Water Archives · Mark Grossi interview

Title

eng Mark Grossi interview

Description

eng Former environmental reporter for the Fresno Bee. Talks about the big water stories he remembers from his career.

Creator

eng Grossi, Mark

eng Holyoke, Thomas

Relation

eng Water Archive Oral Histories

Coverage

eng California State University, Fresno

Date

eng 12/16/2015

Format

eng Microsoft Word document, 29 pages

Identifier

eng SCMS_waoh_00043

extracted text

>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. We are interviewing Mark Grossi today, until
recently, the environmental beat -- if you still use that term -- reporter
at The Fresno Bee. But let's start with a little bit of background. Where
are you from?
>> Mark Grossi: I'm from Bakersfield. Born and raised there. And— went
away to -- went away to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, for my Bachelor of
Science degree. And I've been in journalism, as a reporter, a writer,
columnist, editor -- ever since 1975 or so.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, how do you go from a Bachelor of Science to
journalism?
>> Mark Grossi: Oh. It was a Bachelor of Science in Journalism.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh.
>> Mark Grossi: Believe it or not, yeah. Yeah. It's one of the few places
that offers that. And it was just a little heavier on science courses. And
I was taking, like, computer science, in a computer room that was like,
three times the size of this. And it didn't have as much computing power
as your watch.
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laughter] Back in the days when they had the reel -big reel-to-reel tapes ->> Mark Grossi: Oh Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: -- And the punch cards. And that world.
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well then. Where did you start after getting your
degree from Cal Poly?
>> Mark Grossi: I was a -- I went to work at The Bakersfield Californian.
They hired me, finally full time, in '76. And I was taking dictation from
one of the reporters who was covering the HEW hearings, about the
Bakersfield school district. I haven't thought about this in a long time.
They were enforcing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And trying to arrange
bussing, and ordering -- they basically had to force a lot of this in
Bakersfield. And I was taking dictation on a manual typewriter.
[Laughter]. And covering night meetings. It was a lot of fun, actually. I
really enjoyed it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I take it there was a lot of resistance to integration
through bussing, in Bakersfield.
>> Mark Grossi: Oh, there was. I mean -- they were already doing it. I was
a bus driver myself in the early '70's, after high school. Hauling kids

out of the—out of the -- basically, the ghetto -- into the more suburban
schools.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How well did -- I mean, how well did that effort go?
Was it ever ultimately successful?
>> Mark Grossi: I think it's still done, to a certain extent. It's -Bakersfield's changed a lot. But I was the -- you know, I was among the
guinea pig bus drivers, who started this in 1971 and '72. And it was -yeah, there were some very violent confrontations, and windows being blown
out, and fights, and knives, and dogs, and guns. Anyway, I grew up real
fast and -- you know. But it was a real good adrenaline rush. And that's
sort of what journalism is. That's what newspapering is. That's what
attracted me to it. Deadlines and pressure, and crazy editors, and ->> Thomas Holyoke: Learning to enjoy life on adrenaline.
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah ->> Thomas Holyoke: And coffee.
>> Mark Grossi: -- Total, total junkie. Yeah, on it. And I just loved it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So how long did you stay with the Bakersfield paper?
>> Mark Grossi: I think it was eight or nine years. Something like that. I
progressed -- I covered natural resources, basically water, for a couple
of years in the '70's. And the first -- the first whiff of the Peripheral
Canal -- Peripheral Canal had been talked about for many years. I suppose
we'll get to this later. But, it's -- I covered a few stories in '78,
before the vote that took place in '80. And, wow! It was insane, and it
was -- there were a lot of people, and high emotions and you know.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, let's go ahead and get to that, then. I mean, the
Peripheral Canal -- this is Governor Brown's effort to build the canal
around the Delta, to pull water -- fresh water the Sacramento River, and
deposit it at the CVP pumps.
>> Mark Grossi: Right. Right. And the state pumps. Just to come around the
Delta, and deposit it there. Which, you know, in theory, it was a great
idea. But nobody in Northern California trusted it. So anytime you talked
to one of them, they -- they'd dump all over the idea. And you know, if
you speak to an engineer -- and I spoke to many -- it just made good
sense. I mean, the problem is actually in the Delta, where the two big
rivers meet. Where there are these species that don't occur anywhere else
on the globe. And if you're pumping water out, and moving -- everything is
dependent on flow in the Delta. So if you're making the flow move -change directions -- you're going to scramble nature. And that's what
happened up there. That's what's been happening.

>> Thomas Holyoke: So, what are the thoughts about this in Bakersfield? By
and large, everyone you talked to, pro-Peripheral Canal?
>> Mark Grossi: Well, they wanted it desperately. I mean, there's not much
water -- there's not a lot of water around here, in the Fresno County. But
Kern County, much, much drier.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you remember how the Peripheral Canal would have
helped Bakersfield? I mean, that would have been putting water -- more
water into the California Aqueduct, and the Delta-Mendota canal. How does
that help Bakersfield?
>> Mark Grossi: Bakersfield is on the State Water Project. The Kern County
farmers are the second biggest customer on the State Water Project, which
takes water out of the California Aqueduct. And -- the biggest customer
being Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. And they're huge
tracts of land in Bakersfield -- or west of Bakersfield. And the farmers
there, you know -- they could see, you know, how this could be turned into
this Eden, by bringing more water in. And it was -- it's always a juggle
down there. I mean, I learned a lot. The groundwater banking that we talk
about now, and that we talked about -- we were really getting excited
about it 15 years ago. They were excited about it in the '70's. I was
writing stories about it in '77 and '78. So it was -- it's an art form
down there, because there's so little water.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How do you go about learning the subject of water, as a
journalist there?
>> Mark Grossi: You know -- you go to a meeting, and you sit through it,
and you try to write something coherent, that won't put people to sleep.
And you make lots of mistakes, and you have people call you up and yell.
And pretty soon, you start getting into the jargon, getting on the inside
of it. And basically translating it, and trying not to -- it's a very,
very difficult thing to do for the media. I don't know anybody who can
start right from scratch, and be completely, you know, unbiased. And I
don't think there is any such thing to begin with, but -- to play it down
the middle, and represent everybody as well as you can -- it's impossible
to do right out of the gate. And I was in my -- I was still in my 20's, my
mid 20's. That was very, very hard to learn. So I was not anxious to get
back there, and cover it again.
>> Thomas Holyoke: But learning a subject like that -- I mean, do you find
yourself reliant on, you know, a lot of people in Bakersfield, who may
have all had a particular point of view?
>> Mark Grossi: Absolutely. I mean, right at the start. You bet. One of my
best friends, a college roommate, was actually working for them as an
engineer. And he'd feed me stuff. And I'd write it. And, you know, this
was in the days before the internet. Long before the internet. This was
long before -- not long, but before computers, mostly, in a newsroom. This

