Water Archives · Sarge Green interview

Title

eng Sarge Green interview

Description

eng Former general manager of Tranquility Irrigation District. Talks about the district's history with water management and the challenges west side farmers face today.

Creator

eng Green, Sarge

eng Holyoke, Thomas

Relation

eng Water Archive Oral Histories

Coverage

eng California State University, Fresno

Date

eng 11/2/2015

Format

eng Microsoft Word document, 24 pages

Identifier

eng SCMS_waoh_00047

extracted text

>> Thomas Holyoke: Today, we are interviewing Sergeant Green, currently at
the California Water Institute at Fresno State, but with a long history of
water in the valley. Let's just start with who you are and where you're
from.
>> Sarge Green: Okay. I've lived in Fresno for-- since 1975. So I've been
here in the area for a long time. I moved down here to obtain a promotion.
I started my career after college with the Central Valley Regional Water
Quality Control Board. And, of course since I was in AGI, agricultural
degree, I thought that this was the place to be. I mean Fresno is the
agri-business capital of the world. So moved down here and started working
for the state office here of the Water Quality Control Board.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Let's step a little further back. What got you
interested in water in the first place?
>> Sarge Green: Water in the first place. Well, I spent four years in the
Air Force and the training that I received while I was serving was, as a
weather observer. And that training also then led me to-- while I was in
the Air Force, the opportunity to take some additional coursework, I
happened to be stationed at Fort Ord for two and a half years. The Army
doesn't have weather people. They contract through the Air Force. And so I
was stationed there at a little airfield on the backside, which is now
Marina Airport, and it was Fritzsche Army Airfield. And so while I was
stationed there for two and a half years, I started taking some additional
coursework at Monterey Peninsula College, including geology and a couple
of other classes. So when I got out of the Air Force, I went back to
Monterey Peninsula College and I started looking around at course
curricula at the—at the other university, which is a-- it took me about a
year to finish my lower division work there. And I've kind of figured I
wanted to follow up on the meteorology work that I've done and water
science at Davis was one option but natural resources management at Cal
Poly was another one. In fact I got accepted at both but I decided to go
to UC Davis. And so I got a degree in water science which I thought was
kind of a nice follow up there. So meteorology kind of led me into the
water field.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, and you're saying you moved down into the Central
Valley to be sort of close to the action, and what did you say your first
job was down here?
>> Sarge Green: I was an associate scientist. It's a water and land
scientist. They still have a few of them. And I ended up handling the
agricultural waste discharges out of this office. In other words, under
the new laws both Porter-Cologne that the State had passed in 1969 and
then the Clean Water Act, agriculture came under some scrutiny as a
potential area of need in terms of whether or not their discharges
impacted waters of the State or waters of the US. And so, it was really, a
very early investigatory process that I got involved in. What's happening?
Who's doing what? We knew there were some things already. One of the most

important and has been a hallmark throughout my career is salt and salt
management. So I got heavily involved in looking at agricultural
subsurface drainage, the tile drains that were out on the west side to
drain the root zone, so that the crops would grow. Because at the time, we
were pulling a lot of water out there and they had to go some place with
that water. So that was one of the regulatory areas. Dairies and feedlots>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, just to interrupt for a second. Don't always know
what the basic knowledge of anybody who might be watching this is, just
talk a little bit about what the drainage problem is on the west side.
>> Sarge Green: Yeah, the clay layers that we have that were part of
either geologically recent were much older lake beds deposited a lot of
clay. And then when either the Coast Range or the sierras for that matter
eroded off new material, it's much coarser and much better. So there are
some very fine agricultural soils on the west side of the San Joaquin
Valley, but underlain very shallow is a clay layer. So if you pour water
on the top, not literally, but if you apply irrigation water you trap it
in that clay layer and then it builds up over time if you don't have an
opportunity for it to drain out. And both the applied water and the
natural water are fairly high in salt, mostly the natural water out there.
But even by applying irrigation water, pure water evaporates off and
leaves the salt behind. So you end up with both a problem with potential
loss of oxygen in the root zone for plants or the build up of salt, such
that they can impact plant growth. So you had to drain the water out. It's
common even other parts of the country where you have to get rid of
shallow water for the same reason, it will fill up the whole soil profile.
You see it even on TV today where you have to have these drainage pipes
around your basement in some houses back in certain part of the country,
because there's just enough room for the water to go, so you pump it out.
Well we've always had that problem, we've known about it here for a long
time especially in the San Joaquin Valley. And so we regulated those types
of facilities fairly quickly because we knew that if they were put on the
wrong place at the wrong time, they could cause some ongoing water quality
problems.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, what kind of water quality problems are there
that connected with dairies?
>> Sarge Green: Mostly either in those days, there were a lot of dairies
that literally had their wastewater run off of the property. I remember in
particular daring-- dealing with the dairies in Tulare County. And there
were some very strong political people in the dairy industry. They always
have been fairly active people. And we started to come down on and deal
with some of the dairies in Tulare County because they literally would
pump the water for me their ponds or run off from the fields that had
accumulated a lot of waste. The loafing pens, they call them or the
resting areas where the cows are standing. You see them out there,
standing out there. Probably today they're already in water. And they

would drain that off and run it right into canals. And the canals would
either impact a river or someone else downstream in terms of very poor
water quality, it caused fish kills. Back then we had a lot of fish kills
from ammonia because there's a high content of ammonia in that waste. And
so we worked closely with Fish and Game, we've gone into the rivers. But
in particular in Tulare County, there already was a high concentration
down there. And I remember I got taken to task by an assembly member from
down there about undue attention to the dairies in Tulare County. To their
peril, I think ultimately now they have so many dairy cattle. And between
both the surface water controls and now the irrigated lands program that
the water board staff uses to regulate AG facilities, includes groundwater
protection. The dairies are under a lot of scrutiny again.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Was this— come part of the, I guess, it's the nitrate
problem of the drinking water down there?
>> Sarge Green: Nitrate problem. Yes, nitrates in groundwater. We've
demonstrated fairly clearly now that too much of the animal waste loaded
on certain properties will percolate. That's one of the interesting things
that we learned early in my career. Up until that particular time, there
was a general convention that soil absorbed a lot of materials and
captured it and kept it in place, and it did not deep percolate. Well we
started investigating, me and my staff, a lot of different kinds of
facilities including the ponds that they were currently using for
wastewater from dairies but also pesticide facilities. And what we learned
is sand grains don't hold on to much of anything. It's essentially crushed
glass, right? It's silicon dioxide. And so we started finding pesticides
in groundwater as well. So I had both pesticide facilities, dairies and
then drainage water that were kind of my nicks of things that were keeping
us very busy in the late '70s all the way through the mid '80s.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did you have a lot of resistance then from the dairy
operators themselves, even just conducting your research?
>> Sarge Green: You know, it was mixed and a lot depended on location.
There were some really good farm advisers that we worked with at that time
as well as a general group of experts from all the universities. And they
were developing new rules and guidelines to help dairymen and the whole
business about the regulatory process, is that you end up with 95% of the
people want to comply. You're always dealing with 5% [inaudible]. So I'd
say there were resistant dairymen, definitely had to be taken to das—task.
The board had the ability to find people. And they started—make example of
you. The first thing that got improved were the ponds, ended up being
lined in quite few circumstances either with heavy clay or with plastic.
And then the runoff water would stop. So we were making significant
progress. The more difficult one was those pesticide sites, how did that
get into the groundwater and what damage was it doing. And we found that
those sandy soils were the ones that were a problem and quite a few of
them ended up as Superfund sites. I had actual production facilities of
both commercial industrial manufacturing plants as well as retail yards

