever
was available. Steve was a competent pilot. So we'd go flying and I'd take
pictures. And then we'd do this service area thing with -- if there was a local
agency, that made things easier. But if not, why, we could –- at least you have
the county. And we'd look for the areas where they were. And the county
recorders office would have a list of people, and there would be, you know, you
don't raise sugar cane in southern Florida on 160 acres. There was a great
expanse of wonderful crops, and it tells a very compelling story. And so we –
well that’s one place I thought we got more -- more credit and accolades than we
perhaps deserved, but it was a lot of fun doing it, anyway. And effective.
>> Glenn Gray: What do you suppose in your opinion is the answer to the question
of why did the Corps of Engineers want to impose the 160 acres limitation in the
San Joaquin Valley?
>> Stan Barnes: Well the Corps of Engineers, of course, is under the Department
of Defense or whoever, and not with the Department of the Interior. So they
don't -- what the -- the issue -- certain people within the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Interior, Mr. [Inaudible] and others, wanted
the -- they were urged by, you know, liberals here and there that -- that the -this project should be under -- under the Department of the Interior. It was
debated in the '40s, 1940s, as to who would be constructing these different dams
here and there. There were big projects, and big agencies like to build things.
So there was a dispute as to -- in the '40s the local people went to Washington
and said we would rather have no dam than have one constructed by the Bureau of
Reclamation. It was fought after very seriously in those times. And ultimately,
it was decided that the Corps of Engineers would have these four rivers of the
southern San Joaquin Valley. So the Army was just sort of taken out of their
hands administratively by the United States. I don't know how -- I don't know
how it -- I don't know how those decisions are made. But it was entirely
political. But somebody determined that -- that the proper agency would be
exercising these storage agreements, implementing storage agreements, would be
the Department of the Interior and not the Corps of Engineers.
>> Glenn Gray: My name is Glenn Gray, and I'm with the Henry Madden Library,
California State University, Fresno. Today is January 7, 2009. And we are in
Visalia at the home of Mr. Stan Barnes whom we're going to be interviewing
today. So I'd like to ask you where and when were you born?
>> Stan Barnes: In Pasadena, California and February 9, 1926.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And can you describe a little bit, your family, where they
came from, your family background and your growing up in the state?
>> Stan Barnes: My parents were both native Californians, and educated in
California. And we -- I spent my early years in southern California. But from
kindergarten on I was in northern California, and my dad worked in San Francisco
and commuted by rail from Burlingame and later from Palo Alto to San Francisco
for his entire remaining career. Nifty guy, nifty human being.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did you go to school?
>> Stan Barnes: First three years in Burlingame interesting about that, at
kindergarten age we lived about a half-mile from the school. I think my mother
took me the first day. After that I walked. And everybody else walked and nobody
thought anything about it. Just kind of what you do. And did that for the first
three years and then we moved on down to Palo Alto, where I spent the rest of my
youth growing up. Went to Palo Alto schools and Paly High and so forth and so
on. Had a wonderful time in -- as a youngster. Had a lot of freedom too. We were
-- go any place you wanted, you could do anything you wanted. We'd take bicycles
and go out behind Stanford and just wander the hills and maybe shoot a squirrel
or two. And it was -- but every day after school we played pick-up sports and so
forth. And I -- one of my teammates in those years at Paly High was still my
wonderful friend 60 years later. So, kind of – it was a wonderful place to grow
up.
>> Glenn Gray: And you went on to Stanford, then, I believe?
>> Stan Barnes: Undergraduate to Cal Tech, and I graduated from there in 1949
after the war. And then I went to Stanford for two years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And what made -- what made you decide to study engineering,
become an engineer?
>> Stan Barnes: I liked the reality of it. Dealing, you know, not dealing just
with ideas, you're dealing with applied ideas. And it was more fun to watch
things happen than to just dream about something that might happen.
>> Glenn Gray: And of course at this time there was the various water projects
going on, Central Valley Project and the state water projects. When did you
become interested in water as a specific engineering project?
>> Stan Barnes: In grad school, in civil engineering, you're either going to be
a structural engineer or you're going to be a something else. And the something
else looked to me like it was some fun avenues, maybe with water. And so I
specialized in water in grad school. And when I got out I didn't have any
trouble finding a job in water.
>> Glenn Gray: And what was -- what was your first job, then?
>> Stan Barnes: Work for the Hetch Hetchy Water Supply of the City and County of
San Francisco. They had a dam they were building on the Tuolumne River, Cherry
Valley Dam. And they wanted to do a hydraulic model study of the spillway and
they were looking for somebody to do it. And so the team was my Stanford
professor and me. I was the kid who was kind of working on the model up on the
hill. And Dr. Bernard would come up and keep us going on the straight and
narrow. But then that job was finished in a year and I went to work for Bechtel
Corporation.
>> Glenn Gray: And where is that based?
>> Stan Barnes: All over the place, but my initial job was out of LA area,
Vernon, and I worked there for a couple of years and -- three or four I guess.
And then was transferred to San Francisco.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And how long in total did you work for them?
>> Stan Barnes: Eight years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And did you have -- was there some connection to the Miller
and Lux operation through them?
>> Stan Barnes: Glenn, that came about -- Miller and Lux had some water rights
on the Kern River. And they were different from the surrounding district, the
Buena Vista Water Storage District. Theirs are involving Buena Vista Lake. And
they wanted to -- wanted to negotiate a position on Kern River that was separate
and distinct from the district and such. And they -- they wanted to -- from
Bechtel's standpoint it was a very small job. And it just required one guy to do
most of the coordination, and that was I. And we had monthly meetings in the big
town of Button Willow. And we would -- I would meet the Miller and Lux people
the evening before and we'd chat over dinner and whatever else in the -- during
that time the J. G. Boswell Company became a tenant, farming Buena Vista Lake
lands for Miller and Lux. I met some of the Boswell people in 1958. They gave me
an offer I couldn't refuse. So I came down here to Corcoran, spent 25 years with
the Boswell Company, been in the valley ever since.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe the situation, the water situation here in the
valley, specifically the Tulare Lake and the Boswell operation. What was the
situation like when you came?
>> Stan Barnes: I arrived in February, 1959. By that time Pine Flat Dam was
completed, in 1954, actually. And Isabella dam was completed in '54 [Inaudible]
also. And there still was no regulated water supply from Kaweah River or Tule
River both of which were later regulated by Corcoran area projects. And Boswell
Company had water rights, had small water right yet undefined on the Tulare
River and the Kern River. But a pretty substantial water right on the Kings
River through half a dozen different entities. Public districts and mutual water
companies. They didn't own anything 100%; they owned a substantial percentage of
a half a dozen of these entities. So I was trying to get acquainted with some of
those things and fit into the -- there was also I should add that the dam was
completed, there were no storage agreements among the water users. There was
also no permanent agreement between the water users of the group and the United
States government. The facilities had been constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and it was -- contracts were to be negotiated with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation after quite a bit of wrangling at the determination of the
Department of the Interior. And so we were involved in those issues for the next
20 years.
>> Glenn Gray: And what -- how would you describe some of the projects that you
worked on when you were working for Boswell and how were they different from
some of the projects worked on in your previous jobs?
>> Stan Barnes: We were not building anything, we were using -- taking the
benefits for these projects, some of which were then completed, and some of
which were just a dream in somebody's eye. Not even a serious dream. There was
the -- California State Water Project had not yet been completed. It was
delivering water in the 1960s to the -- the valley and southern California. And
we and our neighbors were players in wanting to use the facilities. It was a fun
-- fun issue.
>> Glenn Gray: How would you describe the level of cooperation between these
various entities? Because you're talking about land owners, you're talking about
government entities who are, you know, trying to come to some sort of agreement.
What was that whole process like there in the early years when you first
arrived?
>> Stan Barnes: I think the best thing you could say about the Kings River Water
Association one of my senior advisors that I respected a lot was Sydney Harding.