was where you had people smoking cigarettes, and cussing at each other,
and drinking coffee, and bells dinging off. I was sitting on the universal
desk -- I must say this. Copy desk down in Bakersfield, in August of '74,
when the AP machine went nuts, and Richard Nixon resigned. [Laughter] I
mean, that is just -- for a kid -- that was just like, wow! Look at that!
And it was just -- it was amazing. But it's like -- so, you write these
stories on manual typewriters. Actually, we were segueing to these great
electric-like typewriters. And it goes into the newspaper, and there's no
internet. There's no way for people to read it outside the area. This is
Bakersfield, California, and almost nobody read it, outside of the area.
So it might be six, eight months before I would get some kind of feedback
from an environmentalist. So all I heard was right there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So when something like the Peripheral Canal, then, was
-- when that -- when the actual ballot proposition, the one that
ultimately killed it -- started to emerge. Was Bakersfield and Kern
County, by and large, still pro-Peripheral Canal? Much as I recall, some
Central Valley farmers started having some second thoughts about the whole
thing.
>> Mark Grossi: Well, the big one who turned it was J.G. Boswell. I'm sure
others have told you that. It -- and the exact reason escapes me, as to
why he was against it. But I seem to remember that, in the process of
establishing this, I think the initiative would have made the northern
coast rivers -- like the Feather River -- it'd make them off limits to
tap, for the future. And he didn't like the sound of that. And I—I -- you
know, I have no idea whether that was politically wise, or not. Or
anything else. But, he dumped a million dollars in that camp— in that no
campaign. And I mean, within months, it pivoted. And they had LA on their
side, up until that point. And that would have -- that's what you do, when
you're a politician. You go get votes in LA.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So this is -- that was, I recall, Governor Brown,
trying to draw Northern California support, by designating those rivers as
free and scenic, or whatever he was doing up there.
>> Mark Grossi: That was it. Yeah. I interviewed him once. He and I both
had more hair at that point.
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laughter] What was that like? Interviewing him?
>> Mark Grossi: I don't remember an awful lot about it. We did get on the
subject of Linda Ronstadt, I think.
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laughter] Okay.
>> Mark Grossi: But—But he was actually very cool. Very smart. And, I
mean, I guarantee you -- you walk into most rooms, and he's the smartest
man in the room. Soon as he walked in, he was just amazingly bright.

>> Thomas Holyoke: So, having -- so, covering Peripheral Canal, and you
know, watching the governor go through various contortions to hold up a
political coalition together -- which of course, he ultimately fails to
do. That must have been, actually a pretty good introduction to California
water politics. So it seems like we've probably seen those kind of
coalition efforts come back again, and again, and again.
>> Mark Grossi: Well, you know. It wasn't so hard to put those together.
Even fifteen -- ten, fifteen years before that. So, he was walking into a
whole new era. I mean, '73, -- the Endangered Species Act, I think was
passed -- or NEPA. All the environmental regulation federally, was -- got
going in about '73. And by the time Brown was making this move, in the
late 70's, you had some pretty strong environmental groups up, and in
people's faces like they had never been before. And that was interesting.
That was fascinating to watch.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any environmental groups in Bakersfield in the '70's?
>> Mark Grossi: No. [Laughter] Well, there were people who were
environmentally minded. And there were people who, like, wanted to join
the Sierra Club, but didn't want anybody to know. [Laughter] And so ->> Thomas Holyoke: [Inaudible] Sierra club members.
>> Mark Grossi: And you know. Honestly, that's the biggest problem that I
saw in the San Joaquin Valley, is, there wasn't the other side. It was all
-- especially down there. I think that place might have been more
republican than Orange County.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any sense, at this time, amongst -- you know, a lot of
the farmers, and the water engineers in Bakersfield -- they understand the
way the water world was changing, with the emergence of environmentalism?
>> Mark Grossi: No. You know that's the funny part about it. I don't think
anybody on that side of the aisle really got it, until after that election
went down. And almost simultaneously -- within a year or two -- the big
wildlife disaster at Kesterson happened. And all the sudden, you were
hearing about laws, and you were hearing from lawyers, like the
Environmental Defense Fund. There were things that were not even in the
computations, in the beginning. And, you know, they had to go get their
lawyers. And their lawyers got lawyers. And everybody lawyered up. And it
was like -- they actually read the laws. And they read the case law, and
all of that. It was a fascinating time. You know. And it was right after
that, that -- the '80's to me, is when it all sort of came together.
Because that's -- like I say, the disaster at Kesterson -- I probably
should say what that is. It's the -- it's in -- it started basically on
the west side, in this part of the state. In Fresno County, where
Westlands Water District had been promised by the U. S. Bureau of
Reclamation, to get drainage for their drainage impaired lands. Lands

where the water couldn't seep down to the water table. And so it would
just build up, and salt up the land, and basically poison plants. So, they
built drains underneath -- tile drains, they call them French drains. It's
a very old technology, were using gravity flow, they could pull the water
out. It would leech down into these pipes. And they'd pump it out. And
they'd move it -- well, they were supposed to complete a drain all the way
to the Delta, and the Bay Area. But that got stopped, by money problems,
and by Contra Costa County and environmentalists. So they built the drain,
and stopped it at Kesterson Reservoir, in western Merced County. And they
started draining 42,000 acres of Westlands into it. And not long after the
Peripheral Canal was voted down, they found all these dead shorebirds.
Eyeless, some of them. Mutations, just grotesque. You could walk through
and you wouldn't hear crickets anymore. It was killing everything. And it
was the buildup of the trace element called selenium, in the water. It was
naturally occurring. It's a leftover from, you know, an ancient sea, just
like everything else over there. And it turned out, when you concentrated
it, it was toxic to wildlife. That really wasn't known until then. Well,
here's the Westlands farmers saying, we were promised this -- this
drainage -- by the federal government. This is the drainage. It's not our
fault. And the federal government saying, well, we didn't have the money
to go all the way to the Bay Area. So, we had to stop here. And nobody
knew that it was a problem. And you had 60 Minutes standing there, holding
the microphone, saying, “When did you stop killing little birds?” And it
just captured everybody. What an interesting story. And that kind of
hooked me back into it, too.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Were you still at the Bakersfield paper at that point?
>> Mark Grossi: No. I was back east at that point. I was working at The
Providence Journal bulletin, as a -- of all things -- a television critic.
I was trying to run away from my roots [laughter], and find myself.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, before we get to your running away, anything else
dramatic from working in Bakersfield in the '70's?
>> Mark Grossi: You know. Just the typical reporter things. You know,
triple-ax murder, things that you -- that nobody should see. And then
after you see them, you go -- I want to see the next one. And, you know,
total kid things.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You were covering the crime beat, as well as water, and
whatever?
>> Mark Grossi: Oh, yeah. Just whatever. It was a smallish newspaper, and
you know -- the Chowchilla bud—bus kidnapping -- it had just happened a
couple of years before. A year or so before. So, everyone was lit up about
that. Everyone was lit up about Woodward and Bernstein. That was that era,
the Watergate. It was a very good time to be a journalist, you know. And
Bakersfield was really, really good for me. I got to do a lot of different

things. Got to meet a lot of different people. And ->> Thomas Holyoke: And then you ran away from it.
>> Mark Grossi: And then I ran.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Any particular reason that you want to admit to?
>> Mark Grossi: No. I just said, this has got to be -- there's got to be
something else. And I was writing in the feature section at the time. And
I had become the features editor there. And I was having a rollicking good
time with it, but I could see the end was coming. There were different
people coming and going as editing. And I said, I need another experience.
And I started looking for some kind of a job where I could just write. And
Providence popped up, and ->> Thomas Holyoke: Providence, Rhode Island.
>> Mark Grossi: Providence, Rhode Island. [Laughter] It's a great place.
And you know, many times I wonder if I should have even left that place.
It was a lot of fun, although my job there was eliminated in staff
reduction, in the last ten years. So it would ->> Thomas Holyoke: So you were a critic. Were you -- what were you
critiquing?
>> Mark Grossi: Just television shows. And I was interviewing stars. I sat
down with Raymond Burr. Or, who was it, the one that freaked out my wife?
Oh, Patrick Swayze called the house one night. And he was doing the North
and the South, for ABC, or somebody. Some miniseries. And it was funny. He
was a nice guy. He was very cordial. And my wife just freaked out as she's
handing me the phone. "It's Patrick Swayze".
>> Thomas Holyoke: This was back when Patrick Swayze was the big idol of - all the women loved him.
>> Mark Grossi: He was. And James Earl Jones called the house one night
too. He apologized for not answering his phone. He said he was having a
bath.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Then new interesting idea.
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: That's going to be an interesting phone call, because
essentially, it's like Darth Vader at the other end of the phone
[laughter].