and crop dusters, as well where the material because it had been disposed
off constantly in one place, water will drive the material down deep, deep
into groundwater. So we were very early in the investigation of both
pesticides and nitrates, and found that they did indeed get into
groundwater that the conventions of the past where people thought that the
soiled materials acted as a reservoir and held all these materials so it
could be broken down, it wasn't true. There-- It's always location,
location, location [laughter] like real estate.
>> Thomas Holyoke: This is the-- This was in 1970s you said->> Sarge Green: Correct.
>> Thomas Holyoke: -- did it lead to any kind of significant reform in
terms of your pesticide use, groundwater-- water discharge, I mean.
>> Sarge Green: Yes, the facilities all had to go to zero liquid discharge
in many instances. They could no longer use ponds, on line ponds in
particular. Actually the Toxic Substance Control Act that was adopted at
the federal level really put the hammer down and it ended up with a whole
new partner agency that we worked with, the Toxic Substances Control Act.
And between the two of us, we ended with Superfund sites that had to go
through the other law that came along was the CERCLA, Comprehensive
Environmental Recovery and Cleanup Act. And between those two facing in,
in the late '70s, we really ended up with a lot more tools that
essentially forced closure of a lot of facilities because they could not
afford, and end up follow-up cleanup. And ultimately that resulted and
even me having some consulting work where some of these facilities were
seeking insurance coverage because they'd close down and they still were
under orders to clean up. It took a long time for some of the facilities
to clean up.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I guess it’s in my understanding that a lot of the
problems with the groundwater, with the drinking of groundwater that a lot
of valley towns have, that a lot of that, you know, like the nitrate
pollution may have been-- is from decades ago. So is the stuff you were
cleaning up in the '70s what might still be poisoning the water today?
>> Sarge Green: You know it's possible. I think we were more concerned at
that time about the point source facilities. So it was the retail yards or
the fertilizer companies, or in the case of the dairies, we did-- we're
looking harder at some of their practices. I think the generalized case
now is that we're looking at was from what we call the non-point source
application of fertilizer and that was on the farms themselves. And we
were not looking necessarily at chasing that down at that particular time
period. It was kind of an unfolding process, and so we started out with
the ones that were clearly a specific location first.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Now one of the things I've noticed on here is
that you had been involved with I guess some of the issues with water over

Kettleman City.
>> Sarge Green: No, Kesterson Reservoir->> Thomas Holyoke: Oh! Is it Kesterson?
>> Sarge Green: -- Kesterson Reservoir. It was very interesting time—
>> Thomas Holyoke: I’m sorry.
>> Sarge Green: —there, as a result of this work that started in the late
'70s and continued through the mid '80s of looking at point sources as
well as drainage water. Drainage water really became a hot item in the mid
19-- actually early 1980s and mid 1980s because of Kesterson Reservoir.
What we found out is for years we've been studying the quality of the
subsurface drainage water, what was coming out of the pipes, and then had
to be managed, either discharged to a river if it had the capacity to take
it or put it in a pond. There were a lot of ponds that were developed to
evaporate off subsurface drainage water. And we were always chasing down,
does it contain pesticides? Does it-- What is the salt makeup? What are
the dominant types of salt, is it a table salt, is it another kind of a
salt to make a difference on whether or not it would damage the
environment? And it turned out that we missed one. And that was selenium.
And selenium is the infamous element that when it gets into the food
supply for certain parts of our terrestrial ecosystem, namely birds
primarily, it has a unique property that it will cause mutations and
damage then to the viability and especially of the offspring of water
fowl, and some other species. But Kesterson was the tipping point. That
was the place that we found it first and at the same time, the water fowl
and wildlife people were finding the damage to the animals. And so that
was the famous event that then stopped any further drainage work from
occurring in Westlands Water District. They literally told them to go up,
plug the drains. We will not allow you to put any of the drainage water
that they had hooked up, put into a drain known as the San Luis Drain and
then ship it to the storage pond in Merced County. The original design was
for that canal to go all the out to the Delta and dispose of this drainage
water, which was less in terms of total salts than seawater, it was only
about 1/3 or less of seawater. But once they found selenium in it, it cut
off drainage to just about everybody. The selenium though turns out was
once again a soil biogeochemistry issue. There had been plants that in
ancient times had accumulated selenium in their plant material died, fell
on the ocean floor. The ocean soils then or material were lifted up
geologically into the cost range and in only certain locations. And so
wherever those beds of that material that were eroded into the valley, it
then allowed the selenium to dissolve and come into the valley, and that's
how it got there, so it— it was skippy [phonetic]. The most famous ones
are the ones that are in the Panoche, little-- Not the little Panoche but
the Panoche Silver Creek Watershed which is the one that fed into
grasslands in the North area. And they are still trying to deal with the
salt and the drainage water. They've managed the selenium to a degree now

but they're still trying to deal with managing the salty water. And up and
down the valley then, there were certain watersheds that intersected this
one geologic formation and it did bring down selenium into them. So that
affected whether or not they could continue to operate ponds. Because it
turned out that ponds were the place where it could reaccumulate and then
provide the kind of food that were then eaten by the animals. And then it
caused them mutations and targeted genetic effects that caused the animals
not to have beaks and feet. It was not very fun [laughter].
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did you actually go to Kesterson and see this?
>> Sarge Green: Yes, I was one of the sen—Even though I was a senior and
had staff to do it, I was heavily involved in visiting Kesterson. Now I
did not have to go out and count the nest or anything like. So I only
ended with the pictures of what it did to the animals but it resulted in
shutting down of a whole bunch of ponds up and down the San Joaquin Valley
that had been temporarily used to try and evaporate drainage water. Some
survived because they didn't have much selenium in them. In fact, there's
still some today. The Tulare Lake Drainage District, south west of
Corcoran still manages a lot of drainage water from the tile system that
underlie Tulare Lake.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Why wasn't the canal built all the way out to the
ocean? I'm sure that was a Bureau of Reclamation project, why did they not
finish the project?
>> Sarge Green: It was a contractual relationship. In fact, you'll
probably be talking about that with other people in the future. That when
the Central Valley project signed the contracts with people to buy the
water and use it to irrigate land on the western part of the San Joaquin
Valley, there was a covenant right there that said, we know we're going to
have drainage problems, so you also have to provide us with drainage. They
had to pay for it. It was a land charge that actually caused the
agriculturalist quite a bit of money. And so that obligation remained
throughout all of the CVP contract periods, both older contracts while
they're still operating under their older contracts. And so that had to be
done and the goal was, is to build that canal all the way to the Delta
some place, but it was political in terms of the resistance. Two things
really happened. Number one was there was a political pushback from people
in the bay area that did not want San Joaquin Valley poison drainage water
coming into the Delta. And the second was money. The project was actually
stopped by the Reagan Administration. And the Reagan Administration,
because the State was involved in the State Water Project and also had
some responsibilities and or had agreed to provide drainage service to
other areas, they were linked with the Federal Government and the State
pulled their money. And so there was also a shortage of money to try and
advance the project. So it dead ended in Merced County in Kesterson
Reservoir.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How? But, wasn't it a federal project--

