WEBVTT 00:00:01.459 --> 00:00:06.005 This is Paul Hertz and Jennifer Sweeney of Arizona State University 00:00:06.038 --> 00:00:13.456 recording an interview on December 4th, 2017 with Andrei Potocnik in Camp 00:00:13.489 --> 00:00:16.515 Verde Arizona. 00:00:16.548 --> 00:00:20.467 Andre. Thank you for uh coming and speaking with us today. I really 00:00:20.500 --> 00:00:24.486 appreciate it. You're welcome. Can you start out by telling us your name, 00:00:24.519 --> 00:00:28.247 the positions that you held in the Adaptive Management Program and the 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.917 years that you participated in the program? Uh Yes, my name is Andrei 00:00:32.950 --> 00:00:40.326 Potocnik and uh I um was involved in the Adaptive Management Program for 00:00:40.359 --> 00:00:45.375 Glen Canyon Dam uh since its inception, uh the Adaptive Management Program 00:00:45.408 --> 00:00:48.835 , its inception and, and prior to that actually, and I, I can go into that 00:00:48.868 --> 00:00:54.356 as well. Um There was some lead up to uh the beginning of the program that 00:00:54.389 --> 00:00:59.515 had to do with the uh transition to adaptive management. And so that would 00:00:59.548 --> 00:01:04.036 , would have been starting and I think my first appointment might have 00:01:04.069 --> 00:01:10.525 been in 97 1997 something like that. I could be a little bit off on that 00:01:10.558 --> 00:01:15.587 on the numbers. But uh yeah, uh the record of decision on Glen Canyon 00:01:15.620 --> 00:01:23.620 Dam's uh environmental impact statement was signed in October of 1996 in 00:01:23.739 --> 00:01:27.717 Phoenix. Uh, the Secretary of the Interior was there. We had a ceremony 00:01:27.750 --> 00:01:34.486 and, uh Bruce Babbitt signed it and we had a nice little, um, confab of a 00:01:34.519 --> 00:01:38.055 lot of the players that were involved in the environmental studies program 00:01:38.088 --> 00:01:41.376 , Glen Canyon environmental studies program which had preceded the 00:01:41.409 --> 00:01:47.087 Adaptive Management Program. And, uh, so there were a number of people 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:50.217 there, I got a chance to chat with, with Bruce Babbitt and some others. 00:01:50.250 --> 00:01:54.686 And, and uh that was really the official launch of the program. Uh once 00:01:54.719 --> 00:01:58.717 that record of decision was signed because that basically started 00:01:58.750 --> 00:02:03.135 everything that was stipulated in the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992 00:02:03.168 --> 00:02:09.136 . 1 of those things that was the, that there would be an EIS on the dam 00:02:09.169 --> 00:02:13.366 and that uh there would be a long term monitoring program uh that would 00:02:13.399 --> 00:02:20.946 continue uh uh into the future. Um And that long term monitoring program 00:02:20.979 --> 00:02:26.936 took the form of the Adaptive Management Program. And it was uh the 00:02:26.969 --> 00:02:31.755 concept being that despite all the studies that had been done during Glen 00:02:31.788 --> 00:02:35.656 Canyon environmental studies, phase one and phase two, there was still a 00:02:35.689 --> 00:02:39.596 lot of uncertainties with regard to the complexity of the, of the 00:02:39.629 --> 00:02:44.136 ecosystem and the changes, changes that had are still going on or we're, 00:02:44.169 --> 00:02:48.177 we're still going on, aren't still going on today with regard to the uh 00:02:48.210 --> 00:02:52.656 nature of the resources and how they interact with one another and the 00:02:52.689 --> 00:03:00.689 influences that um that, that conspire in some ways, unknown ways um to 00:03:03.719 --> 00:03:07.025 have an adaptive uh require an adaptive management program, an adaptive 00:03:07.058 --> 00:03:11.077 management approach to the management of Glen Canyon Dam. So that was the 00:03:11.110 --> 00:03:14.936 concept of long term monitoring from the Protection Act was established as 00:03:14.969 --> 00:03:21.656 the adaptive management program at that point. Um I, I was uh working for 00:03:21.689 --> 00:03:26.916 Grand Canyon River Guides as a um on the member of the board and, and I, I 00:03:26.949 --> 00:03:33.866 was an officer president and, and so on, vice president and I have been 00:03:33.899 --> 00:03:39.957 involved as sort of Grand can river guides, primary 00:03:39.990 --> 00:03:45.566 liaison, one of the primary people uh with regard to Glen Kane and uh dam 00:03:45.599 --> 00:03:52.055 issues. And um the Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt chose, I mean, 00:03:52.088 --> 00:03:55.967 selecting the different organizations that would represent uh the 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:00.036 stakeholders on the committee that chose Grand Canyon River Guide as a 00:04:00.069 --> 00:04:06.436 nonprofit. Um 501 c three in Flagstaff Arizona as one of the two 00:04:06.469 --> 00:04:10.136 representatives of Nongovernmental organizations that would represent 00:04:10.169 --> 00:04:16.305 recreation, use of the Grand Canyon. So, uh uh so I, I uh was in a 00:04:16.338 --> 00:04:20.846 position to take, be appointed by Grand Canyon River Guides to represent 00:04:20.879 --> 00:04:25.596 Grand Canyon River Guides on the committee. And that's what happened. And 00:04:25.629 --> 00:04:30.825 uh so I was appointed to the Adaptive Management Work Group and since I 00:04:30.858 --> 00:04:35.106 was, go ahead, what year was that, that you were appointed? 00:04:35.139 --> 00:04:41.765 I, I think it was 96. Uh Yeah, 1996. 00:04:41.798 --> 00:04:48.346 Ok. And you served for how many years until 2010. 00:04:48.379 --> 00:04:54.265 So it would have been 14 years, I suppose from like that. 00:04:54.298 --> 00:04:58.687 And initially I was also um I appointed myself to the technical work group 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:03.596 because I was the only one that was around at the Grand Canyon guys that 00:05:03.629 --> 00:05:07.555 wanted to do this kind of stuff. Go to meetings in Phoenix for God's sakes. 00:05:07.588 --> 00:05:11.555 River guides don't like doing that so much. And so I had a propensity for 00:05:11.588 --> 00:05:16.257 it or an, and an interest in it. And so initially, I was on the technical 00:05:16.290 --> 00:05:20.096 work group as well. So I would go, I was the uh MWE and Twig 00:05:20.129 --> 00:05:25.906 representative, by the way, MWE is Adaptive Management Work group and Twig 00:05:25.939 --> 00:05:30.705 is the acronym for the technical work group that we use. 00:05:30.738 --> 00:05:36.217 Uh While I was on those, those committees, the I also served on the 00:05:36.250 --> 00:05:39.976 strategic planning sub-committee for the Adaptive Management Program to 00:05:40.009 --> 00:05:46.305 deve developed the strategic plan for the program. I um I was a co 00:05:46.338 --> 00:05:49.926 chairman of the Public outreach sub-committee for the Adaptive Management 00:05:49.959 --> 00:05:52.106 Program 00:05:52.139 --> 00:05:57.976 and I uh pri those are the two primary subcomittee um appointments that I 00:05:58.009 --> 00:06:02.995 had. There may have been others that don't come to mind right now. But I, 00:06:03.028 --> 00:06:07.245 I might also mention that prior to the Adaptive Management Work group. Um 00:06:07.278 --> 00:06:12.026 when Glen Canyon environmental studies was being completed and finished up 00:06:12.059 --> 00:06:15.395 , that was a bureau of reclamation program that, that ran the science 00:06:15.428 --> 00:06:22.437 leading uh for the EIS process, there was a need uh recognized need that 00:06:22.470 --> 00:06:26.426 there be a transition to the adaptive management work group because the 00:06:26.459 --> 00:06:29.637 infrastructure and the people and the players and the environmental 00:06:29.670 --> 00:06:34.976 studies program needed to either come across and be integrated into the 00:06:35.009 --> 00:06:40.817 adaptive management um program somehow or that transition needed to be 00:06:40.850 --> 00:06:47.437 done um comfortably. And so what was established was an informal group 00:06:47.470 --> 00:06:53.955 called the Transition Work Group. And that was uh existed for about two 00:06:53.988 --> 00:07:00.486 years, I think it was 19 95 and 96. 00:07:00.519 --> 00:07:07.705 Um when that was, and that was uh uh uh more of an informal, it was not a 00:07:07.738 --> 00:07:13.856 federal advisory committee per se, but it was comprised of the players, 00:07:13.889 --> 00:07:17.757 the stakeholders that were going to become the adaptive management work 00:07:17.790 --> 00:07:20.916 group. And 00:07:20.949 --> 00:07:27.616 what it was tasked with was to try to understand um what had been done 00:07:27.649 --> 00:07:31.765 with Glen Canyon environmental studies and take all that body of knowledge 00:07:31.798 --> 00:07:38.366 and experience and move it into the Adaptive Management Program, which 00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:43.377 proved to be challenging why. 00:07:43.410 --> 00:07:47.697 Well, because the Glen Kine environmental studies was headed by a fellow 00:07:47.730 --> 00:07:51.967 named named Dave Wagner and you may know the name he interviewed him. Oh, 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:56.536 you did? OK. Yeah. Da Dave was um you know, a, a real champion of the 00:07:56.569 --> 00:08:00.305 program and uh did a tremendous job for a lot of years earning the 00:08:00.338 --> 00:08:05.015 scientific studies um for the Bureau of reclamation of out of Flagstaff 00:08:05.048 --> 00:08:11.495 Arizona. And he did not for various reasons, decide to stay on with the 00:08:11.528 --> 00:08:19.416 program uh with Adaptive Management Program. And he rather abruptly left 00:08:19.449 --> 00:08:26.476 and left without any um uh uh assistance in making that trans 00:08:26.509 --> 00:08:34.509 transformation happen smoothly. So what another person was appointed, 00:08:34.649 --> 00:08:41.355 Dave Garrett um and he uh was tasked with running the transition work 00:08:41.388 --> 00:08:46.174 group and, and tried to um to make bring what he could from Glen Cane 00:08:46.207 --> 00:08:51.717 Environmental Studies program and make it um transition into the Adaptive 00:08:51.750 --> 00:08:57.326 Management Program as smoothly as possible. Uh So it was a little bit 00:08:57.359 --> 00:09:00.807 rough in the beginning, the transition work group was, was pretty rough 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:05.476 because we didn't have the leadership of Dave Wagner and his institutional 00:09:05.509 --> 00:09:10.875 knowledge available to us and made it. Um a lot of us were kind of new as 00:09:10.908 --> 00:09:17.167 stakeholders to this program. And um it became uh challenging to, to kind 00:09:17.200 --> 00:09:21.385 of ferret out the information that that had been developed by the 00:09:21.418 --> 00:09:24.505 environmental studies program, Glen Canyon Environmental Program, 00:09:24.538 --> 00:09:30.807 environmental Studies Program. So that was uh a bit uh uh challenging. So 00:09:30.840 --> 00:09:35.086 what became apparent very quickly as we went into the Adaptive Management 00:09:35.119 --> 00:09:41.015 Program was that we needed clarity as to our purpose and our goals and, 00:09:41.048 --> 00:09:44.787 and our objectives and so on which, you know, spoke to the need for a 00:09:44.820 --> 00:09:50.275 strategic plan. Because the initial stab at and during the transition work 00:09:50.308 --> 00:09:54.667 group of putting together management objectives for the program was quite 00:09:54.700 --> 00:10:00.476 a hodgepodge. It was a kind of a collective brain dump of everybody on the 00:10:00.509 --> 00:10:07.236 , on the stakeholders on the committee. And it uh it was um everybody 00:10:07.269 --> 00:10:10.246 basically said from this, each stakeholder said, well, I want this to be 00:10:10.279 --> 00:10:14.486 studied and uh I want that to be studied. And, and so we took all this 00:10:14.519 --> 00:10:19.116 brandom of ideas to be studied and realized, you know, I took it back to 00:10:19.149 --> 00:10:23.866 home and showed it to my, some of my people at Grand Canyon River guide. 00:10:23.899 --> 00:10:27.787 And we're like, this is crazy. It's, it was all levels of speci 00:10:27.820 --> 00:10:34.856 specificity and generality from um that people wanted to know about and I 00:10:34.889 --> 00:10:40.476 wanted to have studied. And so we had to kind of pull that together. And I 00:10:40.509 --> 00:10:45.885 , and I, I did that with the help of Kelly Burke um from the Grand Canyon 00:10:45.918 --> 00:10:50.736 Wellness Council. She, she was working with us there in Flagstaff and we, 00:10:50.769 --> 00:10:56.417 we uh uh put together uh that document into, into a, a sort of a more 00:10:56.450 --> 00:11:04.025 readable semblance uh of ordered by s um spec specific specificity and 00:11:04.058 --> 00:11:09.645 generality. And from that, it became apparent that um the secretary 00:11:09.678 --> 00:11:12.927 decided and when I say the secretary, I refer to the Secretary of the 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:20.236 Interior, um he decided that we really needed to um have a sub-committee 00:11:20.269 --> 00:11:24.086 that was directed specifically toward getting a, a strategic plan 00:11:24.119 --> 00:11:28.005 developed and go through a process that would, that had everybody involved 00:11:28.038 --> 00:11:34.385 So from that, the strategic planning subcomittee was appointed and I was 00:11:34.418 --> 00:11:38.645 on it, there was um I think six of us or seven, maybe seven of us on that 00:11:38.678 --> 00:11:45.586 committee, we had representatives from recreation, environmental uh tribal 00:11:45.619 --> 00:11:53.619 hydropower uh um and interior. So we had a nice really round well rounded 00:11:54.450 --> 00:11:59.275 uh representation of the various components of the stakeholder groups. And 00:11:59.308 --> 00:12:07.308 it was a long process about a two year process. So the 1996 to 1997 or 00:12:08.109 --> 00:12:16.109 eight is that, that would have been 1997 through 2000. Um ok. 00:12:17.908 --> 00:12:24.686 Yeah, we kind of, it was pretty well. We had put uh I I wrote a series of 00:12:24.719 --> 00:12:32.076 articles that you're certainly welcome to access and use that outlined the 00:12:32.109 --> 00:12:37.116 development of that process, that plan, but I I can give it to you just 00:12:37.149 --> 00:12:41.807 verbally now very quickly. Um 00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:45.427 Basically, we decided the secretary said you guys