Dick Moss interview
Item
Title
eng
Dick Moss interview
Description
eng
A long time consultant specializing in water management strategies for irrigation districts in the south Valley.
Creator
eng
Moss, Dick
eng
Provost, Jim
Relation
eng
Water Archive Oral Histories
Coverage
eng
California State University, Fresno
Date
eng
7/27/2015
Format
eng
Microsoft Word 2013 document, 12 pages
Identifier
eng
SCMS_waoh_00031
extracted text
>> Jim Provost: Today we're with Dick Moss, an engineer. Been in the water
consulting business for quite some time. Pretty much all your life.
>> Dick Moss: In one form or another, yeah.
>> Jim Provost: Yeah, one form or another. And when you started your career,
you got your education whereabouts?
>> Dick Moss: I got my college degree from Cal Poly as an agricultural
engineer. I went to, I grew up in the Bay Area. My father was an electrical
engineer, was one of the first engineers to be part of Silicon Valley and
opened the IBM site, worked for IBM. So engineering has been part of my life
from the get go. Originally went to Cal Poly as an aeronautical engineer.
And that was at the time in the early '70s when aeronautical engineers were
sweeping the streets of Seattle and Boeing was down. And it was pretty
obvious, at least I thought, that I needed to look elsewhere. I got
interesting in agriculture and went into agricultural engineering primarily
in the focus of machinery and equipment design. But then while at Cal Poly
in the ag engineering department, got associated with Dr. John Merriam who
was ended up being a long term mentor of mine and quite a man as it relates
to irrigation and water management. And that's where my interest grew in the
irrigation and water management and went on from there. I did go to grad
school. Went to UC Davis for a couple years. Finished all my coursework.
But, unfortunately, never finished my master's thesis, so never quite got
that degree. But nonetheless, got the value of a UC Davis education, so...
>> Jim Provost: Then you jumped out into the working world and...
>> Dick Moss: I was had a couple of internships with the Kern County Water
Agency. And met there a fellow by the name of Jim Chandler who ended up
being one of my great mentors. And my history in education is all related to
a series of people who have helped guide me and have provided insight and
advice along the way. It's really, I've been truly blessed with a bunch of
people including yourself who have seen it fit to take me under their wing.
And help guide me and provide direction inside of not only my career but
professionally as well in terms of how to do business and what business to
do. But Jim Chandler was on assignment from the USDA Soil Conservation
Service at the time. It's now called Natural Resources Conservation Service.
To the Kern County Water Agency to do hydrology and to, in part, construct
the Alejandro Canal, which is a facility on the Kern River, off of the Kern
River.
>> Jim Provost: Excuse me, Dick, about what years are we?
>> Dick Moss: That would be 19. I interned at the agency in '74 and '75. And
again became familiar with Jim and with that internship and my knowledge of
Jim, it was easy for me to get on at the Soil Conservation Services Davis
office which was their state headquarters office in Davis as it turned out.
And that's where I went to grad school, so it worked out really well. And
then I was able to work at the USDA in their design divisions and drainage
division and irrigation water management while I went to school at Davis. So
I was able to work about 30 hours. I was married at the time. Worked about
30 hours and go to school, fLux schedule worked out terrific. Immediately
after when I thought I had pretty well finished all my coursework, I was
working on my master's thesis. I went ahead and took a position down in
Bakersfield with the USDA in the Bakersfield office as a field office
engineer. And worked there for a year and a half, two years. And then went
to the USDA's Fresno office, area office and was the irrigation water
management specialist for the area office of USDA for a couple of years.
While I was at Davis, interestingly enough, I met another one of my long
term mentors, Roger Rob who was the irrigation water management specialist
for the state of California for the NRCS. And I got to work a lot with Roger
in Davis. And, again, blessed by his insight. Then Roger came to me one day
and says I'm talking a job back in Tulare County where he had grown up as
the manager of the Pixley and Lower Tule River irrigation districts. So
Roger went to work there and about two years later, two or three years
later, he called me and asked if I wanted to go to work for him at Pixley
and Lower Tule. So that's really how I transitioned out of, I worked for the
federal government for about five years. Transitioned out of federal
government work and into irrigation district work as staff engineer for the
Lower Tule and Pixley irrigation districts working for Roger Rob. And that
would have been in the late '70s and early '80s. From there, I took a
position, worked three years for Roger. And took a position as the engineer
manager for the Orange Cove Irrigation District up in Orange Cove. And
worked out well because I was able to stay at about the same location where
we were living and just go commute 20 miles in a different direction and
still able to keep my house. But was engineer manager for Orange Cove
Irrigation District for, again, about three years. During which one of the
issues that came... Well I got a great opportunity in terms of mentors,
worked for a farmer who was the chairman of the board called Harvey Chase.
Harvey was a terrific guy, had been on the board of Orange Cove from the
beginning of the district. And just had a huge understanding of knowledge in
farming. Also got to work with John Boudreau. John was the manager of Terra
Bella Irrigation District. Orange Cove and Terra Bella were partners in the
development of a hydroelectric project on Friant Dam. And so I got to, as
the manager of Orange Cove, at an integral part of helping to develop that
project and was involved during all of its construction. Also, we looked at
financing and construction of a number of other hydroelectric projects in
the Sierras. I think tributaries to the San Joaquin River, particularly on
the Madera side. And work through the fusibility, was in negotiations with
Edison Company and other development interests. And now we can put those
projects together. None of them actually, other than the Friant power
project proved out and never got built, Friant did get built and is
operating still successfully today.
>> Jim Provost: Can you tell us something about where that's located?
>> Dick Moss: Friant Power Project is on the three outlets of Friant Dam on
the San Joaquin River at Millerton Lake. There was no hydroelectric
facilities on any of the outlets. The government had, for some reason,
decided not to build them as part of the project. So the districts, a
consortium of districts, I think they were eight districts joined together
and created a joint powers authority. Which went out and contracted for the
construction of the facilities and contracted with the United States to be
able to operate and maintain facilities on the government's dam. So, yeah,
there's three outlets. I think it totals about 25 megawatts, maybe 30
megawatts, can't remember, on the outlets. But that, yeah, that was my early
career at Orange Cove. One of the things that happened while at Orange Cove
was, this was during the Reagan Administration. There was a real push to
privatize any government services that could be done by the private sector.
I don't know if you remember that push, but there was quite an effort. And
one of the things that got hit upon as something that could be privatized
was the operation and maintenance of major canal facilities. The one that
got focused on the first was the Friant Current Canal. And the districts
were approached with the notion by the federal government that they would no
longer be operating, maintaining the canals. The Bureau of Reclamation would
no longer be operating, maintaining the canals. And that they would put it
out to bid to private companies to do. The districts weren't very excited
about the notion of having a profit motive injected into the O&M of their
canals and were concerned about the level of the quality of maintenance that
would occur. I'd been really pretty satisfied with what the Bureau had been
doing for all of the years and had gotten good service out of the Bureau we
all thought. So we went ahead and took on the responsibility of creating an
organization, putting an entity together and contracting with the federal
government to assume the operation and maintenance of the Friant Current
Canal. It was the first of what ended up being several canals who was
operation and maintenance were turned over to the local interests. And after
us, was the San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority was created for the Delta
Mendota Canal, O&M, and later the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority was created
for the TC Canal. But, yeah, we put together an organization and during the
spring of 1985, contracted with the Bureau of Reclamation to assume the
operation of maintenance which required putting together specifications and
standard operating procedures and the like. As well as assuming most of the
employees that were already under the employ of the federal government who
otherwise were going to lose their jobs. So we had a little bit of
negotiations with the unions, but primarily focused on getting the
organization put together and finding out who the appropriate staff were
within the Bureau that we wanted to hire. Ended up bringing on the majority
of them. We did, the Bureau did end up firing them all and then we hired
them through a protracted process. But ended up bringing most of them on and
most of them turned out to be excellent employees. Yeah, now the Bureau guys
were great. And I'll give the Bureau of Reclamationa lot of credit in that
they were much even more than the unions. Union basically disappeared, but
the Bureau of Reclamation management made sure their employees, ex-employees
were treated well, treated fairly in the process.
>> Jim Provost: And when did you go to work for them?
>> Dick Moss: I was selected as the manager about the time the organization
was formed in January 1985. I worked part time at OCID as the manager and
part time getting the new authority started through the spring and early
summer of 1985. And then went full time with the new organization in about
June of '85. And we assumed the operation and maintenance of the Canal
formally I think on about September 1 of 1985. So nine month transition
period to taking over the Canal.
>> Jim Provost: Then as time went by, it seems like the association started
being more involved with the legislation?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, there was, there had been in existence an organization
called the Friant Water Users Association. A nonprofit corporation that had
existed since the mid-1950s. That during its entire term had been managed by
Jim Sorenson who was engineer in Visalia. I think you probably have his
interview, but Jim was, he had actually been a previous manager of Orange
Cove Irrigation District as well. Got into private practice doing
engineering and one of his primary clients ended up being the Friant Water
Users Association. And Jim was involved in doing a lot, you know, in
starting the process of engaging with the government and the state
government, legislators, and the like. On the informational, political
things associated with delivering water to a million acres of the Friant
Division Service Area. Most of the Friant Division contractors belonged to
the association. And it was kind of how the association sprung the joint
powers authority that took over the operation and maintenance. Just so
happened that Jim was at the stage in his career where he was looking to
reduce his work. And so there was about a period of, oh, once we got the
canal pretty well stabilized in terms of its O&M program, then we started
transitioning, taking on the responsibilities and activities of the old
association. And Jim and I, he transferred different jobs and aspects of his
job to me over time. And Jim was pretty well out of the association
management in about the late '80s, probably '88, '89. And the authority had
assumed all of those responsibilities by then. Jim still served as a
legislative interface for a couple years as a consultant for us, but his
time diminished. And probably by 1990 or so, he was fully retired. At least
as it related to Friant business.
>> Jim Provost: What kinds of proposed legislation going through Congress
the authority chose to be involved with?
>> Dick Moss: Well the authority was a pretty sleepy organization, quite
frankly. Their issues, they were insulated to some degree from a lot of the
major issues affecting the state water scene. The Bay Delta is, you know,
the hub of a lot of activity, continues to be. And was back then as well in
terms of water management issues. The primary thing that the association was
focused on back then was continuing to try to develop additional water
supplies. There was something on the order of a million and a half acre feed
of annual yield of the Central Valley project that was unallocated and not
been formally contracted for; a portion of it was supposed to go to the
Tehama Colusa Canal Service Area, a portion of it was already under contract
as surplus water to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Westlands being
the largest taker. Westlands used to get all of their contract entitlement.
This is how significant things have changed in terms of water supply
availability with virtually the exact same facilities as we have now as we
had then. But Westlands used to regularly get surplus water every year and
got full contract entitlement every year. They were never shorted until the
late '80s. That was where the beginnings of the temperature control issues
relative to winter run salmon on Shasta and some of the, I would say the use
of the Endangered Species Act to impinge upon project operations. And, of
course, in the late '80s through the early '90s, we had 6 years of
significant drought, probably one of the biggest drought periods we've ever
seen in terms of project operations. And, yeah, the surplus water got used
up over time. But then we had the advent of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act in 1992 which changed the whole dynamics of the project, the
whole operations. But Friant division as a whole had, again, operated pretty
much insulated from a lot of the Bay Delta issues. Because it didn't have
any direct diversions out of the Delta. They did, you know, history is that
Friant Dam dried up the San Joaquin and extricated the last salmon run that
existed on the San Joaquin River, on the main stem of the San Joaquin River.
And but that had pretty well been locked in, if you will, from a state water
rights perspective and a federal law perspective for the operations of the
project until that point. So it had operated about 40, right at 40 years
because that was the length of most of the contracts with that kind of
operations. In the late '80s, in fact, it was in 1988, we had the first
contracts coming up for renewal in the Central Valley project, the entire
Central Valley project. And it was Orange Cove Irrigation District's
contract was the very first one that they signed in 1949. So it's a 40 year
contract, so it was up for renewal in 1989. One of the things that the
districts pursued and I was involved in this. This was right at that point
where we were transitioning from the association to the authority in terms
of the informational and political activities. We pursued with the interior
department, a solicitor's opinion as to whether or not these contracts which
had a right to renewal, called for renewal, could, in fact, be renewed
without being undergoing a review as a major federal decision. In other
words, we didn't believe there was any decision on the part of the federal
government to renew these contracts. They had already agreed to renew them
40 years ago. And thus they weren't subject to National Environmental Policy
Act and requirement of doing an NEIR or EIS, rather. Or nor were they
subject to the Endangered Species Act. And we pursued that question just to
get the clarification from the solicitor department from the department of
interior. And we got a solicitor's opinion to that effect. It wasn't but a
couple of months later that the lawsuit was filed by the Natural Resources
Defense Council on behalf of themselves and 13 other plaintiffs challenging
that opinion. That the contract should not have been renewed without having
undergone a full EIS in accordance with NEPA. It was that complaint was
subsequently amended to include an Endangered Species Act aspect to it that
we should have also complained about the Endangered Species Act. And, most
importantly, was amended to include a state law claim that under state Fish
and Game Code that a dam is required to maintain the fishery below the dam
that existed prior to the construction of the dam. And that that hadn't been
the case, they hadn't done that in the case of Friant Dam. All this, by the
way, was looked at in the context of when the dam was built and the
subsequent ROTA rights that were issued for the Friant division back in the
'50s. But the determination back then was that the need for water and for
the region was the imperative and that those things would be set aside. That
didn't keep people from bringing those issues back up. And you know, after
some shopping, some court shopping by the environmental community, they got
a judge by the name of Lawrence Carlton out of Sacramento, district court
judge, as their judge. And who worked out to be, I think, probably the best
attorney for the environmental community. But he maintained control of that
case for its 18 years until it was settled here back in the mid-2000s. And
pretty regularly, you know, handed us our head between our ears in terms of
being wrong in terms of the law on the court case. So it was, you know,
Friant went from being sleepy and not having too many issues to being
embroiled in one of the biggest issues relative to the renewal of water
service contracts right in the middle of it for the better part of 20 years.
Ultimately, into the middle of the restoration of the San Joaquin River as a
major activity that the Friant division is involved with. Along with that
came a whole host of other issues whenever you're connected back to the
Delta, include Delta water quality issues that Friant is now. I mean to be
involved with regularly and Delta operational issues as well.
>> Jim Provost: Would you mind going back a little bit and citing the basis
of the Friant supplies being able to be delivered?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, the Friant supplies originate from a couple of
interesting sources. The river was primarily developed for much of its firm
yield by Old Miller and Lux interests who were large farmer interests back
at the turn of the century. Most of those water rights were perfected prior
to 1914. That's our long standing water rights with a lot of history to
them. Their diversion point was Mendota Pool. And when the Central Valley
project was originally conceived, there was really two components to it.
There was the Friant division. Now there's Friant division, Contra Costa
Division, and then the source of the water was Shasta Dam and Friant Dam.
Those were the two original projects. And the Friant Division, of course,
the San Joaquin River Water Rights had been primarily already spoken for by
those Old Miller and Lux rights who diverted the Mendota Pool. So the CVP
was conceived to build Shasta Dam, provide for pumping facilities and
diversion facilities and canal, the Delta Mendota Canal, that took water out
of the South Delta after it was released down from Shasta Dam. All the way
down the Sacramento River into the Delta to where it would be diverted at
Tracey and right down the Delta Mendota Canal to Mendota Pool. To where it
would be then plumbed into the headworks of all of the version works of the
Old Miller and Lux interests which have now been converted to irrigation
districts and water companies for, gosh, I think it's about 200,000 acres of
land in the Los Banos area. Those rights, the old historic San Joaquin River
rights are now being satisfied through an exchange with Shasta Lake water
through the Delta Mendota Canal. And in exchange, then the Friant
contractors and the Bureau of Reclamationdivert waters at Millerton Lake and
Friant Dam and take it down the Madera Canal and the Friant Current Canal.