>> Mark Grossi: Could you call back later?
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laugh] So what brought you back, then, from the east
coast?
>> Mark Grossi. Well, I wanted -- I mean, simply, I just wanted my kids to
be closer to their grandparents, back in Bakersfield. And I landed in
Fresno. Then my parents moved to Hawaii two years later. Oh well.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is that when you then came back to Fresno State for
your master's degree?
>> Mark Grossi: I did. I did. You know, I -- you know, the master's degree
was a very big key for me. It was, in fact, one of the big landmarks of my
career, is coming to Fresno State, getting a master's degree, learning -for the first time -- really to break down what the scientific method was.
What quantitative reasoning was. Qualitative reasoning. It was all this
theory. You know, most master's programs for guys like us are -- you know,
you go out, you write a big story for some magazine. Well, I didn't need
that. I knew how to write, and I knew how to say things. I needed the
theoretical side of it. And once I got that -- and I owe that to Fresno
State -- it just became simple. And that's when science became very
interesting to me. And within two years -- I had a yearlong fellowship at
MIT, in science writing. And they bring in Nobel Prize winners every other
week, to talk to us. And I was kind of shy. I didn't really want to -because they overwhelmed me. But I understood what they were talking
about, and every now and then, I would jump up and say something to some
astrophysicist. Like, okay, you got that, so what does that mean to me?
You know. Because this and that. And because I understood enough science
to ask that question, because of Fresno State, it turned out to be a
really cool thing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Were you writing stories that were actually published
at that time? In your MIT fellowship?
>> Mark Grossi: No. No, no. It's a full, basic academic year of study
there. And you pick out classes you want to audit. And you -- it's two
stops down to Harvard. So they let you take classes there too. I got to
sit in one of E.O Wilson's last classes. And, I mean, people who know who
E. O. Wilson was -- is ->> Thomas Holyoke: I know, I know, it's Edward O. Wilson. Yes.
>> Mark Grossi: -- Are very impressed. But he was just this great guy.
Just really great. I mean, his very last lecture, his kids -- the kids in
the class -- huge class. Standing ovation after every lecture -- came in
wearing these little antennas, because this guy was into, like, ants. And
he laughed, and he talked with them. And he put a set on, and they started
talking. Pretty soon, he was -- right off the top of his head -- he was
giving a lecture that just had them -- it was supposed to be like ten

minutes of hello and goodbye. And he talked for 90 minutes, and standing
ovation. Guy was amazing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Wow. The experience that must have been.
>> Mark Grossi: Well, you know. It was good for me. As a writer, all that
stuff echoed years later, in The Fresno Bee.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The -- when you were getting your master's degree at
Fresno State, were you also, then, doing writing work? Were you working at
The Bee at that point?
>> Mark Grossi: Yes, I was working through The Bee all through that. The
MIT thing was a year's leave of absence. But the master's, I was doing on
the side. I was working. Actually, I was a bureau chief in Visalia,
covering all kinds of things when it got going. And then I finished up in
'94. And in '94 I was covering the environment. And I'd been doing that
for about a year, when I finally finished.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, 1994 then. You're doing the environmental writing
at The Bee. And you'd said earlier in the interview, that your interest in
water had brought you back into this stuff?
>> Mark Grossi: Well. I was kind of interested in it. When the Natural
Resources Defense Council filed the original San Joaquin River lawsuit in
1988 -- was like Christmas Eve. Just come in and dump this thing, and run.
Nobody really quite understood what it was, except for Lloyd Carter and a
few other people. And they wrote about, here it is. All they were doing
was trying to renew contracts with the Orange Cove Irrigation District and
the Friant water users. And that was the opening for the San Joaquin River
restoration. They -- there was -- they were not requiring an EIR for these
new contracts. And NRDC, and like 14 enviro and fishing groups said, no,
no, no, no. You can't do that. You have to do an EIR for something this
big. And a 40 year contract, or whatever it was at the time. And they
started trading motions and arguing. And I was on the -- I was an
assistant city editor at the time. I was the regional editor of The Bee.
And I was editing these stories, and following it, and watching it. And
knowing that they are -- because I spoke with Lloyd Carter, at the time,
who's ->> Thomas Holyoke: UPI reporter.
>> Mark Grossi: Fine. Well, he was UPI, and then he worked for The Bee for
a while. And at that point, I think he was still with us. He hadn't left
yet. And then he left. But, he said where this is going, is —- is -- it's
going to wind up being a challenge to that dam. To Friant Dam. And it did.
It finally evolved to asking a question of, did you violate state law by
doing this? And fascinating. Just fascinating. I was fascinated to learn
that Department of Fish and Game, at the time, in the '50's, when this got
going. The arguments were still going about Friant Dam -- had put together

a lawsuit, based on state law, and were going to file against the federal
government, for building this dam. And Jerry Brown's father stopped them.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Really. That is something I have never heard before.
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I got a copy of it at one point. And
read it, and just absolutely dropped my mouth opened. You're kidding me!
>> Thomas Holyoke: Was this under the same provision of state law? That->> Mark Grossi: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Mark Grossi: Yes. I -- the number escapes me. But it was basically, you
can't put this up without preserving the fish. And I guess Pat Brown took
a look at it and said, oh, no, we don't want to do this. [Laughter] And it
went away, as things did in those days. So there were plenty of people who
didn't want to see this.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When the lawsuits get filed -- I think it's 1988 -okay, and so, you're coming back in '94. So this has already been going on
for a number of years by the time you're covering things again. Although,
I think there's still many years worth of litigation, yet to go. So, how
do you land in the middle of this, and start coming up to speed, and
understanding what's happening? Besides talking to Lloyd Carter.
>> Mark Grossi: Well, I followed our coverage of it, which was pretty
good, I thought. And started getting interested. I actually started this
beat that we're talking about, in early '93. And in that -- at that point,
they were still arguing the Westlands stuff, in the drainage -- in fact
the drainage case has gone on almost as long as -- well probably longer,
at this point. I should have been a water lawyer. But, that's where I
began to sit in through the federal court sessions with Judge Oliver
Wanger. And the Westlands council, Tom Birmingham, was their litigator. He
was fabulous. And the discussions just opened my eyes. I mean, I spent
hours listening to this stuff. And understanding how the projects worked.
Listen -- or the Central Valley Project, the federal project. And
understanding the law behind it. And that is what kind of helped me bridge
over to the San Joaquin River. And it's interesting that people don't
usually associate both. I mean Friant is part of the Central Valley
Project. Westlands is part of the Central Valley Project. But they get
water in different places. Now, it's all basically the big thing. But, it
can be very confusing. And that's -- that helped -- that tees out all
those differences. Because, remember, I was covering state water politics,
State Water Project, down in Kern County. So I had to really learn the
nuance in this, back then. Which is cool.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, covering the drainage stuff, then, for Westlands.
Did you gain an appreciation for, you know, what they are, and the sort of