need to go, you 00:12:45.460 --> 00:12:51.326 stakeholders need to go on a river trip together. He said, and this was at 00:12:51.359 --> 00:12:56.047 a, at a P happened at a party that we had in Flagstaff at one of the uh I 00:12:56.080 --> 00:12:58.895 think it was maybe Dave Garrett's house. You know, a lot of the 00:12:58.928 --> 00:13:02.255 stakeholders were there, secretary was there and secretaries appoint you 00:13:02.288 --> 00:13:08.375 for water and power was there. And like assistant secretary and uh uh we 00:13:08.408 --> 00:13:11.537 just were talking about it over cocktails and I said, how about we do have 00:13:11.570 --> 00:13:13.787 a river trip? You know, that would be one place where we could at least 00:13:13.820 --> 00:13:17.917 get started talking in an informal basis and, and not being so entrenched 00:13:17.950 --> 00:13:23.505 in our, in the room to, you know, on our typical way that things had been 00:13:23.538 --> 00:13:29.496 , there were a lot of, there was a lot of mutual distrust and initially, 00:13:29.529 --> 00:13:34.866 it wasn't like one big happy family when we started. In fact, um it was, 00:13:34.899 --> 00:13:42.076 it was a lot of like everybody's um positioning themselves and trying to 00:13:42.109 --> 00:13:49.395 figure out what, where they stand. And so the, we hired a, they hired a uh 00:13:49.428 --> 00:13:55.106 facilitator to go on the river trip. Uh Mary Orton, you may know we have 00:13:55.139 --> 00:14:00.297 heard her. We did. Oh, great. OK. Yeah, Mary's great. She's, she uh did a 00:14:00.330 --> 00:14:04.505 tremendous job on the river trip and we were on an eight day motorized 00:14:04.538 --> 00:14:11.275 pontoon trip and on the river and um developed a vision statement for the 00:14:11.308 --> 00:14:18.297 program, which was a sh short vision statement, but it's very beautifully 00:14:18.330 --> 00:14:22.417 written and everybody was on board with it and nobody argued with the 00:14:22.450 --> 00:14:26.436 language. Everybody said this sounds good to us. Let's we came off that 00:14:26.469 --> 00:14:33.645 trip with a vision, a common vision which it's a start and, and uh and 00:14:33.678 --> 00:14:39.246 then, and then also a uh uh 00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:47.279 and step down from the vision plan. Uh The am I thinking of um 00:14:50.440 --> 00:14:56.996 the vision statement followed by, well, we developed principles 00:14:57.029 --> 00:15:04.226 um it that required a lot of hashing out um in meetings after the river 00:15:04.259 --> 00:15:12.259 trip. Let me see if I've got it here somewhere 00:15:14.129 --> 00:15:17.967 while you're looking. Let me see if I have this correct. You're in the 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:22.866 transition between G CE S the environmental studies program and a full 00:15:22.899 --> 00:15:28.297 blown adaptive management program. And uh you're looking for a common 00:15:28.330 --> 00:15:34.255 vision and a common set of uh goals and objectives to guide the 00:15:34.288 --> 00:15:37.765 development of the adaptive management program, right? OK. A vision 00:15:37.798 --> 00:15:40.755 statement and which is very brief and then a mission statement, that was 00:15:40.788 --> 00:15:45.677 what I was kind of searching my vision, my brain for. Um And so we have a 00:15:45.710 --> 00:15:50.566 mission state vision, a mission statement. And um and then there was a lot 00:15:50.599 --> 00:15:54.816 of discussion around, of course, all the language in there because um a 00:15:54.849 --> 00:16:01.346 lot of nit picking about, we know what the meaning of that is, uh that 00:16:01.379 --> 00:16:05.917 sort of thing um to be facetious. But, and then we realized that, you know 00:16:05.950 --> 00:16:08.596 , if we're gonna develop goals for the program, we have to, we, we had a 00:16:08.629 --> 00:16:11.547 bunch of um 00:16:11.580 --> 00:16:17.407 preconceived ideas about how we wanted to look at the ecosystem, how we 00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:22.787 wanted to um guide our development of goals for the program. And that's 00:16:22.820 --> 00:16:26.255 what we ended up calling the principles. And we have these eight 00:16:26.288 --> 00:16:33.186 principles that we developed and they were basically established the, the 00:16:33.219 --> 00:16:37.366 agreed upon understanding of what we were doing and what why we were doing 00:16:37.399 --> 00:16:44.907 it and, and um and recognizing the limitations of what we could do once 00:16:44.940 --> 00:16:47.866 the principles were hashed out and this was after the river trip. Now, 00:16:47.899 --> 00:16:52.287 this is in a whole series of meetings over, over a period of two years, 00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:57.505 the principal developed, we went and developed the goals for the program 00:16:57.538 --> 00:17:05.538 and there we developed 12 goals as I recall and goals being um 00:17:07.299 --> 00:17:11.575 directions we want the program to go toward with regard to different 00:17:11.608 --> 00:17:14.585 ecosystem components. 00:17:14.618 --> 00:17:19.946 Recognizing that a goal may not be an achievable necessarily by definition 00:17:19.979 --> 00:17:27.065 , but it is a direction uh a desired outcome that we needed to have the 00:17:27.098 --> 00:17:33.305 program move toward, for example, with endangered fish or, you know, 00:17:33.338 --> 00:17:40.936 sandbars or um cultural resources. Um And there was is uh 12 of those 00:17:40.969 --> 00:17:46.107 schools that once that was established, that took a couple of years of 00:17:46.140 --> 00:17:50.347 meetings, each we iterated back and forth with the main adaptive 00:17:50.380 --> 00:17:54.426 management work group. Every time we as a sub-committee would develop the 00:17:54.459 --> 00:17:58.147 next stage of this thing. We would have to vet it with the entire adaptive 00:17:58.180 --> 00:18:04.065 management work group at a meeting and the AMAG only met twice a year. So 00:18:04.098 --> 00:18:07.897 that's why it took two years. So and then we'd have to make sure everybody 00:18:07.930 --> 00:18:12.976 in the all 26 members or seven members that were OK with all the language. 00:18:13.009 --> 00:18:16.926 And, and so it was a really laborious process, but we did get the goals 00:18:16.959 --> 00:18:22.256 written and uh and then, then where the rubber meets the road or the 00:18:22.289 --> 00:18:26.847 management objectives under each goal and, and now management objectives 00:18:26.880 --> 00:18:32.867 as you probably know, are, are achievable um 00:18:32.900 --> 00:18:38.666 by definition. And, and so we got, we went from generality to spe 00:18:38.699 --> 00:18:43.847 specifics of the management objectives and with the management objectives 00:18:43.880 --> 00:18:49.906 established that took some time, it was recognized that we also needed to 00:18:49.939 --> 00:18:56.535 establish information needs. What we call s when I had MS we had is, and 00:18:56.568 --> 00:19:01.647 um under each management objective information needs, what do we need to 00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:04.236 know? What do we still need to learn? What do we need to study in order to 00:19:04.269 --> 00:19:08.746 make this management objective, achieve, be achieved? 00:19:08.779 --> 00:19:13.416 And so it got more lengthy document, of course, got more lengthy because 00:19:13.449 --> 00:19:16.456 of all the information needs to managing objectives. And we had to kind of 00:19:16.489 --> 00:19:21.156 hash that out as well, that things started to slow down at that point with 00:19:21.189 --> 00:19:24.426 regard to developing a strategic plan because that's when it's the 00:19:24.459 --> 00:19:29.825 specifics that people, um different members of the committee would be 00:19:29.858 --> 00:19:34.686 picky about because so many members of the committee had, were 00:19:34.719 --> 00:19:42.276 representing an organization that had money at stake and funding and 00:19:42.309 --> 00:19:48.196 potential. So that always kind of played in the background of these 00:19:48.229 --> 00:19:51.256 decisions, you know, who was gonna get the money to study the natured fish 00:19:51.289 --> 00:19:56.825 ? Was it gonna be Arizona Game and Fish Us station and Wildlife Service? 00:19:56.858 --> 00:20:01.795 You know, that sort of question. Um You know, and, and, and it was 00:20:01.828 --> 00:20:06.055 recognized early on in the program too, that the environmental studies 00:20:06.088 --> 00:20:08.926 program which had been headed up by Glen Canyon. Environmental Studies had 00:20:08.959 --> 00:20:12.857 been headed up by the Bureau of Reclamation. That because the Bureau of 00:20:12.890 --> 00:20:20.107 Reclamation was now um a stakeholder on this committee. It would not be 00:20:20.140 --> 00:20:25.467 appropriate for them to manage the the gathering of good science as we 00:20:25.500 --> 00:20:29.906 used to call it, Dave Wagner called it call it good Science. That is, you 00:20:29.939 --> 00:20:36.647 know, uh um science that is done sci uh um uh things are studied in 00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:41.815 scientifically, in, in a way that everybody trusts with that the outcome. 00:20:41.848 --> 00:20:44.906 Uh the product of the science is something that we can all work with 00:20:44.939 --> 00:20:49.377 information. So it was decided early on that the Grand Canyon Monitoring 00:20:49.410 --> 00:20:54.696 and Research Center for doing the science. This was what replaced the G CE 00:20:54.729 --> 00:20:59.936 S was gonna have to be under an outside organization such as the US 00:20:59.969 --> 00:21:04.756 Geological Survey, which uh which prides itself on being on providing 00:21:04.789 --> 00:21:11.035 independent scientific studies that are not colored or slighted toward any 00:21:11.068 --> 00:21:17.486 particular stakeholder group. So GC Merci get moved to the US Geological 00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:21.785 Survey in Black staff as a program of the US GS was that after the 00:21:21.818 --> 00:21:27.756 transition or during G CE S it, it happened after the transition. OK. 00:21:27.789 --> 00:21:31.785 Because initially and during the transition work group period and if I'm 00:21:31.818 --> 00:21:36.506 remembering correctly, it was still bureau of reclamation was still 00:21:36.539 --> 00:21:43.756 running the GCMRC and but it became kind of quickly realized that you know 00:21:43.789 --> 00:21:49.035 , hey, um it should be really under a more independent group, 00:21:49.068 --> 00:21:54.785 scientifically oriented group reclamation is not, they're not, they don't 00:21:54.818 --> 00:22:00.176 do science for science sake. Us GS does science for science sake. And so 00:22:00.209 --> 00:22:05.446 do you remember if I can interrupt, do you remember any um particular 00:22:05.479 --> 00:22:11.506 specific uh instances or controversies that led to that decision or was it 00:22:11.539 --> 00:22:17.055 just generic? We should have an independent third party agency manage, you 00:22:17.088 --> 00:22:20.986 know, the the science. We were there some studies that the Bureau of 00:22:21.019 --> 00:22:25.446 Reclamation didn't want funded or did want funded that led to a 00:22:25.479 --> 00:22:29.026 controversy within the group that caused this to happen. Well, you know, 00:22:29.059 --> 00:22:33.206 this gets back into the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies Program run by 00:22:33.239 --> 00:22:39.706 the Bureau of Reclamation and headed by Dave Wagner and, and, and uh you 00:22:39.739 --> 00:22:44.476 know, II I, I'm sure you got that information already from people involved 00:22:44.509 --> 00:22:50.075 in G ce s like Dave on this. But the perception at the time that this 00:22:50.108 --> 00:22:53.325 adaptive management program started was that the environmental studies 00:22:53.358 --> 00:22:59.426 program run out of Flagstaff by Wagner was in a biased um in some ways. So 00:22:59.459 --> 00:23:02.585 I think some of the hydropower people in particular, the basin states, 00:23:02.618 --> 00:23:07.506 upper basin states were not happy with the direction that Dave Wagner had 00:23:07.539 --> 00:23:13.926 taken the studies. And so they were concerned that uh reclamation for that 00:23:13.959 --> 00:23:19.006 reason shouldn't be the the agency that does the science. And even though 00:23:19.039 --> 00:23:24.467 Dave Wagner did not stay on the program. Um, there was sort of the history 00:23:24.500 --> 00:23:30.446 there that, that, um, some, there were some, I guess some ill feelings 00:23:30.479 --> 00:23:35.607 around I, that I don't know too much about personally. And it was, in your 00:23:35.640 --> 00:23:41.585 opinion, hydropower interests that were expressing the most amount of 00:23:41.618 --> 00:23:48.946 concern over the direction of the research program. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. 