There were rights that were over and above the Miller and Lux rights. There
was rights that were purchased outright by the federal government. There are
these exchange rights that continue to persist. The purchase rights are, you
know, were purchased and moved to the federal government. The exchange
contract rights still exist under an agreement to exchange. And then there
was additional appropriate of rights and storage rights that were overlain
over the top of all of the existing rights for additional appropriations and
diversion of water from Millerton Lake into the Friant Current Canal. So
that primarily constitutes what's called the class two supply of Millerton
Lake. The Friant division is unique in that it employs, has always employed
conjunctive use of ground water within the Friant Division Service Area.
Where in drier years there's, you know, the primary source of supply is
ground water. And then in wetter years, water is delivered in excess of
irrigation needs for ground water recharge and it's contracted that way
through a series of contracts that have what's called a class two or primary
supply and class one, rather. Primary supply and class two water which is
unstorable [sic] surplus water. So districts will, who need a firm supply or
firmer supply get kind of the earliest water that becomes available. And
districts that operate the conjunctive use programs can take class two water
which only becomes available after all of the class one demands have been
met. So they contract for 800,000 acre feed of class 1 water and 1.4 million
acre feet of class 2 water on a river that has an average annual runoff of
about a million 8. So you get 2.2 contracted on a million 8. But a lot of
that water doesn't develop until it's very wet and the class two districts
will take a big chunk of water in those kind of years. In fact, there was a
concept embedded in the earliest contracts called obligation which required
the districts to take water during wet months. They had to take it. If they
didn't take it, still had to pay for it. So there was a real onus on the
districts to move as much water in wet years as possible.
>> Jim Provost: Can you, the impact, if any of Edison Companies operations
or PG&E on the river.
>> Dick Moss: Okay.
>> Jim Provost: They built a lot of dams.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, most of the, it's interesting. Most of the power company
reservoirs were built in the 1920s and '30s. The last one being Mammoth Pool
which was constructed in, help me Jim, '54, '55 somewhere in there, mid
'50s. So they were relatively early diverters. Of course, they had no
consumptive use, they were all power generation reservoirs. And is quoted as
being the hardest working water in the world as it makes its way down
through a number of different power houses and pen stocks. Starting up at
Florence Lake and working its way all the way down to, in the case of Edison
Company, down to Mammoth Pool. PG&E also developed kind of the northern part
of the San Joaquin River water shed with Bass Lake and Kerkoff Reservoirs.
But there's about a little over a half a million acre feet of storage in
these upstream reservoirs that certainly have an impact and an ability to
re-regulate water. Again, most of the time, their re-regulation of water for
power purposes is in pretty close dove tails with the operations needed for
irrigation. So there isn't much in the way of conflict between Edison
Company and the ultimate users of the water, the consumptive users of the
water in the irrigation districts and their growers. Interesting twist in
there in that the mentioned exchange contractor earlier. Those exchange
rates predate Edison's rights. So all of the Edison Power Company rights are
subject to exchange contractor operations and a lot of those...that
subjectivity, if you will, was brought into subsequent agreements. That
prescribed the operations between the exchange contractors, the Friant
contractors, and Edison Company for the operation of the upstream reservoirs
and Millerton Lake. Especially when it comes to time of drought and all
that's all supposed to happen, be coordinated. But, again, generally the
operations of the upstream reservoirs are done in pretty close coordination
with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Friant Division contractors. I know
they meet a couple of times to year to make sure that their operations are
coordinated and there's, like I said, very little controversy overall in
terms of the cooperative operations between them.
>> Jim Provost: You've just given the foundation for two different things
that are very closely related and that's the release of water from storage
for deliveries and for downstream use. And a normal year situation and a
drought situation. Can you describe, of course, we just entered a new
drought.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, well I think where you're heading is towards the notion
of what happens in a drought year relative to the operations especially
given the obligations to meet the exchange contractor commitment from other
sources from the Shasta Lake Water. During the course of the operations
over, what, plus 60 plus years now. There had never been a situation where,
now let me start a little more foundational. I mentioned the exchange
contract earlier. One of the provisions of the exchange contract in essence
or one of several provisions that relate to this subject is that if for some
reason the federal government is unable to deliver water from Shasta Lake
and the Delta Mendota Canal to meet the exchange contractors needs of
Mendota Pool from this alternative source of water. They reserve the right
to go back on the San Joaquin River and take what they call their reserve
rights that were delineated in the contract from the San Joaquin River. We'd
never had that situation before 2014. The obligations to meet the exchange
contractor commitment which are viewed as a prior right, water right
obligation of the project had always been met out of the Delta and out of
Shasta Lake and San Luis reservoir operations. The Central Valley project is
so dysfunctional at this point in time. Again, I mentioned how we, you know,
used to be in a situation and having, I mean, regularly a million and a half
acre feet of water that was still could be programmed for. And now we can't
even meet any obligations of the project as it relates to their contractors.
The Westlands and the west side agricultural contractors. But we can't even
meet the fundamental water right obligations of the exchange. Which was the
whole purpose for the Delta Mendota Canal and Shasta Dam from its origin. So
the project has gotten so dysfunctional as a result of rearranged priorities
for its operations and protection of, in particular, endangered species.
That it hardly functions at all. And, really, the water supplies it's
generating now are inadequate to meet the government's contracted needs. And
as manifest by this situation that happened in 2014 and again in 2015 when
there wasn't enough water out of Shasta and the Delta to meet the exchange
contractor obligation. And as a consequence, the exchange contractors took a
portion of their supply out of Millerton Lake leaving virtually no water for
the Friant Division contractors to use subsequently. So it's, again, points
up the kind of terrible situation that we're in as it relates to the overall
operations of the project and at least some of us would think misplaced
priorities as to how the water ought to be allocated.
>> Jim Provost: You see any changes in the future?
>> Dick Moss: No. No, this is the direction that, you know, hopefully. Well,
yeah. I think there's going to be a much broader understanding. Especially
as a result of the last couple years of drought. And, of course, we say this
after every drought. A much broader understanding by the general public of
where we're at from a water supply situation. I don't think the general
public really understands that it's a series of choices that have been made
over time that result in brown lawns and dead trees this year and last year.
It didn't have to be this way. It wasn't this way as a result of 1977's, you
know, drought which was actually drier than either of the last 2 years. But
it's been a series of decisions that people have made over time and policy
decisions as it relates to the priorities of water use that have gotten us
into this situation. So it's not a matter of drought, it's a matter of
public policy in large respect. We haven't built any new reservoirs. But
even the reservoirs that we have have been radically changed in their
operation to where they don't store water. An example of this, although it's
probably not as relevant as it was at the time, was in the operation of
Shasta reservoir. They had operational criteria that allowed the dam to be
taken down, you know, after a series of try years. It's a huge reservoir,
four and a half million acre feet. Taken down to 700,000 acre feet in
storage. Give you a perspective, 700,000 is about 1 1/2 times the size of
Millerton Lake. So it's not an insignificant amount of water. But, yet, for
Shasta, that's pretty low. When you start with 4 1/2 million and you're down
to 700,000, that's getting down to where it's looking like a pool or a
puddle when you drive over it. But with a stroke of a pen, you know,
instantaneously, the secretary of interior decided to create a cold water
pool for winter run salmon. This would be back in 1991, I believe, 1990 or
'91. And said we will no longer drain that reservoir below 1.9 million acre
feet. So with a stroke of a pen, we lost 1.2 million acre feet of storage
which is about the size of Temperance Lab which we keep talking about
building. And, you know, that's how radically, that was the beginning,
really, of a shift in project operations towards a more environmentally
friendly, fish friendly kind of operations. And the consequences of which
were reduction in the yield of the project again to the point now where
after two years or three years of drought, we can't make our most
fundamental, meet the most fundamental obligations of the project.
>> Jim Provost: How do you see the future on this subject?
>> Dick Moss: Well, again, I don't see that environmental ethic changing
even though we've had, you know, some pretty dramatic signs of drought. I
was in the Bay Area this weekend and they're doing a terrific job of
conserving water. But the toll is going to be not only brown lawns but lots
of dead trees and lots of expenses associated with reestablishment of
landscaping. And there will be, you know, I think Californians are going to
ultimately have to embrace a different water ethic as it relates to urban
water use. It's going to be much more akin to the Arizona kind of landscape
which is where most of the urban water use occurs within the context of
landscaping. So it's, you know, we're going to have to be used to that kind
of rocks and sage brush kind of look. And agriculture is going to be, I
think, significantly curtailed. In the San Joaquin Valley, we've had a
number of things that have occurred over the years that have led to the
prospect that we're going to have to reduce acreage. Probably I'm guessing
to the tune of at least a half a million acres if not more are going to have
to come out of production over the next 20 years. And that's, yeah, we've
systematically curtailed the availability of water out of the Delta in terms
of project operations. This has resulted in a loss of to the area of
something to the tune of 1.5, 1.6 million acre feet that used to come in the
San Joaquin Valley that no longer comes in the San Joaquin Valley. People
turn to ground water as their only source of supply to offset that loss of a
million and a half acre feet. And now we have legislation that prescribes
that within 20 years, we have to bring our ground water use within balance
back to balance. Which means we're going to have to reduce our consumption
by the equivalent of our overdraft in order to get things to balance. And
there's not much in the way of water conservation that will actually do
that, so it's going to result in land, other than land coming out of
production. If you include land coming out of production as water
conservation, then that's where most of it's going to come from.
>> Jim Provost: Sort of a dim future there.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, it is. Doesn't bode well for San Joaquin Valley in a
couple respects. Not only will you lose the economy associated with the half
million acres of production, but I think the cities are going to really have
a difficult time in themselves being able to show that they're in water
balance. Their volumes, of course, are much smaller. So, you know, they
don't have the magnitude of the problem is smaller. But you're not going to
be able to build a subdivision unless you can prove you have the water
available to it. That's law that changed here about 10 years ago. That you
have to have the water available and prove it up on long term basis that you
have enough water supply. Well most of our Valley jobs have done that by
virtue of using ground water as the source of supply that they say is going
to be there for the next 20 years. Well that's not necessarily the case.
Especially given the requirement that we have to come into ground water
balance. Cities, a lot of cities virtually do nothing in terms of ensuring
water balance other than making sure they got enough wells in place. But
they do nothing really on the water supply end to make sure that they're
bringing water in to offset their use. And I think that's going to change, I
think cities are going to be much more directly involved in bringing water
into the area and making sure there's a water supply for the area. Because
they're going to need it in order to support any future development.
Otherwise, you know, cities generally are leer on the appropriations
hierarchy as it relates to ground water. And as a consequence, should only
be using water after the overliers [sic] have their needs met. Overliers
[sic] being those who directly use the water on the land above where they're
pumping the ground water. Cities are appropriators and generally agriculture
is an overlier [sic]. So they really should be secondary priority to
agriculture. Now that probably won't happen just because most of the votes
live in the cities and this others going to be some ongoing negotiations and
issues to deal with in the future. But it's not only going to be an economic
issue as it relates to the agricultural economy. But it'll also be an
economic issue as it relates to the potential for development of the Valley.
Because you won't be able to build a house unless you got the water supply
to support it on long term. Which only makes sense, right.
>> Jim Provost: I get the impression listening to you that the real
possibility that municipal growth will come to a crawl.
>> Dick Moss: Well it's going to, it's either that or people are going to
have to come out of pocket with a lot more money. There will be water
available out there at a price. And to some degree. And the developers who
get it early and not only look at buying land. You know, developers
typically will buy land on the come looking at where the development is
going to be. Well they're going to have to buy water on the come, too, to be
able to support the developments into the future. Which means more money
towards, you know, your water bill's going to go up. And there will be some
limitations I think on growth for some communities who can't afford to buy
the water.
>> Jim Provost: I think that brings us pretty current and everything. Can
you think of anything else today?
>> Dick Moss: Well you mentioned things I worked on over the years. After my
stint at Friant, I went into the consulting business. And pretty quickly got
engaged with a firm called Provost and Pritchard Consulting Group. One of
the founders of which is sitting across the stage from me. Who I also
consider one of my mentors and has taught me a lot about the consulting
business. So for the last, gosh, it's almost 15 years now I guess that I've
been directly involved in consulting, working closely with Jim and other
terrific staff at Provost and Pritchard. Managing, well the fastest growing
consulting firms in the Valley and one of the largest. All started by Mr.
Provost. But, yeah, I've had great opportunities again working with some
terrific people, some of which I mentioned, some of which I haven't had a
chance to mention over the years. I worked a lot with Gary Sawyers who was
general counsel to the Friant Water Use Authority during pretty much most
all the time I was his general manager, worked very closely with Gary. I had
some great chairman of my authority board when I was there starting with
Bill Luten who was quite a decorated war hero and just a terrific guy, very
low key and just what was needed for the authority at the time. I'm very, he
was actually the superintendent of Tulare Irrigation District. But he was a
long standing farmer and a very smart man. And helped put the creation of
the Friant Water Usage Authority and assuming the operation and maintenance
of the canal. Had the opportunity to work with Bob Bowman, Robert Bowman,
who is kind of a legend in the Valley in terms of his involvement both in
the farming community, FFA, he got his early start as national president, I
think, of FFA. So not only in California, but of the nation. But was on a
number of water district boards and led the Friant Water Usage Authority for
a number of years. And then the last chairman I got to work with who was
terrific as well and continues to persist in the water business is Cole
Upton who was from Chowchilla Water District in Labronsa up in the northern
end of the Friant Service Area. But Cole was scary smart and very strategic
and a very good leader of Friant through a very difficult time when they
were working through the settlement of the San Joaquin River litigation.
Which, ultimately, was settled. I left the authority in 2001, kind of,
again, a midlife crisis, I would say, in terms of deciding I wanted to do
something different other than just manage water agency and went into
consulting business. But Cole continued to lead after I left in terms of the
overall organization and was instrumental in facilitating the original
settlement. He ultimately fell to be in disfavor of the settlement after it
became apparent to him that those that we were settling with were not being
genuine in terms of trying to minimize the impacts of their thinking on
Friant Division Operations. They wanted more water than what they had agreed
to. They wanted more damage to the Friant Division Service Area than what
people had suspected or at least had hoped. Some people thought that was
naiveté on the part of Cole. But Cole being a very honest and forthright guy
just couldn't believe that people would deal that way. He found out
different and it's been a real adversary. Not adversary, but a real check on
whether the San Joaquin River Restoration Program is truly viable and
whether or not it should be supported. But he was, when I was with him, he
was great to work with. And, again, very smart and very strategic and
learned a lot from him.
>> Jim Provost: Nice words. Additional thoughts?
>> Dick Moss: In terms of things that I'm proud of over the course of my
career? I would say creation of the Friant Water Authority, really building
it from scratch. During, there were a couple of initiatives. The renewal of
the contracts, I was intimately involved in all of that. And we got renewal
contracts even though they were subject to the outcomes of the litigation in
the NRDC case. During the course of events, the Bay Delta Water Quality as
it relates to the San Joaquin River was a major issue and Gary and I were
both directly, Gary Sawyers and I were heavily involved in negotiations with
other parts of the San Joaquin River, with the Department of Water Resources
and Bureau of Reclamation and the Environmental Community. Over what the
standards would be for the San Joaquin River in terms of water quality
flows. And the Friant division's obligations. And were successful in
developing what's called the Renewals Adaptive Management Plan. Which
persisted for about 15 years. And prescribed the operations of the San
Joaquin River as required for fishery flows and water quality purposes. But
the Friant division was able to move through that program without having to
put any additional water down the San Joaquin River. They primarily provided
through their funding of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program. And some
of the environmental fees brought on with the passage of the Central Valley
Improvement Act able to buy water from other tributary interests and have
that water put down the San Joaquin River really in fulfillment of their, at
least in part of their obligations. That was the deal in the Renewals
Adaptive Management Plan. The Friant funding provided about $3 million a
year. The Department of Water Resources kicked in another million dollars a
year out of state general funds, I think. And that bought 110,000 acre feet
of water from Merced ID and Modesto Interlock Irrigation Districts South San
Joaquin and a little bit from the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors.
But that was quite a big deal at the time in terms of getting that deal done
and in place. Yeah and then when I went in the consulting business, I've had
tremendous opportunities to work with individual districts and getting their
projects going and funded. There's been a number of them, but that's been a
very rewarding part of my career as well.