He said when it's possible to avoid making a decision Kings River Water
Association will do so. The -- the problem was getting everybody to pull in the
same direction. The upstream units had what they called "highority" which is
effective priority. And they had -- it was -- downstream users were in a
position where you were continually pushed to your limit of your patience and
something else would do -- make something come about. Those -- the -- in 1963
after a lot of work by a lot of people, there finally was an agreement among the
Kings River Water Association member units, 28 of them. Large ones and small
ones. Some large in area with a -- farther down stream you were, you had a
higher flow water right, which meant you didn't get any water when the flow was
low, and got more than you wanted in flood times. So those things all had to be
worked into this package of agreements, though ultimately it was put together.
Fun process.
>> Glenn Gray: And how would you describe the role that you played in -- in
helping this all come about?
>> Stan Barnes: Every one of the 28 member units up and down the river needed a
lawyer and an engineer or -- and a strong director, president of the board or
whoever. And the more effective the three of them were, the more effective the
-- they could deal with the issues. And we had -- we were enough involved that
we had legal representation and we made sense out of the engineering situation,
the factual situation. And we had a common sense director, president of the
board of the biggest one. And persistence, I guess, is the main thing. You'd
hang in there. There would be issues come up, there would be some of the
attorneys and some of the engineers and directors would find a difficulty for
any solution that was one of the maximum requirements of an astute attorney is
he must be able to find a difficulty for every solution. And they -- ultimately,
everybody had so much to gain by having the thing worked out that it overcame
these prejudices, and what -- what our group of people did was to focus on maybe
one of the issues would include half a dozen elements. Seepage, river seepage,
how to handle the high flows. The basic water rights under a natural stream were
all agreed to in 1927 and again later in 1949. But none of it applied to water
storage. Storage was the name of the game in -- after the dams were built. So it
was a fun issue. --
>> Glenn Gray: Is there any way that you can describe what a typical day for you
would have been like back in those years.
>> Stan Barnes: It's interesting. We had -- in addition to having sort of a
chaotic situation on all these rivers, especially the King, in terms of
importance, especially the Kings. But you also had to deliver water to the farm.
And the water was either from wells or from the natural flow of the river or
from stored water under some kind of a permissive agreement. So with -- I think
the key to Boswell Company's success and ultimately the whole group, they would
have operational people that would be very effective, willing to work long
hours, drive long miles, and keep track of the water. See that somebody else
doesn't steal your water, while you take two or three days to get down from Pine
Flat to Tulare Lake and in that time a lot of people along the way, and we used
to say they dip their beak and take a little of the water along the way. But
anyway, it was -- we had an older fellow about my dad's age when I went down
there. And he was very, very good. Not afraid of work and he was smart. And he
had a younger fellow working under him who was named Glen Jorgensen [Assumed
spelling]. He was -- he loved work. He loved working with people. And if it was
something that was going to get the water to the land, he could do that under
any circumstances. He had a -- a -- he would tease the foreman, the farming
foreman, and one of his gags I thought was pretty good was he'd -- he'd want to
meet with the guy and he'd -- he'd tell him he wanted to meet with him. And
[Inaudible] meet at this -- by this gin. An so they [Inaudible] certain time,
and they'd get there, Glen had a watermelon. And he said Clarence, I want to
share my watermelon with you. And what had happened was Clarence had a little
home up along the [Inaudible] canal, along -- between Pine Flat and the lake. We
had a little 80-acre parcel there, and he had some watermelons growing on it.
And Glen asked his wife if he might have a [Inaudible] so he took this
watermelon, went down there, and Clarence said, oh Glen, it's wonderful of you
to share your watermelon with me, he said. This is really terrific. He said you
know, I've got some up on my place there, they have the same kinds of seeds as
this one does. Why, you son of a bitch, he said. But he'd -- he'd build working
relationships out of these kinds of situations. And they were always pulling gag
on somebody or other. But anyway, Glen and I could see the importance of the
other guy's job. And he was not only competent, he was also essential from my
standpoint. Because the more he could do with his team of operational guys, why,
the more freedom that gave me to work on some of these broader issues of
becoming a contractor for the state project water or working out kinks for water
storage agreements, or working out agreements with the United States. And so we
were -- we were very, very fond team for 25 years.
>> Glenn Gray: About how many people were working for Boswell in those years?
>> Stan Barnes: Totally, I can't tell you. But we probably had a couple of
hundred salaries employees and a similar number of hourly employees. Maybe a few
more hourly.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were your impressions of Boswell, personally, in the
interactions that had with them.
>> Stan Barnes:[Inaudible] personally?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, he was -- he was a monumental character. He was -- he -- if
you were in trouble and he knew it, he'd turn the world upside down to help you
out. And he'd do anything for you. And if he thought you were getting a little
kind of uppity, kind of pedal a canoe all by yourself, he'd find out somebody to
pull your pedal. See? So you couldn't pedal so much. My own take on him was that
I owe my success of 25 years with the company and never getting fired to the
fact that I never agreed to work in Los Angeles next door to Jim Boswell. I just
didn't have the personality to weather it. I watched kind of a trail of corpses
drift in and out of the LA office, and I decided it was much better to me to
work where I felt I was useful.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, can you talk about some of the -- what you would consider
to be the most significant issues or events related to water in this area where
you worked over the course of the 25 years? What are the things that stand out
in your mind?
>> Stan Barnes: Probably, the first thing that we -- it was so obvious that we - how can you operate a river without any agreements on how you're going to
operate it. No agreements with anybody. No agreements with the operator or the
owner of the dam, no agreements with your neighboring districts, no agreements
with anybody. So we worked pretty hard in defining what was not known and making
kind of parenthetical engineering studies, something you could do on the back of
an envelope, or at least over a weekend. And so we have on the Kings River as an
example, we'd have a meeting among the engineering representatives of the river.
And they would include from the upper river and the middle river and the lower
river, and there would eventually turn out to be half a dozen or eight people
that would be willing to put in the time and effort to be a player in developing
some of these agreements. And they also had to have a client willing to pay for
it. We got pretty well acquainted, and I remember one incident, we were quite a
ways apart on having an agreement up and down the river as to how to operate
storage. And so we –- the first thing we did was define the issues. Like, river
seepage. How many were the losses from Point A to Point B to Point C, and what
are you going to do with it -- what happens to the water that someone's entitled
to take under the old schedule, natural flow schedule. How much of that can they
store and how much -- what you used to not be able to divert, how much of that
in later years would you be required to let pass so that the down stream users
who historically used the excess could also share in it. And so the people that
were up stream said we can take all we can use and store whatever we want. And
we'd say, just a minute here, let's look at what the equities are. Anyway, we'd
-- we'd divide these issues. We'd articulate what they were. And then we'd agree
that, well, we should be able to solve one, two, and three if we just have -we'll divide up whom ever -- somebody would volunteer to prepare a paragraph on
how you do that. And then you'd finally run out of people who were willing to
provide paragraphs that would do anything except satisfy their client. So we'd - but however, by talking about it and working about it, and then agreeing, say
we –- out of these eight or ten issues -- we'd have three or four solved almost
immediately. We'd get them articulated in engineering language. All have to be
doctored up for the attorneys, of course. Then we'd review those same things
with the boards of directors of at least the key people on the boards. And make
sure you're -- everybody's comfortable with what you're doing. And then we'd
tackle some of the more complicated issues, and less certain. And we'd -- over a
period of a year-and-a-half or two, we'd -- were able to put together a report
on all of the issues. And the -- we had an agreement among the engineers on the
physical plan, but some of the up stream engineers couldn't get approval of
their attorneys. They would -- attorneys would be of a certain mind, you know,
if we have -- there's nothing in law that says we can't continue to divert all
we're entitled to, even though we never diverted under natural flow before the
dam was built. So anyway, that sort of went on for a while and I remember there
was one key meeting, one of the key attorneys on the upper river was holding
forth at one of the key meetings, a key meeting, on the Kings River Water
Association, some kind of a -- whoever the chairman was, was not capable of
conducting the meeting in a way that wasn't really just like turning it over to
the attorneys. And so that became, you know, some time where you have to stand
up for what you believe in and talk about what's really right. And so we -- we
had this one meeting and Jay Thomas Crow was the spokesman for Elder Irrigation
District [Assumed spelling]. He determined what the policy of the board of
directors would be. And if you think I'm kidding, I'm not. And that ultimately
was responsible for his demise. Literally. And very sad. Because Tom was a great
guy, great guy. And very capable. Any event, he, on this one occasion, he -- he
-- he had been shown a copy of this engineer's report, and we had all signed it,
we all had our names on it, including his own engineer's. His own engineer.
