Gene Rose interview
Item
Title
eng
Gene Rose interview
Description
eng
Former environmental reporter for the Fresno Bee. Talked generally about covering water issues, and more specifically about covering the Kesterson environmental disaster in 1983.
Creator
eng
Rose, Eugene
eng
Holyoke, Thomas
Relation
eng
Water Archive Oral Histories
Coverage
eng
Gene Rose residence
Date
eng
8/27/2012
Format
eng
Microsoft Word 2003 document, 7 pages
Identifier
eng
SCMS_waoh_00013
extracted text
>> Thomas Holyoke: Interviewing Gene Rose on the San Joaquin River. Let's just
start with the -- a little bit of personal history. Who are you, where are you
from and how did you become interested in the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well I am nearly a life long resident of California, raised in
Grass Valley but I was born in Wyoming, but I missed being California native by
about six months. After high school during World War II I listed in the tail end
of the Navy. After a couple of years in the Navy I went on to college,
graduated from the University of Oregon, School of Journalism in 1951. Went to
work for the Sacramento Bee as photographer. Ten years later I was transferred
to Fresno, did photography and then in ’70 I went back to reporting that I had
done for other newspapers. And my first acquaintance with the San Joaquin River
goes back to 1943 when my older sister married a marine who has family in
Fresno. We came to visit her and in those days Highway 99 was basically two
lanes and at the Chowchilla River and Fresno River we were detoured because the
river was flooding, those rivers were flooding and traffic could not progress.
So after a moving to Fresno I saw the decline, the dewatering of those rivers
and I kept asking myself why was the 90, 95% of those rivers diverted to other
drainages that had little or no water. So that gave rise, so that time I was
writing a couple of other books that gave rise to what I felt was a betrayal of
this heartland river of California, very you know the spiritual river of
California and how could someone, anyone let a river be dewatered, diverted to
the point of extinction. So that's, that was the genesis of how I backed in to
San Joaquin River betrayed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well what, what kind of a river, well let's start with a bit
of history of the river? I mean what was the river like before Friant dam, and
even the diversions of the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Very kindly you're predating my arrival, but when you look at the
history, it had a very dynamic, rich, colorful interesting history and yes there
was a limited steamboat service on the river, but in the 1800's as they started
diverting that river, it was no longer navigable by standards that we accept for
river transportation and all of those little historic community, Hills Ferry,
Crows Landing those more or less became ghost towns because the river still
flowed, but it was being diverted. But then after the construction of Friant Dam
and the two major canals that lead off of it, 92% of its annual water production
or generation was diverted to distant lands that had little or no water. FriantKern Canal 152 miles long, San Joaquin River, irrigating farmland in Kern
County. No one can argue with the production of food, but the original plan of
the Central Valley Project was to divert only the flood flows, but in the haste,
the expediency of the great depression. It was decided somewhere and I could
never find out who made that decision is to divert 92% the flows to those
distant drainages.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The river back before Friant Dam was built, before the water
was you know almost entirely diverted, before the water, the river dried up,
what do we know about, what kind of a river it was in terms of what it was used
for, fish populations in the river, life on the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well, there is some wonderful historical photographs of people
fishing in the river, recreating in the river. If you look at the legacy of
Fresno Beach at the end of Van Ness Avenue, they had trolley service out there
and I've only see two or three wonderful photos of people gathering by the
river. You know water, I don't care if it's a lake or a stream has always been a
magnet for people. Water is life and that's why our early communities or early
transportation facilities were all was established next to water ways.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When the decision you know, why, why, do you know why it was
decided to build a major dam on the San Joaquin River as a part of the Central
Valley Project?
>> Gene Rose: No, that, that, those proposals Tom had been in the works for many
years. Basically what you have in California, you have people in the southern
part of the state and the major water source is in the northern part of the
state and when you look at California Water Project of the ’60s with Edmond G.
Brown, his whole agenda was to get, southern, the water to Southern California
with water out of, particulary out of the Sacramento River by way of the
California Aqueduct. This is the most plumbed state in the world, you know we've
been building water projects for over a 100 years, but as I have said many times
we all was build up to the available capacity and then expect magic water from
somewhere else. This is a closed system. There is no new water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In the case of the San Joaquin, all of its water comes down
out of the Sierra. Do you know where in the Sierra it begins, where the head
waters are?
>> Gene Rose: Yes, the head waters of the San Joaquin River, the main fork, the
three principle forks, north, middle, south fork. Main fork comes out of the
Ritter range, Thousand Island Lake, John Muir's country and you know this is a
land of 10, 12, 13000 foot peaks. The Sierra Nevada provides California with
nearly two-thirds of its water supply and yes that is critical to the growth,
development and the health of this state, but water is a finite resource and we
have been what I call in this dream world of water, that we always might find a
new source just over the next hill, you know the only new water conservation and
recycled water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what about ideas like building new, well as they say new
storage capacity on the river, on the San Joaquin say at the, the Temperance
Flat.
>> Gene Rose: Well that proposal has been batted around you know for 60-70 years
when they discovered that Millerton Friant was inadequate to hold the storage
that the San Joaquin River generates. I have mixed feelings of that you know
until we come up with a mechanism for addressing the demand side of the
equation, we're simply blowing smoke at ourselves. You know we need stricter
conservation methods and then I mentioned the dirty word. We need some sort of
growth, smart growth, limited growth, population controls. I'm an environmental
impact, you're an environmental impact. Each and every one of us, every living
entity needs water and what's a limit? You know there is a limit to growth and
development, that's been said before.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You had mentioned that in regards to Temperance Flat,
building there that may be that's what should have been done in the first place.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: That Millerton Lake and Friant Dam were badly built and built
in the wrong place.
>> Gene Rose: Yup, but Tom I should point out that since the construction of
Friant Dam, we've built upstream storage facilities at Mammoth Pool and at Lake
Edison and Balsam Meadows, some of those are comparatively small storage, but
there are still storage facilities and the question being is, is it wrong for a
river to flow to the sea.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The storage areas you just mentioned, some of those are also
hydroelectric power generation.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact.
>> Gene Rose: This, this is I think one of the great aspects of the San Joaquin
River is that is kind of the -- what you may call the cradle, the crucible of
hydroelectric development and that stems back over a 100 years to John
Eastwood's Big Creek Project where he envisioned a series of stair-stepped
reservoirs where the cascading -- the falling waters would be used again and
again and he had to contest or had to get involved with Henry Miller and Miller
and Lux water rights, it was very complicated but you know that high head, high
voltage long distant transmission that was born in that San Joaquin River high
country is a process that has transformed the world.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does Friant Dam generate electricity?
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, on a very limited basis. It was retrofitted. One of the
arguments during its construction was that the public utilities or private
utilities argued that the government should not be building hydroelectric
facilities and as a result pen stocks were not built into the dam as such. They
were added about 30 or 40 years ago off of the Friant-Kern Canal, but the, the
production is limited, probably I couldn't give you a specific figure, but I
would guess to four or five months a year, still they captured some of that
energy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I don't know if you know, but is there a reason they did not
do more hydroelectric power? Most of the great dams built in that era were
hydroelectric.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed. And in the early 1900s, hydroelectric generation was a
major source for electricity. Since then you know we've come in with coal and
gas fired plants that alleviate the need for long distance transmission. We've
come in with pump storage projects such as we have on the King's River such as
we have at Shaver Lake, but hydroelectricity is now a comparatively small part,
I don't know you'd have to talk to PG&E or Southern Cal. Edison, but I'd say
it's probably 10% of our total electrical consumption today.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You have mentioned Henry Miller.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The big rancher in the Central Valley. Was he at all involved
I mean early developments of the San Joaquin, probably in the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Well Henry Miller's thrust was -- his brilliance, was to recognize
the fallacy behind state water laws that were enacted upon statehood in 1850.
Miller recognized that riparian water rights were vastly superior to any of the
other because he knew that he who has the water, has the power and the political
muscle and the legacy he left was that he was able to buy and sell water
legislators of his needs.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did, did he do private water developments building his own
canals?