things they're going through? Let me change that question, actually. The
view that a lot of environmentalists seem to have of Westlands is that,
you know, it's this giant, wealthy behemoth of an organization that
represents, you know, the wealthiest of wealthy farmers who exploit the
farm workers. Who are exploiting federal water laws, to gain all this -you have taxpayers subsidized water for the—for their fields. And you
know, that's the reputation that Westlands seems to have with an awful lot
of people in California. What do you find that reality to be?
>> Mark Grossi: Well, it -- there's a lot of that -- what you just said,
that's true. I've got to say. It's not entirely fair to paint them just
like that. Because it's not really true all the way through. But, it's
like -- they have folks there who have an awful lot of money. They have an
awful lot of power. And they do things with an awful lot of, you know, in
your face. Although, as I've tried to explain to people a few times, it's
-- if you had a business -- and they have a business. And you were set up
in town. You're set up in Fresno. And you have a big beef going on with
the federal -- or with the city—city government, or whoever -- you go to
your city councilman. You go to the planning commission. You argue your
argument. If you didn't win, you'd take them into superior court. And -happens all the time. Well, they don't have a city councilman out there.
And they don't have a superior court out there. They have, you know,
congressmen. And they're not a business. They're a business. And so, you
know, I -- you can understand from certain viewpoints, why they would do
it this way. Although, I got to say, there's a lot of people who make very
good arguments about how far we've taken agriculture on the west side. And
should it have ever gotten as big as it is now. And it's actually in the
process of getting smaller now. So -- and I don't know how much smaller
it'll get, but -- it's probably going in the right direction to balance
water and land now. And that's probably what we need to do.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think the people at Westlands are open to
finding a better balance?
>> Mark Grossi: I think they're forced to. I think they've seen the
handwriting on the wall in the last ten years. And I think that's what
they've been moving toward.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So covering Westlands, and watching Westlands from -since '93 ‘til now, it's a considerable amount of time. If -- is your
impression that they've always -- again, it seems to me that they've spent
an awful lot of time on the defensive. You know, trying to, you know,
scrape together enough water after CVPIA of 1992 starting withholding
water from that part of the Central Valley Project. And that, you know,
trying to deal with all these environmental issues. Have they adapted well
to the new reality? Have they adapted well to the fact that they seem to
have to litigate everything they do?
>> Mark Grossi: From -- yeah, actually. They look like they're -- if it
were me I'd be sick and tired of it, but they seem to do very, very well,

in that sphere. They seem to have the right people in the right places.
But more than that, they've made adjustments technologically. They're a -most of that district is on drip irrigation now, and they don't get runoff
from Westlands. As far as I can tell, there is no water that's leaving
Westlands. They're very, very efficient. Probably as efficient as anything
you'd find anywhere. So they're a model of consistency that way. I know a
board member who has a place somewhere out near Lemoore. And he's got some
bad land. The water was rising. He's been on drip for many years now. And
he says, you know, water perches up in those shallow areas. But it doesn't
necessarily stay there for -- the clay layers that are holding it, are not
completely impermeable. So the water's actually beginning to recede now.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Really?
>> Mark Grossi: Because it's not being replenished with a lot of water. So
he's recording levels of water dropping now.
>> Thomas Holyoke: What's the feeling out there, now? The people -- the
growers out in Westlands feel they have a future?
>> Mark Grossi: They like to say so, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I know
people who are -- who say one thing and go out and, like, buy land in
other places. And so, you know, I don't -- I don't know. If it were me and
I had a family run operation, and -- a big one. You have to have them big.
Then, I don't know. I don't know what I would do. You want to hold on as
much as you can. Maybe go to almonds.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Almonds and pistachios do seem to be the crop of choice
out there right now.
>> Mark Grossi: Although I think almonds may be peach—peaking right now. I
think—I think you're going to see some very big players begin to drop out
of that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why do you say that?
>> Mark Grossi: I just think it's -- the market's saturated. I think it's
gone as far as it's going to go. I think you're going to see people -- I
shouldn't say this. They're drilling and taking more groundwater while
they can, before the groundwater law kicks in completely. And growing
pistachios, which still has a nice arc going. And after they've bought a
bunch of land and expanded, and drilled, and done all that they can do.
And the law is changing the way they can operate. I think you're going to
see a bunch of solar farms out there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, they certainly have enough sunshine out there.
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. Yeah. It's a big industry, energy is. I would do it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Going back to the east side, back to the San Joaquin

litigation. Do you have a sense to what point of, you know, the Friant
contractors started to maybe realize that they weren't going to win this
one? And that negotiating a settlement was better than -- for the
litigation?
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. When I got back from MIT in '97, I had long talks
with people. And the ones who would admit the truth to me, said the
handwriting was on the wall in the '90's. And they knew that there -- and
some people -- but in public they'd say “oh no. Hell no! We won't go.
We're going to block it.” You know, fight it tooth and nail. But you could
just see -- and that was what the San Joaquin River Project was about. I
wrote a 14-page section, basically saying, this thing's about to be
settled guys. And here's what the river looks like. Here's what the issues
are. And it -- I was a little early. It came out in '99, and the
settlement wasn't signed until 2006. But, every major story that came
after that was modeled on what I had written.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why were you so certain at the time that the settlement
was going to come? You said some people were telling you, at least
privately, that it was going to have to happen. Maybe the better question
is; why did it take so long? If people are telling you, in '97, that they
can see the endgame playing out. Why did the endgame take so long?
>> Mark Grossi: Well, you know, it was really hard for them to admit. And
I— they wanted to hold onto that. These are water rights. People who felt
like there were -- felt like this was exactly the way it should be, and
were willing in the face of law, basically. A losing hand, they were
willing to keep fighting.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Just pure stubbornness.
>> Mark Grossi: Well, and you know. I mean, it took a few years. They -there was a lot of animosity between AG and the envirocommunity in those
days. Still is quite a bit. But really bad then. And just getting them
together to talk was really hard.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Kind of curious. Once the -- a lot of the work seems to
have shifted out of the courtrooms and over into Washington, D.C. Did you
still -- were you still primarily covering that, or it shift to a
different Bee reporter?
>> Mark Grossi: In Washington, Mike Doyle, is McClatchy's go to guy for
this stuff. And he's absolutely genius. He covers this so well. So yeah,
anything with litigation back there, or with -- or legislation -- any
politicking, any lobbying, anything in the background. Mike knows and Mike
writes it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did you coordinate a lot? Did you talk to each other a
lot about --

>> Mark Grossi: All the time. All the time. He was -- it was a great
pleasure to work with Mike Doyle. He's one of the best reporters you'll
ever see back there. There aren't a lot of us left. [Laughter] I'm glad
he's still there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what was the feeling in Friant, when the settlement
was finally being negotiated? – I mean there’s some public stuff about,
you know—some people abandoning the, I mean, you know, defying authority
over this, and ->> Mark Grossi: Yeah. It was sad. Because the old animosities haven't gone
away. And there were people -- they were doing this -- you know, in '05
and '06, when they were negotiating this stuff. It was negotiated
basically, with four people.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Who were they?
>> Mark Grossi: There were two guys on the enviro side. Hal Candee, the
lawyer. And this other guy. [Laughter] And there was the lawyer for the
water guys -- I think it was Dooley. Dan Dooley. And there was also a
longtime contact of mine, Kole Upton. A farmer in -- up in Chowchilla
area.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Who very famously, broke from Friant over this.
>> Mark Grossi: Yes. Well, and he broke away from the agreement too. I
mean, he signed it, he negotiated it, he sold it. And then, I mean, within
a year and a half he was saying, these guys are -- these guys are breaking
their part of the deal. This is a blood oath.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what do you think was behind that? Did -- you think
Kole genuinely thought that NRDC was, you know, reneging on the deal? Was
there something else there?
>> Mark Grossi: No. He genuinely thought they had a deal. They talked
about it and he said, okay, fine. We'll give up this water, okay? We can
see that there's no other way around this. But you got to help us get
water back. You can't stand in our way. And they said, sure. Everything's
good. And within a year, year and a half, he was noticing that up at the
delta; they were fighting all kinds of water things, to do with the west
side. Well, the bigger picture is, the enviro guys couldn't let those
things go. And the farmers down here couldn't let that go either, because
water supply to the west side effects water supply on the east side. And
it's all one -- that's when everyone, the public, finally started putting
it all back together. That and this drought that we've just gone through.
When you realize there are exchange contractors, high priority guys on the
west side who had that river many decades ago. And if they don't get their
water from Northern California, they get their water from Millerton. And
it comes out of the hides of the east side farmers. And that's what turned
Cole around. So he was right. The enviros were right. And that, you know?