Anyway he held fourth at -- he was describing his report. He said this is just
poppy-cock. He says, it's a bit like looking up somebody's ass to see if his
hat’s on straight. And so after a little while I stood up and Tom says, “Stan
I’m not through talking.” I said Tom, I'm just letting the chairman know when
you are through I'd like to say a few words. And so he ultimately wound it up
and so I was talking out of my head. But really so clear in my mind that I had
all the dates down. I described what it was the group of engineers had begun to
work together over a year before, gave them the month and date, and I gave a
synopsis of the subsequent meetings we had had, and how there were times for
drafting information that would go into this report and how it was -- then the
different information was discussed in specific, and some changes would be made
in the earlier drafts and the document before you is what we all agreed on. And
I said “Tom, I'll submit that there's a lot more to this report than a
hemorrhoid inspection.” I got a better laugh than he did. [laughing] Anyway,
that was really sort of the -- that was the beginning of a time when I didn't
have to take any nonsense off the attorneys. They were a little more careful how
they talked to me.
>> Glenn Gray: Now this area that you're working in, the Tulare Lake area is
subject to flooding?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: And why don't you talk some about that, and specifically about
the 1969 flood which I understand was a pretty major one.
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. It was.
>> Glenn Gray: And just describe the situation generally and then maybe that
flood more specifically.
>> Stan Barnes: In 1969 and in such mammoth times, mammoth flood times, there
were flood waters coming into Tulare Lake from all major streams, and some of
the ones that are not even major in a normal year. But certainly, the Kings,
Kaweah, Tule and Kern would be flood inflow all the time, all major flood time.
And so we really had to have two ways to fight the flood from my perspective. On
the ground you could build your levy higher and do whatever you could
physically, but in terms of things I could relate to and do whatever you could
to decrease the flood flows by increasing the irrigation divergence up stream.
And on the King's it's further complicated by the fact that the flood criteria
Corps of Engineers has a manual that -- how they operate in flood times. And
even though there were no agreement among all the users and the government,
while still there was a document the Corps operated under, it said that you take
the non-damaging flows to the extent of safe capacity of the Kings River North
Fork from Riverdale to Firebaugh and you'd divert -- you'd maximize the
diversion north of the Kings River and minimize the flood inflow south. If you
were a water user along Kings River that didn't give a damn about flooding
Tulare Lake, why you'd encourage the Corps as much water as they could south so
you didn't hurt anybody's feelings up north. Little contentious issues would be
discussed with the Corps of Engineer personnel, and the Corps always maintained
control of the -- of the valve on the dam. They weren't going to let too much -they weren't going to let anybody get hurt that didn't have to get hurt. The dam
was constructed to minimize flood damage on the Kings River. So they would do
what they could to maximize safe diversions and minimize flood diversions. And
so we would have a Kings River water master would be involved and engineers
along the river be involved, and talking about and studying how much water could
safely be diverted north an how much must be diverted into Tulare Lake. So we
would -- the way the spring run off is, you know ahead of time that there's so
much snow up on the hill and some of it's got to come off some time. The key
question is at what rate will be come off in the critical months, April, May,
June. And so we'd look at history and how much it could be diverted and so
forth, how much was forecasted by the snow surveys to come off, and we would
divide each month into ten-day periods. And then we would work with
hydrologists, state forecast people, and our own view of history and what this
year might bring. And we would share those thoughts with the Corps staff. And
they would be doing the same thing. And we would make sure that they were aware
of everything we were aware of. And the result was that they made a point -–
they would have done this anyway, but we -- this way we at least had our
forecasts looked at. And then we would -- there would be meetings with the Corps
in Sacramento. And we'd make sure that they had our studies before them, or by
the telephone. And not do anything imprudent, just trying to do the best we
could with what we had to deal with. And so I remember one key meeting in 1969,
the meeting included the key civilian staff people headed by a person by the
name of Malleo Gomez. The -- I remember we had -- had this meeting, and they put
numbers up on the board as to how much water was going to come off and where it
was going to go. And sometimes the weather can influence how it's going to come
off quite a bit. And so we'd show it both ways. And then we'd, you know, I think
we'd say gentlemen, we don't have to make the final decision right now, but we’d
urge you to do delay flood diversions into Tulare Lake until we know more about
how the river is really responding to whatever temperatures it may be facing.
And basically it was the -– from our standpoint, the key was don't decide before
you have to decide. If you can delay deciding for two weeks or another 10 days
or 20 days, you'll know more than you do today. And so let's not -- let's not
put any water in there that we don't have to. And they were really amenable to
that concept. And I remember that Malleo at one point says give us some time to
discuss this and we'll call you back in. So they excused us to go down the hall
and get a glass of water or something, and they met and called us back. And I
can still remember Malleo looking over at the colonel and he says, colonel,
there is a chance. There is a chance, he says, perhaps if we are right, perhaps
we -- well, we'll get a congressional medal. If we are wrong, we will be hung by
the balls. [laughing] So the -- but then he sort of focused on this timing
aspect and said we recommend we defer making a final decision on sending water
south for two weeks or some other date, whatever date it was in the near future.
And the whether blessed us and we were successful in not taking any more Kings
River water in the Tulare Lake. But what did come in plus all the water from the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, there was over a million acre feet in there. And over
100,000 acres were flooded. It was a very severe flood.
>> Glenn Gray: Is it safe to say that that '69 flood was the biggest in your
time?
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, it was the biggest up to that date. 1983 was a little
bigger.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. You mentioned earlier the -- someone serving as a water
master. Can you explain a little bit about what that person does, what their
role is?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. The Kings River Water Association is an unincorporated
association of 28 member units, public districts, and mutual water companies who
represent all of the users, except the riparians along the river individuals.
All of the people who use water from the Kings River. And in 1917 the -- there
was no water association. But they -- they requested -- these water users
requested the state of California to send down some engineering type person to
measure the water that goes to this person or that person. There was an
engineering committee of three gentlemen that had worked up an engineering
report on the allocation of these waters among the units. He came down, his name
was Charles Coffee [Assumed spelling]. He came down stayed for 40 years, and he
became the first water master of the Kings River. And he was very effective
until the dam came along. And then he -- neither he nor his counterparts on the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, all competent men, all well respected, were effective
with an unregulated river and couldn't mentally transfer to being -- having the
field that we all, with a regulated supply. And so they all had to be replaced
or were replaced. But he is the -- he's the administrative entity. He serves at
the pleasure of the board. And sometimes after the -- after the dam was
completed Mr. Coffee had his views about how things should be, and they were
favored by the upper river and not by the middle or lower river. So he wasn't
revered quite as much by us as he was by them. They tell about one time that
they were trying to get everybody together and they had an inspection by the
Corps of Engineers of conditions along the river and what they were going to do
here and there and the other thing. And they had the consulting engineer from
Berkley, Mr. Harding come down representing Tulare Lake, and had other people
along the river. But they had Coffee representing Kings River Water Association.