>> Gene Rose: He had a reputation, build me a ditch, dig me a ditch. He wanted,
he knew that water was money and he diverted. Henry Miller was the largest
singular private land owner that the west has ever known. It was not just in
California, it was in Nevada, Oregon, elsewhere I guess.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Back to building Friant Dam as part of the Central Valley
Project. Was that, was building Friant Dam opposed by people in Fresno in the
area, I mean by anybody in the area or was it universally embraced as a great
thing?
>> Gene Rose: Well during the great depression, there was big hue and cry to
develop that proposal that had been advanced. In the early 1900s you know that
proposal surfaced right after World War I, about 1919 guy by the name of R.G.
Thompson, who was with the USGS and he envisioned this and his plan as I think I
mentioned was to capture the flood waters and divert those to areas that had
what they perceived as deficient natural stream flows. But again somewhere along
the line, they decided that they wanted to build this great Central Valley
system and what they would do is they would build the Shasta on the northern hub
of it and Friant on the southern hub and they would build the necessary
integrating canals that would take water from the Sacramento water river shed,
put it into the delta, pumping stations through the Friant Kern, from the Delta
Mendota canal, we got too many canals here, that would send water south and that
dumped into the Mendota Reservoir. Well the bad part about that was that it was
brackish delta water by now it had been co-mingled with the good northern
California fresh water and that brackish water started irrigating and salting
the very farm land of the San Joaquin Valley. I don't know how much but I've
heard varying figures for the amount of salt that it's carried. Today the big
thrust is to find and agriculture is to find salt tolerant plants that can
thrive in that environment and people need to bear in mind if you look at the
history of irrigated civilizations, going back to the Romans and the Babylonians
it's not very encouraging because ultimately the soil salts, those bad elements
come to the surface and they destroy agriculture. The bad thing about all of the
dams is they prevent, they inhibit the recharge of the alluvial material that
used to rush down from the Sierra. If you look at the best farmland in
California today it's probably the Tulare Lake Basin that was once a large body
of water, but when they diverted, when they built all those dams and diverted
that water, the lake dried up, agriculture came in and Tulare Lake Basin is a
real powerhouse of agricultural production today because it has soil that is
less over worked than many other areas of the state.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So is it in the 1950s that the river goes dry?
>> Gene Rose: Yes that's when the, they find, you know they had to build these
big canals, they were building the canals, was a bigger project than building
the dam.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is this Friant-Kern Canal?
>> Gene Rose: Yes 152, 156, I don't know what the specific mileage is, but real
crucial thing will come may be in another century or so when that concrete
starts to crumble. Those, those well the dams and the canal will have to be
either torn apart and replaced. Well if you look what's happening in Washington,
State of Washington today, they are removing dams so that they can reclaim,
restore hopefully, the fishery, but that's not going to happen in California,
they're not going to tear out any dams that I know of. You know, the people talk
about removing Hetch Hetchy on Tuolumne River that was John Muir's great
catastrophe when they took that area that was in a supposedly in a protected
sacrosanct area of a national park and with the Raker Act in 1913 they built
this, this dam. Well the water could have been captured at a lower elevation but
what the city of San Francisco wants and still insists upon today is the power
generating capabilities of Hetch Hetchy you know, they can't do that at a lower
elevation. People need to go to the area around Hetch Hetchy and look at the
tremendous hydroelectric network that they have there. San Francisco makes a lot
of money on that electricity.
>> Thomas Holyoke: As I know there've been some proposals being floated around
to remove O'Shaughnessy Dam on Hetch Hetchy.
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, it’ll never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Gene Rose: You know, they can talk about it, but
that the political clout of San Francisco. It would
Francisco to lose that revenue and then some of the
water, they'd lose the revenue from electricity and
the road on that proposal.
the, the realists recognize
be devastating for San
water, not much of the
that's where the rubber hits
>> Thomas Holyoke: So up in the late 1980s, all of a sudden there is litigation
against the Bureau of Reclamation for having destroyed the fish populations of
the river. Ultimately this forces a settlement.
>> Gene Rose: Well Tom, if you look back in the desperation of the great
depression, expediency ruled the land and there was this big demand you know for
public work projects and yes the Central Valley Project put a lot of people back
to work, but it also you know was done without any environmental impact
statement, any public oversight and very little and this is where the
journalists have to take a big hit because that watchdog responsibility that
goes with the free press was forgotten. You know the Bee, McClatchy, the big
Central Valley newspaper they became a cheerleader you know. Hurray we got to do
this, we got to do that and you know there was no, no control, no, no one was
there who was saying stop or do you know what you're doing, you know go for it,
we need to rejuvenate the economy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually as a Fresno Bee reporter yourself, did you ever, the
only pressure that came to those kinds of stories?
>> Gene Rose: Well, after I was by that time I was on, I'm late to scene, but
when I recognized that we needed a new era of public involvement and stewardship
towards that beleaguered river. No one, no one has a right to destroy a river
system, as that natural hydrology was destroyed. The appointed governmental
agencies they should have spoke up. They were remarkably silent so yeah I, I
agitated for that because as I said no one has the right to destroy a natural
artery of life and that what happen when we dewatered the San Joaquin River. So
in early 1980s, late ’70s as people started looking what it happened with Mono
Lake that ethic was transferred to the San Joaquin, this heartland river, you
know this spiritual river of the Sierra, of California. People started asking
some hard questions and the Bureau of Reclamation had its foot in its mouth
because they'd been giving this water essentially, the water belongs to the
people of the state of California by law, aha, a wink and a nod and it goes
elsewhere. Yes we need agriculture, but we need a healthy environment, we need a
fishery, you know that's when the commercial fisherman, the sports fisherman,
the Audubon people, the Parkway people, Sierra Club became involved and said hey
we want some remedial flows back into this river channel.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you have faith it's, would that be can or, or at least
will even try to really restore the river?
>> Gene Rose: Yes and it's going to be very difficult project because here in
the drought year of 2012 there has already been some requests from Friant Water
Users Association to scale back those allocations for hard pressed agriculture
and it cannot make me positive to future restoration efforts on the San Joaquin
River.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It seems climate change will bring about more heat, more
drought and I suppose more demand for water for ->> Gene Rose: Yes and that will exacerbate the water conditions in the delta. If
we get the projected one and half foot rise in sea level many of those lands
that are now in the delta will need even higher levies and barriers to protect
them and California's bankrupt. We have a big water bond issue coming up and it
is so loaded with pork that I'm, I would predict that it will not pass and you
know and I say it all involves a new era of citizenship, involvement in water
projects. I am concerned.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that mean building giant tunnels under the delta?
>> Gene Rose: It will never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Really?
>> Gene Rose: Well, not in my life time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: New citizenship and stewardship, would you may be expand on
that a little, what would you, you would like to see that you think is
necessary?
>> Gene Rose: Yes you know I mentioned the San Joaquin, the Sierra Nevada is
kind of the cradle. It is on a geographical basis, this is where the stewardship
ethic began it goes back, it's biblical in nature, it's in the bible of
stewardship, but back in 1864, the height of the Civil War, concerned citizens
got together and saw what was happening to the jewel of the Sierra that is
Yosemite National Park and they rallied around that idea and in 1864 Lincoln
signed the Yosemite Grant that preserved wild land, this is unheard of
presidential in its nature because for the first time people came together and
said, we want to save our wilderness from manifest destiny and all of its
fallouts. So they -- you establish the Yosemite Grant and then Muir who was
driving force of that looked around and said well the Sierra Nevada watershed
has to be protected also, so he came up with a subsequent plan to extend all the
way down to the Kern River, the high Sierra as a “Range of Light,” national
park. National park concept at that time was in its incubator stage, people
didn't know that you know what we're talking about conservation or preservation,
they couldn't distinguish one from the other and that was an argument that has
been played out here in our Sierra. So we build on that and through the years
the National Park Service, Stephen Mather looked to Yosemite as his inspiration.