00:23:48.979 --> 00:23:54.117 Western Area Power Administration and, and Creta and Colorado River Energy 00:23:54.150 --> 00:24:01.236 Distribution Association. Unless you're so us other hydropower consumer 00:24:01.269 --> 00:24:06.156 Utah associated associated municipal power systems. But they were the 00:24:06.189 --> 00:24:10.347 three primary advocates for hydropower on this on the program. And there 00:24:10.380 --> 00:24:13.706 it is uh it was always kind of a battle with them because they were the 00:24:13.739 --> 00:24:17.367 principal, the money was coming from hydropower revenues and although 00:24:17.400 --> 00:24:21.637 reimbursable from the Federal Treasury still, 00:24:21.670 --> 00:24:25.887 they, they were watching the dollars and that was their principal concern 00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:30.186 in the program and making sure this thing didn't get out of control. And 00:24:30.219 --> 00:24:34.436 there is concern that, that the that the program have a budgetary cap for 00:24:34.469 --> 00:24:37.526 instance. And that was a big issue for the hydropower people and the upper 00:24:37.559 --> 00:24:41.446 basin states because the upper basin states may get a lot of money from 00:24:41.479 --> 00:24:45.805 the dam, the revenues from the dam go to projects in the upper basin 00:24:45.838 --> 00:24:49.666 states. And so it's a gravy train for them and they don't want that gravy 00:24:49.699 --> 00:24:56.555 train, you know, interrupted um by a bunch of science on Grand Canyon Dam. 00:24:56.588 --> 00:24:59.766 There's a, there's a history there of Glen Canyon Dam, you probably know 00:24:59.799 --> 00:25:03.476 it, that some are familiar with it anyway, um, that it was a very 00:25:03.509 --> 00:25:08.867 controversial project when it was built and, and it engendered a lot of 00:25:08.900 --> 00:25:14.746 public antipathy. And, uh, so there's a lot of people that didn't like the 00:25:14.779 --> 00:25:22.387 dam and popularly, and this was everybody kind of knew that. And so there 00:25:22.420 --> 00:25:27.166 was in ear, there was that, uh, sort of background history had been a big 00:25:27.199 --> 00:25:33.416 environmental fight um to stop dams being built in Gra Grand Canyon and in 00:25:33.449 --> 00:25:39.936 Echo Park and the Upper Basin. And uh those flights had been won by this, 00:25:39.969 --> 00:25:44.597 the environmental community to stop those dams. But the environmental 00:25:44.630 --> 00:25:48.387 community community was not able to stop the building of Glen Canyon dam, 00:25:48.420 --> 00:25:53.186 which there was a lot of lingering resentment about. And so it was, it's 00:25:53.219 --> 00:25:57.916 not a beloved dam but um from most people's point of view, but from the 00:25:57.949 --> 00:26:02.357 upper basin state's point of view, it's, it's their, their baby. You know 00:26:02.390 --> 00:26:05.647 , that's how they could, their storage pod is their bank account, their 00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:09.857 water bank account. You have to make sure they make their downstream uh 00:26:09.890 --> 00:26:13.506 flow requirements to the lower base in Pasley Ferry. And, and that's why 00:26:13.539 --> 00:26:16.347 they wanted to build in the first place. It doesn't have any other purpose 00:26:16.380 --> 00:26:23.206 other than motor boating. And uh and, and so it, it uh and they wanted to 00:26:23.239 --> 00:26:26.857 preserve the integrity of that. So there is some tension around that, 00:26:26.890 --> 00:26:30.276 especially since, right about that same time this whole program started. 00:26:30.309 --> 00:26:37.097 This year, club board of directors voted to uh that they voted to uh 00:26:37.130 --> 00:26:42.367 to, to lobby for the re removal of Glen Canyon Dale. And this was a big 00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:48.166 deal. Uh uh Well, I'm giving you this as background for the kind of the 00:26:48.199 --> 00:26:54.156 social political context of when this dept of management started. 00:26:54.189 --> 00:26:57.387 This was very concerning, of course, because the Sierra Club had been, was 00:26:57.420 --> 00:27:00.956 able to lead the fight in the stopping of the building of dams prior to 00:27:00.989 --> 00:27:05.486 that. And if the Sierra Club could stop the dams from being built, then 00:27:05.519 --> 00:27:10.976 can potentially, they could remove a dam, they get public behind it. So 00:27:11.009 --> 00:27:13.766 there was the concern on the part of a lot of the stakeholders that are 00:27:13.799 --> 00:27:17.867 basin states and the hydropower people that they wanted to protect their 00:27:17.900 --> 00:27:22.926 interests in Glen Canyon Dam and not have this kind of thing potentially 00:27:22.959 --> 00:27:26.726 happen. So I think that there was a real uh interest in having the 00:27:26.759 --> 00:27:29.325 Adaptive Management program and then being involved in the Adaptive 00:27:29.358 --> 00:27:33.476 Management program early on those constituencies because they thought, wow 00:27:33.509 --> 00:27:37.696 , if we could make adaptive management of the damn work, maybe we can stop 00:27:37.729 --> 00:27:42.916 talking about this damn Decommissioning thing that people were was out 00:27:42.949 --> 00:27:48.416 there. And uh the Sierra Club was pushing for earlier in the interview, 00:27:48.449 --> 00:27:55.156 you said that there was some conflict and distrust among members of uh 00:27:55.189 --> 00:28:00.535 what would become the AM wig. Um Is it, is it the same tension that you're 00:28:00.568 --> 00:28:04.717 referring to now? That is basically tension between environmental and 00:28:04.750 --> 00:28:10.795 scientific interests versus hydropower interests or was the tension much 00:28:10.828 --> 00:28:17.805 more complex than that? Oh, I, I think it's always been there but I have 00:28:17.838 --> 00:28:21.996 not been in the program now for seven years. Uh So I don't really, I'm not 00:28:22.029 --> 00:28:25.986 been following it uh for the last seven years. So I don't know today 00:28:26.019 --> 00:28:29.276 what's going on with this, this program? I know, but I'm referring back 00:28:29.309 --> 00:28:34.916 when, when you started in the program, the shift from G ce S to the 00:28:34.949 --> 00:28:39.545 Adaptive Management Program. Um You said that there was tension and 00:28:39.578 --> 00:28:44.506 distrust between people at that time, which is why you brought Mary Organ 00:28:44.539 --> 00:28:48.926 in to try to bring people together was that tension and distrust. 00:28:48.959 --> 00:28:52.506 Basically, the split between the hydropower interests and environmental 00:28:52.539 --> 00:28:59.367 interests. All nothing much more complicated than that. That was the basic. 00:28:59.400 --> 00:29:04.946 Yeah, side taking. Yeah, I would say that that's pretty, you know, pretty 00:29:04.979 --> 00:29:08.976 much it. There was a question of how the tribe were gonna integrate the 00:29:09.009 --> 00:29:14.325 tribes into it because they had not really been involved much before. And 00:29:14.358 --> 00:29:20.526 um the, the cultural resources issue in general. Um 00:29:20.559 --> 00:29:27.367 Where do they fit in, in that sort of uh social scenario milieu? They, 00:29:27.400 --> 00:29:32.156 they um in general, in the Adaptive Management Program, they tended to be 00:29:32.189 --> 00:29:37.347 quiet, very quiet, they didn't 00:29:37.380 --> 00:29:41.956 speak out a lot. But when they did speak, you know, one of them would 00:29:41.989 --> 00:29:45.956 speak and there was one of them that was pretty outspoken from wallaby but 00:29:45.989 --> 00:29:53.815 , uh, uh, Clay Bravo and he didn't, he didn't miss any words but, but more 00:29:53.848 --> 00:29:58.097 , more often than not, they would, uh, being kind of out of their element 00:29:58.130 --> 00:30:02.847 in the top of a skyscraper in Phoenix, Arizona in a windowless room. They 00:30:02.880 --> 00:30:06.526 didn't really have a lot of comfort, I don't think around being there and 00:30:06.559 --> 00:30:10.717 , and functioning with Robert Robert's rules of order, you know, which was 00:30:10.750 --> 00:30:15.347 something that we all had to learn. But they were, that was pretty far a 00:30:15.380 --> 00:30:20.377 field from their, their manner of dealing with things. One of the great 00:30:20.410 --> 00:30:24.516 things about the river trip was that it was uh the tribal members on the 00:30:24.549 --> 00:30:29.996 river trip felt perfectly at home and, and, and the, and there was a sort 00:30:30.029 --> 00:30:33.686 of egalitarian feel like we're all just these people on this boat going 00:30:33.719 --> 00:30:37.996 down this river. And so it was really wonderful that river trip was great 00:30:38.029 --> 00:30:43.016 at breaking down a lot of the preconceptions or fears that people held 00:30:43.049 --> 00:30:47.575 toward one another. Uh recognizing, getting to know each other as 00:30:47.608 --> 00:30:51.805 individuals and we're not bogeyman, you know, gonna bite your head off or 00:30:51.838 --> 00:30:55.647 something because, you know, a lot of per a lot of those perceptions did 00:30:55.680 --> 00:31:00.035 exist. And, and so I think it was because of that we were able to generate 00:31:00.068 --> 00:31:06.416 a, a strategic plan that uh everybody could could be on board with, um, 00:31:06.449 --> 00:31:10.906 including the tribes and it took a lot of, um, back and forth. You know, 00:31:10.939 --> 00:31:14.637 there is a, there are inherent questions right off the bat like, well, ok 00:31:14.670 --> 00:31:19.016 , environment. Uh, you know, recreationally, you've got a representative 00:31:19.049 --> 00:31:24.285 like my myself from, represents down river interests from Willow ferry, uh 00:31:24.318 --> 00:31:28.967 , principally concerned ostensibly with camping, beaches in the Grand 00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:33.535 Canyon and that sort of thing as a primary concern. And then you got the 00:31:33.568 --> 00:31:37.246 other recreational representative, a non G governmental organization tried 00:31:37.279 --> 00:31:42.347 unlimited that was interested in the blue ribbon trout fishery upstream of 00:31:42.380 --> 00:31:48.926 this theory. And, um, so two kind of very different types of recreational 00:31:48.959 --> 00:31:54.766 concerns, white water downstream, trout fishery upstream. And then, and 00:31:54.799 --> 00:32:00.467 then the inherent conflict between trout and native fish, trout being, uh 00:32:00.500 --> 00:32:06.097 introduced non native and other non natives in the system and how we were 00:32:06.130 --> 00:32:11.256 going to deal with that because, uh, it was clear that, you know, you and 00:32:11.289 --> 00:32:15.387 that, and that still remains an issue. It has been an issue with that ran 00:32:15.420 --> 00:32:19.426 through the whole program, uh, you know, native bird versus non native 00:32:19.459 --> 00:32:23.597 fish. And where are the societal values? How do you integrate those 00:32:23.630 --> 00:32:29.377 societal values when you have a conflict between the two perceived or more 00:32:29.410 --> 00:32:34.226 real and, and in a lot of regard respects, I think it was really real, 00:32:34.259 --> 00:32:39.137 that conflict. But so, you know, there was, um, those are the kind of 00:32:39.170 --> 00:32:42.936 things we dealt with. In that early part of the program. 00:32:42.969 --> 00:32:48.545 Thanks. That was very helpful. Um You mentioned Clay Bravo of the wallaby 00:32:48.578 --> 00:32:51.805 and he was very outspoken. How long was he on the program? And would you 00:32:51.838 --> 00:32:58.436 recommend that we try to interview him? Oh, how long did Clay stay on? I, 00:32:58.469 --> 00:33:03.075 he stayed on for a couple of years. Anyway, a few years, I wanna say it. 00:33:03.108 --> 00:33:06.357 I'd have to go back in the records, the records to see how long he was 00:33:06.390 --> 00:33:11.555 actually on the committee. But he was uh you know, it, it, it was 00:33:11.588 --> 00:33:17.085 refreshing uh for me. I mean, it was because he didn't, he was outspoken. 00:33:17.118 --> 00:33:20.926 And so you knew where he stood with other tribal members often didn't, 00:33:20.959 --> 00:33:24.936 they didn't say much or say anything, almost very little. So you didn't 00:33:24.969 --> 00:33:30.055 really know, you know, where they came out on things um on different 00:33:30.088 --> 00:33:33.446 issues. Um 00:33:33.479 --> 00:33:40.676 And so that was, that was uh um yeah, uh you mentioned uh that you served 00:33:40.709 --> 00:33:44.545 on an outreach committee or some public outreach. Yeah, public outreach. 00:33:44.578 --> 00:33:48.746 Can you tell me a little bit about that committee? Its work and what you 00:33:48.779 --> 00:33:53.805 did? Well, it was recognized early on that this is a very public place. 00:33:53.838 --> 00:33:57.877 Grand Canyon is really, really 00:33:57.910 --> 00:34:04.926 um iconic National Park and World Heritage site and so on. And people were 00:34:04.959 --> 00:34:08.635 gonna pay, be paying attention a lot to what we're this dam was, had a, 00:34:08.668 --> 00:34:12.827 had a lot of controversy around it. People are gonna be paying attention 00:34:12.860 --> 00:34:16.267 and they're gonna like, want to know, OK, what's going on with this 00:34:16.300 --> 00:34:22.215 program? What are you guys doing? There's gonna be public scrutiny and 00:34:22.248 --> 00:34:26.345 what the bureau of reclamation in particular wanted to do as the leader of 00:34:26.378 --> 00:34:30.195 the Adaptive Management work group they wanted. And the operator of the 00:34:30.228 --> 00:34:36.405 dam, they wanted to make sure that we had a way of, of informing the 00:34:36.438 --> 00:34:40.925 public as to what went on in our meetings, what are the directions we were 00:34:40.958 --> 00:34:46.186 going, what the discussions were about? And so the, the secretary 00:34:46.219 --> 00:34:49.296 recognized right off the bat, the program started that this would be an 00:34:49.329 --> 00:34:53.675 important function of the program that we would need to be transparent to 00:34:53.708 --> 00:34:59.256 the public. So the manage work group said, ok, let's let's establish a 00:34:59.289 --> 00:35:02.126 public outreach 00:35:02.159 --> 00:35:07.967 subcommittee's that allow us to translate the complexities of what we do 00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:13.836 in this committee into understandable form that's accurate and believable. 00:35:13.869 --> 00:35:20.747 And um and that is broadly accepted within the committee as being 00:35:20.780 --> 00:35:27.155 accurate and understandable to the public. So that's what we sought to do 00:35:27.188 --> 00:35:31.997 as we were basically a public education committee. So we developed a 00:35:32.030 --> 00:35:34.195 website 00:35:34.228 --> 00:35:40.526 and uh I did a lot of uh translating to the public of what the, what the 00:35:40.559 --> 00:35:44.655 program was doing. Did you hold uh public meetings and invite people to 00:35:44.688 --> 00:35:48.606 come and get updates on what was going on. All the meetings were open to 00:35:48.639 --> 00:35:52.845 the public? Ok. So you didn't have anything extra specifically designed 00:35:52.878 --> 00:35:58.977 beyond the committee meetings themselves, designed to sort of invite 00:35:59.010 --> 00:36:04.425 interested people to come and ask questions. And I don't remember actually 00:36:04.458 --> 00:36:11.566 doing that, um, print any materials that you distributed. 