See what I'm saying? I mean, there's -- you cannot play this to one side
or the other. And say, well, you know, they have the right idea, or no,
they have the right idea. Everybody has got a right idea. You just have to
be able to explain what their ideas are.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did you ever have a chance to interview any of the NRDC
people?
>> Mark Grossi: Oh yeah. Yeah. I sat down with Hal Candee a few times.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And what's their motivation? I mean, do they have
awareness’s to the damage a settlement like this can do to agriculture on
the eastern Valley?
>> Mark Grossi: They think that's overstated. And -- at least that's the
way it came across. And they said that we're not -- we're not factoring in
law, and nature, in this. I mean -- and to a certain extent I can see what
they're saying. No, actually, not to a certain extent. I can see what
they're saying. I talked to a Fortune 500 company, thinking about locating
in California, and looking at Fresno. And saying, well, they don't have a
river. The air's kind of dirty. There's all of this stuff going on here
that I -- do I want to move my company in here? And that plays into
exactly what NRDC was talking about. It's a quality of life issue. A
quality of life issue that was addressed by the legislature and the state.
We made a choice, as a society, way back. And then we set that choice
aside. And you can see some of the -- so there is an argument. There's an
argument on that side, as well as the economics side, down here.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So NRDC has a point. The Friant contractors have a
point. Unfortunately, their points seem a little mutually exclusive.
>> Mark Grossi: And yet they signed this agreement.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And then they signed this agreement. Now everyone's
saying that they're reneging on it.
>> Mark Grossi: Everybody's like -- and no matter what you write. You
know, that's one of the hotspots they put any reporter in. Is when you
took a look at the successes that the restoration has. It started in 2009.
And it reconnected the river briefly, to the ocean, with great fanfare,
and a big, big success. And it was a success. It was good. But at the same
time, it was taking out farmland around it, for the west side guys. There
were all kinds of issues about how they were going to get the river ready
for salmon. You know. This is going to be like this the whole time we do
this. It's going to be one of these.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The time the settlement was being negotiated, do you
think anyone had realized how big this restoration project is? How hard it
was going to be?

>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. I think the scientists understood
think the engineers understood a lot of it. But they -to NRDC and the enviros to get deadlines set. This will
amount of time. And this will be done in this amount of
couldn't be frittered away.

a lot of it. And I
it was important
be done in this
time. So that it

>> Thomas Holyoke: Were they realistic deadlines?
>> Mark Grossi: I don't think -- I think they were ambitious. That's the
term they use. I don't know about realism. Everything that was supposed to
be done by 2014 has not -- I mean, most of it hasn't even been started.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is it just because of the drought, or is the drought
really immaterial? Just other reasons it hasn't gone well?
>> Mark Grossi: I don't think the drought's even involved in this. This is
-- we're talking about money, mostly. And we're talking about landowners.
And we're talking about making it right. And so the federal government is
trying to make it right with people downstream, who are getting flooded
out. They're trying to make it right for the river. I mean, they're
starting a river up after six decades. You can't just flip a switch. You
have to understand what you're doing.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, is re-watering the river like this ever
really been done?
>> Mark Grossi: I -— no, I don't -- I've heard of it being done in
Australia. But I don't think anybody has restored salmon on a river like
this, where the salmon was gone for like, more than half a century.
There's nothing like that. That's unprecedented at, you know, over 60
miles or so, is what it was from the dam all the way out to the Merced
River confluence.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you feel that scientists, that the federal
government -- I guess it was the Bureau of Reclamation and Fishing and
Wildlife -- gets the responsibility for this? Do they—Do you feel that
they know what they're doing, or they're sort of feeling their way
through?
>> Mark Grossi: Well, I mean, I think they're learning what they have to
learn. And they know what they need to know to get it going. But I think
it's a real tough road. And I think that every way -- every direction they
turn, they bump into something that goes poof. And they have to start over
again.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Are most stakeholders still committed to making this
work?
>> Mark Grossi: [Laughter] I think by legal agreement they are. I think

that -- and the place that everybody's going to. The place that I'm going
to. The place that I'm sure you'll wind up, in talking with me, is how can
you restore a cold-water fish this far south, with the climate warming?
And that is a real good question. There are those -- Cole Upton being one
of them -- who says, why don't we just run the water through. And let's
let the warm water fish reestablish, and what happens, happens.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Take it NRDC is probably not so sympathetic to that
point of view.
>> Mark Grossi: No. They're not going that way. The fisheries biologist,
Peter Moyle, from UC Davis -- who is the, you know -- authority on these
inland species and the Delta -- says that he doesn't think it's going to
be -- he thinks that climate change is going to affect it. But he doesn't
think it's going to stop it down here. He thinks this is one place that
it'll be okay. Because the Sierra, on this end of the state, is actually
so much higher than it is to the north. It's kind of counterintuitive. But
the range gets bigger, the further south you come.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So that means that there's more freezing cold snow
melting, and bringing down more cold water.
>> Mark Grossi: That's exactly it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. That's an interesting point there.
>> Mark Grossi: When I wrote it, people laughed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laughter] Actually that's true. But a side question
here. I mean, most of the stories you write on the river restoration. Do
you get a lot of flak?
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. [Laughter] That's a nice way to put it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And who is it coming from? All sides?
>> Mark Grossi: Everybody, yeah. It's pretty much –“I'm not going to talk
to you anymore.” So, pretty much you know you're hitting what you need to
hit when you're -- everybody says that you didn't do them justice. So. Or
they wanted the last word. Or whatever. That's all part of being a
journalist.
>> Thomas Holyoke: East side and west side. It's been my impression that
there's -- that east side farmers, west side farmers, have not always seen
eye to eye on things. Is that true, do you think?
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. There's an east/west split. Although
some farmers are both east and west. You know. It's not unusual for

somebody to own ground over here, and ground over there. But yeah, yeah.
That's a historical, like, butting heads.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Have there been attempts -- at least recently -attempts to sort of, you know, create kind of a common coalition amongst
east/west farmers?
>> Mark Grossi: Oh yeah. All through time. There are times when their
interests line up. And they're -- they -- they'll get together, and then
they'll pull apart. And then they'll ->> Thomas Holyoke: Is this one of those times right now, when they're
supposed to be coming together? I guess, as I ask this, I see things,
like, the Farm Water Coalition. That maybe that's -- I think that's the
right one. Or the Latino Water Coalition, that seems to have made a real
effort. But I think it seems, you know -- people like Mario Santoyo came
out of the east side, but they seem to be dealing with a lot of west side
issues. Like their great march up to the San Luis Reservoir, a few years
back. Seems to have been a relatively high profile, you know, merging, of
east and west issues.
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. And this is one of those times. At the same time,
it's not one of those times. It's funny the way it's worked out. They pull
together, and that—that Latino Water Coalition -- and they pull together
in other efforts. And they all want to fight together. But, it's like,
sooner or later, it's like a bag of cats. You know. You wind up with some
people getting upset, and some people not saying the right things. And you
wind up in court. And that's what it -- you know, this whole business of—
of Friant, and the exchange contractors fighting over some small amount of
water in the last year. The Friant guy's saying, “We thought we had an
agreement”. And the exchange contractors saying, we never said that. And
pretty soon, they're like this. And I'm writing, you know, they're getting
a headline over it. And, you know, after it all blows over, they all get
back together again. They talk about it. But when -- but that's how
California water issues are settled, is in court. I mean, they're people
on the west side who sue each other. Neighbors. Like each other. And
they're in court.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So how much of your time do you spend in court?
>> Mark Grossi: [Laughter] These days, not—not that much.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I assume in years past, you probably spent a great deal
of time in Judge Wanger's courtroom.
>> Mark Grossi: I did. For a while. For a while. One of the things that
happens when you cover a beat as big as mine. In '93 when I took it over,
Russ Clemmings was still there. Russ covered science and water, and that
sort of thing. But he was segueing into covering computer stuff. And he
became a wizard with the, you know, data driven projects. One of the