John Muir looked to the larger area, the Sierra for their... Muir was the de
facto founder of the national park. Stephen Mather was the appointed first
director, but he was instilled, he was fulfilled, motivated by John Muir and
their basic approach was each and every American has a responsibility to protect
the best of the American earth and to me that includes rivers you know, rivers
are the arteries of life and for us to keep abusing them and using them beyond
their physical capabilities does not reflect kindly on our stewardship.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, it's a, as a wrap up here is there anything else that
you want to say or anything ->> Gene Rose: Well I, my big concern, you know my, my radicalism if it's, if
that's what it is, stems from the fact that I worry about what kind of world my
grandchildren and their children might inherit, but if we go down this road of
perpetual growth and development forever and ever, we're going to end up as a
third world nation and that was not the American dream, that is not what my high
school buddies gave their life for in World War II, that is not the type of
citizenship that we should be promoting.
start with the -- a little bit of personal history. Who are you, where are you
from and how did you become interested in the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well I am nearly a life long resident of California, raised in
Grass Valley but I was born in Wyoming, but I missed being California native by
about six months. After high school during World War II I listed in the tail end
of the Navy. After a couple of years in the Navy I went on to college,
graduated from the University of Oregon, School of Journalism in 1951. Went to
work for the Sacramento Bee as photographer. Ten years later I was transferred
to Fresno, did photography and then in ’70 I went back to reporting that I had
done for other newspapers. And my first acquaintance with the San Joaquin River
goes back to 1943 when my older sister married a marine who has family in
Fresno. We came to visit her and in those days Highway 99 was basically two
lanes and at the Chowchilla River and Fresno River we were detoured because the
river was flooding, those rivers were flooding and traffic could not progress.
So after a moving to Fresno I saw the decline, the dewatering of those rivers
and I kept asking myself why was the 90, 95% of those rivers diverted to other
drainages that had little or no water. So that gave rise, so that time I was
writing a couple of other books that gave rise to what I felt was a betrayal of
this heartland river of California, very you know the spiritual river of
California and how could someone, anyone let a river be dewatered, diverted to
the point of extinction. So that's, that was the genesis of how I backed in to
San Joaquin River betrayed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well what, what kind of a river, well let's start with a bit
of history of the river? I mean what was the river like before Friant dam, and
even the diversions of the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Very kindly you're predating my arrival, but when you look at the
history, it had a very dynamic, rich, colorful interesting history and yes there
was a limited steamboat service on the river, but in the 1800's as they started
diverting that river, it was no longer navigable by standards that we accept for
river transportation and all of those little historic community, Hills Ferry,
Crows Landing those more or less became ghost towns because the river still
flowed, but it was being diverted. But then after the construction of Friant Dam
and the two major canals that lead off of it, 92% of its annual water production
or generation was diverted to distant lands that had little or no water. FriantKern Canal 152 miles long, San Joaquin River, irrigating farmland in Kern
County. No one can argue with the production of food, but the original plan of
the Central Valley Project was to divert only the flood flows, but in the haste,
the expediency of the great depression. It was decided somewhere and I could
never find out who made that decision is to divert 92% the flows to those
distant drainages.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The river back before Friant Dam was built, before the water
was you know almost entirely diverted, before the water, the river dried up,
what do we know about, what kind of a river it was in terms of what it was used
for, fish populations in the river, life on the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well, there is some wonderful historical photographs of people
fishing in the river, recreating in the river. If you look at the legacy of
Fresno Beach at the end of Van Ness Avenue, they had trolley service out there
and I've only see two or three wonderful photos of people gathering by the
river. You know water, I don't care if it's a lake or a stream has always been a
magnet for people. Water is life and that's why our early communities or early
transportation facilities were all was established next to water ways.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When the decision you know, why, why, do you know why it was
decided to build a major dam on the San Joaquin River as a part of the Central
Valley Project?
>> Gene Rose: No, that, that, those proposals Tom had been in the works for many
years. Basically what you have in California, you have people in the southern
part of the state and the major water source is in the northern part of the
state and when you look at California Water Project of the ’60s with Edmond G.
Brown, his whole agenda was to get, southern, the water to Southern California
with water out of, particulary out of the Sacramento River by way of the
California Aqueduct. This is the most plumbed state in the world, you know we've
been building water projects for over a 100 years, but as I have said many times
we all was build up to the available capacity and then expect magic water from
somewhere else. This is a closed system. There is no new water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In the case of the San Joaquin, all of its water comes down
out of the Sierra. Do you know where in the Sierra it begins, where the head
waters are?
>> Gene Rose: Yes, the head waters of the San Joaquin River, the main fork, the
three principle forks, north, middle, south fork. Main fork comes out of the
Ritter range, Thousand Island Lake, John Muir's country and you know this is a
land of 10, 12, 13000 foot peaks. The Sierra Nevada provides California with
nearly two-thirds of its water supply and yes that is critical to the growth,
development and the health of this state, but water is a finite resource and we
have been what I call in this dream world of water, that we always might find a
new source just over the next hill, you know the only new water conservation and
recycled water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what about ideas like building new, well as they say new
storage capacity on the river, on the San Joaquin say at the, the Temperance
Flat.
>> Gene Rose: Well that proposal has been batted around you know for 60-70 years
when they discovered that Millerton Friant was inadequate to hold the storage
that the San Joaquin River generates. I have mixed feelings of that you know
until we come up with a mechanism for addressing the demand side of the
equation, we're simply blowing smoke at ourselves. You know we need stricter
conservation methods and then I mentioned the dirty word. We need some sort of
growth, smart growth, limited growth, population controls. I'm an environmental
impact, you're an environmental impact. Each and every one of us, every living
entity needs water and what's a limit? You know there is a limit to growth and
development, that's been said before.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You had mentioned that in regards to Temperance Flat,
building there that may be that's what should have been done in the first place.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: That Millerton Lake and Friant Dam were badly built and built
in the wrong place.
>> Gene Rose: Yup, but Tom I should point out that since the construction of
Friant Dam, we've built upstream storage facilities at Mammoth Pool and at Lake
Edison and Balsam Meadows, some of those are comparatively small storage, but
there are still storage facilities and the question being is, is it wrong for a
river to flow to the sea.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The storage areas you just mentioned, some of those are also
hydroelectric power generation.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact.
>> Gene Rose: This, this is I think one of the great aspects of the San Joaquin
River is that is kind of the -- what you may call the cradle, the crucible of
hydroelectric development and that stems back over a 100 years to John
Eastwood's Big Creek Project where he envisioned a series of stair-stepped
reservoirs where the cascading -- the falling waters would be used again and
again and he had to contest or had to get involved with Henry Miller and Miller
and Lux water rights, it was very complicated but you know that high head, high
voltage long distant transmission that was born in that San Joaquin River high
country is a process that has transformed the world.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does Friant Dam generate electricity?
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, on a very limited basis. It was retrofitted. One of the
arguments during its construction was that the public utilities or private
utilities argued that the government should not be building hydroelectric
facilities and as a result pen stocks were not built into the dam as such. They
were added about 30 or 40 years ago off of the Friant-Kern Canal, but the, the
production is limited, probably I couldn't give you a specific figure, but I
would guess to four or five months a year, still they captured some of that
energy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I don't know if you know, but is there a reason they did not
do more hydroelectric power? Most of the great dams built in that era were
hydroelectric.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed. And in the early 1900s, hydroelectric generation was a
major source for electricity. Since then you know we've come in with coal and
gas fired plants that alleviate the need for long distance transmission. We've
come in with pump storage projects such as we have on the King's River such as
we have at Shaver Lake, but hydroelectricity is now a comparatively small part,
I don't know you'd have to talk to PG&E or Southern Cal. Edison, but I'd say
it's probably 10% of our total electrical consumption today.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You have mentioned Henry Miller.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The big rancher in the Central Valley. Was he at all involved
I mean early developments of the San Joaquin, probably in the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Well Henry Miller's thrust was -- his brilliance, was to recognize
the fallacy behind state water laws that were enacted upon statehood in 1850.
Miller recognized that riparian water rights were vastly superior to any of the
other because he knew that he who has the water, has the power and the political
muscle and the legacy he left was that he was able to buy and sell water
legislators of his needs.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did, did he do private water developments building his own
canals?
>> Gene Rose: He had a reputation, build me a ditch, dig me a ditch. He wanted,
he knew that water was money and he diverted. Henry Miller was the largest
singular private land owner that the west has ever known. It was not just in
California, it was in Nevada, Oregon, elsewhere I guess.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Back to building Friant Dam as part of the Central Valley
Project. Was that, was building Friant Dam opposed by people in Fresno in the
area, I mean by anybody in the area or was it universally embraced as a great
thing?