>> Sarge Green: It was a federal project that was going to be extended
into Kern County.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Is this-- Is the drainage problem primarily
limited to the western side of the valley—the west side of the valley?
>> Sarge Green: Well it is in the trough of the valley to some degree if
you look at where the old lake beds are. So I mentioned Tulare Lake Bed is
actually in the bottom and then it rises back up again a little bit to the
west side. But it is predominantly the west side of the San Joaquin
Valley. Yes, that's where the drainage problems are. So it depends on
where the soils were laid down either from the east side or the west side.
And in the east side lay down some of the clay beds, in the west side, new
soils came over at the top and some of them are pretty good. So-- but
there are drainage problems in some of the central part like the ancient
Tulare Lake.
>> Thomas Holyoke: OK. So in the '80s you start going through a career
change, but before we get to that, anything else from you-- from your time
as a water and soil scientist?
>> Sarge Green: It was pretty busy. There was no question that we were a
transition from all the prior work done by all of our predecessors who
were builders, quite frankly. They were the ones that built a lot of the
systems and moved a lot of dirt to make the valley bloom quite
respectfully and become agricultural powerhouse. It took a long time for
that to happen. But then we started seeing some of these problems. So I
was in the generation that said-- got to ask to look and see, well we've
done this for a long time, now what are some of the results. And so it
kind of transition from just building to also retrospectively looking at
what are the issues now associated with what we've done. So that was kind
of an age of new discovery of-- especially the environmental movement.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, that actually kind of struck me. So this was a
major, almost cultural change going on in the late 1960s. We have one of
the big environmental laws get passed into the 1970s too. Sort of the big
change from, you know, it's all about resource extraction and management
to all of a sudden conservation. I mean did-- were people really aware at
the time that there was a huge cultural shift going on when it came to
water in the environment generally?
>> Sarge Green: I don't think so because we were charged with really a
careful scientific and poli—policy approach. And I really like the artful
way, for example that Port-Cologne was built. It said very simply that if
you discharge your waste, you need to get a permit. That's what it did. In
getting the permit, you had to do a technical report which essentially was
a scientific endeavor to say, this is what we have and this is where we're
going to put it whether it was in the surface water or groundwater. And if
you need to regulate it, then you put the permit on them. And so that's

what really led to the discovery process. And then very shortly thereafter
the Clean Water Act, kind of did the same thing, only it was focused
primarily on surface water. So while there were people that were ringing
the bell about we're causing problems, the way it started out was quite
scientific to figure out what's going on.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And then later on, it became political.
>> Sarge Green: It became very political [laughs]. Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay! So in terms of your movement, was it from this
job that you then went to work for–Dick Shafer?
>> Sarge Green: You know we all reach a point some time in our careers
where you see the handwriting on the wall. I had a little bit of ambition,
I wanted to do more. I wanted to have an opportunity to get promoted or
whatever. And quite frankly I was in an organization there at the Water
Board that was dominated by other professionals. I was kind of an odd duck
agriculturalist who had been hired in the mid '70s because they knew that
we needed that kind of expertise. But you still had to deal with the fact
that the organization over history was dominated by civil and sanitary
engineers, which was a nice way of saying the sewage engineers. And so I
couldn't quite get to the top levels. I would have to go outside and maybe
come back at a higher level by expanding my experience in outside
endeavors. And so that's what I chose to do. I chose to move from being
caught more or less at the level that I was at when I was with the Water
Board and finding another way to move my career path on. So I left and I
went into the private consulting business, in fact for a very prominent
civil engineer, in fact it's somebody we've talked about that you've
interviewed. And I was pretty much given the rope necessary for me to do
what I needed to do to continue the work. And one of the first things I
did was, I was involved in-- At the same time I understood that ponds in
certain locations and activities of certain type could impact waters,
whether it was groundwater or surface water of the State or the US. People
needed an opportunity to adjust to this new environment and deal with it
in a sensible way. There was a start to some of the political pressure you
talked about where certain industries and certain activities were really
under tremendous scrutiny and didn't quite have the same flexibility or
capability to adjust. One of the ones I worked on that was very
interesting was one of the olive growers. In the processing of olives, I
think you-- no one understand, it takes salt to literally cause that olive
to get rid of some of the more or less bitter and certain chemical
properties of the olive to make it into either a black olive that's used
in pizza or even a green olive stuffed with an almond or pimiento, to get
it into a condition where it really is a truly edible and usable fruit, I
consider it a fruit. And there was some major olive producer in Tulare
County and they had been shut down more or less. Told you have to close
because they had used a pond to get rid of their brine water on the east
side of the San Joaquin Valley. Well, Mother Nature is not real perfect in
the way she does things. It turns out where they were specifically located

there are some clay soils on the east side. And furthermore, that's where
the ponds that they worked, furthermore they lined the ponds, one of the
very first companies to use a plastic liner. And so even though in over
their long history of brining olives, they had created a salt load in the
soil profile, they pretty much stopped it. And they were asking for a time
schedule to be able to bring the company down, it was a fairly large
company to decelerate, and they got a no. And so interestingly enough won
against the agency that I worked for in developing the reports to show
that the material had been arrested substantially and just asked for more
time, so they could deconstruct the company and decommission the ponds and
clean it all up, I lost. The system had gained enough force in stating
that pretty much anything that was located on the east side of the San
Joaquin Valley wasn't going to get much of a break. And which is kind of
funny is we're kind of where we are now with farming and what I've called
earlier as the non-point source. I think they're feeling the pressure now
tremendously about what they're doing to try and manage the load of
materials that they've put on the soil, whether it's fertilizers or other
materials. I think pesticides have not been that big of a problem but
clearly nitrogen fertilizers have impacted a large area with nitrates, so
in the groundwater. So that was kind of another early test case, but I did
other things->> Thomas Holyoke: Can I ask you question about this?
>> Sarge Green: Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I don't know but I'm kind of wondering if this might
have changed your attitude towards, you know, working for the government
maybe. I mean, you have an impression that sometimes farmers aren't given
a fair shake by regulators->> Sarge Green: Absolutely. Oh! It's a steamroller in some cases. It—it
doesn't always work perfectly. I mean government is not designed to do
that. Number one, it's usually designed to move rather slow. It's not
destined to be very abrupt. But once the steamroller gets going, it can be
unrelenting and not very forgiving. And so that happens on occasion and is
very difficult for government to back up and say, Oh! We made a mistake,
you're right. We should've done it a little bit differently. It just keeps
rolling. And that has happen on occasion. And I think its part of the
system and we have to accept it in some cases but certainly learn from it
and try to make it better in many instances. So absolutely government can
be unrelenting and quite frankly, yeah, wrong [laughter].
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. I'm sorry I've cut you off->> Sarge Green: That's-- quite all right. It's kind of an interesting
sideline, isn't it? I mean that's what I've learned in my experience,
you're absolutely right. Government is never perfect and constantly
strived to make it better. And sometimes it takes a little bit of thirdparty urging, sometimes you have to do some outside work to show everybody