smartest men I know. And he –- he, I took over a lot of stuff he was
doing. Gene Rose, a Fresno Bee reporter, had left the year before. He was
covering the Sierra and the mountains in Yosemite, and those issues. So I
took over what he was covering. And then there was this other reporter,
who was doing local water politics. So I picked up what she was doing. And
there were blends of other things that were -- like forest fires, and
things like that. And my beat was like this. It was all over the place.
And part of what was thrown in on top, was air quality. And, you know, you
wouldn't think air quality would fit with farming, but actually they do
cross. The farming, as a polluter, but not only that, but suffering lower
yields, from bad air quality.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Which do you think is the bigger problem in the Central
Valley? Air, or the water?
>> Mark Grossi: Well, I mean, you can -- water, you can sort of deal with.
You can fallow a field, or you can put another stack of carbon on your
well, and filter out more DBCP, or whatever contaminate you have. Air, you
get like a one minute supply. And it's – it’s to me -- the revelation for
us in the late '90's and early 2000’s was going into the data. And looking
at it, and realizing, Oh my God. We're the worst place in the country. And
nobody has said this. Everybody at The Times -- you can go back and look
in The LA Times archive. They were talking about LA and Houston being the
worst. Houston's not even close. Houston is like a day at the beach
compared to this place. And—and no one had a clue. No one was talking
about it. Nobody wanted to talk about it. When we broke last gasp in 2002,
it was the first inkling that anybody had that there was a major, major -I'd been writing stories walking up to it. And people were just kind of -but when we came out with 24 pages, complete with Russ Clemmings, you
know, computer breakout, on who has what problems. You know, there was no
denying it. We're still right there with LA.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think anything is essentially being done, that's
productive, about this?
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. Definitely. I don't think people know the measure -the full measure -- of what's going on here. And I think it's your kids. I
think it's your parents. Your grandparents. I think it's your aunt and
uncle. I think people in small communities. I think people don't really
get how bad this is, on a Friday night, when your kids are out playing
football. When there's a big September fire -- a Rough Fire -- like the
one -- the Rough Fire burned 200 square miles. And put in an ash cloud
that filled the clinics with all kinds of lung problems. You know, people
die from this stuff. They seriously -- it might not happen immediately.
But, between 800 and 1000 people die prematurely from air pollution in
this Valley, every year.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It amazes me that the schools will have all -- they'll
send their kids out to play at recess, and have all these outdoor sporting
events. When we know that the air quality is so bad. I just -- I can't

wrap my head around that.
>> Mark Grossi: It's Friday Night Lights, you know. It's like the TV show.
It's like, really? You're doing this with your kids? I don't think people
really, fully understood. And I have written like an evangelist for 15
years about it now. And it just -- about 2008 it just started turning the
corner, where people started talking about it a lot.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Back to water, for a few more minutes here. Think
Temperance Flat Dam will happen?
>> Mark Grossi: Boy, that's a good question. I don't know. It looks like
this is the best shot that they're ever going to have to build it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Think Temperance Flat Dam would love to happen, you
know. It's been a long time that we are out of a dam building era. That's
an outdated technology. It's highly inefficient. But boy, building another
dam in the Sam Joaquin, there's an awful lot of boosters around here.
>> Mark Grossi: Well, I would have said outdated technology. I would have
bought all that five years ago, six years ago. Ten years ago. I would have
bought that environmental argument -- which is a good one. When you look
at what China did, and built that huge dam ->> Thomas Holyoke: Three Gorges.
>> Mark Grossi: -- In the southern part of the state. And it just, it
makes no sense. Everywhere you build -- whether it's in Egypt, or China or
here -- everywhere you build a big dam, you have a problem. It just -- you
know, they're better examples around the globe to do this. But with
climate change, and the way this is set up, we're going to get more
precip’ in the form of rain. And you need to capture rain in a spot, to do
efficient groundwater recharge. To create water banks. That's all there is
to it.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Now that's -- that’s an argument I've not heard said
very much, that, you know -- building a dam is a realistic reaction to
climate change.
>> Mark Grossi: And it should be made. I mean, I maintain that if you sit
down and think about this -- yes, we should have, for instance, some sort
of an intermediate solution over the next 50 years. Like enlarging
reservoirs, so that we can get into the underground business. That's all - it's the only way it should be pitched. It's not going to solve our
problems, or anything else. This is something that's just going to get us
through right now.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How does building a dam lead to groundwater recharge?
>> Mark Grossi: Well, groundwater recharge must be done slowly. And if you

have a whole bunch of water come through -- which is what we do in
California -- it comes through, and it goes out real quick. That's what
California, you know -- God made California to drain real fast. And so,
you need to slow it down. I mean, that's all there is to it. And you look
at the storage. You could make -- I've heard engineers make the case. You
look at the Colorado River. The annual runoff of Colorado River is X. The
annual -- the amount of storage, dams with reservoirs, huge dams, huge
reservoirs -- is like 4x, 5x. They can store like, four, five years of
runoff. Annual runoff in these things. And they've had longer droughts
than we have. And it hasn't had quite the devastating effect that it has
here. Meanwhile, in California, we have X amount of storage. And we have
like 4x amount of outgo. So, this -- it's not quite equal. And it should
be the way -- I mean, I buy the argument that we shouldn't have a whole
bunch of storage, beyond what we have here. Maybe just a little more, to
take advantage of the change and all the precip’ that's going to come.
But, the truth is, I don't think we conserve well enough here. I don't
think we do enough to make the system as strong as it could be. This is
why I have -- I don't have a huge amount of trouble with say, desalination
-- but on the size that they're doing it down in Carlsbad. Spend as much
money as they're -- I don't know how many billions we're talking about,
but it's a lot of money. And for what? I mean, you're going to have to
shut the thing off when the rain falls, because it's too expensive to run.
Wouldn't it be better to fill your swimming pool with water that you've
been able to conserve, rather than to spend $2000 an acre-foot, or
whatever it is, and take it out of the ocean?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, are environmentalists going to be able to swallow
the idea that there's actually a benefit to building a big, new dam on the
San Joaquin?
>> Mark Grossi: I doubt it. Although you do have a better argument for
that here, because of the salmon restoration. I mean, the salmon do -that's part of the argument for the One B money, is that -- or the
Proposition One money, is that you can argue that with this water, we can
create a better flow for salmon. And we can have a more viable population
here.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Have you found the environmentalists to be, maybe -what's the word -- flexible in their thinking? Maybe they can see their
way to at least not opposing the creation of a new dam? Because it seems
like from a farmer's point of view, that would be the ultimate sacrifice
of their ideals. Is, you know, supporting -- or at least not vigorously
opposing -- a big new dam.
>> Mark Grossi: Oh, I think -- I don't think they're going to have a
problem opposing it. [Laughter] I don't. And you know, people ask me the
question about -- we haven't really gotten to the delta -- but they're
asking me about solving the delta problem. Well, no. You're not going to
solve the delta problem. I'm sorry. I've watched it now -- I've lost track
of the years -- 35 years, or so. And there is no reason for those people