>> Gene Rose: Well during the great depression, there was big hue and cry to
develop that proposal that had been advanced. In the early 1900s you know that
proposal surfaced right after World War I, about 1919 guy by the name of R.G.
Thompson, who was with the USGS and he envisioned this and his plan as I think I
mentioned was to capture the flood waters and divert those to areas that had
what they perceived as deficient natural stream flows. But again somewhere along
the line, they decided that they wanted to build this great Central Valley
system and what they would do is they would build the Shasta on the northern hub
of it and Friant on the southern hub and they would build the necessary
integrating canals that would take water from the Sacramento water river shed,
put it into the delta, pumping stations through the Friant Kern, from the Delta
Mendota canal, we got too many canals here, that would send water south and that
dumped into the Mendota Reservoir. Well the bad part about that was that it was
brackish delta water by now it had been co-mingled with the good northern
California fresh water and that brackish water started irrigating and salting
the very farm land of the San Joaquin Valley. I don't know how much but I've
heard varying figures for the amount of salt that it's carried. Today the big
thrust is to find and agriculture is to find salt tolerant plants that can
thrive in that environment and people need to bear in mind if you look at the
history of irrigated civilizations, going back to the Romans and the Babylonians
it's not very encouraging because ultimately the soil salts, those bad elements
come to the surface and they destroy agriculture. The bad thing about all of the
dams is they prevent, they inhibit the recharge of the alluvial material that
used to rush down from the Sierra. If you look at the best farmland in
California today it's probably the Tulare Lake Basin that was once a large body
of water, but when they diverted, when they built all those dams and diverted
that water, the lake dried up, agriculture came in and Tulare Lake Basin is a
real powerhouse of agricultural production today because it has soil that is
less over worked than many other areas of the state.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So is it in the 1950s that the river goes dry?
>> Gene Rose: Yes that's when the, they find, you know they had to build these
big canals, they were building the canals, was a bigger project than building
the dam.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is this Friant-Kern Canal?
>> Gene Rose: Yes 152, 156, I don't know what the specific mileage is, but real
crucial thing will come may be in another century or so when that concrete
starts to crumble. Those, those well the dams and the canal will have to be
either torn apart and replaced. Well if you look what's happening in Washington,
State of Washington today, they are removing dams so that they can reclaim,
restore hopefully, the fishery, but that's not going to happen in California,
they're not going to tear out any dams that I know of. You know, the people talk
about removing Hetch Hetchy on Tuolumne River that was John Muir's great
catastrophe when they took that area that was in a supposedly in a protected
sacrosanct area of a national park and with the Raker Act in 1913 they built
this, this dam. Well the water could have been captured at a lower elevation but
what the city of San Francisco wants and still insists upon today is the power
generating capabilities of Hetch Hetchy you know, they can't do that at a lower
elevation. People need to go to the area around Hetch Hetchy and look at the
tremendous hydroelectric network that they have there. San Francisco makes a lot
of money on that electricity.
>> Thomas Holyoke: As I know there've been some proposals being floated around
to remove O'Shaughnessy Dam on Hetch Hetchy.
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, it’ll never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Gene Rose: You know, they can talk about it, but
that the political clout of San Francisco. It would
Francisco to lose that revenue and then some of the
water, they'd lose the revenue from electricity and
the road on that proposal.
the, the realists recognize
be devastating for San
water, not much of the
that's where the rubber hits
>> Thomas Holyoke: So up in the late 1980s, all of a sudden there is litigation
against the Bureau of Reclamation for having destroyed the fish populations of
the river. Ultimately this forces a settlement.
>> Gene Rose: Well Tom, if you look back in the desperation of the great
depression, expediency ruled the land and there was this big demand you know for
public work projects and yes the Central Valley Project put a lot of people back
to work, but it also you know was done without any environmental impact
statement, any public oversight and very little and this is where the
journalists have to take a big hit because that watchdog responsibility that
goes with the free press was forgotten. You know the Bee, McClatchy, the big
Central Valley newspaper they became a cheerleader you know. Hurray we got to do
this, we got to do that and you know there was no, no control, no, no one was
there who was saying stop or do you know what you're doing, you know go for it,
we need to rejuvenate the economy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually as a Fresno Bee reporter yourself, did you ever, the
only pressure that came to those kinds of stories?
>> Gene Rose: Well, after I was by that time I was on, I'm late to scene, but
when I recognized that we needed a new era of public involvement and stewardship
towards that beleaguered river. No one, no one has a right to destroy a river
system, as that natural hydrology was destroyed. The appointed governmental
agencies they should have spoke up. They were remarkably silent so yeah I, I
agitated for that because as I said no one has the right to destroy a natural
artery of life and that what happen when we dewatered the San Joaquin River. So
in early 1980s, late ’70s as people started looking what it happened with Mono
Lake that ethic was transferred to the San Joaquin, this heartland river, you
know this spiritual river of the Sierra, of California. People started asking
some hard questions and the Bureau of Reclamation had its foot in its mouth
because they'd been giving this water essentially, the water belongs to the
people of the state of California by law, aha, a wink and a nod and it goes
elsewhere. Yes we need agriculture, but we need a healthy environment, we need a
fishery, you know that's when the commercial fisherman, the sports fisherman,
the Audubon people, the Parkway people, Sierra Club became involved and said hey
we want some remedial flows back into this river channel.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you have faith it's, would that be can or, or at least
will even try to really restore the river?
>> Gene Rose: Yes and it's going to be very difficult project because here in
the drought year of 2012 there has already been some requests from Friant Water
Users Association to scale back those allocations for hard pressed agriculture
and it cannot make me positive to future restoration efforts on the San Joaquin
River.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It seems climate change will bring about more heat, more
drought and I suppose more demand for water for ->> Gene Rose: Yes and that will exacerbate the water conditions in the delta. If
we get the projected one and half foot rise in sea level many of those lands
that are now in the delta will need even higher levies and barriers to protect
them and California's bankrupt. We have a big water bond issue coming up and it
is so loaded with pork that I'm, I would predict that it will not pass and you
know and I say it all involves a new era of citizenship, involvement in water
projects. I am concerned.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that mean building giant tunnels under the delta?
>> Gene Rose: It will never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Really?
>> Gene Rose: Well, not in my life time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: New citizenship and stewardship, would you may be expand on
that a little, what would you, you would like to see that you think is
necessary?
>> Gene Rose: Yes you know I mentioned the San Joaquin, the Sierra Nevada is
kind of the cradle. It is on a geographical basis, this is where the stewardship
ethic began it goes back, it's biblical in nature, it's in the bible of
stewardship, but back in 1864, the height of the Civil War, concerned citizens
got together and saw what was happening to the jewel of the Sierra that is
Yosemite National Park and they rallied around that idea and in 1864 Lincoln
signed the Yosemite Grant that preserved wild land, this is unheard of
presidential in its nature because for the first time people came together and
said, we want to save our wilderness from manifest destiny and all of its
fallouts. So they -- you establish the Yosemite Grant and then Muir who was
driving force of that looked around and said well the Sierra Nevada watershed
has to be protected also, so he came up with a subsequent plan to extend all the
way down to the Kern River, the high Sierra as a “Range of Light,” national
park. National park concept at that time was in its incubator stage, people
didn't know that you know what we're talking about conservation or preservation,
they couldn't distinguish one from the other and that was an argument that has
been played out here in our Sierra. So we build on that and through the years
the National Park Service, Stephen Mather looked to Yosemite as his inspiration.