>> Jim Provost: And still going.
>> Dick Moss: Still going.
>> Jim Provost: Good. Well.
>> Dick Moss: What else?
>> Jim Provost: If you're finished, I'm finished.
>> Dick Moss: I think I'm done.
>> Jim Provost: Thank you very much.
>> Dick Moss: Thank you.
consulting business for quite some time. Pretty much all your life.
>> Dick Moss: In one form or another, yeah.
>> Jim Provost: Yeah, one form or another. And when you started your career,
you got your education whereabouts?
>> Dick Moss: I got my college degree from Cal Poly as an agricultural
engineer. I went to, I grew up in the Bay Area. My father was an electrical
engineer, was one of the first engineers to be part of Silicon Valley and
opened the IBM site, worked for IBM. So engineering has been part of my life
from the get go. Originally went to Cal Poly as an aeronautical engineer.
And that was at the time in the early '70s when aeronautical engineers were
sweeping the streets of Seattle and Boeing was down. And it was pretty
obvious, at least I thought, that I needed to look elsewhere. I got
interesting in agriculture and went into agricultural engineering primarily
in the focus of machinery and equipment design. But then while at Cal Poly
in the ag engineering department, got associated with Dr. John Merriam who
was ended up being a long term mentor of mine and quite a man as it relates
to irrigation and water management. And that's where my interest grew in the
irrigation and water management and went on from there. I did go to grad
school. Went to UC Davis for a couple years. Finished all my coursework.
But, unfortunately, never finished my master's thesis, so never quite got
that degree. But nonetheless, got the value of a UC Davis education, so...
>> Jim Provost: Then you jumped out into the working world and...
>> Dick Moss: I was had a couple of internships with the Kern County Water
Agency. And met there a fellow by the name of Jim Chandler who ended up
being one of my great mentors. And my history in education is all related to
a series of people who have helped guide me and have provided insight and
advice along the way. It's really, I've been truly blessed with a bunch of
people including yourself who have seen it fit to take me under their wing.
And help guide me and provide direction inside of not only my career but
professionally as well in terms of how to do business and what business to
do. But Jim Chandler was on assignment from the USDA Soil Conservation
Service at the time. It's now called Natural Resources Conservation Service.
To the Kern County Water Agency to do hydrology and to, in part, construct
the Alejandro Canal, which is a facility on the Kern River, off of the Kern
River.
>> Jim Provost: Excuse me, Dick, about what years are we?
>> Dick Moss: That would be 19. I interned at the agency in '74 and '75. And
again became familiar with Jim and with that internship and my knowledge of
Jim, it was easy for me to get on at the Soil Conservation Services Davis
office which was their state headquarters office in Davis as it turned out.
And that's where I went to grad school, so it worked out really well. And
then I was able to work at the USDA in their design divisions and drainage
division and irrigation water management while I went to school at Davis. So
I was able to work about 30 hours. I was married at the time. Worked about
30 hours and go to school, fLux schedule worked out terrific. Immediately
after when I thought I had pretty well finished all my coursework, I was
working on my master's thesis. I went ahead and took a position down in
Bakersfield with the USDA in the Bakersfield office as a field office
engineer. And worked there for a year and a half, two years. And then went
to the USDA's Fresno office, area office and was the irrigation water
management specialist for the area office of USDA for a couple of years.
While I was at Davis, interestingly enough, I met another one of my long
term mentors, Roger Rob who was the irrigation water management specialist
for the state of California for the NRCS. And I got to work a lot with Roger
in Davis. And, again, blessed by his insight. Then Roger came to me one day
and says I'm talking a job back in Tulare County where he had grown up as
the manager of the Pixley and Lower Tule River irrigation districts. So
Roger went to work there and about two years later, two or three years
later, he called me and asked if I wanted to go to work for him at Pixley
and Lower Tule. So that's really how I transitioned out of, I worked for the
federal government for about five years. Transitioned out of federal
government work and into irrigation district work as staff engineer for the
Lower Tule and Pixley irrigation districts working for Roger Rob. And that
would have been in the late '70s and early '80s. From there, I took a
position, worked three years for Roger. And took a position as the engineer
manager for the Orange Cove Irrigation District up in Orange Cove. And
worked out well because I was able to stay at about the same location where
we were living and just go commute 20 miles in a different direction and
still able to keep my house. But was engineer manager for Orange Cove
Irrigation District for, again, about three years. During which one of the
issues that came... Well I got a great opportunity in terms of mentors,
worked for a farmer who was the chairman of the board called Harvey Chase.
Harvey was a terrific guy, had been on the board of Orange Cove from the
beginning of the district. And just had a huge understanding of knowledge in
farming. Also got to work with John Boudreau. John was the manager of Terra
Bella Irrigation District. Orange Cove and Terra Bella were partners in the
development of a hydroelectric project on Friant Dam. And so I got to, as
the manager of Orange Cove, at an integral part of helping to develop that
project and was involved during all of its construction. Also, we looked at
financing and construction of a number of other hydroelectric projects in
the Sierras. I think tributaries to the San Joaquin River, particularly on
the Madera side. And work through the fusibility, was in negotiations with
Edison Company and other development interests. And now we can put those
projects together. None of them actually, other than the Friant power
project proved out and never got built, Friant did get built and is
operating still successfully today.
>> Jim Provost: Can you tell us something about where that's located?
>> Dick Moss: Friant Power Project is on the three outlets of Friant Dam on
the San Joaquin River at Millerton Lake. There was no hydroelectric
facilities on any of the outlets. The government had, for some reason,
decided not to build them as part of the project. So the districts, a
consortium of districts, I think they were eight districts joined together
and created a joint powers authority. Which went out and contracted for the
construction of the facilities and contracted with the United States to be
able to operate and maintain facilities on the government's dam. So, yeah,
there's three outlets. I think it totals about 25 megawatts, maybe 30
megawatts, can't remember, on the outlets. But that, yeah, that was my early
career at Orange Cove. One of the things that happened while at Orange Cove
was, this was during the Reagan Administration. There was a real push to
privatize any government services that could be done by the private sector.
I don't know if you remember that push, but there was quite an effort. And
one of the things that got hit upon as something that could be privatized
was the operation and maintenance of major canal facilities. The one that
got focused on the first was the Friant Current Canal. And the districts
were approached with the notion by the federal government that they would no
longer be operating, maintaining the canals. The Bureau of Reclamation would
no longer be operating, maintaining the canals. And that they would put it
out to bid to private companies to do. The districts weren't very excited
about the notion of having a profit motive injected into the O&M of their
canals and were concerned about the level of the quality of maintenance that
would occur. I'd been really pretty satisfied with what the Bureau had been
doing for all of the years and had gotten good service out of the Bureau we
all thought. So we went ahead and took on the responsibility of creating an
organization, putting an entity together and contracting with the federal
government to assume the operation and maintenance of the Friant Current
Canal. It was the first of what ended up being several canals who was
operation and maintenance were turned over to the local interests. And after
us, was the San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority was created for the Delta
Mendota Canal, O&M, and later the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority was created
for the TC Canal. But, yeah, we put together an organization and during the
spring of 1985, contracted with the Bureau of Reclamation to assume the
operation of maintenance which required putting together specifications and
standard operating procedures and the like. As well as assuming most of the
employees that were already under the employ of the federal government who
otherwise were going to lose their jobs. So we had a little bit of
negotiations with the unions, but primarily focused on getting the
organization put together and finding out who the appropriate staff were
within the Bureau that we wanted to hire. Ended up bringing on the majority
of them. We did, the Bureau did end up firing them all and then we hired
them through a protracted process. But ended up bringing most of them on and
most of them turned out to be excellent employees. Yeah, now the Bureau guys
were great. And I'll give the Bureau of Reclamationa lot of credit in that
they were much even more than the unions. Union basically disappeared, but
the Bureau of Reclamation management made sure their employees, ex-employees
were treated well, treated fairly in the process.
>> Jim Provost: And when did you go to work for them?
>> Dick Moss: I was selected as the manager about the time the organization
was formed in January 1985. I worked part time at OCID as the manager and
part time getting the new authority started through the spring and early
summer of 1985. And then went full time with the new organization in about
June of '85. And we assumed the operation and maintenance of the Canal
formally I think on about September 1 of 1985. So nine month transition
period to taking over the Canal.
>> Jim Provost: Then as time went by, it seems like the association started
being more involved with the legislation?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, there was, there had been in existence an organization
called the Friant Water Users Association. A nonprofit corporation that had
existed since the mid-1950s. That during its entire term had been managed by
Jim Sorenson who was engineer in Visalia. I think you probably have his
interview, but Jim was, he had actually been a previous manager of Orange
Cove Irrigation District as well. Got into private practice doing
engineering and one of his primary clients ended up being the Friant Water
Users Association. And Jim was involved in doing a lot, you know, in
starting the process of engaging with the government and the state
government, legislators, and the like. On the informational, political
things associated with delivering water to a million acres of the Friant
Division Service Area. Most of the Friant Division contractors belonged to
the association. And it was kind of how the association sprung the joint
powers authority that took over the operation and maintenance. Just so
happened that Jim was at the stage in his career where he was looking to
reduce his work. And so there was about a period of, oh, once we got the
canal pretty well stabilized in terms of its O&M program, then we started
transitioning, taking on the responsibilities and activities of the old
association. And Jim and I, he transferred different jobs and aspects of his
job to me over time. And Jim was pretty well out of the association
management in about the late '80s, probably '88, '89. And the authority had
assumed all of those responsibilities by then. Jim still served as a
legislative interface for a couple years as a consultant for us, but his
time diminished. And probably by 1990 or so, he was fully retired. At least
as it related to Friant business.
>> Jim Provost: What kinds of proposed legislation going through Congress
the authority chose to be involved with?
>> Dick Moss: Well the authority was a pretty sleepy organization, quite
frankly. Their issues, they were insulated to some degree from a lot of the
major issues affecting the state water scene. The Bay Delta is, you know,
the hub of a lot of activity, continues to be. And was back then as well in
terms of water management issues. The primary thing that the association was
focused on back then was continuing to try to develop additional water
supplies. There was something on the order of a million and a half acre feed
of annual yield of the Central Valley project that was unallocated and not
been formally contracted for; a portion of it was supposed to go to the
Tehama Colusa Canal Service Area, a portion of it was already under contract
as surplus water to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Westlands being
the largest taker. Westlands used to get all of their contract entitlement.
This is how significant things have changed in terms of water supply
availability with virtually the exact same facilities as we have now as we
had then. But Westlands used to regularly get surplus water every year and
got full contract entitlement every year. They were never shorted until the
late '80s. That was where the beginnings of the temperature control issues
relative to winter run salmon on Shasta and some of the, I would say the use
of the Endangered Species Act to impinge upon project operations. And, of
course, in the late '80s through the early '90s, we had 6 years of
significant drought, probably one of the biggest drought periods we've ever
seen in terms of project operations. And, yeah, the surplus water got used
up over time. But then we had the advent of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act in 1992 which changed the whole dynamics of the project, the
whole operations. But Friant division as a whole had, again, operated pretty
much insulated from a lot of the Bay Delta issues. Because it didn't have
any direct diversions out of the Delta. They did, you know, history is that
Friant Dam dried up the San Joaquin and extricated the last salmon run that
existed on the San Joaquin River, on the main stem of the San Joaquin River.
And but that had pretty well been locked in, if you will, from a state water
rights perspective and a federal law perspective for the operations of the
project until that point. So it had operated about 40, right at 40 years
because that was the length of most of the contracts with that kind of
operations. In the late '80s, in fact, it was in 1988, we had the first
contracts coming up for renewal in the Central Valley project, the entire
Central Valley project. And it was Orange Cove Irrigation District's
contract was the very first one that they signed in 1949. So it's a 40 year
contract, so it was up for renewal in 1989. One of the things that the
districts pursued and I was involved in this. This was right at that point
where we were transitioning from the association to the authority in terms
of the informational and political activities. We pursued with the interior
department, a solicitor's opinion as to whether or not these contracts which
had a right to renewal, called for renewal, could, in fact, be renewed
without being undergoing a review as a major federal decision. In other
words, we didn't believe there was any decision on the part of the federal
government to renew these contracts. They had already agreed to renew them
40 years ago. And thus they weren't subject to National Environmental Policy
Act and requirement of doing an NEIR or EIS, rather. Or nor were they
subject to the Endangered Species Act. And we pursued that question just to
get the clarification from the solicitor department from the department of
interior. And we got a solicitor's opinion to that effect. It wasn't but a
couple of months later that the lawsuit was filed by the Natural Resources
Defense Council on behalf of themselves and 13 other plaintiffs challenging
that opinion. That the contract should not have been renewed without having
undergone a full EIS in accordance with NEPA. It was that complaint was
subsequently amended to include an Endangered Species Act aspect to it that
we should have also complained about the Endangered Species Act. And, most
importantly, was amended to include a state law claim that under state Fish
and Game Code that a dam is required to maintain the fishery below the dam
that existed prior to the construction of the dam. And that that hadn't been
the case, they hadn't done that in the case of Friant Dam. All this, by the
way, was looked at in the context of when the dam was built and the
subsequent ROTA rights that were issued for the Friant division back in the
'50s. But the determination back then was that the need for water and for
the region was the imperative and that those things would be set aside. That
didn't keep people from bringing those issues back up. And you know, after
some shopping, some court shopping by the environmental community, they got
a judge by the name of Lawrence Carlton out of Sacramento, district court
judge, as their judge. And who worked out to be, I think, probably the best
attorney for the environmental community. But he maintained control of that
case for its 18 years until it was settled here back in the mid-2000s. And
pretty regularly, you know, handed us our head between our ears in terms of
being wrong in terms of the law on the court case. So it was, you know,
Friant went from being sleepy and not having too many issues to being
embroiled in one of the biggest issues relative to the renewal of water
service contracts right in the middle of it for the better part of 20 years.
Ultimately, into the middle of the restoration of the San Joaquin River as a
major activity that the Friant division is involved with. Along with that
came a whole host of other issues whenever you're connected back to the
Delta, include Delta water quality issues that Friant is now. I mean to be
involved with regularly and Delta operational issues as well.
>> Jim Provost: Would you mind going back a little bit and citing the basis
of the Friant supplies being able to be delivered?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, the Friant supplies originate from a couple of
interesting sources. The river was primarily developed for much of its firm
yield by Old Miller and Lux interests who were large farmer interests back
at the turn of the century. Most of those water rights were perfected prior
to 1914. That's our long standing water rights with a lot of history to
them. Their diversion point was Mendota Pool. And when the Central Valley
project was originally conceived, there was really two components to it.
There was the Friant division. Now there's Friant division, Contra Costa
Division, and then the source of the water was Shasta Dam and Friant Dam.
Those were the two original projects. And the Friant Division, of course,
the San Joaquin River Water Rights had been primarily already spoken for by
those Old Miller and Lux rights who diverted the Mendota Pool. So the CVP
was conceived to build Shasta Dam, provide for pumping facilities and
diversion facilities and canal, the Delta Mendota Canal, that took water out
of the South Delta after it was released down from Shasta Dam. All the way
down the Sacramento River into the Delta to where it would be diverted at
Tracey and right down the Delta Mendota Canal to Mendota Pool. To where it
would be then plumbed into the headworks of all of the version works of the
Old Miller and Lux interests which have now been converted to irrigation
districts and water companies for, gosh, I think it's about 200,000 acres of
land in the Los Banos area. Those rights, the old historic San Joaquin River
rights are now being satisfied through an exchange with Shasta Lake water
through the Delta Mendota Canal. And in exchange, then the Friant
contractors and the Bureau of Reclamationdivert waters at Millerton Lake and
Friant Dam and take it down the Madera Canal and the Friant Current Canal.
There were rights that were over and above the Miller and Lux rights. There
was rights that were purchased outright by the federal government. There are
these exchange rights that continue to persist. The purchase rights are, you
know, were purchased and moved to the federal government. The exchange
contract rights still exist under an agreement to exchange. And then there
was additional appropriate of rights and storage rights that were overlain
over the top of all of the existing rights for additional appropriations and
diversion of water from Millerton Lake into the Friant Current Canal. So
that primarily constitutes what's called the class two supply of Millerton
Lake. The Friant division is unique in that it employs, has always employed
conjunctive use of ground water within the Friant Division Service Area.