what is the middle ground or what is third, which is one of the things
I've enjoyed being here at Fresno State, been able to do.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Anything else from your time with Shafer?
>> Sarge Green: You know it went fast because at the same time, like I
mentioned I was looking for a career opportunities and I had always kind
of in the back mind, thought I'd wanted to be part of an irrigation
district. In fact I had applied a couple of times even when I was with the
Water Board. Besides going to work for Shafer and Associates at other
irrigation districts, and lo and behold an opportunity came up when I was
working with Mr. Shafer. And it was for an irrigation district here in
Fresno County, closer to west side. And I interviewed, and I got the job
[laughs]. So that's->> Thomas Holyoke: So you're surprised by that?
>> Sarge Green: Yeah, I was! I guess I answered their questions well. You
know, I think in any irrigation district, if it's a fairly robust one in
terms of water supply, the first thing that you have to say is, what's the
most important thing for the district, and it's their water rights. And
what's your job? To protect those water rights to the nth degree.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Where is Tranquility?
>> Sarge Green: Tranquility is on-- It's in Central Fresno County West of
Kerman. And I kind of call it part of the mother districts. There were a
number of areas that were very important in the development of the west
side. Tranquility is a very small community but it has a long history that
actually started with gentlemen by the name of Jefferson James. He started
both San Joaquin, the City of San Joaquin, James Irrigation District is
named after him, and Tranquility was named by his son-in-law. And they
were contemporaries of the cattle king. They were contemporaries of Miller
and Lux. Mr. Miller had a much larger area under his control but Mr. James
did a pretty good job himself. In fact, he became a member of the board of
supervisors of San Francisco and later in his career. But he developed the
land out there and formed those areas because they were the gathering
place between the Kings and the San Joaquin River. San Joaquin River
backed up and the Kings River flowed on flood flows to the north. So,
those areas were able to early on capture riparian water. And so, they
actually had a pretty good water right. And that district then had been
around since 1911. In fact, it's the second oldest irrigation district in
Fresno County, which is a kind of a unique arrangement. The irrigation
districts that started in the 1880s and there's the famous five that
started it and a whole bunch more started and failed. And then again in
the early 1900s, they started up again and they really took off and
Tranquility happen to be in that early mode, where they voted themselves
to form a district and bonded themselves and built a distribution system
that better evenly, more evenly distributed the water. So, it's been
around for quite some time.

>> Thomas Holyoke: How big? –Sorry.
>> Sarge Green: It's only 10,000 acres but it's 10,000 very good acres.
They've always been very successful because not only did they farm that
area, but they provided the location where a lot of people that moved out
to West Point and start up, start Westlands Water District. Even though,
large portions of Westlands, people don't realize this, but a lot of it
was owned by the railroad. Southern Pacific actually started a lot of that
area and—and other large corporations. I believe Standard Oil was involved
in a lot of the land as well. But the locals out there has started to the
farm out there on either deep wells or on rainfall and groomed the grain
crops. So, some of the families in Tranquility had deep roots in Westlands
as well. Until-- There was a point where some of the older people started
to move here into Fresno and new generations were taking over. And then
when of course they retired all that land out there, they shrink back
pretty much to what they had in Tranquility or bought land in other
places. But during my career there, I then, I got an opportunity to be GM
of a small irrigation district that also happen to supply drinking water
to the community. So I was both running an irrigation system as well as a
drinking water system, which is kind of unique. There aren't-- weren't too
many that started right away delivering drinking water as a retailer to
their citizens. So it makes it a very interesting combination for an
irrigation district.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is Tranquility a CVP contractor?
>> Sarge Green: Yes. And the reason why is much like the exchange
contractors. It was a rights holder on the San Joaquin River. Although it
was never finally resolved, there was a famous lawsuit Rank versus Krug.
But what happened after Tranquility kind of lost Rank versus Krug, and the
city of Fresno was involved on that as well, to get his fair share of San
Joaquin River rights. The United States came along in 1963. And through
the largest of the Kennedy administration said solve it. The bureau, go
back there and solve these problems. Finished all of this work in terms of
developing its water supply, give these people what they need, and then
move on. And Tranquility happen to be in that position where because they
had the rights pretty much spilled, although they've lost a major lawsuit,
they were secondary to the original exchange contractors, they still ended
up with the bureau of contract, the RCVP contractor. And they have a chunk
of riparian water. But they also, because they were downstream on the
Kings River, although all be it in frequently because it takes a major
event to move water all the way out to the North Fork, what's known as
also as Fresno Slough, they also traded that water with other people on
the Kings River who could use it more beneficially and ended up with
enough money from that to buy contract water. So it was also hybrid, it
had rights water, but also was a contractor with the United States. That's
kind of an interesting combination.

>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah. So, before-- I guess back, way back before
time at Tranquility, but before The Bureau of Reclamation build the
Luis Extension, that whole system out there, did Tranquility have a
secure water supply? Because, it sounds like you're talking about a
your riparian almost flood water from the Kings flowing over there.