00:36:11.599 --> 00:36:16.316 Yeah, we probably did. I'd have to go back and find that file, um, in that 00:36:16.349 --> 00:36:21.896 big box of files right out there in my truck. Right. Um, it, it, it, uh, 00:36:21.929 --> 00:36:25.287 whatever we did, I've got a public outreach file and it's probably got 00:36:25.320 --> 00:36:29.115 something in it. I also, I, you know, I have all those paper files out of 00:36:29.148 --> 00:36:34.106 my truck and I just wanted to let you know that those are available to you 00:36:34.139 --> 00:36:39.477 , of course, and, and um but a lot, I still have a lot of files that are 00:36:39.510 --> 00:36:46.327 just uh that are not in there. They're on, on my computer at home of 00:36:46.360 --> 00:36:50.606 different things, that activities that we did think things I generated 00:36:50.639 --> 00:36:54.126 reports that I made back to Grand Canyon River guys. I, I gave, I always 00:36:54.159 --> 00:37:00.296 gave an update report in every invoice that I submitted for my work. So, 00:37:00.329 --> 00:37:03.956 and in a way those invoices and that and that all those invoices that are 00:37:03.989 --> 00:37:08.217 , they're not secret. I mean, they're, they're available too. I mean, 00:37:08.250 --> 00:37:10.997 they're just mice. This is what happened, you know, this is what we've 00:37:11.030 --> 00:37:13.546 been doing. This is not what we've been confronting the issues we've been 00:37:13.579 --> 00:37:18.546 doing and a quick summary, you know, just executive summary of, of uh 00:37:18.579 --> 00:37:23.106 where the program's been going and I think that they would be um very 00:37:23.139 --> 00:37:29.526 useful um to maybe he uh help, you know, because there's a lot of detail 00:37:29.559 --> 00:37:32.945 in there that I don't remember right off the top of my head right now that 00:37:32.978 --> 00:37:36.517 necessarily, uh 00:37:36.550 --> 00:37:40.385 a lot of them are in old formats of a word that I don't, I can't even open 00:37:40.418 --> 00:37:43.066 anymore. 00:37:43.099 --> 00:37:47.126 I probably could if I messed around. But I just, I realized that I'm 00:37:47.159 --> 00:37:50.046 looking back at them in the last couple of days. I like, I can't even open 00:37:50.079 --> 00:37:56.146 these things anymore. This word has, you know, uh it changed anyway, there 00:37:56.179 --> 00:38:00.126 is that and there's also the um articles that I wrote for the Boatman's 00:38:00.159 --> 00:38:05.727 quarterly review periodically that are also insightful as to the progress 00:38:05.760 --> 00:38:11.686 of the program because that you asked about public outreach. And since the 00:38:11.719 --> 00:38:17.827 group I represent are um the public um in a big in the river running 00:38:17.860 --> 00:38:22.385 public, those interested very, you know, the element of the public that's 00:38:22.418 --> 00:38:27.856 very interested in, in that in what's going on with this program. Um It 00:38:27.889 --> 00:38:33.037 was important, I felt that I, that I let the public know our public know 00:38:33.070 --> 00:38:36.396 kind of what was going on with the Adaptive Management Program. Do you 00:38:36.429 --> 00:38:40.287 have a list of, of the articles that you wrote for Boatman's Quarterly? 00:38:40.320 --> 00:38:42.615 Yeah, I do. 00:38:42.648 --> 00:38:46.486 We can just go look them up and most of the uh Boatman's quarterly are 00:38:46.519 --> 00:38:50.936 available digitally online. Most of them. Yeah. Ok. So here it is. Yeah, I 00:38:50.969 --> 00:38:54.655 did a quick search of Boatman's quarterly reviews. It has my name in it. 00:38:54.688 --> 00:39:00.566 And so this is what I came I got and I went through and if there's an N 00:39:00.599 --> 00:39:08.599 next to it, it's not online yet. Uh There's a Y it is online. The N is I, 00:39:09.978 --> 00:39:14.896 I ran, I did, I printed out of it. Oh, excellent. Thank God. Can we keep 00:39:14.929 --> 00:39:21.577 this list here for you? You can keep all these printouts too wonderful. 00:39:21.610 --> 00:39:26.296 These, these are pronounced from, from the vote for the N I guess they're 00:39:26.329 --> 00:39:31.046 the ns I think I got most of them. There are a few in there that aren't. I 00:39:31.079 --> 00:39:36.836 think I got most of them by the time I left home today, uh Here's an 00:39:36.869 --> 00:39:41.227 example of a meeting report that I would submit with my invoice to give 00:39:41.260 --> 00:39:46.316 you a sense of, you know, that was one of the early ones that I did. 00:39:46.349 --> 00:39:50.925 That's a lot of detail. Yeah, 00:39:50.958 --> 00:39:55.816 and here's the, here's the report. See, I was funded my part my for going 00:39:55.849 --> 00:40:02.057 to meetings by the Grand Canyon Conservation Fund. I just thought, can you 00:40:02.090 --> 00:40:04.796 explain the Grand Canyon Conservation Fund? Where does the money come from 00:40:04.829 --> 00:40:09.526 ? What is it to be asked for? Uh what happened was early on. It was 00:40:09.559 --> 00:40:13.856 recognized by the river outfitters, commercial river outfitters. Who are 00:40:13.889 --> 00:40:19.356 they make money taking people down the river that um our involvement in 00:40:19.389 --> 00:40:22.186 this committee was important, important for them to know about, important 00:40:22.219 --> 00:40:26.816 for, for us to get it right. And they were not the ones selected to be on 00:40:26.849 --> 00:40:30.195 the committee. The this informal sort of nongovernmental Grand Canyon 00:40:30.228 --> 00:40:37.095 River guys which were group which I I were sorting were kind of their, 00:40:37.128 --> 00:40:42.126 their um representative as you might say, their connection to. So what 00:40:42.159 --> 00:40:48.675 they developed was uh they got organized, the outs did for the first time 00:40:48.708 --> 00:40:53.206 because not because of this program so much as because of the revision of 00:40:53.239 --> 00:40:57.865 the river management plan in Grand Canyon, which directly influence and 00:40:57.898 --> 00:41:02.385 involve them. But they, they got an umbrella organization called the Grand 00:41:02.418 --> 00:41:06.615 Canyon River Outfitters Association. And with that Grand Canyon River 00:41:06.648 --> 00:41:11.206 Outfitters as Ocean Association did was they, they uh tried to get this 00:41:11.239 --> 00:41:17.077 fund started that would fund um environmental projects or issues having to 00:41:17.110 --> 00:41:21.186 do with protecting the river in the Grand Canyon. And so, and that became 00:41:21.219 --> 00:41:25.796 called the Grand Canyon Conservation Fund. About what year was that 00:41:25.829 --> 00:41:31.876 organization in 97 I think? Ok. Right in the beginning when, because the 00:41:31.909 --> 00:41:35.086 MP is beginning because, yeah, the River management, Colorado River 00:41:35.119 --> 00:41:41.236 Management Plan, ZR MP, which you call it was being revisited at that time. 00:41:41.269 --> 00:41:46.675 And that was hugely controversial, you may know um because the real, 00:41:46.708 --> 00:41:52.006 that's a whole other topic, but that's what, that's what got the 00:41:52.039 --> 00:41:56.086 Outfitters organized and then they had this conservation in front and what 00:41:56.119 --> 00:41:59.606 they decided to do, which was pretty clever. They said, well, we're just 00:41:59.639 --> 00:42:07.639 how we'll fund this Conser UC Con conservation fund is, will um ask our 00:42:08.039 --> 00:42:12.977 clientele when they sign up for one of our river trips that if they would 00:42:13.010 --> 00:42:19.606 like to donate $1 per day of their river trip to this conservation fund, 00:42:19.639 --> 00:42:24.405 that would be a pool of money used to fund. For instance, my involvement, 00:42:24.438 --> 00:42:28.186 our involvement in the Adaptive Management Program. There were other 00:42:28.219 --> 00:42:33.796 things they funded as well, but they funded me to go to meetings basically. 00:42:33.829 --> 00:42:39.126 And uh so it sounds like a dollar a day, doesn't sound like very much. 00:42:39.159 --> 00:42:43.945 But when you talk about uh 100 and 20,000 user days and you get 00:42:43.978 --> 00:42:47.675 broad-based involvement by all the out bidders, you're talking about a 00:42:47.708 --> 00:42:51.836 significant chunk of change being generated every year. 100 and $20,000. I 00:42:51.869 --> 00:42:55.756 don't know, something like that. So it, it, it wasn't that much because 00:42:55.789 --> 00:42:58.506 not all the out bidders got involved in it right away. They were, had to 00:42:58.539 --> 00:43:02.236 be kind of coerced into it by their fellows. But, but eventually most of 00:43:02.269 --> 00:43:07.195 them did buy into the program and they found that most of their clientele 00:43:07.228 --> 00:43:12.425 were happy, you know, after they, they spent $5000 on a river trip to put 00:43:12.458 --> 00:43:19.365 in additional $15 for the conservation even no sweat. Ok. So it was easy a 00:43:19.398 --> 00:43:24.445 way to generate money. And it was uh so grand can of guides would in turn 00:43:24.478 --> 00:43:28.816 uh request money from them each year to fund our involvement in the 00:43:28.849 --> 00:43:34.236 program. And that's why I kept these invoices formalized and reports to 00:43:34.269 --> 00:43:37.486 the conservation Fund committee. Here's one of my very first reports to 00:43:37.519 --> 00:43:42.046 the Grand Canyon Conservation Fund. Uh Initially, I adjusted it to them 00:43:42.079 --> 00:43:46.586 later. I just addressed it to uh Lynn Hamilton as an executive director at 00:43:46.619 --> 00:43:50.615 GCRG and she would convey it to them, but that gives you a flavor or a 00:43:50.648 --> 00:43:56.077 sense of kind of what, how I would report on what I was doing. I say I 00:43:56.110 --> 00:44:00.776 should say we were doing because I only served on both the Twig and the Am 00:44:00.809 --> 00:44:03.925 wig for the first couple of years transition work group and then the Twig 00:44:03.958 --> 00:44:08.436 and Am wig. I did all the meetings, but I was rapidly reaching personally 00:44:08.469 --> 00:44:14.756 a burnout of meeting burnout and I realized I needed help. Uh And uh 00:44:14.789 --> 00:44:19.736 that's when I got Matt Kaplinsky involved and that became my colleague on 00:44:19.769 --> 00:44:23.986 the and he was my twig appointee. So I appointed him to be the technical 00:44:24.019 --> 00:44:27.807 work representative for me and he started handling all the kind of heavy 00:44:27.840 --> 00:44:31.896 lifting. You might say that happened on the twig because the twig is where 00:44:31.929 --> 00:44:36.046 the rubber hit, hit the road really in this program, whatever the twig did 00:44:36.079 --> 00:44:40.956 and recommended to the AMW, the AM wig would generally go hm ok, make it 00:44:40.989 --> 00:44:45.017 so and so there wasn't a lot of because the Amor is mostly composed of 00:44:45.050 --> 00:44:49.497 pretty high, higher up the administrative ladder people. So, for instance 00:44:49.530 --> 00:44:53.606 , you know, and the AMW representing Grand Canyon National Park was the 00:44:53.639 --> 00:44:57.566 superintendent. So I sat shoulder to shoulder with the superintendent. You 00:44:57.599 --> 00:45:02.086 know, we have the same boat on the right next to the, you know, cultural 00:45:02.119 --> 00:45:07.666 preservation officer for the Hopi Tribe. And so uh Western Regional 00:45:07.699 --> 00:45:12.595 Director for the Bureau of Reclamation, uh you know, Western Director of 00:45:12.628 --> 00:45:16.276 Western Power Administration, I mean, these guys are high up in their 00:45:16.309 --> 00:45:24.309 organizations. Um but you had this uh but we, but so they not necessarily 00:45:24.978 --> 00:45:29.876 scientifically trained at all and probably not in most cases, they are 00:45:29.909 --> 00:45:35.666 more uh administrators and there used to be supervisory positions and so 00:45:35.699 --> 00:45:39.135 on the technical work group where each one of us appointed a 00:45:39.168 --> 00:45:42.146 representative on the technical work group which mirrored the adaptive 00:45:42.179 --> 00:45:46.767 management work group was presumably somebody who was more technically 00:45:46.800 --> 00:45:49.736 oriented. They could understand the science that was being developed, they 00:45:49.769 --> 00:45:53.816 could understand how to interpret that material and make recommendations 00:45:53.849 --> 00:45:57.876 to the Amway their amid member and then the A w could discuss it at their 00:45:57.909 --> 00:46:00.436 meetings and make recommendations and turn to the Secretary of the 00:46:00.469 --> 00:46:05.296 Interior, who is the ultimate operator of the dam, the water master of the 00:46:05.329 --> 00:46:11.425 Colorado. And so that's how the chain of command went. I I uh you probably 00:46:11.458 --> 00:46:14.026 know all that already though, right? I mean, you know, the structure of 00:46:14.059 --> 00:46:17.936 the program. Yes. Although it changes over time and I was gonna ask you is 00:46:17.969 --> 00:46:23.086 uh, has the, um, am wig always been bigger than the twig or vice versa? 00:46:23.119 --> 00:46:27.586 Have the number, same size. It's one person. It's a mire come in. OK. And 00:46:27.619 --> 00:46:35.227 , well, almost, um for instance, the A W IC does not have us geological 00:46:35.260 --> 00:46:39.916 survey, um GCRRC and Grand Community marketing and research does not have 00:46:39.949 --> 00:46:44.747 a member on the A W A voting member. They have a member on the technical 00:46:44.780 --> 00:46:50.896 work group uh or at least a representative who could be there to help the 00:46:50.929 --> 00:46:55.066 technical work group understand what the science is that's being done. So 00:46:55.099 --> 00:46:58.997 they're almost a reflection, mere reflection of the MW the twig is. But 00:46:59.030 --> 00:47:03.686 there, there, there may be some differences there early on in the program 00:47:03.719 --> 00:47:08.517 when it first started. Uh one of the upper basin representatives, Wayne 00:47:08.550 --> 00:47:13.017 Cook. I don't know if you interviewed Wayne. Um Yeah. Would you recommend 00:47:13.050 --> 00:47:17.166 that we do? Oh, I'm sure if he's around. So I, I don't you, you got Cliff 00:47:17.199 --> 00:47:21.345 Barrett, didn't you? Yes, he's, I'm surprised he's still around. But yeah 00:47:21.378 --> 00:47:27.155 , cliff was, he was one of the upper, other upper basin guys. And, and uh 00:47:27.188 --> 00:47:30.467 so a lot of times if uh all the upper basin states didn't show up at a 00:47:30.500 --> 00:47:34.717 meeting, you know, some of the Wyoming didn't show up or maybe um New 00:47:34.750 --> 00:47:38.365 Mexico didn't show up or something. Um Wayne would go like he would just 00:47:38.398 --> 00:47:40.865 take all their name cards and put them right in front of him. He says, I'm 00:47:40.898 --> 00:47:45.706 the representative of the Upper Basin. He would just take, he, he, because 00:47:45.739 --> 00:47:49.017 he actually did have some kind of function in that regard with regard to 00:47:49.050 --> 00:47:52.405 the upper basin states. He was kind of the representative who did he work 00:47:52.438 --> 00:48:00.438 for uh Colorado River Commission. I think it was um boy and there was uh 00:48:00.579 --> 00:48:06.905 the Upper Basin States and there are four of them um had their own little 00:48:06.938 --> 00:48:11.115 um conversation that they always have going on because they had a mutual 00:48:11.148 --> 00:48:16.686 interest in in the reservoir and reservoir operations. 