Where in drier years there's, you know, the primary source of supply is
ground water. And then in wetter years, water is delivered in excess of
irrigation needs for ground water recharge and it's contracted that way
through a series of contracts that have what's called a class two or primary
supply and class one, rather. Primary supply and class two water which is
unstorable [sic] surplus water. So districts will, who need a firm supply or
firmer supply get kind of the earliest water that becomes available. And
districts that operate the conjunctive use programs can take class two water
which only becomes available after all of the class one demands have been
met. So they contract for 800,000 acre feed of class 1 water and 1.4 million
acre feet of class 2 water on a river that has an average annual runoff of
about a million 8. So you get 2.2 contracted on a million 8. But a lot of
that water doesn't develop until it's very wet and the class two districts
will take a big chunk of water in those kind of years. In fact, there was a
concept embedded in the earliest contracts called obligation which required
the districts to take water during wet months. They had to take it. If they
didn't take it, still had to pay for it. So there was a real onus on the
districts to move as much water in wet years as possible.
>> Jim Provost: Can you, the impact, if any of Edison Companies operations
or PG&E on the river.
>> Dick Moss: Okay.
>> Jim Provost: They built a lot of dams.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, most of the, it's interesting. Most of the power company
reservoirs were built in the 1920s and '30s. The last one being Mammoth Pool
which was constructed in, help me Jim, '54, '55 somewhere in there, mid
'50s. So they were relatively early diverters. Of course, they had no
consumptive use, they were all power generation reservoirs. And is quoted as
being the hardest working water in the world as it makes its way down
through a number of different power houses and pen stocks. Starting up at
Florence Lake and working its way all the way down to, in the case of Edison
Company, down to Mammoth Pool. PG&E also developed kind of the northern part
of the San Joaquin River water shed with Bass Lake and Kerkoff Reservoirs.
But there's about a little over a half a million acre feet of storage in
these upstream reservoirs that certainly have an impact and an ability to
re-regulate water. Again, most of the time, their re-regulation of water for
power purposes is in pretty close dove tails with the operations needed for
irrigation. So there isn't much in the way of conflict between Edison
Company and the ultimate users of the water, the consumptive users of the
water in the irrigation districts and their growers. Interesting twist in
there in that the mentioned exchange contractor earlier. Those exchange
rates predate Edison's rights. So all of the Edison Power Company rights are
subject to exchange contractor operations and a lot of those...that
subjectivity, if you will, was brought into subsequent agreements. That
prescribed the operations between the exchange contractors, the Friant
contractors, and Edison Company for the operation of the upstream reservoirs
and Millerton Lake. Especially when it comes to time of drought and all
that's all supposed to happen, be coordinated. But, again, generally the
operations of the upstream reservoirs are done in pretty close coordination
with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Friant Division contractors. I know
they meet a couple of times to year to make sure that their operations are
coordinated and there's, like I said, very little controversy overall in
terms of the cooperative operations between them.
>> Jim Provost: You've just given the foundation for two different things
that are very closely related and that's the release of water from storage
for deliveries and for downstream use. And a normal year situation and a
drought situation. Can you describe, of course, we just entered a new
drought.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, well I think where you're heading is towards the notion
of what happens in a drought year relative to the operations especially
given the obligations to meet the exchange contractor commitment from other
sources from the Shasta Lake Water. During the course of the operations
over, what, plus 60 plus years now. There had never been a situation where,
now let me start a little more foundational. I mentioned the exchange
contract earlier. One of the provisions of the exchange contract in essence
or one of several provisions that relate to this subject is that if for some
reason the federal government is unable to deliver water from Shasta Lake
and the Delta Mendota Canal to meet the exchange contractors needs of
Mendota Pool from this alternative source of water. They reserve the right
to go back on the San Joaquin River and take what they call their reserve
rights that were delineated in the contract from the San Joaquin River. We'd
never had that situation before 2014. The obligations to meet the exchange
contractor commitment which are viewed as a prior right, water right
obligation of the project had always been met out of the Delta and out of
Shasta Lake and San Luis reservoir operations. The Central Valley project is
so dysfunctional at this point in time. Again, I mentioned how we, you know,
used to be in a situation and having, I mean, regularly a million and a half
acre feet of water that was still could be programmed for. And now we can't
even meet any obligations of the project as it relates to their contractors.
The Westlands and the west side agricultural contractors. But we can't even
meet the fundamental water right obligations of the exchange. Which was the
whole purpose for the Delta Mendota Canal and Shasta Dam from its origin. So
the project has gotten so dysfunctional as a result of rearranged priorities
for its operations and protection of, in particular, endangered species.
That it hardly functions at all. And, really, the water supplies it's
generating now are inadequate to meet the government's contracted needs. And
as manifest by this situation that happened in 2014 and again in 2015 when
there wasn't enough water out of Shasta and the Delta to meet the exchange
contractor obligation. And as a consequence, the exchange contractors took a
portion of their supply out of Millerton Lake leaving virtually no water for
the Friant Division contractors to use subsequently. So it's, again, points
up the kind of terrible situation that we're in as it relates to the overall
operations of the project and at least some of us would think misplaced
priorities as to how the water ought to be allocated.
>> Jim Provost: You see any changes in the future?
>> Dick Moss: No. No, this is the direction that, you know, hopefully. Well,
yeah. I think there's going to be a much broader understanding. Especially
as a result of the last couple years of drought. And, of course, we say this
after every drought. A much broader understanding by the general public of
where we're at from a water supply situation. I don't think the general
public really understands that it's a series of choices that have been made
over time that result in brown lawns and dead trees this year and last year.
It didn't have to be this way. It wasn't this way as a result of 1977's, you
know, drought which was actually drier than either of the last 2 years. But
it's been a series of decisions that people have made over time and policy
decisions as it relates to the priorities of water use that have gotten us
into this situation. So it's not a matter of drought, it's a matter of
public policy in large respect. We haven't built any new reservoirs. But
even the reservoirs that we have have been radically changed in their
operation to where they don't store water. An example of this, although it's
probably not as relevant as it was at the time, was in the operation of
Shasta reservoir. They had operational criteria that allowed the dam to be
taken down, you know, after a series of try years. It's a huge reservoir,
four and a half million acre feet. Taken down to 700,000 acre feet in
storage. Give you a perspective, 700,000 is about 1 1/2 times the size of
Millerton Lake. So it's not an insignificant amount of water. But, yet, for
Shasta, that's pretty low. When you start with 4 1/2 million and you're down
to 700,000, that's getting down to where it's looking like a pool or a
puddle when you drive over it. But with a stroke of a pen, you know,
instantaneously, the secretary of interior decided to create a cold water
pool for winter run salmon. This would be back in 1991, I believe, 1990 or
'91. And said we will no longer drain that reservoir below 1.9 million acre
feet. So with a stroke of a pen, we lost 1.2 million acre feet of storage
which is about the size of Temperance Lab which we keep talking about
building. And, you know, that's how radically, that was the beginning,
really, of a shift in project operations towards a more environmentally
friendly, fish friendly kind of operations. And the consequences of which
were reduction in the yield of the project again to the point now where
after two years or three years of drought, we can't make our most
fundamental, meet the most fundamental obligations of the project.
>> Jim Provost: How do you see the future on this subject?
>> Dick Moss: Well, again, I don't see that environmental ethic changing
even though we've had, you know, some pretty dramatic signs of drought. I
was in the Bay Area this weekend and they're doing a terrific job of
conserving water. But the toll is going to be not only brown lawns but lots
of dead trees and lots of expenses associated with reestablishment of
landscaping. And there will be, you know, I think Californians are going to
ultimately have to embrace a different water ethic as it relates to urban
water use. It's going to be much more akin to the Arizona kind of landscape
which is where most of the urban water use occurs within the context of
landscaping. So it's, you know, we're going to have to be used to that kind
of rocks and sage brush kind of look. And agriculture is going to be, I
think, significantly curtailed. In the San Joaquin Valley, we've had a
number of things that have occurred over the years that have led to the
prospect that we're going to have to reduce acreage. Probably I'm guessing
to the tune of at least a half a million acres if not more are going to have
to come out of production over the next 20 years. And that's, yeah, we've
systematically curtailed the availability of water out of the Delta in terms
of project operations. This has resulted in a loss of to the area of
something to the tune of 1.5, 1.6 million acre feet that used to come in the
San Joaquin Valley that no longer comes in the San Joaquin Valley. People
turn to ground water as their only source of supply to offset that loss of a
million and a half acre feet. And now we have legislation that prescribes
that within 20 years, we have to bring our ground water use within balance
back to balance. Which means we're going to have to reduce our consumption
by the equivalent of our overdraft in order to get things to balance. And
there's not much in the way of water conservation that will actually do
that, so it's going to result in land, other than land coming out of
production. If you include land coming out of production as water
conservation, then that's where most of it's going to come from.
>> Jim Provost: Sort of a dim future there.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, it is. Doesn't bode well for San Joaquin Valley in a
couple respects. Not only will you lose the economy associated with the half
million acres of production, but I think the cities are going to really have
a difficult time in themselves being able to show that they're in water
balance. Their volumes, of course, are much smaller. So, you know, they
don't have the magnitude of the problem is smaller. But you're not going to
be able to build a subdivision unless you can prove you have the water
available to it. That's law that changed here about 10 years ago. That you
have to have the water available and prove it up on long term basis that you
have enough water supply. Well most of our Valley jobs have done that by
virtue of using ground water as the source of supply that they say is going
to be there for the next 20 years. Well that's not necessarily the case.
Especially given the requirement that we have to come into ground water
balance. Cities, a lot of cities virtually do nothing in terms of ensuring
water balance other than making sure they got enough wells in place. But
they do nothing really on the water supply end to make sure that they're
bringing water in to offset their use. And I think that's going to change, I
think cities are going to be much more directly involved in bringing water
into the area and making sure there's a water supply for the area. Because
they're going to need it in order to support any future development.
Otherwise, you know, cities generally are leer on the appropriations
hierarchy as it relates to ground water. And as a consequence, should only
be using water after the overliers [sic] have their needs met. Overliers
[sic] being those who directly use the water on the land above where they're
pumping the ground water. Cities are appropriators and generally agriculture
is an overlier [sic]. So they really should be secondary priority to
agriculture. Now that probably won't happen just because most of the votes
live in the cities and this others going to be some ongoing negotiations and
issues to deal with in the future. But it's not only going to be an economic
issue as it relates to the agricultural economy. But it'll also be an
economic issue as it relates to the potential for development of the Valley.
Because you won't be able to build a house unless you got the water supply
to support it on long term. Which only makes sense, right.
>> Jim Provost: I get the impression listening to you that the real
possibility that municipal growth will come to a crawl.
>> Dick Moss: Well it's going to, it's either that or people are going to
have to come out of pocket with a lot more money. There will be water
available out there at a price. And to some degree. And the developers who
get it early and not only look at buying land. You know, developers
typically will buy land on the come looking at where the development is
going to be. Well they're going to have to buy water on the come, too, to be
able to support the developments into the future. Which means more money
towards, you know, your water bill's going to go up. And there will be some
limitations I think on growth for some communities who can't afford to buy
the water.
>> Jim Provost: I think that brings us pretty current and everything. Can
you think of anything else today?
>> Dick Moss: Well you mentioned things I worked on over the years. After my
stint at Friant, I went into the consulting business. And pretty quickly got
engaged with a firm called Provost and Pritchard Consulting Group. One of
the founders of which is sitting across the stage from me. Who I also
consider one of my mentors and has taught me a lot about the consulting
business. So for the last, gosh, it's almost 15 years now I guess that I've
been directly involved in consulting, working closely with Jim and other
terrific staff at Provost and Pritchard. Managing, well the fastest growing
consulting firms in the Valley and one of the largest. All started by Mr.
Provost. But, yeah, I've had great opportunities again working with some
terrific people, some of which I mentioned, some of which I haven't had a
chance to mention over the years. I worked a lot with Gary Sawyers who was
general counsel to the Friant Water Use Authority during pretty much most
all the time I was his general manager, worked very closely with Gary. I had
some great chairman of my authority board when I was there starting with
Bill Luten who was quite a decorated war hero and just a terrific guy, very
low key and just what was needed for the authority at the time. I'm very, he
was actually the superintendent of Tulare Irrigation District. But he was a
long standing farmer and a very smart man. And helped put the creation of
the Friant Water Usage Authority and assuming the operation and maintenance
of the canal. Had the opportunity to work with Bob Bowman, Robert Bowman,
who is kind of a legend in the Valley in terms of his involvement both in
the farming community, FFA, he got his early start as national president, I
think, of FFA. So not only in California, but of the nation. But was on a
number of water district boards and led the Friant Water Usage Authority for
a number of years. And then the last chairman I got to work with who was
terrific as well and continues to persist in the water business is Cole
Upton who was from Chowchilla Water District in Labronsa up in the northern
end of the Friant Service Area. But Cole was scary smart and very strategic
and a very good leader of Friant through a very difficult time when they
were working through the settlement of the San Joaquin River litigation.
Which, ultimately, was settled. I left the authority in 2001, kind of,
again, a midlife crisis, I would say, in terms of deciding I wanted to do
something different other than just manage water agency and went into
consulting business. But Cole continued to lead after I left in terms of the
overall organization and was instrumental in facilitating the original
settlement. He ultimately fell to be in disfavor of the settlement after it
became apparent to him that those that we were settling with were not being
genuine in terms of trying to minimize the impacts of their thinking on
Friant Division Operations. They wanted more water than what they had agreed
to. They wanted more damage to the Friant Division Service Area than what
people had suspected or at least had hoped. Some people thought that was
naiveté on the part of Cole. But Cole being a very honest and forthright guy
just couldn't believe that people would deal that way. He found out
different and it's been a real adversary. Not adversary, but a real check on
whether the San Joaquin River Restoration Program is truly viable and
whether or not it should be supported. But he was, when I was with him, he
was great to work with. And, again, very smart and very strategic and
learned a lot from him.
>> Jim Provost: Nice words. Additional thoughts?
>> Dick Moss: In terms of things that I'm proud of over the course of my
career? I would say creation of the Friant Water Authority, really building
it from scratch. During, there were a couple of initiatives. The renewal of
the contracts, I was intimately involved in all of that. And we got renewal
contracts even though they were subject to the outcomes of the litigation in
the NRDC case. During the course of events, the Bay Delta Water Quality as
it relates to the San Joaquin River was a major issue and Gary and I were
both directly, Gary Sawyers and I were heavily involved in negotiations with
other parts of the San Joaquin River, with the Department of Water Resources
and Bureau of Reclamation and the Environmental Community. Over what the
standards would be for the San Joaquin River in terms of water quality
flows. And the Friant division's obligations. And were successful in
developing what's called the Renewals Adaptive Management Plan. Which
persisted for about 15 years. And prescribed the operations of the San
Joaquin River as required for fishery flows and water quality purposes. But
the Friant division was able to move through that program without having to
put any additional water down the San Joaquin River. They primarily provided
through their funding of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program. And some
of the environmental fees brought on with the passage of the Central Valley
Improvement Act able to buy water from other tributary interests and have
that water put down the San Joaquin River really in fulfillment of their, at
least in part of their obligations. That was the deal in the Renewals
Adaptive Management Plan. The Friant funding provided about $3 million a
year. The Department of Water Resources kicked in another million dollars a
year out of state general funds, I think. And that bought 110,000 acre feet
of water from Merced ID and Modesto Interlock Irrigation Districts South San
Joaquin and a little bit from the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors.
But that was quite a big deal at the time in terms of getting that deal done
and in place. Yeah and then when I went in the consulting business, I've had
tremendous opportunities to work with individual districts and getting their
projects going and funded. There's been a number of them, but that's been a
very rewarding part of my career as well.
>> Jim Provost: And still going.
>> Dick Moss: Still going.
>> Jim Provost: Good. Well.