your
San
really
lot of

>> Sarge Green: Yup, flood water from the Kings and back water from the
San Joaquin. You have to understand out there that was a low spot. So,
before Mendota Pool or with Mendota Pool, the water would move back to the
back down there to the south quite a ways. And that's where they put in
their pumps in 1920 and diverted after forming in 1918. And so, they were
using that water, but the fights then didn't come on until much later on.
Everybody kind of get along for a long time and then 1963, the United
States came along and resolved the fights by having that people sign the
contracts with this Central Valley project but it was on the Delta
division. It was not a-- on the Saint Luis society, it was on the Delta
Division. And that's where the Delta-Mendota Canal terminates is in
Mendota Pool. So, it fills that thing up with Delta Water and it backs up
all the way to Tranquility.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. So you're coming out there as general manager. Is
that the job you found yourself prepared for? Was there a whole lot of-big learning curve for you?
>> Sarge Green: You know it's funny what we're going through right now. I
got there in 1989 and unbeknownst to us that particular year was the
second year of the four-year drought. And fortunately, at that particular
time, we didn't have quite the issues in the Delta. So 1989, my first year
there, I actually got a full supply from the Bureau of Reclamation, all of
our rights water and all of our contract water. 1990 not so lucky, '91
even worse, got cut back. And one of those years, all the way down to our
very minimum. So I get there and I'm addressing what I thought were the
issues for the district. And that was kind of a capital improvement plan,
so yes, I was prepared. I kind of understood what I was getting into that
the district was in its next phase. It had built it system and now it
needed to redo it again to make sure that it met current standards or met
future needs. And so, while assessing everything, get hit with a drought.
And that moves things along a little bit quicker. So one of the first
things I ended up doing was putting everybody on a water diet, it was not
fun. I had to allocate the water amongst everybody and try and figure out
how to implement that. And so, it called for a wholesale overhaul a lot of
the rules and regulations. Quite frankly, they didn't have a book on
operations in rules and regulations. So, one of the first thing I ended up
doing was writing the book on rules and regulations on how to distribute
the water economically and fairly amongst the users within the district.
So we got that done fairly early on. And fortunately because of the
drought also, there was a time when there was some bond money also. I
don't recall the particular one, the name of it or anything and got right
on by hiring the right engineers who could consult with us and help
develop an application. And we're successful right away in the middle of

that drought of starting up a conservation program. And one of the first
things we did was install meters on every outlet. It was not a metered
district before that, it was—.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did—did you thought to push back from your board and
other growers on->> Sarge Green: No.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay.
>> Sarge Green: They were ripe and ready because that first couple of
years of the drought, they could see amongst themselves that there were
certain equities. The water master, who I had, I inherited, was going
crazy trying to meet everybody's needs. And some guys were operating on
the weekends and illegally in diverting water when they shouldn't. And so
it had created the kind of tension amongst the growers themselves that
said enough of this stuff, this is not fair, these guys are taking
advantage of the water master and your staff, we need to have a more
equitable way, and that board was ready and ripe for making the changes.
So I walked into a situation where the board was actually more ready than
the existing management structure to make the changes necessary for equity
and reinvestment. So, I had no problems with the board and I had no
problem, with a couple of minor exceptions. There's always somebody in the
organization or in the area that wants to push back and create problems,
and the community took care of those people. I didn't have to worry about
them. They may have come into my office and yelled at me, you always have
that problem when you're a district manager. You get yelled at a lot. Not
fun, but I have big shoulders, so I took it. And I told the other people,
and they internally handled it themselves.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Now, were you-- you're still general manager in
'92 and CVPIA came up and gotten-- was passed?
>> Sarge Green: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did-- Were you at all involved in any of the political
work in trying to push back on that?
>> Sarge Green: No, I think you have to understand is that you have
different levels of participation. I did have a fairly good attorney who
could converse with the other attorneys who were perhaps writing. And so,
I was kind of a dependent manager from the standpoint that if somebody
else has some expertise, whether my consulting engineer or my attorney,
parts that kind of work out to them. And so, they were involved in that.
I—I certainly was aware of it. The other thing that happened of course is
that the irrigation entities always have been kind of on their own or
worked somewhat individually and somewhat at times it crossed purposes.
But what had happen early in the 1990s, at the same time as this sort of
thing happened, CVPIA is we'd formed the water authority out on the west

side, the Saint Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority. And that was where
a lot of the coordination and pushback was going on in a collective way.
So that, I always partnered with, in that the case, with Westlands, Santa
Clara Valley Water District, all the west side districts up along Western
Merced and Stanislaus County all way up into the Delta, the exchange
contractors, everybody operated through that one organization and worked
fairly good at trying to inform. But since it was a relatively new
organization, obviously we weren't as successful as we wanted to be
because we didn't think we got a very fair deal in terms of CVPIA. I mean
taking 800,000 acre feet off the top and then imposing all these other
restrictions on the bureau in terms of its ability to manage the CVP was
quite a blow. It was a very difficult time compounded with a drought so.
But when you're dealing with a drought, your first duty and responsibility
is just get the water to the customers. And so you had to rely on other
people to work on those larger issues. Was I in the middle of it? N—Yeah,
to the extent that I could be.
>> Thomas Holyoke: During this time, did you actually have a good
relationship with the bureau people?
>> Sarge Green: Absolutely, they were very good people and they are to
this day. I mean the staff, like any other organization, knew their
customers. They knew that-- In fact today, I would say that that's still a
problem. The bureau has to finance itself. It doesn't get a whole lot of
money out of the federal government in terms of general funds. It has to
go to its customers. And so, they had that customer relationship and they
knew this fairly well. So, yeah, I knew who I worked with whether it was
Tracey for the paperwork that I had to do every year or whether it was
Fresno for understanding what was going on with Sacramento or Sacramento
directly. Yeah, we had a pretty good relationship with the bureau staff.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is-- Does Tranquility actually border Westlands Water
District?
>> Sarge Green: Absolutely, right on its western edge is all Westlands.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Was it ever an issue sort of having this gigantic water
district sort of over your shoulder like that? Did you get along with
them?
>> Sarge Green: We got along well because we shared so many people. We
shared growers. We shared other things. Once again at the staff level,
whether it was a piece of pipe or whether it was to understand something
that was going on, on the land between us. For example if they had areas
out there that had already been abandoned and got weedy, they make sure
that the landowners went out there and took care of the weeds, because
weeds are problem in farming because it will host pests that are damaging
to your guys. Occasionally, we'd still run into a problem. I remember, we
had storms out there, and the runoff from their area came breaking through
one of the things that used to stop them and flooded a bunch of our guys