John Muir looked to the larger area, the Sierra for their... Muir was the de
facto founder of the national park. Stephen Mather was the appointed first
director, but he was instilled, he was fulfilled, motivated by John Muir and
their basic approach was each and every American has a responsibility to protect
the best of the American earth and to me that includes rivers you know, rivers
are the arteries of life and for us to keep abusing them and using them beyond
their physical capabilities does not reflect kindly on our stewardship.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, it's a, as a wrap up here is there anything else that
you want to say or anything ->> Gene Rose: Well I, my big concern, you know my, my radicalism if it's, if
that's what it is, stems from the fact that I worry about what kind of world my
grandchildren and their children might inherit, but if we go down this road of
perpetual growth and development forever and ever, we're going to end up as a
third world nation and that was not the American dream, that is not what my high
school buddies gave their life for in World War II, that is not the type of
citizenship that we should be promoting.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Interviewing Gene Rose on the San Joaquin River. Let's just
start with the -- a little bit of personal history. Who are you, where are you
from and how did you become interested in the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well I am nearly a life long resident of California, raised in
Grass Valley but I was born in Wyoming, but I missed being California native by
about six months. After high school during World War II I listed in the tail end
of the Navy. After a couple of years in the Navy I went on to college,
graduated from the University of Oregon, School of Journalism in 1951. Went to
work for the Sacramento Bee as photographer. Ten years later I was transferred
to Fresno, did photography and then in ’70 I went back to reporting that I had
done for other newspapers. And my first acquaintance with the San Joaquin River
goes back to 1943 when my older sister married a marine who has family in
Fresno. We came to visit her and in those days Highway 99 was basically two
lanes and at the Chowchilla River and Fresno River we were detoured because the
river was flooding, those rivers were flooding and traffic could not progress.
So after a moving to Fresno I saw the decline, the dewatering of those rivers
and I kept asking myself why was the 90, 95% of those rivers diverted to other
drainages that had little or no water. So that gave rise, so that time I was
writing a couple of other books that gave rise to what I felt was a betrayal of
this heartland river of California, very you know the spiritual river of
California and how could someone, anyone let a river be dewatered, diverted to
the point of extinction. So that's, that was the genesis of how I backed in to
San Joaquin River betrayed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well what, what kind of a river, well let's start with a bit
of history of the river? I mean what was the river like before Friant dam, and
even the diversions of the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Very kindly you're predating my arrival, but when you look at the
history, it had a very dynamic, rich, colorful interesting history and yes there
was a limited steamboat service on the river, but in the 1800's as they started
diverting that river, it was no longer navigable by standards that we accept for
river transportation and all of those little historic community, Hills Ferry,
Crows Landing those more or less became ghost towns because the river still
flowed, but it was being diverted. But then after the construction of Friant Dam
and the two major canals that lead off of it, 92% of its annual water production
or generation was diverted to distant lands that had little or no water. FriantKern Canal 152 miles long, San Joaquin River, irrigating farmland in Kern
County. No one can argue with the production of food, but the original plan of
the Central Valley Project was to divert only the flood flows, but in the haste,
the expediency of the great depression. It was decided somewhere and I could
never find out who made that decision is to divert 92% the flows to those
distant drainages.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The river back before Friant Dam was built, before the water
was you know almost entirely diverted, before the water, the river dried up,
what do we know about, what kind of a river it was in terms of what it was used
for, fish populations in the river, life on the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well, there is some wonderful historical photographs of people
fishing in the river, recreating in the river. If you look at the legacy of
Fresno Beach at the end of Van Ness Avenue, they had trolley service out there
and I've only see two or three wonderful photos of people gathering by the
river. You know water, I don't care if it's a lake or a stream has always been a
magnet for people. Water is life and that's why our early communities or early
transportation facilities were all was established next to water ways.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When the decision you know, why, why, do you know why it was
decided to build a major dam on the San Joaquin River as a part of the Central
Valley Project?
>> Gene Rose: No, that, that, those proposals Tom had been in the works for many
years. Basically what you have in California, you have people in the southern
part of the state and the major water source is in the northern part of the
state and when you look at California Water Project of the ’60s with Edmond G.
Brown, his whole agenda was to get, southern, the water to Southern California
with water out of, particulary out of the Sacramento River by way of the
California Aqueduct. This is the most plumbed state in the world, you know we've
been building water projects for over a 100 years, but as I have said many times
we all was build up to the available capacity and then expect magic water from
somewhere else. This is a closed system. There is no new water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In the case of the San Joaquin, all of its water comes down
out of the Sierra. Do you know where in the Sierra it begins, where the head
waters are?
>> Gene Rose: Yes, the head waters of the San Joaquin River, the main fork, the
three principle forks, north, middle, south fork. Main fork comes out of the
Ritter range, Thousand Island Lake, John Muir's country and you know this is a
land of 10, 12, 13000 foot peaks. The Sierra Nevada provides California with
nearly two-thirds of its water supply and yes that is critical to the growth,
development and the health of this state, but water is a finite resource and we
have been what I call in this dream world of water, that we always might find a
new source just over the next hill, you know the only new water conservation and
recycled water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what about ideas like building new, well as they say new
storage capacity on the river, on the San Joaquin say at the, the Temperance
Flat.
>> Gene Rose: Well that proposal has been batted around you know for 60-70 years
when they discovered that Millerton Friant was inadequate to hold the storage
that the San Joaquin River generates. I have mixed feelings of that you know
until we come up with a mechanism for addressing the demand side of the
equation, we're simply blowing smoke at ourselves. You know we need stricter
conservation methods and then I mentioned the dirty word. We need some sort of
growth, smart growth, limited growth, population controls. I'm an environmental
impact, you're an environmental impact. Each and every one of us, every living
entity needs water and what's a limit? You know there is a limit to growth and
development, that's been said before.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You had mentioned that in regards to Temperance Flat,
building there that may be that's what should have been done in the first place.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: That Millerton Lake and Friant Dam were badly built and built
in the wrong place.
>> Gene Rose: Yup, but Tom I should point out that since the construction of
Friant Dam, we've built upstream storage facilities at Mammoth Pool and at Lake
Edison and Balsam Meadows, some of those are comparatively small storage, but
there are still storage facilities and the question being is, is it wrong for a
river to flow to the sea.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The storage areas you just mentioned, some of those are also
hydroelectric power generation.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact.
>> Gene Rose: This, this is I think one of the great aspects of the San Joaquin
River is that is kind of the -- what you may call the cradle, the crucible of
hydroelectric development and that stems back over a 100 years to John
Eastwood's Big Creek Project where he envisioned a series of stair-stepped
reservoirs where the cascading -- the falling waters would be used again and
again and he had to contest or had to get involved with Henry Miller and Miller
and Lux water rights, it was very complicated but you know that high head, high
voltage long distant transmission that was born in that San Joaquin River high
country is a process that has transformed the world.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does Friant Dam generate electricity?
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, on a very limited basis. It was retrofitted. One of the
arguments during its construction was that the public utilities or private
utilities argued that the government should not be building hydroelectric
facilities and as a result pen stocks were not built into the dam as such. They
were added about 30 or 40 years ago off of the Friant-Kern Canal, but the, the
production is limited, probably I couldn't give you a specific figure, but I
would guess to four or five months a year, still they captured some of that
energy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I don't know if you know, but is there a reason they did not
do more hydroelectric power? Most of the great dams built in that era were
hydroelectric.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed. And in the early 1900s, hydroelectric generation was a
major source for electricity. Since then you know we've come in with coal and
gas fired plants that alleviate the need for long distance transmission. We've
come in with pump storage projects such as we have on the King's River such as
we have at Shaver Lake, but hydroelectricity is now a comparatively small part,
I don't know you'd have to talk to PG&E or Southern Cal. Edison, but I'd say
it's probably 10% of our total electrical consumption today.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You have mentioned Henry Miller.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The big rancher in the Central Valley. Was he at all involved
I mean early developments of the San Joaquin, probably in the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Well Henry Miller's thrust was -- his brilliance, was to recognize
the fallacy behind state water laws that were enacted upon statehood in 1850.
Miller recognized that riparian water rights were vastly superior to any of the
other because he knew that he who has the water, has the power and the political
muscle and the legacy he left was that he was able to buy and sell water
legislators of his needs.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did, did he do private water developments building his own
canals?
>> Gene Rose: He had a reputation, build me a ditch, dig me a ditch. He wanted,
he knew that water was money and he diverted. Henry Miller was the largest
singular private land owner that the west has ever known. It was not just in
California, it was in Nevada, Oregon, elsewhere I guess.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Back to building Friant Dam as part of the Central Valley
Project. Was that, was building Friant Dam opposed by people in Fresno in the
area, I mean by anybody in the area or was it universally embraced as a great
thing?