>> Dick Moss: What else?
>> Jim Provost: If you're finished, I'm finished.
>> Dick Moss: I think I'm done.
>> Jim Provost: Thank you very much.
>> Dick Moss: Thank you.
>> Jim Provost: Today we're with Dick Moss, an engineer. Been in the water
consulting business for quite some time. Pretty much all your life.
>> Dick Moss: In one form or another, yeah.
>> Jim Provost: Yeah, one form or another. And when you started your career,
you got your education whereabouts?
>> Dick Moss: I got my college degree from Cal Poly as an agricultural
engineer. I went to, I grew up in the Bay Area. My father was an electrical
engineer, was one of the first engineers to be part of Silicon Valley and
opened the IBM site, worked for IBM. So engineering has been part of my life
from the get go. Originally went to Cal Poly as an aeronautical engineer.
And that was at the time in the early '70s when aeronautical engineers were
sweeping the streets of Seattle and Boeing was down. And it was pretty
obvious, at least I thought, that I needed to look elsewhere. I got
interesting in agriculture and went into agricultural engineering primarily
in the focus of machinery and equipment design. But then while at Cal Poly
in the ag engineering department, got associated with Dr. John Merriam who
was ended up being a long term mentor of mine and quite a man as it relates
to irrigation and water management. And that's where my interest grew in the
irrigation and water management and went on from there. I did go to grad
school. Went to UC Davis for a couple years. Finished all my coursework.
But, unfortunately, never finished my master's thesis, so never quite got
that degree. But nonetheless, got the value of a UC Davis education, so...
>> Jim Provost: Then you jumped out into the working world and...
>> Dick Moss: I was had a couple of internships with the Kern County Water
Agency. And met there a fellow by the name of Jim Chandler who ended up
being one of my great mentors. And my history in education is all related to
a series of people who have helped guide me and have provided insight and
advice along the way. It's really, I've been truly blessed with a bunch of
people including yourself who have seen it fit to take me under their wing.
And help guide me and provide direction inside of not only my career but
professionally as well in terms of how to do business and what business to
do. But Jim Chandler was on assignment from the USDA Soil Conservation
Service at the time. It's now called Natural Resources Conservation Service.
To the Kern County Water Agency to do hydrology and to, in part, construct
the Alejandro Canal, which is a facility on the Kern River, off of the Kern
River.
>> Jim Provost: Excuse me, Dick, about what years are we?
>> Dick Moss: That would be 19. I interned at the agency in '74 and '75. And
again became familiar with Jim and with that internship and my knowledge of
Jim, it was easy for me to get on at the Soil Conservation Services Davis
office which was their state headquarters office in Davis as it turned out.
And that's where I went to grad school, so it worked out really well. And
then I was able to work at the USDA in their design divisions and drainage
division and irrigation water management while I went to school at Davis. So
I was able to work about 30 hours. I was married at the time. Worked about
30 hours and go to school, fLux schedule worked out terrific. Immediately
after when I thought I had pretty well finished all my coursework, I was
working on my master's thesis. I went ahead and took a position down in
Bakersfield with the USDA in the Bakersfield office as a field office
engineer. And worked there for a year and a half, two years. And then went
to the USDA's Fresno office, area office and was the irrigation water
management specialist for the area office of USDA for a couple of years.
While I was at Davis, interestingly enough, I met another one of my long
term mentors, Roger Rob who was the irrigation water management specialist
for the state of California for the NRCS. And I got to work a lot with Roger
in Davis. And, again, blessed by his insight. Then Roger came to me one day
and says I'm talking a job back in Tulare County where he had grown up as
the manager of the Pixley and Lower Tule River irrigation districts. So
Roger went to work there and about two years later, two or three years
later, he called me and asked if I wanted to go to work for him at Pixley
and Lower Tule. So that's really how I transitioned out of, I worked for the
federal government for about five years. Transitioned out of federal
government work and into irrigation district work as staff engineer for the
Lower Tule and Pixley irrigation districts working for Roger Rob. And that
would have been in the late '70s and early '80s. From there, I took a
position, worked three years for Roger. And took a position as the engineer
manager for the Orange Cove Irrigation District up in Orange Cove. And
worked out well because I was able to stay at about the same location where
we were living and just go commute 20 miles in a different direction and
still able to keep my house. But was engineer manager for Orange Cove
Irrigation District for, again, about three years. During which one of the
issues that came... Well I got a great opportunity in terms of mentors,
worked for a farmer who was the chairman of the board called Harvey Chase.
Harvey was a terrific guy, had been on the board of Orange Cove from the
beginning of the district. And just had a huge understanding of knowledge in
farming. Also got to work with John Boudreau. John was the manager of Terra
Bella Irrigation District. Orange Cove and Terra Bella were partners in the
development of a hydroelectric project on Friant Dam. And so I got to, as
the manager of Orange Cove, at an integral part of helping to develop that
project and was involved during all of its construction. Also, we looked at
financing and construction of a number of other hydroelectric projects in
the Sierras. I think tributaries to the San Joaquin River, particularly on
the Madera side. And work through the fusibility, was in negotiations with
Edison Company and other development interests. And now we can put those
projects together. None of them actually, other than the Friant power
project proved out and never got built, Friant did get built and is
operating still successfully today.
>> Jim Provost: Can you tell us something about where that's located?
>> Dick Moss: Friant Power Project is on the three outlets of Friant Dam on
the San Joaquin River at Millerton Lake. There was no hydroelectric
facilities on any of the outlets. The government had, for some reason,
decided not to build them as part of the project. So the districts, a
consortium of districts, I think they were eight districts joined together
and created a joint powers authority. Which went out and contracted for the
construction of the facilities and contracted with the United States to be
able to operate and maintain facilities on the government's dam. So, yeah,
there's three outlets. I think it totals about 25 megawatts, maybe 30
megawatts, can't remember, on the outlets. But that, yeah, that was my early
career at Orange Cove. One of the things that happened while at Orange Cove
was, this was during the Reagan Administration. There was a real push to
privatize any government services that could be done by the private sector.
I don't know if you remember that push, but there was quite an effort. And
one of the things that got hit upon as something that could be privatized
was the operation and maintenance of major canal facilities. The one that
got focused on the first was the Friant Current Canal. And the districts
were approached with the notion by the federal government that they would no
longer be operating, maintaining the canals. The Bureau of Reclamation would
no longer be operating, maintaining the canals. And that they would put it
out to bid to private companies to do. The districts weren't very excited
about the notion of having a profit motive injected into the O&M of their
canals and were concerned about the level of the quality of maintenance that
would occur. I'd been really pretty satisfied with what the Bureau had been
doing for all of the years and had gotten good service out of the Bureau we
all thought. So we went ahead and took on the responsibility of creating an
organization, putting an entity together and contracting with the federal
government to assume the operation and maintenance of the Friant Current
Canal. It was the first of what ended up being several canals who was
operation and maintenance were turned over to the local interests. And after
us, was the San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority was created for the Delta
Mendota Canal, O&M, and later the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority was created
for the TC Canal. But, yeah, we put together an organization and during the
spring of 1985, contracted with the Bureau of Reclamation to assume the
operation of maintenance which required putting together specifications and
standard operating procedures and the like. As well as assuming most of the
employees that were already under the employ of the federal government who
otherwise were going to lose their jobs. So we had a little bit of
negotiations with the unions, but primarily focused on getting the
organization put together and finding out who the appropriate staff were
within the Bureau that we wanted to hire. Ended up bringing on the majority
of them. We did, the Bureau did end up firing them all and then we hired
them through a protracted process. But ended up bringing most of them on and
most of them turned out to be excellent employees. Yeah, now the Bureau guys
were great. And I'll give the Bureau of Reclamationa lot of credit in that
they were much even more than the unions. Union basically disappeared, but
the Bureau of Reclamation management made sure their employees, ex-employees
were treated well, treated fairly in the process.
>> Jim Provost: And when did you go to work for them?
>> Dick Moss: I was selected as the manager about the time the organization
was formed in January 1985. I worked part time at OCID as the manager and
part time getting the new authority started through the spring and early
summer of 1985. And then went full time with the new organization in about
June of '85. And we assumed the operation and maintenance of the Canal
formally I think on about September 1 of 1985. So nine month transition
period to taking over the Canal.
>> Jim Provost: Then as time went by, it seems like the association started
being more involved with the legislation?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, there was, there had been in existence an organization
called the Friant Water Users Association. A nonprofit corporation that had
existed since the mid-1950s. That during its entire term had been managed by
Jim Sorenson who was engineer in Visalia. I think you probably have his
interview, but Jim was, he had actually been a previous manager of Orange
Cove Irrigation District as well. Got into private practice doing
engineering and one of his primary clients ended up being the Friant Water
Users Association. And Jim was involved in doing a lot, you know, in
starting the process of engaging with the government and the state
government, legislators, and the like. On the informational, political
things associated with delivering water to a million acres of the Friant
Division Service Area. Most of the Friant Division contractors belonged to
the association. And it was kind of how the association sprung the joint
powers authority that took over the operation and maintenance. Just so
happened that Jim was at the stage in his career where he was looking to
reduce his work. And so there was about a period of, oh, once we got the
canal pretty well stabilized in terms of its O&M program, then we started
transitioning, taking on the responsibilities and activities of the old
association. And Jim and I, he transferred different jobs and aspects of his
job to me over time. And Jim was pretty well out of the association
management in about the late '80s, probably '88, '89. And the authority had
assumed all of those responsibilities by then. Jim still served as a
legislative interface for a couple years as a consultant for us, but his
time diminished. And probably by 1990 or so, he was fully retired. At least
as it related to Friant business.
>> Jim Provost: What kinds of proposed legislation going through Congress
the authority chose to be involved with?
>> Dick Moss: Well the authority was a pretty sleepy organization, quite
frankly. Their issues, they were insulated to some degree from a lot of the
major issues affecting the state water scene. The Bay Delta is, you know,
the hub of a lot of activity, continues to be. And was back then as well in
terms of water management issues. The primary thing that the association was
focused on back then was continuing to try to develop additional water
supplies. There was something on the order of a million and a half acre feed
of annual yield of the Central Valley project that was unallocated and not
been formally contracted for; a portion of it was supposed to go to the
Tehama Colusa Canal Service Area, a portion of it was already under contract
as surplus water to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Westlands being
the largest taker. Westlands used to get all of their contract entitlement.
This is how significant things have changed in terms of water supply
availability with virtually the exact same facilities as we have now as we
had then. But Westlands used to regularly get surplus water every year and
got full contract entitlement every year. They were never shorted until the
late '80s. That was where the beginnings of the temperature control issues
relative to winter run salmon on Shasta and some of the, I would say the use
of the Endangered Species Act to impinge upon project operations. And, of
course, in the late '80s through the early '90s, we had 6 years of
significant drought, probably one of the biggest drought periods we've ever
seen in terms of project operations. And, yeah, the surplus water got used
up over time. But then we had the advent of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act in 1992 which changed the whole dynamics of the project, the
whole operations. But Friant division as a whole had, again, operated pretty
much insulated from a lot of the Bay Delta issues. Because it didn't have
any direct diversions out of the Delta. They did, you know, history is that
Friant Dam dried up the San Joaquin and extricated the last salmon run that
existed on the San Joaquin River, on the main stem of the San Joaquin River.
And but that had pretty well been locked in, if you will, from a state water
rights perspective and a federal law perspective for the operations of the
project until that point. So it had operated about 40, right at 40 years
because that was the length of most of the contracts with that kind of
operations. In the late '80s, in fact, it was in 1988, we had the first
contracts coming up for renewal in the Central Valley project, the entire
Central Valley project. And it was Orange Cove Irrigation District's
contract was the very first one that they signed in 1949. So it's a 40 year
contract, so it was up for renewal in 1989. One of the things that the
districts pursued and I was involved in this. This was right at that point
where we were transitioning from the association to the authority in terms
of the informational and political activities. We pursued with the interior
department, a solicitor's opinion as to whether or not these contracts which
had a right to renewal, called for renewal, could, in fact, be renewed
without being undergoing a review as a major federal decision. In other
words, we didn't believe there was any decision on the part of the federal
government to renew these contracts. They had already agreed to renew them
40 years ago. And thus they weren't subject to National Environmental Policy
Act and requirement of doing an NEIR or EIS, rather. Or nor were they
subject to the Endangered Species Act. And we pursued that question just to
get the clarification from the solicitor department from the department of
interior. And we got a solicitor's opinion to that effect. It wasn't but a
couple of months later that the lawsuit was filed by the Natural Resources
Defense Council on behalf of themselves and 13 other plaintiffs challenging
that opinion. That the contract should not have been renewed without having
undergone a full EIS in accordance with NEPA. It was that complaint was
subsequently amended to include an Endangered Species Act aspect to it that
we should have also complained about the Endangered Species Act. And, most
importantly, was amended to include a state law claim that under state Fish
and Game Code that a dam is required to maintain the fishery below the dam
that existed prior to the construction of the dam. And that that hadn't been
the case, they hadn't done that in the case of Friant Dam. All this, by the
way, was looked at in the context of when the dam was built and the
subsequent ROTA rights that were issued for the Friant division back in the
'50s. But the determination back then was that the need for water and for
the region was the imperative and that those things would be set aside. That
didn't keep people from bringing those issues back up. And you know, after
some shopping, some court shopping by the environmental community, they got
a judge by the name of Lawrence Carlton out of Sacramento, district court
judge, as their judge. And who worked out to be, I think, probably the best
attorney for the environmental community. But he maintained control of that
case for its 18 years until it was settled here back in the mid-2000s. And
pretty regularly, you know, handed us our head between our ears in terms of
being wrong in terms of the law on the court case. So it was, you know,
Friant went from being sleepy and not having too many issues to being
embroiled in one of the biggest issues relative to the renewal of water
service contracts right in the middle of it for the better part of 20 years.
Ultimately, into the middle of the restoration of the San Joaquin River as a
major activity that the Friant division is involved with. Along with that
came a whole host of other issues whenever you're connected back to the
Delta, include Delta water quality issues that Friant is now. I mean to be
involved with regularly and Delta operational issues as well.
>> Jim Provost: Would you mind going back a little bit and citing the basis
of the Friant supplies being able to be delivered?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, the Friant supplies originate from a couple of
interesting sources. The river was primarily developed for much of its firm
yield by Old Miller and Lux interests who were large farmer interests back
at the turn of the century. Most of those water rights were perfected prior
to 1914. That's our long standing water rights with a lot of history to
them. Their diversion point was Mendota Pool. And when the Central Valley
project was originally conceived, there was really two components to it.
There was the Friant division. Now there's Friant division, Contra Costa
Division, and then the source of the water was Shasta Dam and Friant Dam.
Those were the two original projects. And the Friant Division, of course,
the San Joaquin River Water Rights had been primarily already spoken for by
those Old Miller and Lux rights who diverted the Mendota Pool. So the CVP
was conceived to build Shasta Dam, provide for pumping facilities and
diversion facilities and canal, the Delta Mendota Canal, that took water out
of the South Delta after it was released down from Shasta Dam. All the way
down the Sacramento River into the Delta to where it would be diverted at
Tracey and right down the Delta Mendota Canal to Mendota Pool. To where it
would be then plumbed into the headworks of all of the version works of the
Old Miller and Lux interests which have now been converted to irrigation
districts and water companies for, gosh, I think it's about 200,000 acres of
land in the Los Banos area. Those rights, the old historic San Joaquin River
rights are now being satisfied through an exchange with Shasta Lake water
through the Delta Mendota Canal. And in exchange, then the Friant
contractors and the Bureau of Reclamationdivert waters at Millerton Lake and
Friant Dam and take it down the Madera Canal and the Friant Current Canal.
There were rights that were over and above the Miller and Lux rights. There
was rights that were purchased outright by the federal government. There are
these exchange rights that continue to persist. The purchase rights are, you
know, were purchased and moved to the federal government. The exchange
contract rights still exist under an agreement to exchange. And then there
was additional appropriate of rights and storage rights that were overlain
over the top of all of the existing rights for additional appropriations and
diversion of water from Millerton Lake into the Friant Current Canal. So
that primarily constitutes what's called the class two supply of Millerton
Lake. The Friant division is unique in that it employs, has always employed
conjunctive use of ground water within the Friant Division Service Area.