ground. And it was a little grossing and finger pointing and yelling to
each other on the couple of things. But for the most part, irrigation
district people have a kinship even though they played it on a different
game overall especially at the political level. For the most part, the way
I operated at my level, we worked well together.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So, after the passage of CVPIA in 1992, when did you
first start to feel the cutbacks and the removal of the 800,000 acre feet
plus other restrictions?
>> Sarge Green: You know the fortunate thing was, is that when they
drought broke, the drought broke. And the last half of the '90s, we had a
number of wet years. So, really didn't hit until the next kind of hint of
the drought was in the early 2000s. So, we actually got by very well
water-wise before really started to pinch. It started to, and it's always
this sequential thing. The people that got hit the hardest first were the
peer contractors. And as much as we were very well to do in terms of a
good chunk of water supply that was riparian water. They honored that
every year fairly well after the '93. So, '95 was a wet year for example.
In fact, that was a very damaging year in western part of the San Joaquin
Valley and so was '97, '98, that was the year I think. One of the two was
when the bridge was blown on in the Interstate 5, really tragic. But-- So
we had some wet years in there and it didn't really affect water supply.
You could see the handwriting on the wall though. And that's when I think
the water authority starting asserting more responsibility, so we could
work collectively together. The San Luis Delta-Mendota Water Authority
gathered more professional staff, hired other outside council and
professionals that would take on some of the issues especially with the
Delta. In fact, I remember one of the people that they hired just recently
passed away and it's on a tragic thing, I don't know where. It is-- She
was Chief Deputy Director of DWR Laura Moon King. And Laura worked for
water authority in that time period. And she was our heartbeat in
Sacramento. So, once again, my job was to make sure that my people had
water and that I was making this substantial capital improvements
necessary to bridge to the future. So that even if we did get potential a
lot of water loss during the future years, that that district could still
survive and do fairly well with less of a water supply. So, I anticipated
some of it to a degree by making those kinds of changes and improvements
and whether it was eliminating poor-performing canals and putting in
pipelines or improving the pumps and the motors and everything like that,
getting more efficient overall. I did participate heavily also to the
extent feasible at that higher level more and more because that was where
we needed to invest some time. So, whether it was myself or one of my
board members, I had an active board member that's always been part of
that larger organization. In fact he's been chief of their finance
committee for a number of years now. So, I actually had some good
leadership with me in my little small irrigation district. And so we were
able to weather both the storms from-- because we were lucky with weather
patterns and water or because we had people who were active in leadership
and trying to make the rest of us our constituents understand that we are

in a kind of a long-term fight, and it wasn't going very well. Ultimately,
I think it's drought that is probably been more damaging than the longterm changes in water supply. It did affect the contract districts that
were a hundred percent reliant on Delta supplies, did not have any
riparian water or reasonable way of getting groundwater. Another thing I
did was I tried to expand both the groundwater program and onsite storage.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did Tranquility have a good aquifer?
>> Sarge Green: Yeah. It's-- That happens to be right on the nose out
there of seems of good Sierra Sands, and so it has some areas where we
have some deeper water that you could get, and augment the supply with.
And so that's been an ongoing thing. I think they're in a little bit of
trouble now though because I think they're part of the area that's seen
subsidence resurface that's been another residual of this recent route.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When you were at Tranquility, did you have go through
contract renegotiation with the bureau?
>> Sarge Green: Yes. I was the lead person on that, all those
negotiations, along with council between the two of us, we pretty much
handled the lot of it. And it was a fairly intense but because we were
rights holder, it was a more of us of a pass-through contract. It really
didn't affect that very much. It was a settlement. And all settlement
contractors had riparian rights, had kind of a gold card to get through
that part of it. It was only the contract water that really became much
more difficult. And so that part of the contract, we had to negotiate more
specifically. And we weren't treated any different than anybody else. We
saw the handwriting on the wall that was going to be less reliable. And
so, that's another reason why we went more into groundwater business.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Just another follow-up question, you had mentioned you
had done a lot of infrastructure upgrading. Was there a lot that needed to
be done when you came to Tranquility? Was it an old system?
>> Sarge Green: I think it was OK. But yes, it needed some serious
investment. And so, we ended up bonding. We did it, actually go to the
voters in the district, the land holders and say, "Look, this is what we
plan to do between myself and the design engineers." And they said, "Go
ahead," so that-- because they voted with their pocketbooks and made those
investments. One of the things that they had learned was when the first
investment was made to install meters was it actually did much better. And
it's the same old thing, what's measured is managed. And they did. They
started-- And furthermore, they started making other investments. They
started shifting crops. When I first got there for the first, oh I say
seven or eight years, it was predominantly cut. It shifted even in the
cotton business from Acala Cotton to Pima Cotton. In fact, we had two gins
that were located within Tranquility that were regional gins. And they had
switched one of them to actually process Pima Cotton. So it was another
good source of jobs right in the community. Then it went to tomatoes.

Canning tomatoes. They figured out that going to drip date made a big
difference in canning tomatoes. They weren't flood irrigating them
anymore. And so, they didn't-- tomatoes didn't fall in to mud. That's
always a problem with the canning tomatoes is they want them clean. So the
growers that I had were very progressive and were dynamic from the
standpoint that they were shifting with the times as quick as they could.
In fact, by the time I left, I already had several thousand acres of
almonds as well because they found new root stocks and the soils were not
salty out there. They were relatively clean. It was all small plant. In
fact, it was very high in organic matter, they're black soils. Those are
very pretty rich soils. They have internal drainage problem still, but
they were able to overcome that by going to micro spray and drip and now
they're successful in growing almonds as well. So during the time I was
there, there was also this transition and they managed to stay financially
viable and in fact prosper and it was very easy for them to understand
that the scope and the need for making those investments in the system
itself and modernizing pretty much everything to the extent feasible. When
I got there, they had one computer and it was on a floppy disk drive,
1989. We immediately went upgraded the computers is one. The other things,
got Wi-Fi in there started to do lots of different things to keep up with
everything that was going on. So I was able to keep pace. You can only go
as far though as there's a comfort zone with your constituents. And so,
that's one of the things I learned out there. Advances are easy if
everybody is ready for it. But if it's a little too far out there, it
takes a little more work and convincing. And we pushed that envelope a
couple of times where we went a little farther, but we managed to get
there. So it's a quite efficient nice little operation out there.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You had mentioned much earlier that you're also
providing domestic water service to the town Tranquility?
>> Sarge Green: Yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did that ever cause any tensions between growers or?
>> Sarge Green: Yeah. Really, what happened, the biggest change in the
community, well I was very successful, I think, in working with the
agricultural community. The change that happened that impacted the
community itself the most, especially the small town of about 1200
residents, and it has a high school out there by the way, that's in
Tranquility, was not in other parts, the larger city next door, San
Joaquin, little more like 3500 people. So it was a regional high school
that we served as well. The drinking water system was fine until the
drinking water regulations started to ratchet down. So at the same time we
talked early on about how many other environmental rules have come along,
drinking water regulations got stiffer. And that area out there even
though the water, deep-water is good for irrigation, has arsenic in it. So
I had to start dealing with both, one, upgrading the system because it was
old in terms of the pipes in the ground but then we also got saddled with
having to deal with the arsenic thing. And so, I kind of had paced myself