It was on a Saturday, I guess. And -- oh, Mr. Harding told me this story about
how Mr. Coffee was, would –- he showed them where the points of diversion were
until they got down to Highway 99, then he excused himself. He said gentlemen,
I'm going have to excuse myself, I've got go back to Fresno and mow my lawn. So
that didn't win him any friends below Kingsburg. So anyway, those are the things
that happen periodically, and people like to remember them. Different people
like to remember different things.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, we've been talking about the situation in the '60s, and at
this time there are some things that are set in motion that continue through the
1970s to percolate. And that ultimately you end up with the Reclamation Reform
Act in 1982. Do you have any comments at all about this process and how this
became the law that it is?
>> Stan Barnes: I was -- the early '60s were topsy-turvy times on all the
rivers. And before we could have permanent agreement among ourselves -– I’m
really phrasing that wrong -- but it was essential to have a long permanent
agreement between the water users in the United States. And the Kings River
people had been more actively involved in dealing with the United States, even
though non successfully up to that time than the Kaweah, Tule and Kern. Kern
stayed active through these years, but not effectively, I mean the United States
chose to put the priority on the Kings River. And so anyway, that's where it
stood. And the United States would not give a contract to the river that did not
include the Acreage Limitations Provisions of reclamation law. Which included
160 acre limitation. And the -- that was unacceptable to the Kings River.
Finally, in the late '60s, I believe, the local people were successful in
getting the government to agree that the Acreage Limitation Provisions of
Reclamation Law could be litigated and they would not impose sovereign immunity
on the non-federal interests to decide the issue, the reclamation issue. And so
that wasn't really a victory, but if you looked at our three avenues potentially
administratively, that exhausted the administrative issues. And then legislative
would be through the congress and judicial would be through the courts. And so
that was the end of the administrative element. And there were -- that did not
prohibit execution of storage agreements between the United States and the local
people. But it -- it left that issue unresolved. But at least you had a chance
to have a permanent agreement on -- on the -- with the United States and all the
Kings River interests, which was a major step. And we then proceeded to pursue
the legal issues. And that started out in Fresno District Court, Judge Crocker
[Assumed spelling]. The local people won. One of the reasons that we won was
that during this period of litigation before it came to trial and during -while it was in trial, but before the decision came down, the 1969 flood
occurred. And Judge Crocker was flown over the Tulare Lake area, and Bob
Knowles used to -- was fond of saying it, very seldom that you get a chance to
show the judge the crime taking place. So here was a flood taking place and
pretty obvious it was going to be impossible to put a 160 acre operator in that
situation. So anyway, we were -- we did win. And then the things taken -- it was
taken on appeal by the United States and after a lot of time and bother, matters
taking place, why the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco came down, reversing Judge
Crocker and the matter was taken up by appeal on the water user's side. And
ultimately became -- it was -- it was -- well, I'll leave that on hold for
discussion here for just a moment. But in the meantime, there were also major
legislative activities on this -- on acreage limitation. And why is it that the
poor southern -- southern part of the San Joaquin Valley is singled-out among
all Corps of Engineer projects throughout the United States as the only one
where they have this intent to apply acreage limitation. There were other large
Corps projects in Florida and these other states, I can name all for you in a
minute. But there were no similar efforts by the United States to apply any -any kind of registration -- any kind of restrictions. And they weren't even -they weren't even on the map, you might say. That -- that issue, we reformed
groups of water users from throughout the west mostly, Western States Water
Council. 17 western states, or reclamation states, those are the ones that have
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects. And we'd meet and look for legislation to
correct this evil, that we thought. And it on was some of those things that I
met your friend Mr. Manock. But we would meet and see how to address this common
issue. In the meantime -- in the meantime there were other irrigation projects
in California and elsewhere, where the acreage limitation was applied and was
sometimes policed and sometimes not. And so the -- the -- our friends on the
legislative issue were the Westlands Water Distinct and the Friant Water Users
and others. The ones that they were really after were the big boys in the
Westlands Water District. And that's where Mr. Manock came into play. His client
was Westland. But anyway, you had an issue which effected different people
different ways. And so what would satisfy one would satisfy not everyone. And so
during that process -- I'm trying to think. I'm quite sure Chip Pashayan was the
congressman from representing these -- most of these Kings and Kern County –
Kings and Tulare. Then Mr. Cuelho represented Westlands. And -- but anyway,
these -- these were -- and seemed like endless meetings. My wife wondered why I
had so much business in Denver, you know? But I said Honey, that's where the
discussions are. But anyway, that whole legislative process was going on, and
there became more and more pressure on more and more people to apply this thing
in different ways and different ones. And anyway, I became a player -- we -- we
-- the suggestion was made, I don't remember who made it initially, but it
certainly hit welcome ears -- to documenting, where Corps of Engineer projects
throughout the United States were being operated every day for -- with no
suggestion of acreage limitation. The one that sounds, it might be clear to you
from your experiences since you've been here anyway, was that on the Columbia
River, the Oregon and Washington border. You had people near the town of
Boardman, Oregon. There had been these whole series of dams constructed in
Bonneville Power Administration states. They -- they had very favorable power
rates compared to your other utilities. And so we put two and two together and
took a trip up to -- to Portland to get some reports on -- from the Corps on
these different reservoirs and so forth. And then we flew over more than one
location, but the one that struck me the most was the one in Boardland -- near
Boardman, Oregon. This major group of fellas were pumping out of the lake behind
the dam. And I can't remember if it was the John Day Dam [Assumed spelling] or
which one. But -- and then you could sort of imagine, might be a little easier
to be pumping from a still pond, however it might be fluctuating a little bit in
pump lift. But it would be much easier to pump than it would be from raging
canyon of widely fluctuating levels and difficulty of keeping your pumping plant
in place and so forth. And then if you compared the power rates of this
Bonneville power rate structure compared to Portland General Electric or
somebody, you had a pretty big advantage on your power. I think it -- on
balance, it turned out to be less than half, much less than half, the cost to
irrigate by the controlled river than it would be out of a non-controlled river.
So we found -- we did a number of these things which I have summarized on a
little report here. But it was very easy to document all these projects along
different rivers, and the people that were being benefited were just delighted
to show us how they could do all this. And so we were polite enough to take all
their literature that they do these reports on how much money they were saving
and so forth, had to buy two new briefcases to haul all of this stuff home.
Anyway, in congress the -- our lobbyists would chat with some of the senators
and congressmen from these other states. And they'd say, gentlemen, here's the
situation. You know, we think that your people are -- our people are getting
unfairly treated. We think there should be an exemption for Corps of Engineer
projects in California from application of reclamation law. And that was a -that was a wonderfully easy sell. And it was -- I think one of the terms of
maximum satisfaction per minimum input, that was one of my easiest engineering
assignments over the years, I think. We had a lot of fun. We had, you know, the
MO we had was you can only do this if you have a certain level of enthusiasm.
But Mr. Tomkins, Steve Tomkins and I would take off on a Sunday and we'd fly to
central city in the area of where we were going to look and we'd get quarters
and stay there. And we'd charter an aircraft from, like a Cessna 182 or whatever
was available. Steve was a competent pilot. So we'd go flying and I'd take
pictures. And then we'd do this service area thing with -- if there was a local
agency, that made things easier. But if not, why, we could –- at least you have
the county. And we'd look for the areas where they were. And the county
recorders office would have a list of people, and there would be, you know, you
don't raise sugar cane in southern Florida on 160 acres. There was a great
expanse of wonderful crops, and it tells a very compelling story. And so we –
well that’s one place I thought we got more -- more credit and accolades than we
perhaps deserved, but it was a lot of fun doing it, anyway. And effective.
>> Glenn Gray: What do you suppose in your opinion is the answer to the question
of why did the Corps of Engineers want to impose the 160 acres limitation in the
San Joaquin Valley?