Where in drier years there's, you know, the primary source of supply is
ground water. And then in wetter years, water is delivered in excess of
irrigation needs for ground water recharge and it's contracted that way
through a series of contracts that have what's called a class two or primary
supply and class one, rather. Primary supply and class two water which is
unstorable [sic] surplus water. So districts will, who need a firm supply or
firmer supply get kind of the earliest water that becomes available. And
districts that operate the conjunctive use programs can take class two water
which only becomes available after all of the class one demands have been
met. So they contract for 800,000 acre feed of class 1 water and 1.4 million
acre feet of class 2 water on a river that has an average annual runoff of
about a million 8. So you get 2.2 contracted on a million 8. But a lot of
that water doesn't develop until it's very wet and the class two districts
will take a big chunk of water in those kind of years. In fact, there was a
concept embedded in the earliest contracts called obligation which required
the districts to take water during wet months. They had to take it. If they
didn't take it, still had to pay for it. So there was a real onus on the
districts to move as much water in wet years as possible.
>> Jim Provost: Can you, the impact, if any of Edison Companies operations
or PG&E on the river.
>> Dick Moss: Okay.
>> Jim Provost: They built a lot of dams.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, most of the, it's interesting. Most of the power company
reservoirs were built in the 1920s and '30s. The last one being Mammoth Pool
which was constructed in, help me Jim, '54, '55 somewhere in there, mid
'50s. So they were relatively early diverters. Of course, they had no
consumptive use, they were all power generation reservoirs. And is quoted as
being the hardest working water in the world as it makes its way down
through a number of different power houses and pen stocks. Starting up at
Florence Lake and working its way all the way down to, in the case of Edison
Company, down to Mammoth Pool. PG&E also developed kind of the northern part
of the San Joaquin River water shed with Bass Lake and Kerkoff Reservoirs.
But there's about a little over a half a million acre feet of storage in
these upstream reservoirs that certainly have an impact and an ability to
re-regulate water. Again, most of the time, their re-regulation of water for
power purposes is in pretty close dove tails with the operations needed for
irrigation. So there isn't much in the way of conflict between Edison
Company and the ultimate users of the water, the consumptive users of the
water in the irrigation districts and their growers. Interesting twist in
there in that the mentioned exchange contractor earlier. Those exchange
rates predate Edison's rights. So all of the Edison Power Company rights are
subject to exchange contractor operations and a lot of those...that
subjectivity, if you will, was brought into subsequent agreements. That
prescribed the operations between the exchange contractors, the Friant
contractors, and Edison Company for the operation of the upstream reservoirs
and Millerton Lake. Especially when it comes to time of drought and all
that's all supposed to happen, be coordinated. But, again, generally the
operations of the upstream reservoirs are done in pretty close coordination
with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Friant Division contractors. I know
they meet a couple of times to year to make sure that their operations are
coordinated and there's, like I said, very little controversy overall in
terms of the cooperative operations between them.
>> Jim Provost: You've just given the foundation for two different things
that are very closely related and that's the release of water from storage
for deliveries and for downstream use. And a normal year situation and a
drought situation. Can you describe, of course, we just entered a new
drought.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, well I think where you're heading is towards the notion
of what happens in a drought year relative to the operations especially
given the obligations to meet the exchange contractor commitment from other
sources from the Shasta Lake Water. During the course of the operations
over, what, plus 60 plus years now. There had never been a situation where,
now let me start a little more foundational. I mentioned the exchange
contract earlier. One of the provisions of the exchange contract in essence
or one of several provisions that relate to this subject is that if for some
reason the federal government is unable to deliver water from Shasta Lake
and the Delta Mendota Canal to meet the exchange contractors needs of
Mendota Pool from this alternative source of water. They reserve the right
to go back on the San Joaquin River and take what they call their reserve
rights that were delineated in the contract from the San Joaquin River. We'd
never had that situation before 2014. The obligations to meet the exchange
contractor commitment which are viewed as a prior right, water right
obligation of the project had always been met out of the Delta and out of
Shasta Lake and San Luis reservoir operations. The Central Valley project is
so dysfunctional at this point in time. Again, I mentioned how we, you know,
used to be in a situation and having, I mean, regularly a million and a half
acre feet of water that was still could be programmed for. And now we can't
even meet any obligations of the project as it relates to their contractors.
The Westlands and the west side agricultural contractors. But we can't even
meet the fundamental water right obligations of the exchange. Which was the
whole purpose for the Delta Mendota Canal and Shasta Dam from its origin. So
the project has gotten so dysfunctional as a result of rearranged priorities
for its operations and protection of, in particular, endangered species.
That it hardly functions at all. And, really, the water supplies it's
generating now are inadequate to meet the government's contracted needs. And
as manifest by this situation that happened in 2014 and again in 2015 when
there wasn't enough water out of Shasta and the Delta to meet the exchange
contractor obligation. And as a consequence, the exchange contractors took a
portion of their supply out of Millerton Lake leaving virtually no water for
the Friant Division contractors to use subsequently. So it's, again, points
up the kind of terrible situation that we're in as it relates to the overall
operations of the project and at least some of us would think misplaced
priorities as to how the water ought to be allocated.
>> Jim Provost: You see any changes in the future?
>> Dick Moss: No. No, this is the direction that, you know, hopefully. Well,
yeah. I think there's going to be a much broader understanding. Especially
as a result of the last couple years of drought. And, of course, we say this
after every drought. A much broader understanding by the general public of
where we're at from a water supply situation. I don't think the general
public really understands that it's a series of choices that have been made
over time that result in brown lawns and dead trees this year and last year.
It didn't have to be this way. It wasn't this way as a result of 1977's, you
know, drought which was actually drier than either of the last 2 years. But
it's been a series of decisions that people have made over time and policy
decisions as it relates to the priorities of water use that have gotten us
into this situation. So it's not a matter of drought, it's a matter of
public policy in large respect. We haven't built any new reservoirs. But
even the reservoirs that we have have been radically changed in their
operation to where they don't store water. An example of this, although it's
probably not as relevant as it was at the time, was in the operation of
Shasta reservoir. They had operational criteria that allowed the dam to be
taken down, you know, after a series of try years. It's a huge reservoir,
four and a half million acre feet. Taken down to 700,000 acre feet in
storage. Give you a perspective, 700,000 is about 1 1/2 times the size of
Millerton Lake. So it's not an insignificant amount of water. But, yet, for
Shasta, that's pretty low. When you start with 4 1/2 million and you're down
to 700,000, that's getting down to where it's looking like a pool or a
puddle when you drive over it. But with a stroke of a pen, you know,
instantaneously, the secretary of interior decided to create a cold water
pool for winter run salmon. This would be back in 1991, I believe, 1990 or
'91. And said we will no longer drain that reservoir below 1.9 million acre
feet. So with a stroke of a pen, we lost 1.2 million acre feet of storage
which is about the size of Temperance Lab which we keep talking about
building. And, you know, that's how radically, that was the beginning,
really, of a shift in project operations towards a more environmentally
friendly, fish friendly kind of operations. And the consequences of which
were reduction in the yield of the project again to the point now where
after two years or three years of drought, we can't make our most
fundamental, meet the most fundamental obligations of the project.
>> Jim Provost: How do you see the future on this subject?
>> Dick Moss: Well, again, I don't see that environmental ethic changing
even though we've had, you know, some pretty dramatic signs of drought. I
was in the Bay Area this weekend and they're doing a terrific job of
conserving water. But the toll is going to be not only brown lawns but lots
of dead trees and lots of expenses associated with reestablishment of
landscaping. And there will be, you know, I think Californians are going to
ultimately have to embrace a different water ethic as it relates to urban
water use. It's going to be much more akin to the Arizona kind of landscape
which is where most of the urban water use occurs within the context of
landscaping. So it's, you know, we're going to have to be used to that kind
of rocks and sage brush kind of look. And agriculture is going to be, I
think, significantly curtailed. In the San Joaquin Valley, we've had a
number of things that have occurred over the years that have led to the
prospect that we're going to have to reduce acreage. Probably I'm guessing
to the tune of at least a half a million acres if not more are going to have
to come out of production over the next 20 years. And that's, yeah, we've
systematically curtailed the availability of water out of the Delta in terms
of project operations. This has resulted in a loss of to the area of
something to the tune of 1.5, 1.6 million acre feet that used to come in the
San Joaquin Valley that no longer comes in the San Joaquin Valley. People
turn to ground water as their only source of supply to offset that loss of a
million and a half acre feet. And now we have legislation that prescribes
that within 20 years, we have to bring our ground water use within balance
back to balance. Which means we're going to have to reduce our consumption
by the equivalent of our overdraft in order to get things to balance. And
there's not much in the way of water conservation that will actually do
that, so it's going to result in land, other than land coming out of
production. If you include land coming out of production as water
conservation, then that's where most of it's going to come from.
>> Jim Provost: Sort of a dim future there.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, it is. Doesn't bode well for San Joaquin Valley in a
couple respects. Not only will you lose the economy associated with the half
million acres of production, but I think the cities are going to really have
a difficult time in themselves being able to show that they're in water
balance. Their volumes, of course, are much smaller. So, you know, they
don't have the magnitude of the problem is smaller. But you're not going to
be able to build a subdivision unless you can prove you have the water
available to it. That's law that changed here about 10 years ago. That you
have to have the water available and prove it up on long term basis that you
have enough water supply. Well most of our Valley jobs have done that by
virtue of using ground water as the source of supply that they say is going
to be there for the next 20 years. Well that's not necessarily the case.
Especially given the requirement that we have to come into ground water
balance. Cities, a lot of cities virtually do nothing in terms of ensuring
water balance other than making sure they got enough wells in place. But
they do nothing really on the water supply end to make sure that they're
bringing water in to offset their use. And I think that's going to change, I
think cities are going to be much more directly involved in bringing water
into the area and making sure there's a water supply for the area. Because
they're going to need it in order to support any future development.
Otherwise, you know, cities generally are leer on the appropriations
hierarchy as it relates to ground water. And as a consequence, should only
be using water after the overliers [sic] have their needs met. Overliers
[sic] being those who directly use the water on the land above where they're
pumping the ground water. Cities are appropriators and generally agriculture
is an overlier [sic]. So they really should be secondary priority to
agriculture. Now that probably won't happen just because most of the votes
live in the cities and this others going to be some ongoing negotiations and
issues to deal with in the future. But it's not only going to be an economic
issue as it relates to the agricultural economy. But it'll also be an
economic issue as it relates to the potential for development of the Valley.
Because you won't be able to build a house unless you got the water supply
to support it on long term. Which only makes sense, right.
>> Jim Provost: I get the impression listening to you that the real
possibility that municipal growth will come to a crawl.
>> Dick Moss: Well it's going to, it's either that or people are going to
have to come out of pocket with a lot more money. There will be water
available out there at a price. And to some degree. And the developers who
get it early and not only look at buying land. You know, developers
typically will buy land on the come looking at where the development is
going to be. Well they're going to have to buy water on the come, too, to be
able to support the developments into the future. Which means more money
towards, you know, your water bill's going to go up. And there will be some
limitations I think on growth for some communities who can't afford to buy
the water.
>> Jim Provost: I think that brings us pretty current and everything. Can
you think of anything else today?
>> Dick Moss: Well you mentioned things I worked on over the years. After my
stint at Friant, I went into the consulting business. And pretty quickly got
engaged with a firm called Provost and Pritchard Consulting Group. One of
the founders of which is sitting across the stage from me. Who I also
consider one of my mentors and has taught me a lot about the consulting
business. So for the last, gosh, it's almost 15 years now I guess that I've
been directly involved in consulting, working closely with Jim and other
terrific staff at Provost and Pritchard. Managing, well the fastest growing
consulting firms in the Valley and one of the largest. All started by Mr.
Provost. But, yeah, I've had great opportunities again working with some
terrific people, some of which I mentioned, some of which I haven't had a
chance to mention over the years. I worked a lot with Gary Sawyers who was
general counsel to the Friant Water Use Authority during pretty much most
all the time I was his general manager, worked very closely with Gary. I had
some great chairman of my authority board when I was there starting with
Bill Luten who was quite a decorated war hero and just a terrific guy, very
low key and just what was needed for the authority at the time. I'm very, he
was actually the superintendent of Tulare Irrigation District. But he was a
long standing farmer and a very smart man. And helped put the creation of
the Friant Water Usage Authority and assuming the operation and maintenance
of the canal. Had the opportunity to work with Bob Bowman, Robert Bowman,
who is kind of a legend in the Valley in terms of his involvement both in
the farming community, FFA, he got his early start as national president, I
think, of FFA. So not only in California, but of the nation. But was on a
number of water district boards and led the Friant Water Usage Authority for
a number of years. And then the last chairman I got to work with who was
terrific as well and continues to persist in the water business is Cole
Upton who was from Chowchilla Water District in Labronsa up in the northern
end of the Friant Service Area. But Cole was scary smart and very strategic
and a very good leader of Friant through a very difficult time when they
were working through the settlement of the San Joaquin River litigation.
Which, ultimately, was settled. I left the authority in 2001, kind of,
again, a midlife crisis, I would say, in terms of deciding I wanted to do
something different other than just manage water agency and went into
consulting business. But Cole continued to lead after I left in terms of the
overall organization and was instrumental in facilitating the original
settlement. He ultimately fell to be in disfavor of the settlement after it
became apparent to him that those that we were settling with were not being
genuine in terms of trying to minimize the impacts of their thinking on
Friant Division Operations. They wanted more water than what they had agreed
to. They wanted more damage to the Friant Division Service Area than what
people had suspected or at least had hoped. Some people thought that was
naiveté on the part of Cole. But Cole being a very honest and forthright guy
just couldn't believe that people would deal that way. He found out
different and it's been a real adversary. Not adversary, but a real check on
whether the San Joaquin River Restoration Program is truly viable and
whether or not it should be supported. But he was, when I was with him, he
was great to work with. And, again, very smart and very strategic and
learned a lot from him.
>> Jim Provost: Nice words. Additional thoughts?
>> Dick Moss: In terms of things that I'm proud of over the course of my
career? I would say creation of the Friant Water Authority, really building
it from scratch. During, there were a couple of initiatives. The renewal of
the contracts, I was intimately involved in all of that. And we got renewal
contracts even though they were subject to the outcomes of the litigation in
the NRDC case. During the course of events, the Bay Delta Water Quality as
it relates to the San Joaquin River was a major issue and Gary and I were
both directly, Gary Sawyers and I were heavily involved in negotiations with
other parts of the San Joaquin River, with the Department of Water Resources
and Bureau of Reclamation and the Environmental Community. Over what the
standards would be for the San Joaquin River in terms of water quality
flows. And the Friant division's obligations. And were successful in
developing what's called the Renewals Adaptive Management Plan. Which
persisted for about 15 years. And prescribed the operations of the San
Joaquin River as required for fishery flows and water quality purposes. But
the Friant division was able to move through that program without having to
put any additional water down the San Joaquin River. They primarily provided
through their funding of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program. And some
of the environmental fees brought on with the passage of the Central Valley
Improvement Act able to buy water from other tributary interests and have
that water put down the San Joaquin River really in fulfillment of their, at
least in part of their obligations. That was the deal in the Renewals
Adaptive Management Plan. The Friant funding provided about $3 million a
year. The Department of Water Resources kicked in another million dollars a
year out of state general funds, I think. And that bought 110,000 acre feet
of water from Merced ID and Modesto Interlock Irrigation Districts South San
Joaquin and a little bit from the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors.
But that was quite a big deal at the time in terms of getting that deal done
and in place. Yeah and then when I went in the consulting business, I've had
tremendous opportunities to work with individual districts and getting their
projects going and funded. There's been a number of them, but that's been a
very rewarding part of my career as well.
>> Jim Provost: And still going.
>> Dick Moss: Still going.
>> Jim Provost: Good. Well.
>> Dick Moss: What else?
>> Jim Provost: If you're finished, I'm finished.