where my first focus was on rebuilding the irrigation system because that
was the heart and real economic engine for the community. The same time
though, not only did we start to see the business with the drinking water
system needing an upgrade, the economy of the community went down. And the
reason was, I mentioned early on that we had people in the community that
heavily invested involved in Westlands Water District area. Well it turns
out then when it really hit the fan with the proverbial changes because of
the drainage and the settlements and all the things that started to happen
as a result to CVPIA. Tranquility area was the area's hardest hit with
land retirement. And that cut down the amount of land and amount of jobs
that had historically then supported the number of those west side
communities including Tranquility. So what we saw was since that-- the
town got ran down, it frankly went downhill because it no longer had the
number of jobs because the farmers had change their focuses as they had
gone into the other crops that didn't require the labor, but they also had
lost either the rent land that they rented or they sold some of the land
that they owned out at Westlands.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How was this taking place?
>> Sarge Green: How was it taking->> Thomas Holyoke: Or why was it taking place?
>> Sarge Green: Why was it taking place?
>> Thomas Holyoke: Yeah, this is kind of land retirement or so on, or just
the changes.
>> Sarge Green: It was part of the agreements that started to happen as a
result of the contracts and the changes in terms of trying-- the United
Stated trying to deal with their obligation, that obligation that they had
to provide drainage. And so, one of the things that the Federal government
came up was the buyout program that bought out a lot of the Westland’s
land. And so the farmers made out, OK, they sold their land for a pretty
good price but they-- not everybody, some people were indebted than the
money that they were going to get, so some actually did not do very but
most came out OK. And that just retired a swamp out there between Mendota
and Tranquility of 75,000 acres. That was the biggest chunk out there of
any area in Westland that was contiguous. Everything else was piece-- but
there were other districts that got bought out. Broadview was bought out.
So, the United States was-- during this entire process after CVPIA was in
this ongoing intervals of negotiations and activities that they had to do
and that was one of things that they came up was the buyout program. So
the community itself was impoverished. So I actually got more pushback
from the community about the investments and the cost of the drinking
water system than I did for the investments that try and to rebuild the
irrigation system.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Because they couldn't afford it essentially?

>> Sarge Green: They couldn't afford it. Yeah. Yeah, so that was an
interesting time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Well, what did you do about it?
>> Sarge Green: We just finally said it's the law. We had to build the
necessary components, and I left actually before the final pieces are in
place. And they're back in place. I think now they're getting much closer
already to fully comply. They were on a time schedule from USCPA. So when
I left in 2006, I had a new tank built, a whole bunch of new pumps and
motors and a couple of-- one-- at least one new well. And that's kind of
where I left it because it takes quite bit of time for these kinds of
things to be implemented. It doesn't happen overnight. For one thing, you
do have to deal with the customers and they were already upset with two
things. One of the other things that happened was is that even though
groundwater in many cases from very deeps zones doesn't have
bacteriological problems. The new rules required also that you chlorinate
to make sure. And so when you mix chorine with some of the materials that
were in the water out there, namely manganese and iron and a little bit of
arsenic, it created a problem where it made the water cloudy. So the
citizens were getting hit with higher rates, cloudy water that they didn't
necessarily [laughs] like. And then told that we have arsenic and we got
to spend even more money to clean that all up. And so, when I left we did
have some issues still to deal with. And the current manager is still
trying to finalize and address all those, because it just takes that much
time to get everything done.
>> Thomas Holyoke: On the timeline you provided me here, you have a
reference to a levy blowout at Mendota Pool.
>> Sarge Green: Yeah. That's the thing that people don't understand. We
have these cycles where we have wet years and dry years. There's no such
thing as average in California water. It seems to be one or the other. And
sure enough in 2005, 2006 we had very wet year and a high snow pack and
the way the Kings River works is Pine Flat Dam is the controlling thing
and it has to let out so much water. And the first part of the water,
because to Tulare Lake people don't want to flood their farmland, it's
routed to the north. So there's literary a designed system were checks and
weirs and everything move water. Naturally, it would've gone and flooded
Tulare Lake, but instead it's artificially moved out towards Mendota Pool
ties in with the San Joaquin River. And the San Joaquin River has flood
bypass where most of its water goes up that flood bypass. And then we
dumped Kings River water into Mendota Pool and it found its way out with
however it could. Well that particular year, they were pushing the limit
very early on and making sure that all the water was routed to the north.
And after so many years of this occurring over time, wet and dry cycles,
things happen in hydrology like sediments gets deposited. Or levies get
eroded and weaken a little bit. We pret—pretty much maintained the levies
to the extent that we could because we're right next to Mendota Pool right

where the Kings River came in. But for whatever reason and I think it was
the sediment build up, there was a lot of material where it settled out
near that it no longer had that capacity and it kind of redirected the
flow and moved it and banged it right into one of the levies that we had
on the edge of our district. And it eroded that thing out and it blew out.
And it first flooded several hundred acres of district-owned land that we
leased. I purchased it in anticipation of the future of using it for a
well field and for storage of water, so that it can get through the poor
months of August and September. Didn't have much rights water and lost our
contract water, so we're relying on wells. We wanted to make sure that we
had the capability to manage water out there, so we purchased the land.
The farmer had given up out there. But we had a lessee and the lessee was
growing tomatoes. And he put in [inaudible], flooded that whole field.
Ruined it. So we ended up working out a deal with our insurance and
everything to take care of that. But when that levy blew out, it also was
impacting several other levies. And we immediately got a hold of the state
and the state had a-- Governor Schwarzenegger already declared an
emergency, he'd been helping rebuild some levies on the flood pipe bypass
channel in the San Joaquin River and it also had some major problems. And
they mobilized and got the contractor down to help us out. And we were
standing on the levy and looking at it. There was a hole and the water was
swirling on the top of it. If that last levy had broken, it would have
flooded the town of Tranquility. So it was one of those things where
you're always seems to be in crisis mode. You're either fighting drought
or fighting a flood, and that happen to be a year when we were in a flood
year that really impacted us. Well the guys from the lake bed felt bad for
us. And they also mobilized equipment brought it up because they've been
pushing so hard with the water instead of flooding Tulare Lake. So they
helped us out. The state government helped us out. We have parts of the
government that worked really well. And office emergency services and
those people do a good job. They mobilized the contractor, got out there.
We caught that leak before it broke. In fact, the DWR staff person who was
the flood coordinator out of this office down here that handles flood
issues where they have to walk levies and actually go out and check on
things. He was the one that saw where this swirling was going on. And he
mobilized the people to move over there and fixed that leak and it saved
the community Tranquility in my mind. I don't know whether it would've
flooded them completely or not but well that's kind of a—kind of a bad way
to end your career. But after a while the stress of all those alternate
situation whether it was drought or floods, I really give a lot a credit
to people who can spend 30 years as a manager in one place, because
there's a lot of stress in the water business, it really is. And-- Well, I
could have gone longer. I decided I needed to do something again.
Something a little different again. And sure enough, yeah, I decide to
pull the plug and leave a little bit early, I was 60. But, yeah, that was
one of the things is that I'm tired [laughs].
>> Thomas Holyoke: So you went from Tranquility to Fresno State?
>> Sarge Green: Yeah.