00:48:16.719 --> 00:48:20.046 Uh So Wayne, you know, so sometimes there would be a meeting like that 00:48:20.079 --> 00:48:24.115 where not everybody would show be at the meeting. And uh Wayne didn't 00:48:24.148 --> 00:48:29.345 hesitate to represent anybody who wasn't there on the upper basin of the 00:48:29.378 --> 00:48:36.405 upper basin states. So, yeah, he didn't want to let that. Um he's a power 00:48:36.438 --> 00:48:39.925 broker, you know, and he was, he, he used to run Glen Canyon Dam. I mean, 00:48:39.958 --> 00:48:44.385 he was, he was, he's in the revolving door of working for Western area 00:48:44.418 --> 00:48:47.175 Power Administration, working for the Basin states, working for beer 00:48:47.208 --> 00:48:50.316 reclamation at different phases of their career. So we had several of 00:48:50.349 --> 00:48:52.967 those kind of people that had work done different, worked in different 00:48:53.000 --> 00:48:58.686 capacities in the upper basin, for instance. Um And Wayne Cook was a good 00:48:58.719 --> 00:49:04.967 example of that clip Barrett, I think did some of that multifaceted 00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:11.896 work. But uh uh and yeah, so, um 00:49:11.929 --> 00:49:16.026 where, where was I going with that? Um 00:49:16.059 --> 00:49:20.316 Sometimes they were, the committees were there. It was exact mirror twig 00:49:20.349 --> 00:49:27.736 and the hew and, or, or very nearly so, and that's how uh the whole idea 00:49:27.769 --> 00:49:33.747 was that, that the twig would convey to the AM wig who presumably knew 00:49:33.780 --> 00:49:37.445 what their constituency cared about it because they're in a supervisory 00:49:37.478 --> 00:49:43.026 position, you know, superintendent knows what his park needs concerns of 00:49:43.059 --> 00:49:47.997 his park. Uh The head of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area knows what 00:49:48.030 --> 00:49:54.945 their park needs. Andre Poto knows what the re recreational down over 00:49:54.978 --> 00:50:00.146 whitewater river runners need. You know. So we would get uh we would give 00:50:00.179 --> 00:50:04.626 directives to the twig and say we need you to study this to reach these 00:50:04.659 --> 00:50:09.646 certain management objectives. And the twig go like, OK, and they would go 00:50:09.679 --> 00:50:13.967 and hash out the information needs and the different write the request for 00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:18.635 proposals and things like that that were necessary to farm out to the 00:50:18.668 --> 00:50:25.695 scientific community to have competitive uh uh presumably competition for 00:50:25.728 --> 00:50:31.577 those RFPS request for proposals to, to uh do you get the work done and 00:50:31.610 --> 00:50:35.566 the scientific work done? And that was largely under the venue of 00:50:35.599 --> 00:50:37.747 GCMRCGFCMRC 00:50:37.780 --> 00:50:41.477 had many of its scientists in house that would do a lot of the work, but 00:50:41.510 --> 00:50:45.885 there were other agencies and um universities that were engaged as well. 00:50:45.918 --> 00:50:50.577 Arizona State University being one other universities as well. Utah State 00:50:50.610 --> 00:50:58.566 University Jack Schmidt there. Uh He's on our interview and good. Yeah. Um 00:50:58.599 --> 00:51:02.436 because he really knows a lot um 00:51:02.469 --> 00:51:07.967 about G ce S particularly. Uh anyway, can I bring you back to something 00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:11.845 you mentioned a little bit earlier before I lose track of it? Um You 00:51:11.878 --> 00:51:15.236 mentioned that Colorado River Management plan was being revised sometime 00:51:15.269 --> 00:51:19.497 in the late 19 nineties and it was very controversial. Can you tell us um 00:51:19.530 --> 00:51:25.166 uh when did they start making these Colorado River management plans? Um 00:51:25.199 --> 00:51:28.247 for what purpose and why controversial and what was going on in the late 00:51:28.280 --> 00:51:32.885 19 nineties in that revision? Ok. The relationship between the Grand 00:51:32.918 --> 00:51:40.057 Canyon National Park and the River Outfitters is um governed by the river 00:51:40.090 --> 00:51:45.706 management plan that the, that the Grand Canyon develops. And so the 00:51:45.739 --> 00:51:52.896 Colorado per service document Colorado management plan and it is, it was 00:51:52.929 --> 00:51:58.787 designed by the park to be revisited every 10 years. At which time the 00:51:58.820 --> 00:52:02.356 park as part of that would, would re evaluate the Outfitters and their 00:52:02.389 --> 00:52:04.606 performance 00:52:04.639 --> 00:52:09.477 using part criteria to determine whether to renew those concessionaires 00:52:09.510 --> 00:52:17.356 permits or not and to um govern how those permits were, were um applied 00:52:17.389 --> 00:52:20.646 because it was clear from the parks to the park service when the river 00:52:20.679 --> 00:52:24.436 management plan first started in 1972 00:52:24.469 --> 00:52:28.827 that there needed to be regulation of the river out theres because it was 00:52:28.860 --> 00:52:35.037 getting growing fast and the park had no control of it prior to that. And 00:52:35.070 --> 00:52:40.135 this was a revisitation of that original plan. The first big one, it, it 00:52:40.168 --> 00:52:44.467 doesn't exactly happen every 10 years because there's an administrative 00:52:44.500 --> 00:52:51.876 delays and things happen. But uh this was being revisited uh maybe for the 00:52:51.909 --> 00:52:56.816 second time uh since the institution of the, the original River Outfitters 00:52:56.849 --> 00:53:00.747 in 1972 I believe it was. 00:53:00.780 --> 00:53:07.675 And, and so the big issues that had emerged in that 1st 17 years of 00:53:07.708 --> 00:53:10.537 commercial river running, 15 years of commercial river running in Grand 00:53:10.570 --> 00:53:16.717 Canyon in the seventies and eighties, was that the big change was that 00:53:16.750 --> 00:53:22.327 private river trips had increased in demand and number and uh in the Grand 00:53:22.360 --> 00:53:27.166 Canyon and they had traditionally a very small allotment from the Park 00:53:27.199 --> 00:53:31.247 Service management plan. Originally, when it first started, they had 8% of 00:53:31.280 --> 00:53:37.006 the use and commercial had 92% of the use if I'm remembering, right? And 00:53:37.039 --> 00:53:42.236 the the the rapid growth of people outfitting their own river trips 00:53:42.269 --> 00:53:46.686 throughout the seventies and eighties. And the concurrent development of 00:53:46.719 --> 00:53:50.836 all the material materials that you need to run a river trip, boats and 00:53:50.869 --> 00:53:55.997 rafts and ors and equipment, you know, uh was exploding industry, 00:53:56.030 --> 00:54:00.537 recreation and river industry. The private boaters were put on a waiting 00:54:00.570 --> 00:54:04.896 list to get a private trip in the Grand Canyon. 00:54:04.929 --> 00:54:08.405 And it is widely known as one of the most sought after river experiences 00:54:08.438 --> 00:54:12.706 in the world. Um they were, that waiting list was getting longer and 00:54:12.739 --> 00:54:17.796 longer. And so the private boaters got organized and they decided to 00:54:17.829 --> 00:54:23.276 advocate for themselves to get a bigger share of the pie and they fought 00:54:23.309 --> 00:54:30.405 for a 5050 instead of 92 to 8. They wanted it to be 5050. And so, and the 00:54:30.438 --> 00:54:35.026 park didn't want it to get that big because the park is concerned about 00:54:35.059 --> 00:54:37.986 protecting the resource and the park is trying to keep the numbers of 00:54:38.019 --> 00:54:41.477 total use down. So the threat to the commercial outfitters from the 00:54:41.510 --> 00:54:45.586 private outfit, private groups was that they would take away commercial 00:54:45.619 --> 00:54:48.865 use and give it to private use. And this really scared the commercial 00:54:48.898 --> 00:54:54.217 outfitters. That's why they got organized and, and uh uh one of the 00:54:54.250 --> 00:54:58.256 primary reasons. So it was private versus commercial. It was probably the 00:54:58.289 --> 00:55:03.967 biggest issue. The other big issue was wilderness or no wilderness motors 00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:08.845 or no motors. And the wilderness advocates had a very good point to make 00:55:08.878 --> 00:55:16.878 that, that it was a, um designated as a um po potential wilderness area. 00:55:17.139 --> 00:55:22.706 And according to the wilderness act, it was um um potential, which 00:55:22.739 --> 00:55:26.747 wilderness is to be managed as wilderness until such time as Congress 00:55:26.780 --> 00:55:32.365 decides, uh as, as to make it wilderness or not. So yet, there was this 00:55:32.398 --> 00:55:35.666 huge motors are not allowed in wildernesses, but there was this huge 00:55:35.699 --> 00:55:40.146 motorized rafting industry in the Grand Canyon. So the park is going like 00:55:40.179 --> 00:55:43.615 , well, these the wilderness advocates have a really good point. You know 00:55:43.648 --> 00:55:48.037 , they don't wanna hear motors in their wilderness. This is a proposed 00:55:48.070 --> 00:55:51.675 wilderness area, so we have to manage it as such. So they had to do a lot 00:55:51.708 --> 00:55:56.376 of juggling with the, the motor versus non motor controversy. That, uh, 00:55:56.409 --> 00:56:01.686 that, that was two of the big controversies operation of the Glen Canyon 00:56:01.719 --> 00:56:05.977 Dam was kind of off to the side of that depth management program was not 00:56:06.010 --> 00:56:10.586 directly gonna impact directly involved in uh in the river management plan 00:56:10.619 --> 00:56:14.477 per se unless you're talking about science, science, river trips, research 00:56:14.510 --> 00:56:18.717 trips, which had grown in abundance. And with the Glen Canyon 00:56:18.750 --> 00:56:22.467 environmental studies and then the Adaptive Management Program. So we 00:56:22.500 --> 00:56:26.686 started seeing more science trips on the river and, and, and that was 00:56:26.719 --> 00:56:29.155 dictated by the Grand Canyon Protection Act that there would be this long 00:56:29.188 --> 00:56:32.655 term monitoring program. And so that was by a lot of something the park 00:56:32.688 --> 00:56:36.155 had to integrate into how they were going to manage that component of 00:56:36.188 --> 00:56:41.186 overuse. The tribes started coming out and saying what about us? And, and 00:56:41.219 --> 00:56:48.066 uh we have traditional use, use of this region for generations. 00:56:48.099 --> 00:56:54.106 And so there had to be that um that that thing also taken care of park had 00:56:54.139 --> 00:57:00.646 to play the, with the uh tribe, the the concerns of the tribes and 00:57:00.679 --> 00:57:04.635 integrate those concerns as best as possible. And I could tell you about 00:57:04.668 --> 00:57:10.307 how they did that eventually. But Um, and, and, and II, I sort of get into 00:57:10.340 --> 00:57:14.227 where I always got involved in doing science down there. So all the time, 00:57:14.260 --> 00:57:17.747 same time, I'm the AM wig and the twig representative, I've also got, uh, 00:57:17.780 --> 00:57:22.856 I'm, I'm also a co principal investigator on our science project that 00:57:22.889 --> 00:57:27.537 directly influences the program. So, arguably, you know, conflict of 00:57:27.570 --> 00:57:32.296 interest. Yeah, perhaps. But there was a lot of that, um, the US Fish and 00:57:32.329 --> 00:57:36.756 Wildlife Service. You sat on the committee as a member of the A w for 00:57:36.789 --> 00:57:40.086 getting most of the lion's share of the funds fighting with the Arizona 00:57:40.119 --> 00:57:43.865 game of fish or who got to study the fish and you know, whose jurisdiction 00:57:43.898 --> 00:57:48.095 are those native, uh you know, those endangered native fish or how we got 00:57:48.128 --> 00:57:50.756 to split that pie piece of the pie because that was a big chunk of the 00:57:50.789 --> 00:57:54.626 funding was going toward endangered fish. It was a big concern of the 00:57:54.659 --> 00:57:58.486 committee, uh Endangered Species Act as you'd know is a very powerful 00:57:58.519 --> 00:58:02.557 piece of legislation and there isn't, there's a threat, threatened species 00:58:02.590 --> 00:58:05.227 down there. You gotta do something about it if there's endangered 00:58:05.260 --> 00:58:09.467 especially. And uh so the Humpback chub was a big, big deal and the 00:58:09.500 --> 00:58:14.916 program spent a lot of money and uh in some ways and, and, and who got, 00:58:14.949 --> 00:58:18.217 who got to do the research, you know, us fish and wildlife service has 00:58:18.250 --> 00:58:23.396 their scientists, fish, scientists, Arizona game and fish has theirs. A 00:58:23.429 --> 00:58:29.936 Arizona has theirs, of course. Uh It was uh Mink, Mink Wendell, Mink. Yeah. 00:58:29.969 --> 00:58:37.327 And uh so you had three different entities, please. Arizona game and fish 00:58:37.360 --> 00:58:41.986 claim that they uh have jurisdiction over the bed of the river cause that 00:58:42.019 --> 00:58:46.416 the bed of the river is not the water of the river. So the, the bed 00:58:46.449 --> 00:58:50.836 underneath the river is Arizona game and fish jurisdiction. They stood by 00:58:50.869 --> 00:58:55.436 that and, and, and, and oh, there's fish above our bed of the river. Then 00:58:55.469 --> 00:58:58.997 we get a piece of the pie and we're gonna study those fish, us, fish and 00:58:59.030 --> 00:59:02.787 wildlife service. Whoa, whoa, we're, we're charged with the Endangered 00:59:02.820 --> 00:59:07.666 Species Act, you know, we got it. That's our job. And so you can't take 00:59:07.699 --> 00:59:12.256 that away from us, you know, and then Hinkley's, yeah, his clout and his 00:59:12.289 --> 00:59:16.296 history of development of studying fishes and he's got a lot of academic 00:59:16.329 --> 00:59:20.787 clout and history with doing that. So they had to work with that GC mercy. 