>> Dick Moss: I think I'm done.
>> Jim Provost: Thank you very much.
>> Dick Moss: Thank you.
consulting business for quite some time. Pretty much all your life.
>> Dick Moss: In one form or another, yeah.
>> Jim Provost: Yeah, one form or another. And when you started your career,
you got your education whereabouts?
>> Dick Moss: I got my college degree from Cal Poly as an agricultural
engineer. I went to, I grew up in the Bay Area. My father was an electrical
engineer, was one of the first engineers to be part of Silicon Valley and
opened the IBM site, worked for IBM. So engineering has been part of my life
from the get go. Originally went to Cal Poly as an aeronautical engineer.
And that was at the time in the early '70s when aeronautical engineers were
sweeping the streets of Seattle and Boeing was down. And it was pretty
obvious, at least I thought, that I needed to look elsewhere. I got
interesting in agriculture and went into agricultural engineering primarily
in the focus of machinery and equipment design. But then while at Cal Poly
in the ag engineering department, got associated with Dr. John Merriam who
was ended up being a long term mentor of mine and quite a man as it relates
to irrigation and water management. And that's where my interest grew in the
irrigation and water management and went on from there. I did go to grad
school. Went to UC Davis for a couple years. Finished all my coursework.
But, unfortunately, never finished my master's thesis, so never quite got
that degree. But nonetheless, got the value of a UC Davis education, so...
>> Jim Provost: Then you jumped out into the working world and...
>> Dick Moss: I was had a couple of internships with the Kern County Water
Agency. And met there a fellow by the name of Jim Chandler who ended up
being one of my great mentors. And my history in education is all related to
a series of people who have helped guide me and have provided insight and
advice along the way. It's really, I've been truly blessed with a bunch of
people including yourself who have seen it fit to take me under their wing.
And help guide me and provide direction inside of not only my career but
professionally as well in terms of how to do business and what business to
do. But Jim Chandler was on assignment from the USDA Soil Conservation
Service at the time. It's now called Natural Resources Conservation Service.
To the Kern County Water Agency to do hydrology and to, in part, construct
the Alejandro Canal, which is a facility on the Kern River, off of the Kern
River.
>> Jim Provost: Excuse me, Dick, about what years are we?
>> Dick Moss: That would be 19. I interned at the agency in '74 and '75. And
again became familiar with Jim and with that internship and my knowledge of
Jim, it was easy for me to get on at the Soil Conservation Services Davis
office which was their state headquarters office in Davis as it turned out.
And that's where I went to grad school, so it worked out really well. And
then I was able to work at the USDA in their design divisions and drainage
division and irrigation water management while I went to school at Davis. So
I was able to work about 30 hours. I was married at the time. Worked about
30 hours and go to school, fLux schedule worked out terrific. Immediately
after when I thought I had pretty well finished all my coursework, I was
working on my master's thesis. I went ahead and took a position down in
Bakersfield with the USDA in the Bakersfield office as a field office
engineer. And worked there for a year and a half, two years. And then went
to the USDA's Fresno office, area office and was the irrigation water
management specialist for the area office of USDA for a couple of years.
While I was at Davis, interestingly enough, I met another one of my long
term mentors, Roger Rob who was the irrigation water management specialist
for the state of California for the NRCS. And I got to work a lot with Roger
in Davis. And, again, blessed by his insight. Then Roger came to me one day
and says I'm talking a job back in Tulare County where he had grown up as
the manager of the Pixley and Lower Tule River irrigation districts. So
Roger went to work there and about two years later, two or three years
later, he called me and asked if I wanted to go to work for him at Pixley
and Lower Tule. So that's really how I transitioned out of, I worked for the
federal government for about five years. Transitioned out of federal
government work and into irrigation district work as staff engineer for the
Lower Tule and Pixley irrigation districts working for Roger Rob. And that
would have been in the late '70s and early '80s. From there, I took a
position, worked three years for Roger. And took a position as the engineer
manager for the Orange Cove Irrigation District up in Orange Cove. And
worked out well because I was able to stay at about the same location where
we were living and just go commute 20 miles in a different direction and
still able to keep my house. But was engineer manager for Orange Cove
Irrigation District for, again, about three years. During which one of the
issues that came... Well I got a great opportunity in terms of mentors,
worked for a farmer who was the chairman of the board called Harvey Chase.
Harvey was a terrific guy, had been on the board of Orange Cove from the
beginning of the district. And just had a huge understanding of knowledge in
farming. Also got to work with John Boudreau. John was the manager of Terra
Bella Irrigation District. Orange Cove and Terra Bella were partners in the
development of a hydroelectric project on Friant Dam. And so I got to, as
the manager of Orange Cove, at an integral part of helping to develop that
project and was involved during all of its construction. Also, we looked at
financing and construction of a number of other hydroelectric projects in
the Sierras. I think tributaries to the San Joaquin River, particularly on
the Madera side. And work through the fusibility, was in negotiations with
Edison Company and other development interests. And now we can put those
projects together. None of them actually, other than the Friant power
project proved out and never got built, Friant did get built and is
operating still successfully today.
>> Jim Provost: Can you tell us something about where that's located?
>> Dick Moss: Friant Power Project is on the three outlets of Friant Dam on
the San Joaquin River at Millerton Lake. There was no hydroelectric
facilities on any of the outlets. The government had, for some reason,
decided not to build them as part of the project. So the districts, a
consortium of districts, I think they were eight districts joined together
and created a joint powers authority. Which went out and contracted for the
construction of the facilities and contracted with the United States to be
able to operate and maintain facilities on the government's dam. So, yeah,
there's three outlets. I think it totals about 25 megawatts, maybe 30
megawatts, can't remember, on the outlets. But that, yeah, that was my early
career at Orange Cove. One of the things that happened while at Orange Cove
was, this was during the Reagan Administration. There was a real push to
privatize any government services that could be done by the private sector.
I don't know if you remember that push, but there was quite an effort. And
one of the things that got hit upon as something that could be privatized
was the operation and maintenance of major canal facilities. The one that
got focused on the first was the Friant Current Canal. And the districts
were approached with the notion by the federal government that they would no
longer be operating, maintaining the canals. The Bureau of Reclamation would
no longer be operating, maintaining the canals. And that they would put it
out to bid to private companies to do. The districts weren't very excited
about the notion of having a profit motive injected into the O&M of their
canals and were concerned about the level of the quality of maintenance that
would occur. I'd been really pretty satisfied with what the Bureau had been
doing for all of the years and had gotten good service out of the Bureau we
all thought. So we went ahead and took on the responsibility of creating an
organization, putting an entity together and contracting with the federal
government to assume the operation and maintenance of the Friant Current
Canal. It was the first of what ended up being several canals who was
operation and maintenance were turned over to the local interests. And after
us, was the San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority was created for the Delta
Mendota Canal, O&M, and later the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority was created
for the TC Canal. But, yeah, we put together an organization and during the
spring of 1985, contracted with the Bureau of Reclamation to assume the
operation of maintenance which required putting together specifications and
standard operating procedures and the like. As well as assuming most of the
employees that were already under the employ of the federal government who
otherwise were going to lose their jobs. So we had a little bit of
negotiations with the unions, but primarily focused on getting the
organization put together and finding out who the appropriate staff were
within the Bureau that we wanted to hire. Ended up bringing on the majority
of them. We did, the Bureau did end up firing them all and then we hired
them through a protracted process. But ended up bringing most of them on and
most of them turned out to be excellent employees. Yeah, now the Bureau guys
were great. And I'll give the Bureau of Reclamationa lot of credit in that
they were much even more than the unions. Union basically disappeared, but
the Bureau of Reclamation management made sure their employees, ex-employees
were treated well, treated fairly in the process.
>> Jim Provost: And when did you go to work for them?
>> Dick Moss: I was selected as the manager about the time the organization
was formed in January 1985. I worked part time at OCID as the manager and
part time getting the new authority started through the spring and early
summer of 1985. And then went full time with the new organization in about
June of '85. And we assumed the operation and maintenance of the Canal
formally I think on about September 1 of 1985. So nine month transition
period to taking over the Canal.
>> Jim Provost: Then as time went by, it seems like the association started
being more involved with the legislation?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, there was, there had been in existence an organization
called the Friant Water Users Association. A nonprofit corporation that had
existed since the mid-1950s. That during its entire term had been managed by
Jim Sorenson who was engineer in Visalia. I think you probably have his
interview, but Jim was, he had actually been a previous manager of Orange
Cove Irrigation District as well. Got into private practice doing
engineering and one of his primary clients ended up being the Friant Water
Users Association. And Jim was involved in doing a lot, you know, in
starting the process of engaging with the government and the state
government, legislators, and the like. On the informational, political
things associated with delivering water to a million acres of the Friant
Division Service Area. Most of the Friant Division contractors belonged to
the association. And it was kind of how the association sprung the joint
powers authority that took over the operation and maintenance. Just so
happened that Jim was at the stage in his career where he was looking to
reduce his work. And so there was about a period of, oh, once we got the
canal pretty well stabilized in terms of its O&M program, then we started
transitioning, taking on the responsibilities and activities of the old
association. And Jim and I, he transferred different jobs and aspects of his
job to me over time. And Jim was pretty well out of the association
management in about the late '80s, probably '88, '89. And the authority had
assumed all of those responsibilities by then. Jim still served as a
legislative interface for a couple years as a consultant for us, but his
time diminished. And probably by 1990 or so, he was fully retired. At least
as it related to Friant business.
>> Jim Provost: What kinds of proposed legislation going through Congress
the authority chose to be involved with?
>> Dick Moss: Well the authority was a pretty sleepy organization, quite
frankly. Their issues, they were insulated to some degree from a lot of the
major issues affecting the state water scene. The Bay Delta is, you know,
the hub of a lot of activity, continues to be. And was back then as well in
terms of water management issues. The primary thing that the association was
focused on back then was continuing to try to develop additional water
supplies. There was something on the order of a million and a half acre feed
of annual yield of the Central Valley project that was unallocated and not
been formally contracted for; a portion of it was supposed to go to the
Tehama Colusa Canal Service Area, a portion of it was already under contract
as surplus water to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Westlands being
the largest taker. Westlands used to get all of their contract entitlement.
This is how significant things have changed in terms of water supply
availability with virtually the exact same facilities as we have now as we
had then. But Westlands used to regularly get surplus water every year and
got full contract entitlement every year. They were never shorted until the
late '80s. That was where the beginnings of the temperature control issues
relative to winter run salmon on Shasta and some of the, I would say the use
of the Endangered Species Act to impinge upon project operations. And, of
course, in the late '80s through the early '90s, we had 6 years of
significant drought, probably one of the biggest drought periods we've ever
seen in terms of project operations. And, yeah, the surplus water got used
up over time. But then we had the advent of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act in 1992 which changed the whole dynamics of the project, the
whole operations. But Friant division as a whole had, again, operated pretty
much insulated from a lot of the Bay Delta issues. Because it didn't have
any direct diversions out of the Delta. They did, you know, history is that
Friant Dam dried up the San Joaquin and extricated the last salmon run that
existed on the San Joaquin River, on the main stem of the San Joaquin River.
And but that had pretty well been locked in, if you will, from a state water
rights perspective and a federal law perspective for the operations of the
project until that point. So it had operated about 40, right at 40 years
because that was the length of most of the contracts with that kind of
operations. In the late '80s, in fact, it was in 1988, we had the first
contracts coming up for renewal in the Central Valley project, the entire
Central Valley project. And it was Orange Cove Irrigation District's
contract was the very first one that they signed in 1949. So it's a 40 year
contract, so it was up for renewal in 1989. One of the things that the
districts pursued and I was involved in this. This was right at that point
where we were transitioning from the association to the authority in terms
of the informational and political activities. We pursued with the interior
department, a solicitor's opinion as to whether or not these contracts which
had a right to renewal, called for renewal, could, in fact, be renewed
without being undergoing a review as a major federal decision. In other
words, we didn't believe there was any decision on the part of the federal
government to renew these contracts. They had already agreed to renew them
40 years ago. And thus they weren't subject to National Environmental Policy
Act and requirement of doing an NEIR or EIS, rather. Or nor were they
subject to the Endangered Species Act. And we pursued that question just to
get the clarification from the solicitor department from the department of
interior. And we got a solicitor's opinion to that effect. It wasn't but a
couple of months later that the lawsuit was filed by the Natural Resources
Defense Council on behalf of themselves and 13 other plaintiffs challenging
that opinion. That the contract should not have been renewed without having
undergone a full EIS in accordance with NEPA. It was that complaint was
subsequently amended to include an Endangered Species Act aspect to it that
we should have also complained about the Endangered Species Act. And, most
importantly, was amended to include a state law claim that under state Fish
and Game Code that a dam is required to maintain the fishery below the dam
that existed prior to the construction of the dam. And that that hadn't been
the case, they hadn't done that in the case of Friant Dam. All this, by the
way, was looked at in the context of when the dam was built and the
subsequent ROTA rights that were issued for the Friant division back in the
'50s. But the determination back then was that the need for water and for
the region was the imperative and that those things would be set aside. That
didn't keep people from bringing those issues back up. And you know, after
some shopping, some court shopping by the environmental community, they got
a judge by the name of Lawrence Carlton out of Sacramento, district court
judge, as their judge. And who worked out to be, I think, probably the best
attorney for the environmental community. But he maintained control of that
case for its 18 years until it was settled here back in the mid-2000s. And
pretty regularly, you know, handed us our head between our ears in terms of
being wrong in terms of the law on the court case. So it was, you know,
Friant went from being sleepy and not having too many issues to being
embroiled in one of the biggest issues relative to the renewal of water
service contracts right in the middle of it for the better part of 20 years.
Ultimately, into the middle of the restoration of the San Joaquin River as a
major activity that the Friant division is involved with. Along with that
came a whole host of other issues whenever you're connected back to the
Delta, include Delta water quality issues that Friant is now. I mean to be
involved with regularly and Delta operational issues as well.
>> Jim Provost: Would you mind going back a little bit and citing the basis
of the Friant supplies being able to be delivered?
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, the Friant supplies originate from a couple of
interesting sources. The river was primarily developed for much of its firm
yield by Old Miller and Lux interests who were large farmer interests back
at the turn of the century. Most of those water rights were perfected prior
to 1914. That's our long standing water rights with a lot of history to
them. Their diversion point was Mendota Pool. And when the Central Valley
project was originally conceived, there was really two components to it.
There was the Friant division. Now there's Friant division, Contra Costa
Division, and then the source of the water was Shasta Dam and Friant Dam.
Those were the two original projects. And the Friant Division, of course,
the San Joaquin River Water Rights had been primarily already spoken for by
those Old Miller and Lux rights who diverted the Mendota Pool. So the CVP
was conceived to build Shasta Dam, provide for pumping facilities and
diversion facilities and canal, the Delta Mendota Canal, that took water out
of the South Delta after it was released down from Shasta Dam. All the way
down the Sacramento River into the Delta to where it would be diverted at
Tracey and right down the Delta Mendota Canal to Mendota Pool. To where it
would be then plumbed into the headworks of all of the version works of the
Old Miller and Lux interests which have now been converted to irrigation
districts and water companies for, gosh, I think it's about 200,000 acres of
land in the Los Banos area. Those rights, the old historic San Joaquin River
rights are now being satisfied through an exchange with Shasta Lake water
through the Delta Mendota Canal. And in exchange, then the Friant
contractors and the Bureau of Reclamationdivert waters at Millerton Lake and
Friant Dam and take it down the Madera Canal and the Friant Current Canal.
There were rights that were over and above the Miller and Lux rights. There
was rights that were purchased outright by the federal government. There are
these exchange rights that continue to persist. The purchase rights are, you
know, were purchased and moved to the federal government. The exchange
contract rights still exist under an agreement to exchange. And then there
was additional appropriate of rights and storage rights that were overlain
over the top of all of the existing rights for additional appropriations and
diversion of water from Millerton Lake into the Friant Current Canal. So
that primarily constitutes what's called the class two supply of Millerton
Lake. The Friant division is unique in that it employs, has always employed
conjunctive use of ground water within the Friant Division Service Area.