>> Gene Rose: Well during the great depression, there was big hue and cry to
develop that proposal that had been advanced. In the early 1900s you know that
proposal surfaced right after World War I, about 1919 guy by the name of R.G.
Thompson, who was with the USGS and he envisioned this and his plan as I think I
mentioned was to capture the flood waters and divert those to areas that had
what they perceived as deficient natural stream flows. But again somewhere along
the line, they decided that they wanted to build this great Central Valley
system and what they would do is they would build the Shasta on the northern hub
of it and Friant on the southern hub and they would build the necessary
integrating canals that would take water from the Sacramento water river shed,
put it into the delta, pumping stations through the Friant Kern, from the Delta
Mendota canal, we got too many canals here, that would send water south and that
dumped into the Mendota Reservoir. Well the bad part about that was that it was
brackish delta water by now it had been co-mingled with the good northern
California fresh water and that brackish water started irrigating and salting
the very farm land of the San Joaquin Valley. I don't know how much but I've
heard varying figures for the amount of salt that it's carried. Today the big
thrust is to find and agriculture is to find salt tolerant plants that can
thrive in that environment and people need to bear in mind if you look at the
history of irrigated civilizations, going back to the Romans and the Babylonians
it's not very encouraging because ultimately the soil salts, those bad elements
come to the surface and they destroy agriculture. The bad thing about all of the
dams is they prevent, they inhibit the recharge of the alluvial material that
used to rush down from the Sierra. If you look at the best farmland in
California today it's probably the Tulare Lake Basin that was once a large body
of water, but when they diverted, when they built all those dams and diverted
that water, the lake dried up, agriculture came in and Tulare Lake Basin is a
real powerhouse of agricultural production today because it has soil that is
less over worked than many other areas of the state.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So is it in the 1950s that the river goes dry?
>> Gene Rose: Yes that's when the, they find, you know they had to build these
big canals, they were building the canals, was a bigger project than building
the dam.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is this Friant-Kern Canal?
>> Gene Rose: Yes 152, 156, I don't know what the specific mileage is, but real
crucial thing will come may be in another century or so when that concrete
starts to crumble. Those, those well the dams and the canal will have to be
either torn apart and replaced. Well if you look what's happening in Washington,
State of Washington today, they are removing dams so that they can reclaim,
restore hopefully, the fishery, but that's not going to happen in California,
they're not going to tear out any dams that I know of. You know, the people talk
about removing Hetch Hetchy on Tuolumne River that was John Muir's great
catastrophe when they took that area that was in a supposedly in a protected
sacrosanct area of a national park and with the Raker Act in 1913 they built
this, this dam. Well the water could have been captured at a lower elevation but
what the city of San Francisco wants and still insists upon today is the power
generating capabilities of Hetch Hetchy you know, they can't do that at a lower
elevation. People need to go to the area around Hetch Hetchy and look at the
tremendous hydroelectric network that they have there. San Francisco makes a lot
of money on that electricity.
>> Thomas Holyoke: As I know there've been some proposals being floated around
to remove O'Shaughnessy Dam on Hetch Hetchy.
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, it’ll never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Gene Rose: You know, they can talk about it, but
that the political clout of San Francisco. It would
Francisco to lose that revenue and then some of the
water, they'd lose the revenue from electricity and
the road on that proposal.
the, the realists recognize
be devastating for San
water, not much of the
that's where the rubber hits
>> Thomas Holyoke: So up in the late 1980s, all of a sudden there is litigation
against the Bureau of Reclamation for having destroyed the fish populations of
the river. Ultimately this forces a settlement.
>> Gene Rose: Well Tom, if you look back in the desperation of the great
depression, expediency ruled the land and there was this big demand you know for
public work projects and yes the Central Valley Project put a lot of people back
to work, but it also you know was done without any environmental impact
statement, any public oversight and very little and this is where the
journalists have to take a big hit because that watchdog responsibility that
goes with the free press was forgotten. You know the Bee, McClatchy, the big
Central Valley newspaper they became a cheerleader you know. Hurray we got to do
this, we got to do that and you know there was no, no control, no, no one was
there who was saying stop or do you know what you're doing, you know go for it,
we need to rejuvenate the economy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually as a Fresno Bee reporter yourself, did you ever, the
only pressure that came to those kinds of stories?
>> Gene Rose: Well, after I was by that time I was on, I'm late to scene, but
when I recognized that we needed a new era of public involvement and stewardship
towards that beleaguered river. No one, no one has a right to destroy a river
system, as that natural hydrology was destroyed. The appointed governmental
agencies they should have spoke up. They were remarkably silent so yeah I, I
agitated for that because as I said no one has the right to destroy a natural
artery of life and that what happen when we dewatered the San Joaquin River. So
in early 1980s, late ’70s as people started looking what it happened with Mono
Lake that ethic was transferred to the San Joaquin, this heartland river, you
know this spiritual river of the Sierra, of California. People started asking
some hard questions and the Bureau of Reclamation had its foot in its mouth
because they'd been giving this water essentially, the water belongs to the
people of the state of California by law, aha, a wink and a nod and it goes
elsewhere. Yes we need agriculture, but we need a healthy environment, we need a
fishery, you know that's when the commercial fisherman, the sports fisherman,
the Audubon people, the Parkway people, Sierra Club became involved and said hey
we want some remedial flows back into this river channel.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you have faith it's, would that be can or, or at least
will even try to really restore the river?
>> Gene Rose: Yes and it's going to be very difficult project because here in
the drought year of 2012 there has already been some requests from Friant Water
Users Association to scale back those allocations for hard pressed agriculture
and it cannot make me positive to future restoration efforts on the San Joaquin
River.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It seems climate change will bring about more heat, more
drought and I suppose more demand for water for ->> Gene Rose: Yes and that will exacerbate the water conditions in the delta. If
we get the projected one and half foot rise in sea level many of those lands
that are now in the delta will need even higher levies and barriers to protect
them and California's bankrupt. We have a big water bond issue coming up and it
is so loaded with pork that I'm, I would predict that it will not pass and you
know and I say it all involves a new era of citizenship, involvement in water
projects. I am concerned.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that mean building giant tunnels under the delta?
>> Gene Rose: It will never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Really?
>> Gene Rose: Well, not in my life time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: New citizenship and stewardship, would you may be expand on
that a little, what would you, you would like to see that you think is
necessary?
>> Gene Rose: Yes you know I mentioned the San Joaquin, the Sierra Nevada is
kind of the cradle. It is on a geographical basis, this is where the stewardship
ethic began it goes back, it's biblical in nature, it's in the bible of
stewardship, but back in 1864, the height of the Civil War, concerned citizens
got together and saw what was happening to the jewel of the Sierra that is
Yosemite National Park and they rallied around that idea and in 1864 Lincoln
signed the Yosemite Grant that preserved wild land, this is unheard of
presidential in its nature because for the first time people came together and
said, we want to save our wilderness from manifest destiny and all of its
fallouts. So they -- you establish the Yosemite Grant and then Muir who was
driving force of that looked around and said well the Sierra Nevada watershed
has to be protected also, so he came up with a subsequent plan to extend all the
way down to the Kern River, the high Sierra as a “Range of Light,” national
park. National park concept at that time was in its incubator stage, people
didn't know that you know what we're talking about conservation or preservation,
they couldn't distinguish one from the other and that was an argument that has
been played out here in our Sierra. So we build on that and through the years
the National Park Service, Stephen Mather looked to Yosemite as his inspiration.