00:59:20.820 --> 00:59:26.736 Meanwhile, is developing their own in-house fish people that are trying 00:59:26.769 --> 00:59:30.945 to manage all these other fish scientists and figuring out how to outfit 00:59:30.978 --> 00:59:36.526 the chips for them. Uh So it was uh it was the fish issue was a big one. 00:59:36.559 --> 00:59:41.666 Did they ever figure out a way to divide up research responsibilities to, 00:59:41.699 --> 00:59:45.206 you know, like one agency got one fish and another agency got a different 00:59:45.239 --> 00:59:47.756 fish. 00:59:47.789 --> 00:59:53.376 Yeah, they figured it out. Yeah, they, they kind of just figured it out. 00:59:53.409 --> 00:59:58.006 Um And it kind of changed a little bit more back and forth over the years. 00:59:58.039 --> 01:00:03.155 But, uh uh you know, like I, you know, I'd have to go back and look at 01:00:03.188 --> 01:00:06.497 how it actually happened. The people that know a lot more about this than 01:00:06.530 --> 01:00:09.736 I do. My memory is not that great about this, but because I wasn't 01:00:09.769 --> 01:00:14.566 directly a fish scientist, I, my research was on, on uh archaeological 01:00:14.599 --> 01:00:20.876 sites, uh and along the river that were influenced by the dam. So you have 01:00:20.909 --> 01:00:25.146 training as a geologist, right? But you were doing archaeological research 01:00:25.179 --> 01:00:29.706 , geo archaeology, geo archaeology. Can you explain interface between 01:00:29.739 --> 01:00:35.345 geology, geomorphology? Really and archaeology? How do the two interface? 01:00:35.378 --> 01:00:39.776 What's the connection? Oh OK. 01:00:39.809 --> 01:00:41.787 Um 01:00:41.820 --> 01:00:46.807 It was recognized by a Park service. I give you a little background. Um 01:00:46.840 --> 01:00:51.236 Trinkle Jones uh Park Service archaeologist in 1983 when the high flows 01:00:51.269 --> 01:00:56.006 from Glen Canyon Dam were um eroding beaches really severely, very high 01:00:56.039 --> 01:01:01.236 flows out of control dam. She, she was doing uh surveys of archaeological 01:01:01.269 --> 01:01:06.756 sites and found a circumstance situation where the actual archaeological 01:01:06.789 --> 01:01:10.807 sites were eroding away as a result of the uncontrolled releases from lay 01:01:10.840 --> 01:01:15.316 hand down during that year of flooding. That was the in 1983. And from 01:01:15.349 --> 01:01:19.655 that, the park said, hey, the dam is a washing away our the archaeological 01:01:19.688 --> 01:01:23.615 sites that we have to protect. We are mandated to protect the 01:01:23.648 --> 01:01:28.807 archaeological all preserve and protect. So we do so, the question then 01:01:28.840 --> 01:01:35.247 became, is that really true? And how is that happening? And, and this 01:01:35.280 --> 01:01:40.537 became a potentially big deal because tribes would get involved in that, 01:01:40.570 --> 01:01:45.135 whether tribes get involved, uh They, you know, National Historic 01:01:45.168 --> 01:01:48.186 Preservation Act or Acts in Congress, they were passed, that had to do 01:01:48.219 --> 01:01:51.445 with protecting these things, just like the endangered species Act 01:01:51.478 --> 01:01:58.776 protected fish snails. And so, and then the question became, well, is that 01:01:58.809 --> 01:02:05.296 really happening? So we were commissioned to answer that question, how is 01:02:05.329 --> 01:02:11.727 it or is Glen Canyon Dam the operations of Glen Canyon Dam uh affecting 01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:19.425 the erosion of archaeological sites. And if so how and 01:02:19.458 --> 01:02:25.385 if it is, then please develop a quantitative predictive geom morphic model 01:02:25.418 --> 01:02:29.615 for us to understand how that process works. We at the park can understand 01:02:29.648 --> 01:02:32.986 how that works. So what we were commissioned with was the question 01:02:33.019 --> 01:02:39.396 answering the question if, if so how and then develop a model? That's what 01:02:39.429 --> 01:02:45.345 we did in two years, 119 sites. 01:02:45.378 --> 01:02:49.577 Did you do any of that research with uh with tribal um represented 01:02:49.610 --> 01:02:53.497 archaeological representatives? No, we did it in conjunction with the park 01:02:53.530 --> 01:03:00.376 service. So park archaeologists um the park archaeologists directed where 01:03:00.409 --> 01:03:03.727 they wanted us to study. Uh They said they did, they'd done a complete 01:03:03.760 --> 01:03:07.736 survey of the entire river corridor, Jen and Helen Fairley had done that 01:03:07.769 --> 01:03:12.327 with her team previous years during the E I Environmental studies program. 01:03:12.360 --> 01:03:15.385 They knew where all the sites were along the river where there was any 01:03:15.418 --> 01:03:20.807 kind of archaeological feature or material. It's like something like 435 01:03:20.840 --> 01:03:24.885 of them or along there. So there's a lot of them, the parts of the park, 01:03:24.918 --> 01:03:31.247 archaeologists uh Lisa Lee, she kind of directed us. She said, ok, this is 01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:35.606 a region we want you to study. This is a region that we want you to study. 01:03:35.639 --> 01:03:40.456 And principally, we were focused on gully erosion caused by runoff from 01:03:40.489 --> 01:03:44.256 the slopes running through the arch archaeological sites and cutting 01:03:44.289 --> 01:03:48.316 gullies and removing the archaeological sites. So that was our primary 01:03:48.349 --> 01:03:53.666 concern of and we are trying to understand the processes of gully erosion 01:03:53.699 --> 01:03:58.706 if they were um a constant or they were changing over time due to climate 01:03:58.739 --> 01:04:04.537 variation. Possibly. That's a question that we had. Uh how does the uh 01:04:04.570 --> 01:04:11.776 gully process of runoff gulley of interface with the river processes? 01:04:11.809 --> 01:04:15.425 There's two different geom morphic systems, the interface where the people 01:04:15.458 --> 01:04:23.458 used to live in in 1000 years ago and 500 years ago. And so we studied 01:04:23.878 --> 01:04:28.206 principally that interface. And what and the basic conclusion that we came 01:04:28.239 --> 01:04:34.845 up with was that uh yes, the dam, the presence of the dam and the 01:04:34.878 --> 01:04:39.416 operation of the dam is causing the exacerbation of the erosion of 01:04:39.449 --> 01:04:44.115 archaeological sites. And we explained how that was and why that occurred 01:04:44.148 --> 01:04:50.267 was occurring. And um and then we developed a model predictive model. A 01:04:50.300 --> 01:04:55.115 quantitative model for a Geor model for gave it to the park and said, 01:04:55.148 --> 01:04:59.695 here's how you can rate the very relative vulnerabilities of your, your 01:04:59.728 --> 01:05:04.655 known cultural sites to gully erosion. You take measure these parameters, 01:05:04.688 --> 01:05:09.195 you put them into this equation. It'll give you a number and that number 01:05:09.228 --> 01:05:14.827 will be on a scale of 1 to 100 0 to 100 will give us vulnerability. 01:05:14.860 --> 01:05:21.146 And did that lead to uh any uh decisions on altering dam operations as the 01:05:21.179 --> 01:05:25.977 adaptive management plan is sort of designed to do it did. 01:05:26.010 --> 01:05:30.956 Yeah. Well, to make the connection between erosion of archaeological sites 01:05:30.989 --> 01:05:38.989 and the dam operations was huge because now all of a sudden, oh, we have 01:05:39.179 --> 01:05:43.126 to do something about that because until that connection was made 01:05:43.159 --> 01:05:49.405 scientifically, um It was speculation was that the first time that there 01:05:49.438 --> 01:05:55.195 was a scientifically empirically documented connection between dam 01:05:55.228 --> 01:06:01.155 operations and damage to a valued resource downstream. Uh No, there was a 01:06:01.188 --> 01:06:07.316 rich Herford did the, the a lot of the uh um he did a couple of really 01:06:07.349 --> 01:06:10.456 important studies, several, several mapping studies, geomorphology, 01:06:10.489 --> 01:06:15.827 mapping studies in critically archaeologically rich areas down there. And 01:06:15.860 --> 01:06:19.057 he was did that for us geological survey and he made these beautiful maps. 01:06:19.090 --> 01:06:23.416 So he we had his maps to work with which were fantastic and uh very 01:06:23.449 --> 01:06:29.537 detailed. And um and he one of the conclusions of one of his reports, 01:06:29.570 --> 01:06:34.836 which was just an open file report us GS Open file report, I shouldn't say 01:06:34.869 --> 01:06:40.776 just but not mainstream report. But one of the conclusions was that, that 01:06:40.809 --> 01:06:45.626 um he hypothesized that there was this linkage between gully erosion and 01:06:45.659 --> 01:06:52.566 the operations of the Glen Canyon dam. And, and then we had to go out and 01:06:52.599 --> 01:06:57.865 test that hypothesis. That's what our job was. Me and Kate Thompson, like 01:06:57.898 --> 01:07:03.675 co co cooperator on the, on the project, Kate had worked with Harford on 01:07:03.708 --> 01:07:09.106 his stuff previously. So she was the one sort of the heir apparent that 01:07:09.139 --> 01:07:12.206 Herford Herford didn't want anything to do with. He was done with all this 01:07:12.239 --> 01:07:18.166 poli politics crap. But uh yeah, and he, and so he stepped away from it 01:07:18.199 --> 01:07:21.717 and he said, you guys do it, go ahead, you know. And so Kate said, hey, 01:07:21.750 --> 01:07:28.227 Andre, I need a partner. There's an RFP on this. We went to SWC A which is 01:07:28.260 --> 01:07:32.256 a local environmental consulting group, did quite a bit of research down 01:07:32.289 --> 01:07:36.517 there. Steve Brothers group and uh he was at the University of Arizona, 01:07:36.550 --> 01:07:42.557 right? You know, um he had his own environmental uh uh he was the curator 01:07:42.590 --> 01:07:45.845 of Biology at the Museum of Northern Arizona in the seventies. He did a 01:07:45.878 --> 01:07:49.066 lot of the groundwork in the whole ecosystem down there. River ecosystem 01:07:49.099 --> 01:07:54.066 cars is a great resource. Is he still around? I think. So, I haven't seen 01:07:54.099 --> 01:08:00.425 him for quite a long time but he, he likes to. Uh but he started SWC A and 01:08:00.458 --> 01:08:06.736 uh and, and SWC A has got earned a lot of the uh applied for a lot of, a 01:08:06.769 --> 01:08:11.217 lot of the RFP to the part of the RPS for this program and they were doing 01:08:11.250 --> 01:08:16.217 fish research as well, but uh with their own fish scientists. And so 01:08:16.250 --> 01:08:21.777 that's 1/4 group uh on fish. But uh he said, Crothers went to Kate and 01:08:21.810 --> 01:08:26.027 said, hey, Kate, you know, you work with Herford on this geo archaeology 01:08:26.060 --> 01:08:30.456 geomorphology project along the river. Would you like to be a principal 01:08:30.489 --> 01:08:34.187 investigator? We'll, we'll house you, you can work under SWC A and we'll 01:08:34.220 --> 01:08:39.956 do the, you know, we'll handle your, your um the management of your, if 01:08:39.989 --> 01:08:44.836 you, if you win it, the um K said, yeah, I'd like to, but I'd like to need 01:08:44.869 --> 01:08:48.795 a partner. So we were friends. She said, hey, and you wanna be my partner 01:08:48.828 --> 01:08:56.828 on this? And I said, sure. And uh uh so we, uh we put in request, uh we 01:08:57.189 --> 01:09:01.187 put in for that proposal and got it and uh did it. What uh what kind of uh 01:09:01.220 --> 01:09:06.027 changes in dam operations do you remember? May have resulted from that 01:09:06.060 --> 01:09:08.206 research? 01:09:08.239 --> 01:09:15.576 Um 01:09:15.609 --> 01:09:19.726 Probably the most important one was the, the thing that I'm most proud of 01:09:19.759 --> 01:09:22.956 having accomplished in the program. And I fought for, for all those years 01:09:22.989 --> 01:09:26.456 that I was in it. And that's the run artificial floods from the dam to 01:09:26.489 --> 01:09:31.317 rebuild the sandbars in the Grand Canyon. And what we were able to do in 01:09:31.350 --> 01:09:36.567 our study was show that um that by rebuilding sandbars in the Grand Canyon 01:09:36.600 --> 01:09:39.187 , 01:09:39.220 --> 01:09:43.237 you stood a chance of mitigating the erosion of archaeological sites by 01:09:43.270 --> 01:09:46.095 putting sand up high. 01:09:46.128 --> 01:09:50.567 And the connection we made was that even though you can't get the sandbars 01:09:50.600 --> 01:09:54.135 as high as they used to be back when the Indians lived there because the 01:09:54.168 --> 01:09:59.527 dam prevents that high bruise pattern. You can get the dead water sand up 01:09:59.560 --> 01:10:04.687 high enough to where. And this is a critical piece of or the wind can blow 01:10:04.720 --> 01:10:08.817 the sand and redistribute it into the archaeologically rich areas and 01:10:08.850 --> 01:10:12.175 mitigate the gully erosion effect. 01:10:12.208 --> 01:10:15.187 Basically, what our study showed was that the gully erosion, it's always 01:10:15.220 --> 01:10:20.237 gone on. It's all run off from monsoon storms, particularly monsoon runoff. 