>> Stan Barnes: Well the Corps of Engineers, of course, is under the Department
of Defense or whoever, and not with the Department of the Interior. So they
don't -- what the -- the issue -- certain people within the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Interior, Mr. [Inaudible] and others, wanted
the -- they were urged by, you know, liberals here and there that -- that the -this project should be under -- under the Department of the Interior. It was
debated in the '40s, 1940s, as to who would be constructing these different dams
here and there. There were big projects, and big agencies like to build things.
So there was a dispute as to -- in the '40s the local people went to Washington
and said we would rather have no dam than have one constructed by the Bureau of
Reclamation. It was fought after very seriously in those times. And ultimately,
it was decided that the Corps of Engineers would have these four rivers of the
southern San Joaquin Valley. So the Army was just sort of taken out of their
hands administratively by the United States. I don't know how -- I don't know
how it -- I don't know how those decisions are made. But it was entirely
political. But somebody determined that -- that the proper agency would be
exercising these storage agreements, implementing storage agreements, would be
the Department of the Interior and not the Corps of Engineers.
California State University, Fresno. Today is January 7, 2009. And we are in
Visalia at the home of Mr. Stan Barnes whom we're going to be interviewing
today. So I'd like to ask you where and when were you born?
>> Stan Barnes: In Pasadena, California and February 9, 1926.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And can you describe a little bit, your family, where they
came from, your family background and your growing up in the state?
>> Stan Barnes: My parents were both native Californians, and educated in
California. And we -- I spent my early years in southern California. But from
kindergarten on I was in northern California, and my dad worked in San Francisco
and commuted by rail from Burlingame and later from Palo Alto to San Francisco
for his entire remaining career. Nifty guy, nifty human being.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did you go to school?
>> Stan Barnes: First three years in Burlingame interesting about that, at
kindergarten age we lived about a half-mile from the school. I think my mother
took me the first day. After that I walked. And everybody else walked and nobody
thought anything about it. Just kind of what you do. And did that for the first
three years and then we moved on down to Palo Alto, where I spent the rest of my
youth growing up. Went to Palo Alto schools and Paly High and so forth and so
on. Had a wonderful time in -- as a youngster. Had a lot of freedom too. We were
-- go any place you wanted, you could do anything you wanted. We'd take bicycles
and go out behind Stanford and just wander the hills and maybe shoot a squirrel
or two. And it was -- but every day after school we played pick-up sports and so
forth. And I -- one of my teammates in those years at Paly High was still my
wonderful friend 60 years later. So, kind of – it was a wonderful place to grow
up.
>> Glenn Gray: And you went on to Stanford, then, I believe?
>> Stan Barnes: Undergraduate to Cal Tech, and I graduated from there in 1949
after the war. And then I went to Stanford for two years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And what made -- what made you decide to study engineering,
become an engineer?
>> Stan Barnes: I liked the reality of it. Dealing, you know, not dealing just
with ideas, you're dealing with applied ideas. And it was more fun to watch
things happen than to just dream about something that might happen.
>> Glenn Gray: And of course at this time there was the various water projects
going on, Central Valley Project and the state water projects. When did you
become interested in water as a specific engineering project?
>> Stan Barnes: In grad school, in civil engineering, you're either going to be
a structural engineer or you're going to be a something else. And the something
else looked to me like it was some fun avenues, maybe with water. And so I
specialized in water in grad school. And when I got out I didn't have any
trouble finding a job in water.
>> Glenn Gray: And what was -- what was your first job, then?
>> Stan Barnes: Work for the Hetch Hetchy Water Supply of the City and County of
San Francisco. They had a dam they were building on the Tuolumne River, Cherry
Valley Dam. And they wanted to do a hydraulic model study of the spillway and
they were looking for somebody to do it. And so the team was my Stanford
professor and me. I was the kid who was kind of working on the model up on the
hill. And Dr. Bernard would come up and keep us going on the straight and
narrow. But then that job was finished in a year and I went to work for Bechtel
Corporation.
>> Glenn Gray: And where is that based?
>> Stan Barnes: All over the place, but my initial job was out of LA area,
Vernon, and I worked there for a couple of years and -- three or four I guess.
And then was transferred to San Francisco.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And how long in total did you work for them?
>> Stan Barnes: Eight years.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And did you have -- was there some connection to the Miller
and Lux operation through them?
>> Stan Barnes: Glenn, that came about -- Miller and Lux had some water rights
on the Kern River. And they were different from the surrounding district, the
Buena Vista Water Storage District. Theirs are involving Buena Vista Lake. And
they wanted to -- wanted to negotiate a position on Kern River that was separate
and distinct from the district and such. And they -- they wanted to -- from
Bechtel's standpoint it was a very small job. And it just required one guy to do
most of the coordination, and that was I. And we had monthly meetings in the big
town of Button Willow. And we would -- I would meet the Miller and Lux people
the evening before and we'd chat over dinner and whatever else in the -- during
that time the J. G. Boswell Company became a tenant, farming Buena Vista Lake
lands for Miller and Lux. I met some of the Boswell people in 1958. They gave me
an offer I couldn't refuse. So I came down here to Corcoran, spent 25 years with
the Boswell Company, been in the valley ever since.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe the situation, the water situation here in the
valley, specifically the Tulare Lake and the Boswell operation. What was the
situation like when you came?
>> Stan Barnes: I arrived in February, 1959. By that time Pine Flat Dam was
completed, in 1954, actually. And Isabella dam was completed in '54 [Inaudible]
also. And there still was no regulated water supply from Kaweah River or Tule
River both of which were later regulated by Corcoran area projects. And Boswell
Company had water rights, had small water right yet undefined on the Tulare
River and the Kern River. But a pretty substantial water right on the Kings
River through half a dozen different entities. Public districts and mutual water
companies. They didn't own anything 100%; they owned a substantial percentage of
a half a dozen of these entities. So I was trying to get acquainted with some of
those things and fit into the -- there was also I should add that the dam was
completed, there were no storage agreements among the water users. There was
also no permanent agreement between the water users of the group and the United
States government. The facilities had been constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and it was -- contracts were to be negotiated with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation after quite a bit of wrangling at the determination of the
Department of the Interior. And so we were involved in those issues for the next
20 years.
>> Glenn Gray: And what -- how would you describe some of the projects that you
worked on when you were working for Boswell and how were they different from
some of the projects worked on in your previous jobs?
>> Stan Barnes: We were not building anything, we were using -- taking the
benefits for these projects, some of which were then completed, and some of
which were just a dream in somebody's eye. Not even a serious dream. There was
the -- California State Water Project had not yet been completed. It was
delivering water in the 1960s to the -- the valley and southern California. And
we and our neighbors were players in wanting to use the facilities. It was a fun
-- fun issue.
>> Glenn Gray: How would you describe the level of cooperation between these
various entities? Because you're talking about land owners, you're talking about
government entities who are, you know, trying to come to some sort of agreement.
What was that whole process like there in the early years when you first
arrived?
>> Stan Barnes: I think the best thing you could say about the Kings River Water
Association one of my senior advisors that I respected a lot was Sydney Harding.
He said when it's possible to avoid making a decision Kings River Water
Association will do so. The -- the problem was getting everybody to pull in the
same direction. The upstream units had what they called "highority" which is
effective priority. And they had -- it was -- downstream users were in a
position where you were continually pushed to your limit of your patience and
something else would do -- make something come about. Those -- the -- in 1963
after a lot of work by a lot of people, there finally was an agreement among the
Kings River Water Association member units, 28 of them. Large ones and small
ones. Some large in area with a -- farther down stream you were, you had a
higher flow water right, which meant you didn't get any water when the flow was
low, and got more than you wanted in flood times. So those things all had to be
worked into this package of agreements, though ultimately it was put together.
Fun process.
>> Glenn Gray: And how would you describe the role that you played in -- in
helping this all come about?