John Muir looked to the larger area, the Sierra for their... Muir was the de
facto founder of the national park. Stephen Mather was the appointed first
director, but he was instilled, he was fulfilled, motivated by John Muir and
their basic approach was each and every American has a responsibility to protect
the best of the American earth and to me that includes rivers you know, rivers
are the arteries of life and for us to keep abusing them and using them beyond
their physical capabilities does not reflect kindly on our stewardship.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, it's a, as a wrap up here is there anything else that
you want to say or anything ->> Gene Rose: Well I, my big concern, you know my, my radicalism if it's, if
that's what it is, stems from the fact that I worry about what kind of world my
grandchildren and their children might inherit, but if we go down this road of
perpetual growth and development forever and ever, we're going to end up as a
third world nation and that was not the American dream, that is not what my high
school buddies gave their life for in World War II, that is not the type of
citizenship that we should be promoting.
start with the -- a little bit of personal history. Who are you, where are you
from and how did you become interested in the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well I am nearly a life long resident of California, raised in
Grass Valley but I was born in Wyoming, but I missed being California native by
about six months. After high school during World War II I listed in the tail end
of the Navy. After a couple of years in the Navy I went on to college,
graduated from the University of Oregon, School of Journalism in 1951. Went to
work for the Sacramento Bee as photographer. Ten years later I was transferred
to Fresno, did photography and then in ’70 I went back to reporting that I had
done for other newspapers. And my first acquaintance with the San Joaquin River
goes back to 1943 when my older sister married a marine who has family in
Fresno. We came to visit her and in those days Highway 99 was basically two
lanes and at the Chowchilla River and Fresno River we were detoured because the
river was flooding, those rivers were flooding and traffic could not progress.
So after a moving to Fresno I saw the decline, the dewatering of those rivers
and I kept asking myself why was the 90, 95% of those rivers diverted to other
drainages that had little or no water. So that gave rise, so that time I was
writing a couple of other books that gave rise to what I felt was a betrayal of
this heartland river of California, very you know the spiritual river of
California and how could someone, anyone let a river be dewatered, diverted to
the point of extinction. So that's, that was the genesis of how I backed in to
San Joaquin River betrayed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well what, what kind of a river, well let's start with a bit
of history of the river? I mean what was the river like before Friant dam, and
even the diversions of the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Very kindly you're predating my arrival, but when you look at the
history, it had a very dynamic, rich, colorful interesting history and yes there
was a limited steamboat service on the river, but in the 1800's as they started
diverting that river, it was no longer navigable by standards that we accept for
river transportation and all of those little historic community, Hills Ferry,
Crows Landing those more or less became ghost towns because the river still
flowed, but it was being diverted. But then after the construction of Friant Dam
and the two major canals that lead off of it, 92% of its annual water production
or generation was diverted to distant lands that had little or no water. FriantKern Canal 152 miles long, San Joaquin River, irrigating farmland in Kern
County. No one can argue with the production of food, but the original plan of
the Central Valley Project was to divert only the flood flows, but in the haste,
the expediency of the great depression. It was decided somewhere and I could
never find out who made that decision is to divert 92% the flows to those
distant drainages.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The river back before Friant Dam was built, before the water
was you know almost entirely diverted, before the water, the river dried up,
what do we know about, what kind of a river it was in terms of what it was used
for, fish populations in the river, life on the river?
>> Gene Rose: Well, there is some wonderful historical photographs of people
fishing in the river, recreating in the river. If you look at the legacy of
Fresno Beach at the end of Van Ness Avenue, they had trolley service out there
and I've only see two or three wonderful photos of people gathering by the
river. You know water, I don't care if it's a lake or a stream has always been a
magnet for people. Water is life and that's why our early communities or early
transportation facilities were all was established next to water ways.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When the decision you know, why, why, do you know why it was
decided to build a major dam on the San Joaquin River as a part of the Central
Valley Project?
>> Gene Rose: No, that, that, those proposals Tom had been in the works for many
years. Basically what you have in California, you have people in the southern
part of the state and the major water source is in the northern part of the
state and when you look at California Water Project of the ’60s with Edmond G.
Brown, his whole agenda was to get, southern, the water to Southern California
with water out of, particulary out of the Sacramento River by way of the
California Aqueduct. This is the most plumbed state in the world, you know we've
been building water projects for over a 100 years, but as I have said many times
we all was build up to the available capacity and then expect magic water from
somewhere else. This is a closed system. There is no new water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In the case of the San Joaquin, all of its water comes down
out of the Sierra. Do you know where in the Sierra it begins, where the head
waters are?
>> Gene Rose: Yes, the head waters of the San Joaquin River, the main fork, the
three principle forks, north, middle, south fork. Main fork comes out of the
Ritter range, Thousand Island Lake, John Muir's country and you know this is a
land of 10, 12, 13000 foot peaks. The Sierra Nevada provides California with
nearly two-thirds of its water supply and yes that is critical to the growth,
development and the health of this state, but water is a finite resource and we
have been what I call in this dream world of water, that we always might find a
new source just over the next hill, you know the only new water conservation and
recycled water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what about ideas like building new, well as they say new
storage capacity on the river, on the San Joaquin say at the, the Temperance
Flat.
>> Gene Rose: Well that proposal has been batted around you know for 60-70 years
when they discovered that Millerton Friant was inadequate to hold the storage
that the San Joaquin River generates. I have mixed feelings of that you know
until we come up with a mechanism for addressing the demand side of the
equation, we're simply blowing smoke at ourselves. You know we need stricter
conservation methods and then I mentioned the dirty word. We need some sort of
growth, smart growth, limited growth, population controls. I'm an environmental
impact, you're an environmental impact. Each and every one of us, every living
entity needs water and what's a limit? You know there is a limit to growth and
development, that's been said before.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You had mentioned that in regards to Temperance Flat,
building there that may be that's what should have been done in the first place.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: That Millerton Lake and Friant Dam were badly built and built
in the wrong place.
>> Gene Rose: Yup, but Tom I should point out that since the construction of
Friant Dam, we've built upstream storage facilities at Mammoth Pool and at Lake
Edison and Balsam Meadows, some of those are comparatively small storage, but
there are still storage facilities and the question being is, is it wrong for a
river to flow to the sea.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The storage areas you just mentioned, some of those are also
hydroelectric power generation.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: In fact.
>> Gene Rose: This, this is I think one of the great aspects of the San Joaquin
River is that is kind of the -- what you may call the cradle, the crucible of
hydroelectric development and that stems back over a 100 years to John
Eastwood's Big Creek Project where he envisioned a series of stair-stepped
reservoirs where the cascading -- the falling waters would be used again and
again and he had to contest or had to get involved with Henry Miller and Miller
and Lux water rights, it was very complicated but you know that high head, high
voltage long distant transmission that was born in that San Joaquin River high
country is a process that has transformed the world.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does Friant Dam generate electricity?
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, on a very limited basis. It was retrofitted. One of the
arguments during its construction was that the public utilities or private
utilities argued that the government should not be building hydroelectric
facilities and as a result pen stocks were not built into the dam as such. They
were added about 30 or 40 years ago off of the Friant-Kern Canal, but the, the
production is limited, probably I couldn't give you a specific figure, but I
would guess to four or five months a year, still they captured some of that
energy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I don't know if you know, but is there a reason they did not
do more hydroelectric power? Most of the great dams built in that era were
hydroelectric.
>> Gene Rose: Yes indeed. And in the early 1900s, hydroelectric generation was a
major source for electricity. Since then you know we've come in with coal and
gas fired plants that alleviate the need for long distance transmission. We've
come in with pump storage projects such as we have on the King's River such as
we have at Shaver Lake, but hydroelectricity is now a comparatively small part,
I don't know you'd have to talk to PG&E or Southern Cal. Edison, but I'd say
it's probably 10% of our total electrical consumption today.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You have mentioned Henry Miller.
>> Gene Rose: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The big rancher in the Central Valley. Was he at all involved
I mean early developments of the San Joaquin, probably in the late 19th century?
>> Gene Rose: Well Henry Miller's thrust was -- his brilliance, was to recognize
the fallacy behind state water laws that were enacted upon statehood in 1850.
Miller recognized that riparian water rights were vastly superior to any of the
other because he knew that he who has the water, has the power and the political
muscle and the legacy he left was that he was able to buy and sell water
legislators of his needs.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did, did he do private water developments building his own
canals?
>> Gene Rose: He had a reputation, build me a ditch, dig me a ditch. He wanted,
he knew that water was money and he diverted. Henry Miller was the largest
singular private land owner that the west has ever known. It was not just in
California, it was in Nevada, Oregon, elsewhere I guess.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Back to building Friant Dam as part of the Central Valley
Project. Was that, was building Friant Dam opposed by people in Fresno in the
area, I mean by anybody in the area or was it universally embraced as a great
thing?
>> Gene Rose: Well during the great depression, there was big hue and cry to
develop that proposal that had been advanced. In the early 1900s you know that
proposal surfaced right after World War I, about 1919 guy by the name of R.G.