01:10:20.270 --> 01:10:26.305 Storms are create these powerful flash flash floods and course down 01:10:26.338 --> 01:10:30.476 across the pre damn sandbars where the archaeological sites are. It's just 01:10:30.509 --> 01:10:35.217 that in the pre dam era, you have annual flood that theyre replenish the 01:10:35.250 --> 01:10:40.286 sandbars extensively up high with would counteract that gully erosion 01:10:40.319 --> 01:10:45.777 process. So there was this balance over time that preserve the 01:10:45.810 --> 01:10:50.217 archaeological sites. Gully erosion was not able to outcompete the river, 01:10:50.250 --> 01:10:56.786 so to speak. Right. River is a depositional river. And um 01:10:56.819 --> 01:11:00.836 in the Post AM era, the river is operated at much lower levels. It's clear 01:11:00.869 --> 01:11:05.696 water very what we call sediment, hungry water and the level to which the 01:11:05.729 --> 01:11:11.237 gullies want to seek. The river level. It's a lower level for much of the 01:11:11.270 --> 01:11:16.046 year than it used to be. And in fact, all of the year where it was only 01:11:16.079 --> 01:11:18.786 part of the year, like it used to be only part of the year. And because 01:11:18.819 --> 01:11:22.836 you didn't have that replenishing sand every year from the annual flood, 01:11:22.869 --> 01:11:30.869 you uh you had the uh loss of sand over time from the system and the uh 01:11:30.918 --> 01:11:35.666 gully erosion process was winning the war. He might say to put it in human 01:11:35.699 --> 01:11:41.906 terms. It was um dominating the river depositional process. And the only 01:11:41.939 --> 01:11:47.366 chance we had of potentially re operating the dam to mitigate that was to 01:11:47.399 --> 01:11:52.366 run artificial floods from the dam, the sandbar building floods. And we 01:11:52.399 --> 01:11:56.885 made the that linkage the additional linkage that the sand wind which we 01:11:56.918 --> 01:12:01.956 had documented in our studies. The very ubiquitous presence of blowing 01:12:01.989 --> 01:12:05.937 sand down there. It was a very important process for redistributing sand 01:12:05.970 --> 01:12:11.416 in the p preda era and could be in the post da era as well. So um give the 01:12:11.449 --> 01:12:15.765 wind something to work with you guys. Uh We, we might be able to slow this 01:12:15.798 --> 01:12:23.036 down and then al also what came out of that was the concern that because 01:12:23.069 --> 01:12:27.845 of the concern generated by our report, the Park Service say we need where 01:12:27.878 --> 01:12:32.635 there are these really vulnerable sites that outlined by Poto and 01:12:32.668 --> 01:12:36.956 Thompson's record high of vulnerable sites where we know there's a lot of 01:12:36.989 --> 01:12:42.425 archaeology there's a danger and the gully is already starting to form 01:12:42.458 --> 01:12:47.796 there. We need to go and do and do data recovery in those in those sites 01:12:47.829 --> 01:12:51.647 and data recovery. If you're not familiar with, the term is a common term 01:12:51.680 --> 01:12:57.055 for it is excavation. So and and it's generally understood in Archaeo by 01:12:57.088 --> 01:13:00.425 archaeologists. So when you go in and you do data recovery at a site, you 01:13:00.458 --> 01:13:07.175 basically completely, I am take away the context of the site and document 01:13:07.208 --> 01:13:10.187 what's there, but you'll never be able to recreate the context for that 01:13:10.220 --> 01:13:13.857 site perfectly. So you need to do the science right, the first time and 01:13:13.890 --> 01:13:16.567 very meticulously, 01:13:16.600 --> 01:13:20.467 that's expensive to have rich people full of archaeologists down there 01:13:20.500 --> 01:13:27.675 doing his work park picked 10 or nine or 10. It's particularly vulnerable 01:13:27.708 --> 01:13:30.845 sites down there where the archaeology was particularly rich and they did 01:13:30.878 --> 01:13:35.116 uh data recovery on those sites and they were able to get money from 01:13:35.149 --> 01:13:39.385 interior and the park put up some of the money. It was about a million 01:13:39.418 --> 01:13:46.296 dollars site I remember, right. So it was about $10 million deal um to get 01:13:46.329 --> 01:13:50.756 those done. And they did that over about a two year period, fantastic, two 01:13:50.789 --> 01:13:54.397 years. It took about two years to do that data recovery and it's great. I 01:13:54.430 --> 01:14:02.430 , I bring it with me. I know I got it with me in the car. Great. Um 01:14:05.529 --> 01:14:10.487 Must be the car and to your recollection. Did they pick the 10 most, um, 01:14:10.520 --> 01:14:15.656 archaeologically rich sites or the 10 most risky sites subject to erosion. 01:14:15.689 --> 01:14:20.607 It was a combination of both those thoughts. Ok. Yeah. 01:14:20.640 --> 01:14:23.746 Like the ones that were high on our scale for vulnerability, you know, 01:14:23.779 --> 01:14:29.086 were ones that, of course, got their attention. Uh, and so, and they 01:14:29.119 --> 01:14:34.286 already knew where they kind of. Yeah. So that's how they decided where to 01:14:34.319 --> 01:14:40.866 , where to do the, uh, data recovery. Do you remember about when uh 01:14:40.899 --> 01:14:43.546 the first 01:14:43.579 --> 01:14:49.496 alteration of the dam's operation was accomplished in order to try to 01:14:49.529 --> 01:14:52.826 rebuild some of that sediment? I know you had to do the studies first. 01:14:52.859 --> 01:14:56.567 Then you probably had to advocate for change in operations. How long did 01:14:56.600 --> 01:15:00.796 it take about? When did you actually get to the pulse flows? The first 01:15:00.829 --> 01:15:06.515 pulse was 1996 19. 0 yeah, they were already doing it. It was, it was, it 01:15:06.548 --> 01:15:10.496 was proposed under Glen Canyon environmental studies if they do this. And 01:15:10.529 --> 01:15:17.277 , and it was proposed in the EIS on the dam that this is a because the 01:15:17.310 --> 01:15:20.217 sediment scientists had proposed that this could be something that would 01:15:20.250 --> 01:15:23.595 be a tool that the dam could use potentially to rebuild sandbars in the 01:15:23.628 --> 01:15:29.456 Grand Canyon um that needed to be uh tried out. So that 1996 flood flow 01:15:29.489 --> 01:15:34.196 was a big scary experiment. No one knew if it was gonna work or not and it 01:15:34.229 --> 01:15:39.567 worked and, and uh and we learned a lot the sentiment scientists learned a 01:15:39.600 --> 01:15:43.515 lot. We all learned a lot. Then it became a question of advocating for it 01:15:43.548 --> 01:15:48.046 in the dept of men work group. That was where it was like pulling teeth 01:15:48.079 --> 01:15:52.706 because we, you know, I was doing this, I was part of the archaeological 01:15:52.739 --> 01:15:55.286 study that was going like, hey, we need to do this for archaeological 01:15:55.319 --> 01:15:59.656 sites. I was recreational guy. We need to do it for camping, beaches. Our 01:15:59.689 --> 01:16:03.836 beaches are all disappearing and the fish people were going like we need 01:16:03.869 --> 01:16:09.515 it for habitat, shoreline habitat for the fish rear end, need a fish. So 01:16:09.548 --> 01:16:15.536 the three big things of the components of the ecosystem, um endangered 01:16:15.569 --> 01:16:20.166 fish, endangered archaeological sites and endangered camping beaches. The 01:16:20.199 --> 01:16:25.765 recreational resource were all potentially benefited by a, a high fluid 01:16:25.798 --> 01:16:31.296 event. And so we finally got them. After we finished our cultural study, 01:16:31.329 --> 01:16:34.616 our archaeological geo archaeological study, we got, we were able to 01:16:34.649 --> 01:16:37.546 convince them and reclamation was all on board for this. So they wanted to 01:16:37.579 --> 01:16:45.076 do it. Uh Bureau of reclamation. Um Guys were um and they were on our side 01:16:45.109 --> 01:16:49.326 , you might say, and it was the, it was the upper base and state people 01:16:49.359 --> 01:16:53.135 didn't want to establish this precedent of running water around the 01:16:53.168 --> 01:16:56.345 generators and wasting all that water that could have been generating 01:16:56.378 --> 01:17:02.805 money for their coffers. And uh and that was what their, their fight was 01:17:02.838 --> 01:17:05.996 and along with them was during our power administration, they were kind of 01:17:06.029 --> 01:17:13.317 in codes. But uh so the hydropower consumers in the NW A but they, we 01:17:13.350 --> 01:17:17.107 finally got him to do it again in 2003. So we ran the high flow next 01:17:17.140 --> 01:17:23.246 second high flow experience in 2, 2003. And uh that, like I said, it was 01:17:23.279 --> 01:17:26.696 like pulling teeth to get it done, but we got it done. And then, and then 01:17:26.729 --> 01:17:31.885 we just say that one was as successful as the 1996. It was, and it was 01:17:31.918 --> 01:17:34.616 recognized that it didn't, we didn't have to use as much water. We didn't 01:17:34.649 --> 01:17:38.046 have to run it for as long. The first one was that took seven, they ran it 01:17:38.079 --> 01:17:41.687 for seven days and almost all of the segmentation of the building and 01:17:41.720 --> 01:17:46.946 beaches happened in the 1st 2024 hours. And that recognition in from the 01:17:46.979 --> 01:17:49.937 first one was like, we don't have to run it for seven days guys. You know 01:17:49.970 --> 01:17:53.866 , we can run it for two days or a day and a half and get the same benefit. 01:17:53.899 --> 01:18:00.175 So we ran the 2003 experiment and then then it was a few more years. That 01:18:00.208 --> 01:18:06.385 was the Bush administration started, came in and, and things slowed down a 01:18:06.418 --> 01:18:14.296 lot now. It's a regular occurrence now. Yeah, it's not regular. It is 01:18:14.329 --> 01:18:18.277 contingent upon the conditions being right. 01:18:18.310 --> 01:18:21.397 That means that there's sufficient sediment that's been washed into the 01:18:21.430 --> 01:18:25.906 river on the bottom from the Peria River, big tributary right below the 01:18:25.939 --> 01:18:30.836 dam. There's a lot of sand in every year and they, so they monitor the 01:18:30.869 --> 01:18:33.805 sediment. Scientists monitor the per river very closely and very carefully 01:18:33.838 --> 01:18:37.147 to, to quantify the amount of sand that's being delivered to you most 01:18:37.180 --> 01:18:40.876 upstream reach of the Grand Canyon. And once that river and, and they 01:18:40.909 --> 01:18:45.845 determine that that sand is still uh sufficiently retained within the 01:18:45.878 --> 01:18:50.397 Colorado River system in the bed of the river by a certain date, September 01:18:50.430 --> 01:18:54.687 30th. And there's a, there's a million 8 million metric tons still 01:18:54.720 --> 01:18:59.336 remaining. That triggers a release from the dam. That's what's called the 01:18:59.369 --> 01:19:05.777 , the hydrologic trigger criteria. That is the sentimental logic, GEOS 01:19:05.810 --> 01:19:13.576 sentimental logic trigger criteria really. And, and so once that was shown 01:19:13.609 --> 01:19:21.609 to work as a trigger criteria in 2003 event, um 01:19:21.779 --> 01:19:25.196 then it was a couple more years before we were finally able to get the 01:19:25.229 --> 01:19:31.805 2008 flow flow event. Once we got the 2008 flow event, it became protocol 01:19:31.838 --> 01:19:35.956 and once it was adopted as protocol because it worked again, hey, this is 01:19:35.989 --> 01:19:39.437 working. It's solving the problem of the dam affecting these critical 01:19:39.470 --> 01:19:44.246 resources. So let's write it into the new EIS the new uh preferred 01:19:44.279 --> 01:19:49.296 alternative. So they did a new EIS on the dam uh to replace the first one 01:19:49.329 --> 01:19:53.345 because it was clear that the first one wasn't working. We were losing 01:19:53.378 --> 01:19:58.357 resources and that was violating the Grand Canyon Protection Act because I 01:19:58.390 --> 01:20:01.675 don't know if you know the Grand Canyon Protection Act very well, but you 01:20:01.708 --> 01:20:04.976 know, the critical language in their environmental language is the dam 01:20:05.009 --> 01:20:09.586 shall not be operated in such a manner as to preserve, mitigate adverse 01:20:09.619 --> 01:20:13.906 impacts to and improve the values for which Grand Canyon National Park was 01:20:13.939 --> 01:20:19.777 created, including cultural biologic and recreational resources. So that's 01:20:19.810 --> 01:20:24.256 the the the driving language of the Protection Act. Uh It did a lot, said 01:20:24.289 --> 01:20:28.726 a lot of other things too, but those are the things that really made it be 01:20:28.759 --> 01:20:33.916 the first part of the law of the river that had to do with uh mitigating 01:20:33.949 --> 01:20:38.726 environmental problems as opposed to simply redistributing water power and 01:20:38.759 --> 01:20:43.126 that sort of thing. So that was an important act. And, and so that was the 01:20:43.159 --> 01:20:48.305 whole purpose of our program. That's why I I it was part of the Grand 01:20:48.338 --> 01:20:53.366 Canyon Protection Act said there will be an EIS on Glen Canyon Dam. At 01:20:53.399 --> 01:20:57.397 first, I think it's the first post facto EIS done on any major federal 01:20:57.430 --> 01:21:02.196 project, meaning after it was built, normally you do an EIS before 01:21:02.229 --> 01:21:06.506 something's built. Well, I said, no, we didn't do it but back then because 01:21:06.539 --> 01:21:10.956 N A hadn't been passed yet and now I A says we should do that. So that was 01:21:10.989 --> 01:21:13.406 part of the Protection Act was that there would be an EIS done on the dam 01:21:13.439 --> 01:21:17.866 , but also part of the Protection Act that uh the long term monitoring 01:21:17.899 --> 01:21:23.616 program be established uh that diment program and, and so, and that, but 01:21:23.649 --> 01:21:28.336 then it said the reason the poor, what we're doing to protect the Grand 01:21:28.369 --> 01:21:31.567 Canyon because it's recognized that we, the dam is affecting the 01:21:31.600 --> 01:21:37.737 downstream environment. Um And that was a, that was novel. Um No one had 01:21:37.770 --> 01:21:42.626 ever thought about dams affecting the downstream environment before the 01:21:42.659 --> 01:21:45.437 only people always thought about, you build a dam. It's gonna flood this 01:21:45.470 --> 01:21:49.217 whole region upstream. It displays all these people but cover up all these 01:21:49.250 --> 01:21:52.107 archaeological sites, you know, right. But nobody thought about, well, 01:21:52.140 --> 01:21:57.385 what's it gonna do downstream? And so this was an important recognition 01:21:57.418 --> 01:22:01.626 that the downstream and, and environmental impacts and, and by the way, 01:22:01.659 --> 01:22:05.226 that's Grand Canyon down there. And you know, it's iconic feat feature on 01:22:05.259 --> 01:22:09.317 the landscape. And so you got to get protected. So that's the, the 01:22:09.350 --> 01:22:11.696 Protection Act was important for that reason. I'm not sure where I was 01:22:11.729 --> 01:22:17.476 going with that, but um we were able to get the uh high flow, um what used 01:22:17.509 --> 01:22:22.567 to be called beach habitat building flows. Bhbfs. They changed the 01:22:22.600 --> 01:22:30.600 nomenclature to call them high flow experiments. Now, HFES, so Bhbfshhfes 01:22:30.899 --> 01:22:35.515 sometime around what, 2008 or something it was right around then uh when 01:22:35.548 --> 01:22:39.826 the third successful pulse flow and they decided to operationalize this on 01:22:39.859 --> 01:22:42.967 a regular basis, it was recognized that we were the part we have was 01:22:43.000 --> 01:22:47.586 failing that management of the dam was failing that the criteria for water 01:22:47.619 --> 01:22:53.496 releases that was dictated by the original preferred alternative in 1997 01:22:53.529 --> 01:22:58.286 the first year of the dam. But that criteria was not achieving the goals 01:22:58.319 --> 01:23:02.805 of the Protection Act. We weren't conserving the chub. That was a big 01:23:02.838 --> 01:23:08.036 scare when in the early two thousands, when the chubb population is going 01:23:08.069 --> 01:23:12.845 like this down. We've, we've, we, we didn't have any, nobody, Melin wasn't 01:23:12.878 --> 01:23:17.756 coming up with this data. He was holding it. No, I'm not gonna go into 01:23:17.789 --> 01:23:22.055 that. But people had data out there in the fish community, science 01:23:22.088 --> 01:23:26.446 communities, but they were sharing it. It was like, you know, and we're on 01:23:26.479 --> 01:23:30.345 the adaptive manage work going, hey, fish community, science community, 01:23:30.378 --> 01:23:35.796 what's going on with the endangered job? And they're not like, 01:23:35.829 --> 01:23:40.036 you know, being, you know, maybe just conservative scientists not willing 01:23:40.069 --> 01:23:46.055 to say. But finally, they come up in 19, I think it was 2002. 