>> Stan Barnes: Every one of the 28 member units up and down the river needed a
lawyer and an engineer or -- and a strong director, president of the board or
whoever. And the more effective the three of them were, the more effective the
-- they could deal with the issues. And we had -- we were enough involved that
we had legal representation and we made sense out of the engineering situation,
the factual situation. And we had a common sense director, president of the
board of the biggest one. And persistence, I guess, is the main thing. You'd
hang in there. There would be issues come up, there would be some of the
attorneys and some of the engineers and directors would find a difficulty for
any solution that was one of the maximum requirements of an astute attorney is
he must be able to find a difficulty for every solution. And they -- ultimately,
everybody had so much to gain by having the thing worked out that it overcame
these prejudices, and what -- what our group of people did was to focus on maybe
one of the issues would include half a dozen elements. Seepage, river seepage,
how to handle the high flows. The basic water rights under a natural stream were
all agreed to in 1927 and again later in 1949. But none of it applied to water
storage. Storage was the name of the game in -- after the dams were built. So it
was a fun issue. --
>> Glenn Gray: Is there any way that you can describe what a typical day for you
would have been like back in those years.
>> Stan Barnes: It's interesting. We had -- in addition to having sort of a
chaotic situation on all these rivers, especially the King, in terms of
importance, especially the Kings. But you also had to deliver water to the farm.
And the water was either from wells or from the natural flow of the river or
from stored water under some kind of a permissive agreement. So with -- I think
the key to Boswell Company's success and ultimately the whole group, they would
have operational people that would be very effective, willing to work long
hours, drive long miles, and keep track of the water. See that somebody else
doesn't steal your water, while you take two or three days to get down from Pine
Flat to Tulare Lake and in that time a lot of people along the way, and we used
to say they dip their beak and take a little of the water along the way. But
anyway, it was -- we had an older fellow about my dad's age when I went down
there. And he was very, very good. Not afraid of work and he was smart. And he
had a younger fellow working under him who was named Glen Jorgensen [Assumed
spelling]. He was -- he loved work. He loved working with people. And if it was
something that was going to get the water to the land, he could do that under
any circumstances. He had a -- a -- he would tease the foreman, the farming
foreman, and one of his gags I thought was pretty good was he'd -- he'd want to
meet with the guy and he'd -- he'd tell him he wanted to meet with him. And
[Inaudible] meet at this -- by this gin. An so they [Inaudible] certain time,
and they'd get there, Glen had a watermelon. And he said Clarence, I want to
share my watermelon with you. And what had happened was Clarence had a little
home up along the [Inaudible] canal, along -- between Pine Flat and the lake. We
had a little 80-acre parcel there, and he had some watermelons growing on it.
And Glen asked his wife if he might have a [Inaudible] so he took this
watermelon, went down there, and Clarence said, oh Glen, it's wonderful of you
to share your watermelon with me, he said. This is really terrific. He said you
know, I've got some up on my place there, they have the same kinds of seeds as
this one does. Why, you son of a bitch, he said. But he'd -- he'd build working
relationships out of these kinds of situations. And they were always pulling gag
on somebody or other. But anyway, Glen and I could see the importance of the
other guy's job. And he was not only competent, he was also essential from my
standpoint. Because the more he could do with his team of operational guys, why,
the more freedom that gave me to work on some of these broader issues of
becoming a contractor for the state project water or working out kinks for water
storage agreements, or working out agreements with the United States. And so we
were -- we were very, very fond team for 25 years.
>> Glenn Gray: About how many people were working for Boswell in those years?
>> Stan Barnes: Totally, I can't tell you. But we probably had a couple of
hundred salaries employees and a similar number of hourly employees. Maybe a few
more hourly.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were your impressions of Boswell, personally, in the
interactions that had with them.
>> Stan Barnes:[Inaudible] personally?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, he was -- he was a monumental character. He was -- he -- if
you were in trouble and he knew it, he'd turn the world upside down to help you
out. And he'd do anything for you. And if he thought you were getting a little
kind of uppity, kind of pedal a canoe all by yourself, he'd find out somebody to
pull your pedal. See? So you couldn't pedal so much. My own take on him was that
I owe my success of 25 years with the company and never getting fired to the
fact that I never agreed to work in Los Angeles next door to Jim Boswell. I just
didn't have the personality to weather it. I watched kind of a trail of corpses
drift in and out of the LA office, and I decided it was much better to me to
work where I felt I was useful.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, can you talk about some of the -- what you would consider
to be the most significant issues or events related to water in this area where
you worked over the course of the 25 years? What are the things that stand out
in your mind?
>> Stan Barnes: Probably, the first thing that we -- it was so obvious that we - how can you operate a river without any agreements on how you're going to
operate it. No agreements with anybody. No agreements with the operator or the
owner of the dam, no agreements with your neighboring districts, no agreements
with anybody. So we worked pretty hard in defining what was not known and making
kind of parenthetical engineering studies, something you could do on the back of
an envelope, or at least over a weekend. And so we have on the Kings River as an
example, we'd have a meeting among the engineering representatives of the river.
And they would include from the upper river and the middle river and the lower
river, and there would eventually turn out to be half a dozen or eight people
that would be willing to put in the time and effort to be a player in developing
some of these agreements. And they also had to have a client willing to pay for
it. We got pretty well acquainted, and I remember one incident, we were quite a
ways apart on having an agreement up and down the river as to how to operate
storage. And so we –- the first thing we did was define the issues. Like, river
seepage. How many were the losses from Point A to Point B to Point C, and what
are you going to do with it -- what happens to the water that someone's entitled
to take under the old schedule, natural flow schedule. How much of that can they
store and how much -- what you used to not be able to divert, how much of that
in later years would you be required to let pass so that the down stream users
who historically used the excess could also share in it. And so the people that
were up stream said we can take all we can use and store whatever we want. And
we'd say, just a minute here, let's look at what the equities are. Anyway, we'd
-- we'd divide these issues. We'd articulate what they were. And then we'd agree
that, well, we should be able to solve one, two, and three if we just have -we'll divide up whom ever -- somebody would volunteer to prepare a paragraph on
how you do that. And then you'd finally run out of people who were willing to
provide paragraphs that would do anything except satisfy their client. So we'd - but however, by talking about it and working about it, and then agreeing, say
we –- out of these eight or ten issues -- we'd have three or four solved almost
immediately. We'd get them articulated in engineering language. All have to be
doctored up for the attorneys, of course. Then we'd review those same things
with the boards of directors of at least the key people on the boards. And make
sure you're -- everybody's comfortable with what you're doing. And then we'd
tackle some of the more complicated issues, and less certain. And we'd -- over a
period of a year-and-a-half or two, we'd -- were able to put together a report
on all of the issues. And the -- we had an agreement among the engineers on the
physical plan, but some of the up stream engineers couldn't get approval of
their attorneys. They would -- attorneys would be of a certain mind, you know,
if we have -- there's nothing in law that says we can't continue to divert all
we're entitled to, even though we never diverted under natural flow before the
dam was built. So anyway, that sort of went on for a while and I remember there
was one key meeting, one of the key attorneys on the upper river was holding
forth at one of the key meetings, a key meeting, on the Kings River Water
Association, some kind of a -- whoever the chairman was, was not capable of
conducting the meeting in a way that wasn't really just like turning it over to
the attorneys. And so that became, you know, some time where you have to stand
up for what you believe in and talk about what's really right. And so we -- we
had this one meeting and Jay Thomas Crow was the spokesman for Elder Irrigation
District [Assumed spelling]. He determined what the policy of the board of
directors would be. And if you think I'm kidding, I'm not. And that ultimately
was responsible for his demise. Literally. And very sad. Because Tom was a great
guy, great guy. And very capable. Any event, he, on this one occasion, he -- he
-- he had been shown a copy of this engineer's report, and we had all signed it,
we all had our names on it, including his own engineer's. His own engineer.