in Northern California to trust those people in Southern California. Zero.
Absolutely no reason. There – there— and there's no reason for the
Southern California people to stop trying to fix this, because they need
water. And the same with the San Joaquin Valley.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Have you covered a lot of the Delta?
>> Mark Grossi: I did at one point. I was covering -- I was there in 1994
when they had the first Bay-Delta Accord. And Pete Wilson was there. And
Bruce Babbitt, and ->> Thomas Holyoke: Well, it's been a little time on that, so ->> Mark Grossi: Kumbaya!
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laughter] And then what? The Bay-Delta Accord, you had
CALFED. As I recall, was an attempt to bring everybody together, to work
out mutual problems. It fails. What happened?
>> Mark Grossi: There was the back room stuff in the Monterey Agreement on
the State Water Project. In the middle of all of that. No, it's—it’s like,
I could tell the -- I'm standing there in Sacramento, and they're signing
it. And someone's -- enviro in one ear, going “they've got to be kidding
me. There's no way they're going to”. And then an engineer from the water
district in the other ear, going, “you've got to be kidding me.” And—
yeah, it turned out to be -- it didn't pass the giggle test, in my
opinion. And it never did. And there is no reason for these two groups to
agree, is all I'm saying.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, CALFED and that sort of thing. That was most -that was concoction of politicians?
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Sort of, you know, hoping that being some kind of Hail
Mary pass that somehow this was all going to work.
>> Mark Grossi: There were sincere people working on it. There are sincere
people in the government structure who are very dedicated to this sort of
thing. I'm not denigrating them at all. But, you know, the only thing -the only thing that will bring them around -- and time and again this has
been proven to me -- is some kind of a disaster. The four-year drought is
the only reason we now have a groundwater law in this state. Although we
should have been talking about it since the 1940's.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what kind of disaster fixes the Delta?
>> Mark Grossi: [Laughter] Some people think it's an earthquake. But I -but there are others, that's been debunked. There will be no problem. So

maybe there wouldn't be a problem. I haven't looked closely enough at
that. That would be a fine book, if you ask me.
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laughter] Okay, so. CALFED turns out to be a failure.
The various sides cannot get along with each other. Have no interest in
getting along with -- is it fair to say they have no interest in getting
along with each other?
>> Mark Grossi: I think that's fair. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying,
the reason you don't find agreement is, there's no reason. Like the
enviros and the water guys on the east side, there was a reason they had
to hash this out. The enviros were not interested in totally trashing the
east side, which they had a judge who would do that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Judge Karlton.
>> Mark Grossi: Judge Karlton. And so, but that does not exist here. Like
Mono Lake, in LA. There was a compelling reason. They had law; they had
people who were blowing things up. They had -- you know, there was damage.
There was real live damage that you could prove. Not so with Hetch Hetchy
in San Francisco, right? I mean, in my opinion, that's an abomination to
have that thing sitting up in Yosemite National Park. I'm sorry. I'm not
supposed to have an opinion. I've been up there. I've seen it. I've
covered it for years. The enviros, the greenies, up in San Francisco, who
say no, this is okay. They're wrong.
>> Thomas Holyoke: There always seemed to be a little bit of hypocrisy on
that. Or, that dam is okay. We'll support that dam. And what that dam did.
>> Mark Grossi: Well, we can't tear out any reservoir right now. We need
the reservoir. Okay. Okay. Whatever!
>> Thomas Holyoke: So essentially, the environmentalists and the farmers,
by and large, seem to be happiest in the courtroom.
>> Mark Grossi: [Laughter] Well, that's where all this stuff always ends
up.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So in -- oh, gosh. What was it -- 2007, maybe? Governor
Schwarzenegger comes out with this Blue Ribbon Task Force report on the
delta. And it seem -- and right there, in front, it's like, we're going to
do this. It's going to a madge [phonetic], and we're going to this. We're
going to have these co-equal goals. Water reliability. Environmental
restoration. How do you react to that?
>> Mark Grossi: Well, it was 1994 all over again. It's -- it’s, you know,
the big Kumbaya. And when the gloves drop off, everybody starts swinging
for whatever cause that they're -- you're just -- I don't know. There -I've read books that say, you know, a whole generation has to die before
you're going to get some kind of a change. But, you know, we've already

had generations. We're talking about coming from the '40's and '50's, and
we're having some of the same arguments that we had way, way back.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So Californians never learn?
>> Mark Grossi: I don't know. I don't know if—if anybody ever really
learns these sorts of things, when there's a lot of money involved. And
there's, you know, affairs of the heart, you know -- with nature, and that
sort of thing. It's like I said, with the groundwater. The groundwater's
just an incredible issue. And it's -- it's really the basis for all of
these arguments. All of them. Because groundwater is the basis for
agriculture here. That's the only reason you're bringing surface water in,
is to preserve that groundwater. So that when you've got four years dry
like this, you can pump the heck out of it, like they did.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So groundwater, then. Groundwater. The groundwater law
we finally got last year, creating all these management responsibilities.
Is that a revolution, or is this just, you know, a baby step?
>> Mark Grossi: It's a baby step. Yeah. In fact, something needs to be
done between now and 2020. They've got, I think, like five years, to put
together these groups that are going to put together the plan, that
they're going to put together to talk about. I mean, they're going to be
winding up, and winding up and -- but it'll be 2030 before you really see
anything going on.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is anyone actually doing anything, and putting a plan
together?
>> Mark Grossi: Oh, yeah. There are plenty of people here. The Kings River
Conservation District was the best one that I saw. With Dave Orth, who has
left them, and who's now, basically a consultant on this stuff. But -- and
that's the best way to get these groups together, and bring everybody
together. And try to understand what's going on. I mean, half of the
problem with having no groundwater law, is not knowing what's being
pumped. Nobody knows how much is coming out. And the state estimates how
much water is down there. But nobody knows how much water is down there.
Nobody knows how many wells we have. These are basic things. Just basic
regulation things that you've got to have, before you can start
regulating. You need to know what it is you're regulating. And we don't
even know that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is it even possible for us to take decisive action on
this problem before that water is gone?
>> Mark Grossi: Yes. Yes. I -- like I said, I think something interim
should be done, you know. I -- there was a very large farming outfit -who shall remain nameless in this. But, came in and drilled a 2500 foot
well, very close to the city of Tulare, the Matheny tract. Largely
Latinos. And dried up a bunch of wells. Well, the only reason they did

that is because they can. There is no sustainable plan for this. You can
come in and pull the water out from under your neighbor, and tough luck.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah. That's Mike makes right, in the water world.
>> Mark Grossi: Oh that sucks. And the -- you know, Arizona has done this.
Has legi—regulated this. It's not perfect, but I know farmers -- another
farmer who moved from Arizona in the '70's and early '80's, to California,
because Arizona was passing this law on the groundwater. He wanted to go a
place where there wasn't a groundwater -- I would too.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Are political leaders cognizant of this? I mean, the
governor seems to have an obsession with these tunnels under the delta -if that will ever work out. Is anyone talking about the groundwater
problems?
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. They are. Yeah. I mean, much more so now. But if it
rains like crazy this winter, I mean, the question is, will we keep
talking about it? When you got a full reservoir up there, and ->> Thomas Holyoke: Is that a cycle you've seen many times? You know,
problems become acute, then the rain comes, and it all disappears.
>> Mark Grossi: And then there's no more problem. [Laughter] It's kind of
like -- you know, you build a big dam, and pretty soon there's developers
building up close to that beautiful riverside. And then all of a sudden
you have a rain like we had in late '96, early '97. And the huge, huge
runoff. And people are flooded out. Houses are destroyed. Lives are
ruined. The -- and we've forgotten all about how bad it can get -- really
get. And I think the average -- at Friant Dam, the runoff -- the biggest
runoff they were ever expecting, was like 30, 35,000 CFS. Maybe 40,000.
And that night it was over 90,000. Over the dam. Out of control. The only
thing that saved him -- and ran all the way out to the west side -- the
only thing that saved Firebaugh was the big mining pits.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Wow!
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. They swallowed a bunch of that flow. It -- and I'm
telling you, it was -- people wonder why are these big bluffs here?
[Laughter] Above the San Joaquin river? And, you know, there's a reason
for that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Laughter] Do you think the governor's going to get his
tunnels?
>> Mark Grossi: I don't know. I -- you know, I've sort of given up on
trying to understand how they're going to maneuver those things in,
politically. It's like a -- if anybody can do it, it's Jerry Brown. You
know?