>> Thomas Holyoke: How you end up here?
>> Sarge Green: You know, about the time I was getting ready to retire. I
started at-- I've shown you the thing that I've always done some outside
things, and fortunately, I had a board that understood and recognized.
There's value in keeping your hands in all these different things. In
fact, I didn't side bar it very well. But the same time I was managing the
district, I had carryover from my early work at the Water Board and still
continue to do things like cleanups and things on the side a little bit. I
had a little bit of energy to those kinds of the things in a very, very
forgiving and welcoming board that understood I had that additional skill
set and I should probably use it. And I did for a while. Wane down
considerably towards the end of my career at Tranquility. But I always
then had this other interest. And I happen to go to a meeting here on the
campus where they were talking about integrated regional water management
planning. And one of the other staff here recognized me and knew who I
was, whom I worked out in the west side, knew had this various other
skills that I'd managed to maintain and understood the concept and told me
that there was a contract here. And happen to be the contract that was
with the partnership for the San Joaquin Valley. And they were looking for
somebody to help work with the partnership on the water piece. And so
that's how that the contact was made and David brought me on as a
consultant. And I started working on that effort with the partnership for
the San Joaquin Valley through the Water Institute. And ended up writing
that first report that established kind of the framework for the
partnership in terms of what I wanted to work on because water was one of
its key issues. Water, air, education, transportation. It was a multitude
of things that that organization took on. And water was one of keys I
guess and still is. It's pretty important here on the San Joaquin Valley,
probably more important than it has ever been. In fact, I think you'll
hear that from the partnership for the San Joaquin Valley. They moved
water up to number one. I'm not surprised. Yeah. So that was how that
started out. And it ripened into other things came along. And besides that
contract, Senator Costa who is always a strong partner with either the
Water Institute, he helped start it, and then became congressmen. And one
of the other pieces of legislation that came along of course was the
omnibus act for water included within it though the restoration process
for the San Joaquin River. And so, as part of that, it funded ongoing work
in integrated water management processes. And so that has continued me be
able to work on figuring out what it is that we need to work together in
water. Now we've got the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and that's
another new thing. So it looks like water is going be busy for a while.
>> Thomas Holyoke: [Inaudible] job security I guess.
>> Sarge Green: Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So Integrated Water Management. I guess, what does that
mean?

>> Sarge Green: You now, it's the thing where you have to look at things a
little more holistically. It's the old whack-a-mole game, you pop on one
thing and another thing pops up. Well you got to look at it as a system
more or less. And whether its agriculture or cities, lunges planning,
transportation, they all have this impact. And then you bring in things
like water quality. So water has to be looked at differently now that you
want it sustainable and you want it high quality. So you need to know and
understand how it can be managed more holistically with all of the
different partners. We no longer can rely on say agricultural water
districts or irrigation districts alone to manage their supply and water
quality. That was never part of their mission. Water quality wasn't their
mission. And yet, we have learned that farming has had an impact. So
putting those altogether in terms of the process that we're talking to
each other, so the cities and the counties and the water people and
everybody in a much more integrated fashion to try and make sure that we
have water supply for the future of a reasonable quality is what
integration is. But it's also integration about what do you do with flood
water, what do you do with storm water, what do you do with groundwater in
terms of how you manage it more sustainably, how do you look at water, how
do you do it differently and so that we will come to that time. Frankly
what it is, is after many years of all these independent things working
fine, we've gotten to a point in our society were they're running into
each other more often and the demands have increased so much that you have
to look at it differently. You can no longer rely on each one taking care
of their own because they now have so much more of influence on each
other. That's what it's all about is that the supply and the equality
finally now had got to the point where there's not enough to go around and
it better be good quality. So we have to work together.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Is that well understood do you think by all the
different people who are looking on water especially in agriculture?
>> Sarge Green: You know I think that they're getting much better at it.
They're realizing it. And I think that's the one of the things that I
believe has come out of this drought is that nobody can exist by
themselves anymore. They have to work better together. And hopefully,
they'll start doing that. The last piece in my mind was this groundwater
piece. People who were on groundwater by themselves were an island and
they protected that very firmly. They were very adamant in their position
that it’s their right and they're going to do it. And yet now, since it's
been kind of the lynchpin in many instances to get us through things like
droughts and how we find out that there's much there as we use to have,
they're kicking and screaming, they've been dragged in. And I have to give
AG credit. In many instances AG has spoken out and says times up—timeout,
we've got to work together on this one because it's to our peril if we do
not. So yes I think that there's a strong realization amongst. They're
still some [inaudible] for instance saying "No, that's mine and I'm going
to do what I want." But I think they're weakening. I think they recognized
that they are reliant on somebody else. If you're a groundwater pump who

are on the middle of Fresno County, like even Tranquility, where you're
withdrawing from a very deep formation, where does that water come from?
It's not percolating directly over the top. There's too many clay layers
to get down there. It moves faster latterly down there than it does
vertically. So you recharge area is somewhere out here to the east. So
you're relying on other peoples' largest to be able to sustain that
particular. So this notion of connectivity is important. Connecting
everybody in the logical way is going be real interesting time.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Just as we sort of wrap up here.
>> Sarge Green: Yeah.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you think the-- Do you think that the State of
California is managing its water and its water problems well?
>> Sarge Green: That is such a tough question because like everything
else, everything is local to start with. And if you are asking the
question if they had figured out how the wire is better together locally,
most of the idea still have been pretty much top down for a long time. But
I think Integrated Water Management is one of the things that did they
come up with that does start back at that local and regional awareness
together better. Locally, we find out that we can do things better if
we're hooked up together better. So they're start catch on and I think the
Groundwater Management Act is more the same where the locals get the
opportunity to wire themselves better together first before the State
steps in. So it's been a growth process on both ends. It takes everybody,
it's not-- And in their defense for a long time the state has been
involved in just really the big stuff, whether it was the big dams or the
big canals and big picture stuff. And it turns out that that's not the
only way to do business. In fact, it ran into a brick wall. Part of it was
environmental impact. So now it's rebuilding it. And so integration to me
now is not just necessarily about the physical stuff but it's
institutional and I think we're headed in the right direction and I hope
we're successful.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So it's almost anticipating my last question. Are you
an optimist or a pessimist about the future?
>> Sarge Green: I'm an optimist. I—I think that we have the right mix of
people and capabilities I think to ultimately do a pretty good job. The
old, old, problem and it's in any endeavor is unfortunately there's
probably going to be winners and losers. So I think the hardest thing that
we'll have to deal with is the soft letdown once we get those who cannot
sustain, who cannot be sustained. So how do we figure out how to-- what
does our landscape kind of look like in the future is what I'm asking.
Agriculture occupies a big portion of the land and it also controls quite
a bit of the water but is it sustainable and that's the good question.
Cities are going to continue to grow because population continues to grow.
And can they parse anymore out of the system themselves. Those are all

going to be very difficult questions. And there will be winners and
losers.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Anything else we missed?
>> Sarge Green: No, it's been one heck of a rollercoaster ride for me. So
I think you got a sense of that. And I don't whether I'm unique or
atypical but I suspect not. I suspect that everybody that has talked to
you has found that there's been these ups and downs throughout their
careers and that seems to be the constant tone in the water business.
>> Thomas Holyoke: I think the majority of them have been relatively
optimistic about the future, guardedly optimistic.
>> Sarge Green: Guardedly optimistic. Okay.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Thank you very much.
>> Sarge Green: Okay.

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