Anyway he held fourth at -- he was describing his report. He said this is just
poppy-cock. He says, it's a bit like looking up somebody's ass to see if his
hat’s on straight. And so after a little while I stood up and Tom says, “Stan
I’m not through talking.” I said Tom, I'm just letting the chairman know when
you are through I'd like to say a few words. And so he ultimately wound it up
and so I was talking out of my head. But really so clear in my mind that I had
all the dates down. I described what it was the group of engineers had begun to
work together over a year before, gave them the month and date, and I gave a
synopsis of the subsequent meetings we had had, and how there were times for
drafting information that would go into this report and how it was -- then the
different information was discussed in specific, and some changes would be made
in the earlier drafts and the document before you is what we all agreed on. And
I said “Tom, I'll submit that there's a lot more to this report than a
hemorrhoid inspection.” I got a better laugh than he did. [laughing] Anyway,
that was really sort of the -- that was the beginning of a time when I didn't
have to take any nonsense off the attorneys. They were a little more careful how
they talked to me.
>> Glenn Gray: Now this area that you're working in, the Tulare Lake area is
subject to flooding?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: And why don't you talk some about that, and specifically about
the 1969 flood which I understand was a pretty major one.
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. It was.
>> Glenn Gray: And just describe the situation generally and then maybe that
flood more specifically.
>> Stan Barnes: In 1969 and in such mammoth times, mammoth flood times, there
were flood waters coming into Tulare Lake from all major streams, and some of
the ones that are not even major in a normal year. But certainly, the Kings,
Kaweah, Tule and Kern would be flood inflow all the time, all major flood time.
And so we really had to have two ways to fight the flood from my perspective. On
the ground you could build your levy higher and do whatever you could
physically, but in terms of things I could relate to and do whatever you could
to decrease the flood flows by increasing the irrigation divergence up stream.
And on the King's it's further complicated by the fact that the flood criteria
Corps of Engineers has a manual that -- how they operate in flood times. And
even though there were no agreement among all the users and the government,
while still there was a document the Corps operated under, it said that you take
the non-damaging flows to the extent of safe capacity of the Kings River North
Fork from Riverdale to Firebaugh and you'd divert -- you'd maximize the
diversion north of the Kings River and minimize the flood inflow south. If you
were a water user along Kings River that didn't give a damn about flooding
Tulare Lake, why you'd encourage the Corps as much water as they could south so
you didn't hurt anybody's feelings up north. Little contentious issues would be
discussed with the Corps of Engineer personnel, and the Corps always maintained
control of the -- of the valve on the dam. They weren't going to let too much -they weren't going to let anybody get hurt that didn't have to get hurt. The dam
was constructed to minimize flood damage on the Kings River. So they would do
what they could to maximize safe diversions and minimize flood diversions. And
so we would have a Kings River water master would be involved and engineers
along the river be involved, and talking about and studying how much water could
safely be diverted north an how much must be diverted into Tulare Lake. So we
would -- the way the spring run off is, you know ahead of time that there's so
much snow up on the hill and some of it's got to come off some time. The key
question is at what rate will be come off in the critical months, April, May,
June. And so we'd look at history and how much it could be diverted and so
forth, how much was forecasted by the snow surveys to come off, and we would
divide each month into ten-day periods. And then we would work with
hydrologists, state forecast people, and our own view of history and what this
year might bring. And we would share those thoughts with the Corps staff. And
they would be doing the same thing. And we would make sure that they were aware
of everything we were aware of. And the result was that they made a point -–
they would have done this anyway, but we -- this way we at least had our
forecasts looked at. And then we would -- there would be meetings with the Corps
in Sacramento. And we'd make sure that they had our studies before them, or by
the telephone. And not do anything imprudent, just trying to do the best we
could with what we had to deal with. And so I remember one key meeting in 1969,
the meeting included the key civilian staff people headed by a person by the
name of Malleo Gomez. The -- I remember we had -- had this meeting, and they put
numbers up on the board as to how much water was going to come off and where it
was going to go. And sometimes the weather can influence how it's going to come
off quite a bit. And so we'd show it both ways. And then we'd, you know, I think
we'd say gentlemen, we don't have to make the final decision right now, but we’d
urge you to do delay flood diversions into Tulare Lake until we know more about
how the river is really responding to whatever temperatures it may be facing.
And basically it was the -– from our standpoint, the key was don't decide before
you have to decide. If you can delay deciding for two weeks or another 10 days
or 20 days, you'll know more than you do today. And so let's not -- let's not
put any water in there that we don't have to. And they were really amenable to
that concept. And I remember that Malleo at one point says give us some time to
discuss this and we'll call you back in. So they excused us to go down the hall
and get a glass of water or something, and they met and called us back. And I
can still remember Malleo looking over at the colonel and he says, colonel,
there is a chance. There is a chance, he says, perhaps if we are right, perhaps
we -- well, we'll get a congressional medal. If we are wrong, we will be hung by
the balls. [laughing] So the -- but then he sort of focused on this timing
aspect and said we recommend we defer making a final decision on sending water
south for two weeks or some other date, whatever date it was in the near future.
And the whether blessed us and we were successful in not taking any more Kings
River water in the Tulare Lake. But what did come in plus all the water from the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, there was over a million acre feet in there. And over
100,000 acres were flooded. It was a very severe flood.
>> Glenn Gray: Is it safe to say that that '69 flood was the biggest in your
time?
>> Stan Barnes: Oh, it was the biggest up to that date. 1983 was a little
bigger.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. You mentioned earlier the -- someone serving as a water
master. Can you explain a little bit about what that person does, what their
role is?
>> Stan Barnes: Yes. The Kings River Water Association is an unincorporated
association of 28 member units, public districts, and mutual water companies who
represent all of the users, except the riparians along the river individuals.
All of the people who use water from the Kings River. And in 1917 the -- there
was no water association. But they -- they requested -- these water users
requested the state of California to send down some engineering type person to
measure the water that goes to this person or that person. There was an
engineering committee of three gentlemen that had worked up an engineering
report on the allocation of these waters among the units. He came down, his name
was Charles Coffee [Assumed spelling]. He came down stayed for 40 years, and he
became the first water master of the Kings River. And he was very effective
until the dam came along. And then he -- neither he nor his counterparts on the
Kaweah, Tule and Kern, all competent men, all well respected, were effective
with an unregulated river and couldn't mentally transfer to being -- having the
field that we all, with a regulated supply. And so they all had to be replaced
or were replaced. But he is the -- he's the administrative entity. He serves at
the pleasure of the board. And sometimes after the -- after the dam was
completed Mr. Coffee had his views about how things should be, and they were
favored by the upper river and not by the middle or lower river. So he wasn't
revered quite as much by us as he was by them. They tell about one time that
they were trying to get everybody together and they had an inspection by the
Corps of Engineers of conditions along the river and what they were going to do
here and there and the other thing. And they had the consulting engineer from
Berkley, Mr. Harding come down representing Tulare Lake, and had other people
along the river. But they had Coffee representing Kings River Water Association.
It was on a Saturday, I guess. And -- oh, Mr. Harding told me this story about
how Mr. Coffee was, would –- he showed them where the points of diversion were
until they got down to Highway 99, then he excused himself. He said gentlemen,
I'm going have to excuse myself, I've got go back to Fresno and mow my lawn. So
that didn't win him any friends below Kingsburg. So anyway, those are the things
that happen periodically, and people like to remember them. Different people
like to remember different things.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, we've been talking about the situation in the '60s, and at
this time there are some things that are set in motion that continue through the
1970s to percolate. And that ultimately you end up with the Reclamation Reform
Act in 1982. Do you have any comments at all about this process and how this
became the law that it is?
>> Stan Barnes: I was -- the early '60s were topsy-turvy times on all the
rivers. And before we could have permanent agreement among ourselves -– I’m
really phrasing that wrong -- but it was essential to have a long permanent
agreement between the water users in the United States. And the Kings River
people had been more actively involved in dealing with the United States, even
though non successfully up to that time than the Kaweah, Tule and Kern. Kern
stayed active through these years, but not effectively, I mean the United States
chose to put the priority on the Kings River. And so anyway, that's where it
stood. And the United States would not give a contract to the river that did not
include the Acreage Limitations Provisions of reclamation law. Which included
160 acre limitation. And the -- that was unacceptable to the Kings River.