>> Thomas Holyoke: You think he actually understands this stuff well?
>> Mark Grossi: I don't know about that. I think he is, actually. I think
he understands it a lot better than he lets on. And I think he's very
smart. But I sort of subscribe to the way he thinks. And he goes, I'm in
my 70's. I really don't care. I'm going to not be here that much longer,
physically. I mean, I'm going to be, like, dead. And so, I'm going to push
the things that I know are right. And I don't care about the political
consequences, and that makes him very, very persuasive.
>> Thomas Holyoke: That's a kind of interesting difference from many of
our other, like, you know, local congressman, and stuff, [laughter] who do
seem to care a great deal about, you know, taking sides, and being seen on
sides and stuff. So ->> Mark Grossi: Well. And you know there's -- I know there's a whole line
of political things going on. But I mean, the biggest thing for me the
last four or five years, my big pet has been the environmental risk for
the small communities. And water is one of the big ones involved. And
these ground water management areas are the only thing that's really going
to save these little towns.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yes. Even before we got to this issue of wells going
dry, we had the issue of wells producing water that was undrinkable.
>> Mark Grossi: Laced
kind of -- that rolls
DBCP. I mean, you add
toxicity, and causing
don't yet have an MCL

with nitrates. And there's the 1,2,3-TCP. Which is
off the tongue. But it's actually far worse than
another zero on the .000 whatever it is to find
cancer. And it is worse. And it is not yet -- they
for it.

>> Thomas Holyoke: An MCL. I'm not ->> Mark Grossi: Oh, I'm sorry. A maximum contaminant level. To where it's
unsafe, you know. They just sort of -- they detect it right now. And it's
-- it is throughout the San Joaquin Valley. It's part of an old fumigant
that they used. And when I looked back through the lawsuits on this, I
found in true discovery that it was a junk -- a piece of junk chemical.
Some sort of a polymer of some kind, that Dow and Shell were trying to get
rid of, so they wouldn't have to process it. So they dumped it into this
fumigant. And it is vile. It causes cancer. It is -- and it is like, shot
through the Valley. You'll see lawsuits going through, and like,
Livingston is the first town that settled it. And got, I think, 8 million
dollars to add more stacks of charcoal onto their wells. And it'll be done
here in Fresno. It'll be done in Clovis. Down in Bakersfield. Wasco. All
around. It's all over the place, and the stuff lives as long as, you know,
a dinosaur. It goes and goes and goes. I'm just amazed that people do not
realize how bad the water is here. And when there's -- they show you this
long list of stuff they can detect in your water, and they're dealing
with. And the City of Fresno is very good at it. And I recommend everybody

to read the report on the well that they drink from. But, like, if you
think you're safe drinking this stuff, you're ->> Thomas Holyoke: I think a lot of us would prefer not to know
[laughter].
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah. It's better not to think about. And then, you know,
that's the irony of it all. The well water is supposed to be the better
choice, over surface water. Right? Surface water's got, you know ->> Thomas Holyoke: Like I said.
>> Mark Grossi: -- Bears pee in that, or whatever. But groundwater, you
pump it up. It's supposed to be naturally cleansed. Not here. It's filled
with nitrates and ->> Thomas Holyoke: And is this a problem that's being properly addressed?
I mean, you know, Fresno has probably a pretty good filtration system.
What about all these little towns up and down the valley?
>> Mark Grossi: No. No. That's part of the environmental risk. It's -- and
the whole state government reaction to it has just been ridiculous. It's
[laughter] -- I mean, right now, the way they're looking at it is, let's
go in. And we'll drill a well in the middle of town, and everybody can
bring their bottle in. And it's like, okay, that's fine if you're in
Central Africa. But this is a state with what? A 2 trillion dollar gross
state product, or whatever. And you're going to have people walking in
with their bottle, and hoping that well doesn't get fouled. We need a
better approach than that.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, I've heard it said that we are often compared to
developing countries. At least the Valley is, when it comes to this stuff.
>> Mark Grossi: I've been there. Trust me. In cities -- in little towns
all over the place. It's -- and I've been to -- I've seen Third World, but
this is -- and this is not that. But it's not good.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And as far as you can tell, nothing is seriously being
done about the problem?
>> Mark Grossi: A lot of serious talk. And a lot of bottled water. But,
like the treatment -- water treatment plant for seven small towns in
northern Tulare County. Magnificent idea. Was on the drawing boards for
two, three years. And it's been approved four years ago. It's -- they have
water set up for it in a water bank. It's all ready to go. It's still
waiting. Somebody needs to check a box, or -- I mean, I don't understand
it. Every time I get in front of somebody I ask, what the hell is going
on? What is wrong with you people? You know, you -- somebody have to draw
you a picture? And they just -- yeah, I mean, they swear up and down. And
six months later, nothing's happened.

>> Thomas Holyoke: How knowledgeable do you think Californian's are about
their water problems?
>> Mark Grossi: I think that they turn the water on, and it turns on.
>> Thomas Holyoke: There it is.
>> Mark Grossi: We're good [laughter].
>> Thomas Holyoke: So what's been one of the most interesting water
stories you've covered in your career?
>> Mark Grossi: Oh, God.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Or, just broaden the question. What's been the most
interesting thing, event, subject, you've covered in your career?
>> Mark Grossi: Oh, God. The one I had the most fun with, and the one that
I liked the most. Wasn't necessarily the most serious story. It was hiking
the Muir Trail in 2006.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Oh, you did a series of stories on that in the paper. I
remember that was ->> Mark Grossi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How much of it did you do?
>> Mark Grossi: We did about a 75 mile length of it, from Florence Lake.
Down through -- to Kings Canyon National Park, and Road's End down there.
It was gorgeous. Three 12,000 foot passes. And had this one feature called
The Golden Staircase. Anytime you name something like that in the Valley,
or in the mountains, it's -- goes straight up. [Laughter] And it was fab!
Sleeping up near the glaciers. And it was -- it's truly, truly compelling.
And it changes your whole mindset of what this place is. And it should be
required for anybody who makes laws about water or air. Anybody who's in a
position of responsibility, to go up there, and see what's there. Because
that is what's keeping your water clear and clean. That's what's cleaning
your air. And you should see what we're doing, in return, to that. I mean,
there's so much overgrowth going on. And it's because of the oxide -- to
me, the fire suppression over many decades. But that's changed. Not soon
enough, but the deposition of oxides of nitrogen, from NOx -- from
pollution, on the western side of the range. It's like a shot of nitrogen.
It's -- makes things grow like crazy. This is a nitrogen deprived mountain
range, historically. And now it's filled with nitrogen.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Hmm. I've never heard that said.
>> Mark Grossi: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the researchers are like – you

talk— you set them down and talk to them, it flips them out.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, well. It's 2015. You've left The Bee. What are
you doing next?
>> Mark Grossi: I'm going to try to write whatever I can. Extended
projects, books, magazines. I don't know yet. It's only been like, a
couple of months, and I'm ->> Thomas Holyoke: Any particular topics? Water, air, global warming? All
of them?
>> Mark Grossi: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
communities. The mountain ranges.
passionate about, probably is the
you know, write some tawdry novel
tell her friends about.

The environmental risk to small
Things you can hear in my voice that I'm
direction I'll go. Either that, or I'll,
that my wife can read [laughter] and

>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, have we missed anything important?
>> Mark Grossi: No. I think we're good.
>> Thomas Holyoke: All right. Thank you very much.
>> Mark Grossi: My pleasure.

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