Thompson, who was with the USGS and he envisioned this and his plan as I think I
mentioned was to capture the flood waters and divert those to areas that had
what they perceived as deficient natural stream flows. But again somewhere along
the line, they decided that they wanted to build this great Central Valley
system and what they would do is they would build the Shasta on the northern hub
of it and Friant on the southern hub and they would build the necessary
integrating canals that would take water from the Sacramento water river shed,
put it into the delta, pumping stations through the Friant Kern, from the Delta
Mendota canal, we got too many canals here, that would send water south and that
dumped into the Mendota Reservoir. Well the bad part about that was that it was
brackish delta water by now it had been co-mingled with the good northern
California fresh water and that brackish water started irrigating and salting
the very farm land of the San Joaquin Valley. I don't know how much but I've
heard varying figures for the amount of salt that it's carried. Today the big
thrust is to find and agriculture is to find salt tolerant plants that can
thrive in that environment and people need to bear in mind if you look at the
history of irrigated civilizations, going back to the Romans and the Babylonians
it's not very encouraging because ultimately the soil salts, those bad elements
come to the surface and they destroy agriculture. The bad thing about all of the
dams is they prevent, they inhibit the recharge of the alluvial material that
used to rush down from the Sierra. If you look at the best farmland in
California today it's probably the Tulare Lake Basin that was once a large body
of water, but when they diverted, when they built all those dams and diverted
that water, the lake dried up, agriculture came in and Tulare Lake Basin is a
real powerhouse of agricultural production today because it has soil that is
less over worked than many other areas of the state.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So is it in the 1950s that the river goes dry?
>> Gene Rose: Yes that's when the, they find, you know they had to build these
big canals, they were building the canals, was a bigger project than building
the dam.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is this Friant-Kern Canal?
>> Gene Rose: Yes 152, 156, I don't know what the specific mileage is, but real
crucial thing will come may be in another century or so when that concrete
starts to crumble. Those, those well the dams and the canal will have to be
either torn apart and replaced. Well if you look what's happening in Washington,
State of Washington today, they are removing dams so that they can reclaim,
restore hopefully, the fishery, but that's not going to happen in California,
they're not going to tear out any dams that I know of. You know, the people talk
about removing Hetch Hetchy on Tuolumne River that was John Muir's great
catastrophe when they took that area that was in a supposedly in a protected
sacrosanct area of a national park and with the Raker Act in 1913 they built
this, this dam. Well the water could have been captured at a lower elevation but
what the city of San Francisco wants and still insists upon today is the power
generating capabilities of Hetch Hetchy you know, they can't do that at a lower
elevation. People need to go to the area around Hetch Hetchy and look at the
tremendous hydroelectric network that they have there. San Francisco makes a lot
of money on that electricity.
>> Thomas Holyoke: As I know there've been some proposals being floated around
to remove O'Shaughnessy Dam on Hetch Hetchy.
>> Gene Rose: Yeah, it’ll never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Gene Rose: You know, they can talk about it, but
that the political clout of San Francisco. It would
Francisco to lose that revenue and then some of the
water, they'd lose the revenue from electricity and
the road on that proposal.
the, the realists recognize
be devastating for San
water, not much of the
that's where the rubber hits
>> Thomas Holyoke: So up in the late 1980s, all of a sudden there is litigation
against the Bureau of Reclamation for having destroyed the fish populations of
the river. Ultimately this forces a settlement.
>> Gene Rose: Well Tom, if you look back in the desperation of the great
depression, expediency ruled the land and there was this big demand you know for
public work projects and yes the Central Valley Project put a lot of people back
to work, but it also you know was done without any environmental impact
statement, any public oversight and very little and this is where the
journalists have to take a big hit because that watchdog responsibility that
goes with the free press was forgotten. You know the Bee, McClatchy, the big
Central Valley newspaper they became a cheerleader you know. Hurray we got to do
this, we got to do that and you know there was no, no control, no, no one was
there who was saying stop or do you know what you're doing, you know go for it,
we need to rejuvenate the economy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually as a Fresno Bee reporter yourself, did you ever, the
only pressure that came to those kinds of stories?
>> Gene Rose: Well, after I was by that time I was on, I'm late to scene, but
when I recognized that we needed a new era of public involvement and stewardship
towards that beleaguered river. No one, no one has a right to destroy a river
system, as that natural hydrology was destroyed. The appointed governmental
agencies they should have spoke up. They were remarkably silent so yeah I, I
agitated for that because as I said no one has the right to destroy a natural
artery of life and that what happen when we dewatered the San Joaquin River. So
in early 1980s, late ’70s as people started looking what it happened with Mono
Lake that ethic was transferred to the San Joaquin, this heartland river, you
know this spiritual river of the Sierra, of California. People started asking
some hard questions and the Bureau of Reclamation had its foot in its mouth
because they'd been giving this water essentially, the water belongs to the
people of the state of California by law, aha, a wink and a nod and it goes
elsewhere. Yes we need agriculture, but we need a healthy environment, we need a
fishery, you know that's when the commercial fisherman, the sports fisherman,
the Audubon people, the Parkway people, Sierra Club became involved and said hey
we want some remedial flows back into this river channel.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you have faith it's, would that be can or, or at least
will even try to really restore the river?
>> Gene Rose: Yes and it's going to be very difficult project because here in
the drought year of 2012 there has already been some requests from Friant Water
Users Association to scale back those allocations for hard pressed agriculture
and it cannot make me positive to future restoration efforts on the San Joaquin
River.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It seems climate change will bring about more heat, more
drought and I suppose more demand for water for ->> Gene Rose: Yes and that will exacerbate the water conditions in the delta. If
we get the projected one and half foot rise in sea level many of those lands
that are now in the delta will need even higher levies and barriers to protect
them and California's bankrupt. We have a big water bond issue coming up and it
is so loaded with pork that I'm, I would predict that it will not pass and you
know and I say it all involves a new era of citizenship, involvement in water
projects. I am concerned.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Does that mean building giant tunnels under the delta?
>> Gene Rose: It will never happen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Really?
>> Gene Rose: Well, not in my life time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: New citizenship and stewardship, would you may be expand on
that a little, what would you, you would like to see that you think is
necessary?
>> Gene Rose: Yes you know I mentioned the San Joaquin, the Sierra Nevada is
kind of the cradle. It is on a geographical basis, this is where the stewardship
ethic began it goes back, it's biblical in nature, it's in the bible of
stewardship, but back in 1864, the height of the Civil War, concerned citizens
got together and saw what was happening to the jewel of the Sierra that is
Yosemite National Park and they rallied around that idea and in 1864 Lincoln
signed the Yosemite Grant that preserved wild land, this is unheard of
presidential in its nature because for the first time people came together and
said, we want to save our wilderness from manifest destiny and all of its
fallouts. So they -- you establish the Yosemite Grant and then Muir who was
driving force of that looked around and said well the Sierra Nevada watershed
has to be protected also, so he came up with a subsequent plan to extend all the
way down to the Kern River, the high Sierra as a “Range of Light,” national
park. National park concept at that time was in its incubator stage, people
didn't know that you know what we're talking about conservation or preservation,
they couldn't distinguish one from the other and that was an argument that has
been played out here in our Sierra. So we build on that and through the years
the National Park Service, Stephen Mather looked to Yosemite as his inspiration.
John Muir looked to the larger area, the Sierra for their... Muir was the de
facto founder of the national park. Stephen Mather was the appointed first
director, but he was instilled, he was fulfilled, motivated by John Muir and
their basic approach was each and every American has a responsibility to protect
the best of the American earth and to me that includes rivers you know, rivers
are the arteries of life and for us to keep abusing them and using them beyond
their physical capabilities does not reflect kindly on our stewardship.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, it's a, as a wrap up here is there anything else that
you want to say or anything ->> Gene Rose: Well I, my big concern, you know my, my radicalism if it's, if
that's what it is, stems from the fact that I worry about what kind of world my
grandchildren and their children might inherit, but if we go down this road of
perpetual growth and development forever and ever, we're going to end up as a
third world nation and that was not the American dream, that is not what my high
school buddies gave their life for in World War II, that is not the type of
citizenship that we should be promoting.