Where in drier years there's, you know, the primary source of supply is
ground water. And then in wetter years, water is delivered in excess of
irrigation needs for ground water recharge and it's contracted that way
through a series of contracts that have what's called a class two or primary
supply and class one, rather. Primary supply and class two water which is
unstorable [sic] surplus water. So districts will, who need a firm supply or
firmer supply get kind of the earliest water that becomes available. And
districts that operate the conjunctive use programs can take class two water
which only becomes available after all of the class one demands have been
met. So they contract for 800,000 acre feed of class 1 water and 1.4 million
acre feet of class 2 water on a river that has an average annual runoff of
about a million 8. So you get 2.2 contracted on a million 8. But a lot of
that water doesn't develop until it's very wet and the class two districts
will take a big chunk of water in those kind of years. In fact, there was a
concept embedded in the earliest contracts called obligation which required
the districts to take water during wet months. They had to take it. If they
didn't take it, still had to pay for it. So there was a real onus on the
districts to move as much water in wet years as possible.
>> Jim Provost: Can you, the impact, if any of Edison Companies operations
or PG&E on the river.
>> Dick Moss: Okay.
>> Jim Provost: They built a lot of dams.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, most of the, it's interesting. Most of the power company
reservoirs were built in the 1920s and '30s. The last one being Mammoth Pool
which was constructed in, help me Jim, '54, '55 somewhere in there, mid
'50s. So they were relatively early diverters. Of course, they had no
consumptive use, they were all power generation reservoirs. And is quoted as
being the hardest working water in the world as it makes its way down
through a number of different power houses and pen stocks. Starting up at
Florence Lake and working its way all the way down to, in the case of Edison
Company, down to Mammoth Pool. PG&E also developed kind of the northern part
of the San Joaquin River water shed with Bass Lake and Kerkoff Reservoirs.
But there's about a little over a half a million acre feet of storage in
these upstream reservoirs that certainly have an impact and an ability to
re-regulate water. Again, most of the time, their re-regulation of water for
power purposes is in pretty close dove tails with the operations needed for
irrigation. So there isn't much in the way of conflict between Edison
Company and the ultimate users of the water, the consumptive users of the
water in the irrigation districts and their growers. Interesting twist in
there in that the mentioned exchange contractor earlier. Those exchange
rates predate Edison's rights. So all of the Edison Power Company rights are
subject to exchange contractor operations and a lot of those...that
subjectivity, if you will, was brought into subsequent agreements. That
prescribed the operations between the exchange contractors, the Friant
contractors, and Edison Company for the operation of the upstream reservoirs
and Millerton Lake. Especially when it comes to time of drought and all
that's all supposed to happen, be coordinated. But, again, generally the
operations of the upstream reservoirs are done in pretty close coordination
with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Friant Division contractors. I know
they meet a couple of times to year to make sure that their operations are
coordinated and there's, like I said, very little controversy overall in
terms of the cooperative operations between them.
>> Jim Provost: You've just given the foundation for two different things
that are very closely related and that's the release of water from storage
for deliveries and for downstream use. And a normal year situation and a
drought situation. Can you describe, of course, we just entered a new
drought.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, well I think where you're heading is towards the notion
of what happens in a drought year relative to the operations especially
given the obligations to meet the exchange contractor commitment from other
sources from the Shasta Lake Water. During the course of the operations
over, what, plus 60 plus years now. There had never been a situation where,
now let me start a little more foundational. I mentioned the exchange
contract earlier. One of the provisions of the exchange contract in essence
or one of several provisions that relate to this subject is that if for some
reason the federal government is unable to deliver water from Shasta Lake
and the Delta Mendota Canal to meet the exchange contractors needs of
Mendota Pool from this alternative source of water. They reserve the right
to go back on the San Joaquin River and take what they call their reserve
rights that were delineated in the contract from the San Joaquin River. We'd
never had that situation before 2014. The obligations to meet the exchange
contractor commitment which are viewed as a prior right, water right
obligation of the project had always been met out of the Delta and out of
Shasta Lake and San Luis reservoir operations. The Central Valley project is
so dysfunctional at this point in time. Again, I mentioned how we, you know,
used to be in a situation and having, I mean, regularly a million and a half
acre feet of water that was still could be programmed for. And now we can't
even meet any obligations of the project as it relates to their contractors.
The Westlands and the west side agricultural contractors. But we can't even
meet the fundamental water right obligations of the exchange. Which was the
whole purpose for the Delta Mendota Canal and Shasta Dam from its origin. So
the project has gotten so dysfunctional as a result of rearranged priorities
for its operations and protection of, in particular, endangered species.
That it hardly functions at all. And, really, the water supplies it's
generating now are inadequate to meet the government's contracted needs. And
as manifest by this situation that happened in 2014 and again in 2015 when
there wasn't enough water out of Shasta and the Delta to meet the exchange
contractor obligation. And as a consequence, the exchange contractors took a
portion of their supply out of Millerton Lake leaving virtually no water for
the Friant Division contractors to use subsequently. So it's, again, points
up the kind of terrible situation that we're in as it relates to the overall
operations of the project and at least some of us would think misplaced
priorities as to how the water ought to be allocated.
>> Jim Provost: You see any changes in the future?
>> Dick Moss: No. No, this is the direction that, you know, hopefully. Well,
yeah. I think there's going to be a much broader understanding. Especially
as a result of the last couple years of drought. And, of course, we say this
after every drought. A much broader understanding by the general public of
where we're at from a water supply situation. I don't think the general
public really understands that it's a series of choices that have been made
over time that result in brown lawns and dead trees this year and last year.
It didn't have to be this way. It wasn't this way as a result of 1977's, you
know, drought which was actually drier than either of the last 2 years. But
it's been a series of decisions that people have made over time and policy
decisions as it relates to the priorities of water use that have gotten us
into this situation. So it's not a matter of drought, it's a matter of
public policy in large respect. We haven't built any new reservoirs. But
even the reservoirs that we have have been radically changed in their
operation to where they don't store water. An example of this, although it's
probably not as relevant as it was at the time, was in the operation of
Shasta reservoir. They had operational criteria that allowed the dam to be
taken down, you know, after a series of try years. It's a huge reservoir,
four and a half million acre feet. Taken down to 700,000 acre feet in
storage. Give you a perspective, 700,000 is about 1 1/2 times the size of
Millerton Lake. So it's not an insignificant amount of water. But, yet, for
Shasta, that's pretty low. When you start with 4 1/2 million and you're down
to 700,000, that's getting down to where it's looking like a pool or a
puddle when you drive over it. But with a stroke of a pen, you know,
instantaneously, the secretary of interior decided to create a cold water
pool for winter run salmon. This would be back in 1991, I believe, 1990 or
'91. And said we will no longer drain that reservoir below 1.9 million acre
feet. So with a stroke of a pen, we lost 1.2 million acre feet of storage
which is about the size of Temperance Lab which we keep talking about
building. And, you know, that's how radically, that was the beginning,
really, of a shift in project operations towards a more environmentally
friendly, fish friendly kind of operations. And the consequences of which
were reduction in the yield of the project again to the point now where
after two years or three years of drought, we can't make our most
fundamental, meet the most fundamental obligations of the project.
>> Jim Provost: How do you see the future on this subject?
>> Dick Moss: Well, again, I don't see that environmental ethic changing
even though we've had, you know, some pretty dramatic signs of drought. I
was in the Bay Area this weekend and they're doing a terrific job of
conserving water. But the toll is going to be not only brown lawns but lots
of dead trees and lots of expenses associated with reestablishment of
landscaping. And there will be, you know, I think Californians are going to
ultimately have to embrace a different water ethic as it relates to urban
water use. It's going to be much more akin to the Arizona kind of landscape
which is where most of the urban water use occurs within the context of
landscaping. So it's, you know, we're going to have to be used to that kind
of rocks and sage brush kind of look. And agriculture is going to be, I
think, significantly curtailed. In the San Joaquin Valley, we've had a
number of things that have occurred over the years that have led to the
prospect that we're going to have to reduce acreage. Probably I'm guessing
to the tune of at least a half a million acres if not more are going to have
to come out of production over the next 20 years. And that's, yeah, we've
systematically curtailed the availability of water out of the Delta in terms
of project operations. This has resulted in a loss of to the area of
something to the tune of 1.5, 1.6 million acre feet that used to come in the
San Joaquin Valley that no longer comes in the San Joaquin Valley. People
turn to ground water as their only source of supply to offset that loss of a
million and a half acre feet. And now we have legislation that prescribes
that within 20 years, we have to bring our ground water use within balance
back to balance. Which means we're going to have to reduce our consumption
by the equivalent of our overdraft in order to get things to balance. And
there's not much in the way of water conservation that will actually do
that, so it's going to result in land, other than land coming out of
production. If you include land coming out of production as water
conservation, then that's where most of it's going to come from.
>> Jim Provost: Sort of a dim future there.
>> Dick Moss: Yeah, it is. Doesn't bode well for San Joaquin Valley in a
couple respects. Not only will you lose the economy associated with the half
million acres of production, but I think the cities are going to really have
a difficult time in themselves being able to show that they're in water
balance. Their volumes, of course, are much smaller. So, you know, they
don't have the magnitude of the problem is smaller. But you're not going to
be able to build a subdivision unless you can prove you have the water
available to it. That's law that changed here about 10 years ago. That you
have to have the water available and prove it up on long term basis that you
have enough water supply. Well most of our Valley jobs have done that by
virtue of using ground water as the source of supply that they say is going
to be there for the next 20 years. Well that's not necessarily the case.
Especially given the requirement that we have to come into ground water
balance. Cities, a lot of cities virtually do nothing in terms of ensuring
water balance other than making sure they got enough wells in place. But
they do nothing really on the water supply end to make sure that they're
bringing water in to offset their use. And I think that's going to change, I
think cities are going to be much more directly involved in bringing water
into the area and making sure there's a water supply for the area. Because
they're going to need it in order to support any future development.
Otherwise, you know, cities generally are leer on the appropriations
hierarchy as it relates to ground water. And as a consequence, should only
be using water after the overliers [sic] have their needs met. Overliers
[sic] being those who directly use the water on the land above where they're
pumping the ground water. Cities are appropriators and generally agriculture
is an overlier [sic]. So they really should be secondary priority to
agriculture. Now that probably won't happen just because most of the votes
live in the cities and this others going to be some ongoing negotiations and
issues to deal with in the future. But it's not only going to be an economic
issue as it relates to the agricultural economy. But it'll also be an
economic issue as it relates to the potential for development of the Valley.
Because you won't be able to build a house unless you got the water supply
to support it on long term. Which only makes sense, right.
>> Jim Provost: I get the impression listening to you that the real
possibility that municipal growth will come to a crawl.
>> Dick Moss: Well it's going to, it's either that or people are going to
have to come out of pocket with a lot more money. There will be water
available out there at a price. And to some degree. And the developers who
get it early and not only look at buying land. You know, developers
typically will buy land on the come looking at where the development is
going to be. Well they're going to have to buy water on the come, too, to be
able to support the developments into the future. Which means more money
towards, you know, your water bill's going to go up. And there will be some
limitations I think on growth for some communities who can't afford to buy
the water.
>> Jim Provost: I think that brings us pretty current and everything. Can
you think of anything else today?
>> Dick Moss: Well you mentioned things I worked on over the years. After my
stint at Friant, I went into the consulting business. And pretty quickly got
engaged with a firm called Provost and Pritchard Consulting Group. One of
the founders of which is sitting across the stage from me. Who I also
consider one of my mentors and has taught me a lot about the consulting
business. So for the last, gosh, it's almost 15 years now I guess that I've
been directly involved in consulting, working closely with Jim and other
terrific staff at Provost and Pritchard. Managing, well the fastest growing
consulting firms in the Valley and one of the largest. All started by Mr.
Provost. But, yeah, I've had great opportunities again working with some
terrific people, some of which I mentioned, some of which I haven't had a
chance to mention over the years. I worked a lot with Gary Sawyers who was
general counsel to the Friant Water Use Authority during pretty much most
all the time I was his general manager, worked very closely with Gary. I had
some great chairman of my authority board when I was there starting with
Bill Luten who was quite a decorated war hero and just a terrific guy, very
low key and just what was needed for the authority at the time. I'm very, he
was actually the superintendent of Tulare Irrigation District. But he was a
long standing farmer and a very smart man. And helped put the creation of
the Friant Water Usage Authority and assuming the operation and maintenance
of the canal. Had the opportunity to work with Bob Bowman, Robert Bowman,
who is kind of a legend in the Valley in terms of his involvement both in
the farming community, FFA, he got his early start as national president, I
think, of FFA. So not only in California, but of the nation. But was on a
number of water district boards and led the Friant Water Usage Authority for
a number of years. And then the last chairman I got to work with who was
terrific as well and continues to persist in the water business is Cole
Upton who was from Chowchilla Water District in Labronsa up in the northern
end of the Friant Service Area. But Cole was scary smart and very strategic
and a very good leader of Friant through a very difficult time when they
were working through the settlement of the San Joaquin River litigation.
Which, ultimately, was settled. I left the authority in 2001, kind of,
again, a midlife crisis, I would say, in terms of deciding I wanted to do
something different other than just manage water agency and went into
consulting business. But Cole continued to lead after I left in terms of the
overall organization and was instrumental in facilitating the original
settlement. He ultimately fell to be in disfavor of the settlement after it
became apparent to him that those that we were settling with were not being
genuine in terms of trying to minimize the impacts of their thinking on
Friant Division Operations. They wanted more water than what they had agreed
to. They wanted more damage to the Friant Division Service Area than what
people had suspected or at least had hoped. Some people thought that was
naiveté on the part of Cole. But Cole being a very honest and forthright guy
just couldn't believe that people would deal that way. He found out
different and it's been a real adversary. Not adversary, but a real check on
whether the San Joaquin River Restoration Program is truly viable and
whether or not it should be supported. But he was, when I was with him, he
was great to work with. And, again, very smart and very strategic and
learned a lot from him.
>> Jim Provost: Nice words. Additional thoughts?
>> Dick Moss: In terms of things that I'm proud of over the course of my
career? I would say creation of the Friant Water Authority, really building
it from scratch. During, there were a couple of initiatives. The renewal of
the contracts, I was intimately involved in all of that. And we got renewal
contracts even though they were subject to the outcomes of the litigation in
the NRDC case. During the course of events, the Bay Delta Water Quality as
it relates to the San Joaquin River was a major issue and Gary and I were
both directly, Gary Sawyers and I were heavily involved in negotiations with
other parts of the San Joaquin River, with the Department of Water Resources
and Bureau of Reclamation and the Environmental Community. Over what the
standards would be for the San Joaquin River in terms of water quality
flows. And the Friant division's obligations. And were successful in
developing what's called the Renewals Adaptive Management Plan. Which
persisted for about 15 years. And prescribed the operations of the San
Joaquin River as required for fishery flows and water quality purposes. But
the Friant division was able to move through that program without having to
put any additional water down the San Joaquin River. They primarily provided
through their funding of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program. And some
of the environmental fees brought on with the passage of the Central Valley
Improvement Act able to buy water from other tributary interests and have
that water put down the San Joaquin River really in fulfillment of their, at
least in part of their obligations. That was the deal in the Renewals
Adaptive Management Plan. The Friant funding provided about $3 million a
year. The Department of Water Resources kicked in another million dollars a
year out of state general funds, I think. And that bought 110,000 acre feet
of water from Merced ID and Modesto Interlock Irrigation Districts South San
Joaquin and a little bit from the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors.
But that was quite a big deal at the time in terms of getting that deal done
and in place. Yeah and then when I went in the consulting business, I've had
tremendous opportunities to work with individual districts and getting their
projects going and funded. There's been a number of them, but that's been a
very rewarding part of my career as well.
>> Jim Provost: And still going.
>> Dick Moss: Still going.
>> Jim Provost: Good. Well.
>> Dick Moss: What else?
>> Jim Provost: If you're finished, I'm finished.
>> Dick Moss: I think I'm done.
>> Jim Provost: Thank you very much.
>> Dick Moss: Thank you.