Finally, in the late '60s, I believe, the local people were successful in
getting the government to agree that the Acreage Limitation Provisions of
Reclamation Law could be litigated and they would not impose sovereign immunity
on the non-federal interests to decide the issue, the reclamation issue. And so
that wasn't really a victory, but if you looked at our three avenues potentially
administratively, that exhausted the administrative issues. And then legislative
would be through the congress and judicial would be through the courts. And so
that was the end of the administrative element. And there were -- that did not
prohibit execution of storage agreements between the United States and the local
people. But it -- it left that issue unresolved. But at least you had a chance
to have a permanent agreement on -- on the -- with the United States and all the
Kings River interests, which was a major step. And we then proceeded to pursue
the legal issues. And that started out in Fresno District Court, Judge Crocker
[Assumed spelling]. The local people won. One of the reasons that we won was
that during this period of litigation before it came to trial and during -while it was in trial, but before the decision came down, the 1969 flood
occurred. And Judge Crocker was flown over the Tulare Lake area, and Bob
Knowles used to -- was fond of saying it, very seldom that you get a chance to
show the judge the crime taking place. So here was a flood taking place and
pretty obvious it was going to be impossible to put a 160 acre operator in that
situation. So anyway, we were -- we did win. And then the things taken -- it was
taken on appeal by the United States and after a lot of time and bother, matters
taking place, why the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco came down, reversing Judge
Crocker and the matter was taken up by appeal on the water user's side. And
ultimately became -- it was -- it was -- well, I'll leave that on hold for
discussion here for just a moment. But in the meantime, there were also major
legislative activities on this -- on acreage limitation. And why is it that the
poor southern -- southern part of the San Joaquin Valley is singled-out among
all Corps of Engineer projects throughout the United States as the only one
where they have this intent to apply acreage limitation. There were other large
Corps projects in Florida and these other states, I can name all for you in a
minute. But there were no similar efforts by the United States to apply any -any kind of registration -- any kind of restrictions. And they weren't even -they weren't even on the map, you might say. That -- that issue, we reformed
groups of water users from throughout the west mostly, Western States Water
Council. 17 western states, or reclamation states, those are the ones that have
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects. And we'd meet and look for legislation to
correct this evil, that we thought. And it on was some of those things that I
met your friend Mr. Manock. But we would meet and see how to address this common
issue. In the meantime -- in the meantime there were other irrigation projects
in California and elsewhere, where the acreage limitation was applied and was
sometimes policed and sometimes not. And so the -- the -- our friends on the
legislative issue were the Westlands Water Distinct and the Friant Water Users
and others. The ones that they were really after were the big boys in the
Westlands Water District. And that's where Mr. Manock came into play. His client
was Westland. But anyway, you had an issue which effected different people
different ways. And so what would satisfy one would satisfy not everyone. And so
during that process -- I'm trying to think. I'm quite sure Chip Pashayan was the
congressman from representing these -- most of these Kings and Kern County –
Kings and Tulare. Then Mr. Cuelho represented Westlands. And -- but anyway,
these -- these were -- and seemed like endless meetings. My wife wondered why I
had so much business in Denver, you know? But I said Honey, that's where the
discussions are. But anyway, that whole legislative process was going on, and
there became more and more pressure on more and more people to apply this thing
in different ways and different ones. And anyway, I became a player -- we -- we
-- the suggestion was made, I don't remember who made it initially, but it
certainly hit welcome ears -- to documenting, where Corps of Engineer projects
throughout the United States were being operated every day for -- with no
suggestion of acreage limitation. The one that sounds, it might be clear to you
from your experiences since you've been here anyway, was that on the Columbia
River, the Oregon and Washington border. You had people near the town of
Boardman, Oregon. There had been these whole series of dams constructed in
Bonneville Power Administration states. They -- they had very favorable power
rates compared to your other utilities. And so we put two and two together and
took a trip up to -- to Portland to get some reports on -- from the Corps on
these different reservoirs and so forth. And then we flew over more than one
location, but the one that struck me the most was the one in Boardland -- near
Boardman, Oregon. This major group of fellas were pumping out of the lake behind
the dam. And I can't remember if it was the John Day Dam [Assumed spelling] or
which one. But -- and then you could sort of imagine, might be a little easier
to be pumping from a still pond, however it might be fluctuating a little bit in
pump lift. But it would be much easier to pump than it would be from raging
canyon of widely fluctuating levels and difficulty of keeping your pumping plant
in place and so forth. And then if you compared the power rates of this
Bonneville power rate structure compared to Portland General Electric or
somebody, you had a pretty big advantage on your power. I think it -- on
balance, it turned out to be less than half, much less than half, the cost to
irrigate by the controlled river than it would be out of a non-controlled river.
So we found -- we did a number of these things which I have summarized on a
little report here. But it was very easy to document all these projects along
different rivers, and the people that were being benefited were just delighted
to show us how they could do all this. And so we were polite enough to take all
their literature that they do these reports on how much money they were saving
and so forth, had to buy two new briefcases to haul all of this stuff home.
Anyway, in congress the -- our lobbyists would chat with some of the senators
and congressmen from these other states. And they'd say, gentlemen, here's the
situation. You know, we think that your people are -- our people are getting
unfairly treated. We think there should be an exemption for Corps of Engineer
projects in California from application of reclamation law. And that was a -that was a wonderfully easy sell. And it was -- I think one of the terms of
maximum satisfaction per minimum input, that was one of my easiest engineering
assignments over the years, I think. We had a lot of fun. We had, you know, the
MO we had was you can only do this if you have a certain level of enthusiasm.
But Mr. Tomkins, Steve Tomkins and I would take off on a Sunday and we'd fly to
central city in the area of where we were going to look and we'd get quarters
and stay there. And we'd charter an aircraft from, like a Cessna 182 or whatever
was available. Steve was a competent pilot. So we'd go flying and I'd take
pictures. And then we'd do this service area thing with -- if there was a local
agency, that made things easier. But if not, why, we could –- at least you have
the county. And we'd look for the areas where they were. And the county
recorders office would have a list of people, and there would be, you know, you
don't raise sugar cane in southern Florida on 160 acres. There was a great
expanse of wonderful crops, and it tells a very compelling story. And so we –
well that’s one place I thought we got more -- more credit and accolades than we
perhaps deserved, but it was a lot of fun doing it, anyway. And effective.
>> Glenn Gray: What do you suppose in your opinion is the answer to the question
of why did the Corps of Engineers want to impose the 160 acres limitation in the
San Joaquin Valley?
>> Stan Barnes: Well the Corps of Engineers, of course, is under the Department
of Defense or whoever, and not with the Department of the Interior. So they
don't -- what the -- the issue -- certain people within the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and the Department of Interior, Mr. [Inaudible] and others, wanted
the -- they were urged by, you know, liberals here and there that -- that the -this project should be under -- under the Department of the Interior. It was
debated in the '40s, 1940s, as to who would be constructing these different dams
here and there. There were big projects, and big agencies like to build things.
So there was a dispute as to -- in the '40s the local people went to Washington
and said we would rather have no dam than have one constructed by the Bureau of
Reclamation. It was fought after very seriously in those times. And ultimately,
it was decided that the Corps of Engineers would have these four rivers of the
southern San Joaquin Valley. So the Army was just sort of taken out of their
hands administratively by the United States. I don't know how -- I don't know
how it -- I don't know how those decisions are made. But it was entirely
political. But somebody determined that -- that the proper agency would be
exercising these storage agreements, implementing storage agreements, would be
the Department of the Interior and not the Corps of Engineers.