01:23:46.088 --> 01:23:49.857 They presented it at, at they showed us the long term population trend of 01:23:49.890 --> 01:23:54.317 the adult chub in the, in the Grand Canyon and it was like over the last 01:23:54.350 --> 01:23:59.425 10 years and by their best estimates, I'm not sure how those fish 01:23:59.458 --> 01:24:02.946 scientists got their act together and maybe Mink was involved in getting 01:24:02.979 --> 01:24:06.706 to do it or something, but they got the data out there and we all looked 01:24:06.739 --> 01:24:10.675 at that and I remember it was a very pregnant moment of the day and I am 01:24:10.708 --> 01:24:14.175 with reading it we looked, we're all looking at this thing projected up 01:24:14.208 --> 01:24:18.925 there that shows a long term decline in numbers of adult chub over 8, 10 01:24:18.958 --> 01:24:22.076 years. And we're going like, leading up to where we are today, which is 01:24:22.109 --> 01:24:26.656 like 2000 adults left, you know, 10,000 adults to 2000 adults over eight 01:24:26.689 --> 01:24:32.326 years. And we're like, uh, you know, we're failing, you know, we're 01:24:32.359 --> 01:24:37.206 failing with the Endangered Species Act. And I, and I said, I remember 01:24:37.239 --> 01:24:41.906 that moment in that meeting. I said, well, I, for one on this committee, I 01:24:41.939 --> 01:24:45.996 am not willing to stand by and be a member of this committee and watch the 01:24:46.029 --> 01:24:49.467 destruction of the chub in the Grand Canyon, not when we can do something 01:24:49.500 --> 01:24:55.265 and everybody will, I'm on board with that. I'm on board. So the whole 01:24:55.298 --> 01:24:58.425 committee kind of went, we gotta do something. So it created a sense of 01:24:58.458 --> 01:25:02.746 urgency and like we got it, get rid of the non native fish. If they're 01:25:02.779 --> 01:25:07.496 causing the problem, we got, you know, do whatever we can to, you know, 01:25:07.529 --> 01:25:12.616 create additional spawning populations. Uh Little Colorado was the only 01:25:12.649 --> 01:25:18.357 one known spawning population. So it's, it just triggered this massive 01:25:18.390 --> 01:25:22.107 amount of research and interest the part of the MW and, and so that was 01:25:22.140 --> 01:25:26.987 good that got things going. Did the fish biologists at the time understand 01:25:27.020 --> 01:25:29.687 the cause of the decline? 01:25:29.720 --> 01:25:34.076 Yeah, they had a pretty good idea. Was it habitat or competition or both 01:25:34.109 --> 01:25:41.156 or it was both. Um, I, you know, every everybody 01:25:41.189 --> 01:25:45.406 habitat was, is probably the big one, but it was an introduction of non 01:25:45.439 --> 01:25:49.866 native competitive species. The other big one, that's something we could 01:25:49.899 --> 01:25:57.496 do something about the habitat issue. The um was one that uh was addressed 01:25:57.529 --> 01:26:02.006 by the temperature control device. It was planned for the dam and I don't 01:26:02.039 --> 01:26:04.666 know if you know much about that, but right in the gourd go of the program 01:26:04.699 --> 01:26:08.336 , the idea was to build a temperature control device on the back side of 01:26:08.369 --> 01:26:11.696 the dam to regulate the temperature of water that would come through the 01:26:11.729 --> 01:26:16.796 dam to try to up to try to emulate that. Yeah, we get warmer water from 01:26:16.829 --> 01:26:20.406 higher up on the reservoir uh to draw it. It's called a selective 01:26:20.439 --> 01:26:23.756 withdrawal structure. Ok? They weren't heating it, they were just drawing 01:26:23.789 --> 01:26:27.607 warm water from the top and mixing it with the colder water. Ok. Right. 01:26:27.640 --> 01:26:32.246 Because there's a thermal gradient in the reservoir that warmest on top, 01:26:32.279 --> 01:26:36.357 closes on the bottom and, and where the pin stocks are pulling water from 01:26:36.390 --> 01:26:42.576 , which is about midway up. The reservoir was a constant 48 °F and year 01:26:42.609 --> 01:26:48.456 round and not good for native warm muddy water fish, not for fish that are 01:26:48.489 --> 01:26:51.826 used to spawning in warmer water. And that's why it was considered the 01:26:51.859 --> 01:26:54.576 Humpback Chuck could only spawn in little Colorado because that was where 01:26:54.609 --> 01:26:57.576 they had a nice warm water habitat that was always gonna be there there 01:26:57.609 --> 01:27:00.956 and always the same because a blue spring runs the same temperature year 01:27:00.989 --> 01:27:06.166 round and uh creates a perfect habitat for spawning chug. And so there was 01:27:06.199 --> 01:27:09.635 , they were successfully spawning there. And with the fish, scientists 01:27:09.668 --> 01:27:13.706 could tell us that and they weren't in the main stem of the river and the 01:27:13.739 --> 01:27:17.317 river is colder than it was in the pre dam era. And it didn't have the 01:27:17.350 --> 01:27:21.756 high fluctuation of, uh, volume during the year and it didn't have the 01:27:21.789 --> 01:27:26.406 high range in temperature that it used to have throughout the year. So the 01:27:26.439 --> 01:27:30.527 conditions were totally artificial for the child. Now, there is a perfect 01:27:30.560 --> 01:27:35.607 environment for trout. Rainbow trout, cold water, clear water. Trout need 01:27:35.640 --> 01:27:39.647 a CD. You know, the chub don't need a CD. The ch can smell anything. They 01:27:39.680 --> 01:27:45.036 , they, they really got good noses on them, but the trout have seeded so 01:27:45.069 --> 01:27:49.237 the trout had clear water. So there was this conflict. Well, how do we, 01:27:49.270 --> 01:27:52.726 what about the temperature control? They might, well, I don't even know 01:27:52.759 --> 01:27:55.976 what happened to this well, selected withdrawal structure is what it 01:27:56.009 --> 01:28:01.046 initially called. But we tried to get that built in the first part of the 01:28:01.079 --> 01:28:06.036 program, but we just take it with a lot of resistance, a lot of resistance 01:28:06.069 --> 01:28:11.156 because nobody knew for sure if you did something that you might be doing 01:28:11.189 --> 01:28:14.456 the wrong thing. What if we build this big thing and it kills all the 01:28:14.489 --> 01:28:18.416 endangered fish, you know, you know, because if nobody was really sure 01:28:18.449 --> 01:28:23.366 that if you really messed with the habitat that much by changing the 01:28:23.399 --> 01:28:27.456 temperature, you know, uh, annual temp temperature fluctuation of the 01:28:27.489 --> 01:28:31.506 releases from the dam, that it wouldn't encourage the growth of other non 01:28:31.539 --> 01:28:37.015 natives that could do even better and well or co compete this the trout. 01:28:37.048 --> 01:28:41.187 So the decision was made, let's get rid of the non-native. So that was 01:28:41.220 --> 01:28:47.446 when we start, we should develop the, um, removal of the trout program. 01:28:47.479 --> 01:28:52.576 And I imagine the trout fishery, uh, representatives, uh, on the committee 01:28:52.609 --> 01:28:57.046 were a little concerned about that. Yeah, because even though the blue 01:28:57.079 --> 01:28:59.987 ribbon trout fishery was upstream, at least fairy, that, that's where they 01:29:00.020 --> 01:29:03.336 fished. They didn't really care about the trout downstream, at least that 01:29:03.369 --> 01:29:08.067 was ok. They knew that, that those trout weren't obeying that do not pass 01:29:08.100 --> 01:29:14.726 this. There's no, yeah, do not pass and go. You can't go down there and 01:29:14.759 --> 01:29:19.326 they were. And so that has spawned other studies on natal origins of trout 01:29:19.359 --> 01:29:22.857 or they were they, how much were they moving up and down the corridor? How 01:29:22.890 --> 01:29:27.385 much of them are the trout spawning in place? A whole lot of research 01:29:27.418 --> 01:29:31.737 around that. And so, um, that there was a lot of money pumped into the 01:29:31.770 --> 01:29:36.076 program for trout removal initially because it was like crap. We gotta do 01:29:36.109 --> 01:29:40.437 something. We gotta, we gotta reduce the competitive pressures because it 01:29:40.470 --> 01:29:43.626 was a good assumption. Everybody thought it was a good assumption that the 01:29:43.659 --> 01:29:48.726 non natives were preying upon and at least out competing the ch the chub 01:29:48.759 --> 01:29:53.226 for the food supply, which was meager compared to the pre dam era. The 01:29:53.259 --> 01:29:57.086 Glen Canyon dam, not on, not only interrupts 90% of the sediment supply. A 01:29:57.119 --> 01:30:02.857 pre damp sediment supply interrupts 90% of at least of the organic drift 01:30:02.890 --> 01:30:06.876 of material coming down the river. That was the basis for the food chain 01:30:06.909 --> 01:30:12.506 in, in the, in the uh aquatic environment. So you need all that organic 01:30:12.539 --> 01:30:17.717 and it was a organic deprived river and it was dry water. Basically it, 01:30:17.750 --> 01:30:24.437 and have the basis for all that organic basis for fish populations that 01:30:24.470 --> 01:30:32.015 had been dependent on, dependent on, on it before the dam. And so, um, 01:30:32.048 --> 01:30:35.357 the, what do you say? Well, we just got to get rid of the trial. So they 01:30:35.390 --> 01:30:41.546 started fishing them out of there, trout destruction ex expeditions where 01:30:41.579 --> 01:30:46.786 the Arizona game and fish was. I've been doing a lot of that, I think. Um 01:30:46.819 --> 01:30:49.336 I don't know if you know about that. They, they fish at night with electro 01:30:49.369 --> 01:30:54.357 shockers. Uh, go from Eddie to Eddie during the night hours and they have 01:30:54.390 --> 01:30:57.857 this little boat that's a generator on it and they put the electrode in 01:30:57.890 --> 01:31:03.376 the and zaps, all the fish in the fish float up to the surface and then 01:31:03.409 --> 01:31:09.217 they have a big light on the just scoop them out. And if they're 01:31:09.250 --> 01:31:12.546 originally, when they were getting rid of the trout, they would, they, we 01:31:12.579 --> 01:31:16.656 have measured all of all the fish but do a fish senses and then they would 01:31:16.689 --> 01:31:21.406 trash the trout basically and put them through the trout Matic, you know, 01:31:21.439 --> 01:31:26.006 the bass somatic TV, late night TV, tryout attic. And, you know, and so 01:31:26.039 --> 01:31:29.666 they're turning me into fish meal and, and then putting the chub back, but 01:31:29.699 --> 01:31:32.576 putting a, a pet tag in each of the chubs. So all the chub down there have 01:31:32.609 --> 01:31:36.666 a pet tag inside. So we have a little barcode inside and they can just 01:31:36.699 --> 01:31:41.277 read this thing and it's like a supermarket checkout. So you gotta catch 01:31:41.310 --> 01:31:44.836 the fish to get to read the barcode. 01:31:44.869 --> 01:31:48.536 But they, they were developing the techniques for pit tagging the child. 01:31:48.569 --> 01:31:51.925 But pretty much all the child have been caught down there at least once. 01:31:51.958 --> 01:31:56.055 But so many of them several times. This is all happening in the 2000. This 01:31:56.088 --> 01:31:58.826 is happening in the mid two thousands. And then the tribe said, wait a 01:31:58.859 --> 01:32:04.046 minute, we don't, we can't support this. A Hopi tribe in particular came 01:32:04.079 --> 01:32:08.836 out and said, we can't support the killing of fish. Just the wanton 01:32:08.869 --> 01:32:13.987 wholesale slaughter of fish because the Hopi I believe that's the, there's 01:32:14.020 --> 01:32:17.496 descendants are in the form of fish in the Grand Canyon. And the Grand 01:32:17.529 --> 01:32:21.546 Canyon is their holy place in the world. That's where they came from, 01:32:21.579 --> 01:32:28.425 right? Originated as a tribe there. So to them, it was an anathema that we 01:32:28.458 --> 01:32:32.826 are using wholesale slaughter of fish. And we try to get around that by 01:32:32.859 --> 01:32:35.857 saying, well, we give all the fish meal to the wall by Indian tribe. At 01:32:35.890 --> 01:32:38.206 the end of the trip. When they do, they rotate out of Diamond Creek and 01:32:38.239 --> 01:32:42.536 they use it in the tribal gardens to grow, grow food for the fish meal. 01:32:42.569 --> 01:32:45.726 And so that sort of worked for a while, sort of placated the tribe, the 01:32:45.759 --> 01:32:47.976 tribe a little bit. Hope he tried a little bit. But then it was just like 01:32:48.009 --> 01:32:53.635 , yeah, yeah. So now they don't kill him anymore. They measure, weigh him 01:32:53.668 --> 01:33:01.668 , monitor. But the slaughter of n of non native fish is kind of ceased. 01:33:01.708 --> 01:33:07.086 And partly because, you know, the Humpback job numbers started coming back 01:33:07.119 --> 01:33:09.976 and it was like, oh, you know, I'm getting rid of the non native is 01:33:10.009 --> 01:33:14.595 helping here, maybe you guys actually. And so we started seeing the, the, 01:33:14.628 --> 01:33:19.607 the Humpback chub that was coming up and it was like, you know, um, what 01:33:19.640 --> 01:33:25.135 we're doing, let's keep doing it. But I think what I believe and I think a 01:33:25.168 --> 01:33:29.357 lot of fish scientists might agree with me on this is that a large reason 01:33:29.390 --> 01:33:32.836 that Humpback chub started coming back up in health and abundance and 01:33:32.869 --> 01:33:37.196 numbers is because of the warm releases from the dam because of the 01:33:37.229 --> 01:33:42.237 drought, because the low levels of the lake they uh they didn't have to 01:33:42.270 --> 01:33:45.467 build a selective withdraw on the backside of the dam. The drought was 01:33:45.500 --> 01:33:48.996 doing it for them. It was bringing that warm surface water of Lake Powell 01:33:49.029 --> 01:33:53.175 down to the p stock level and water, warmer water was going through the 01:33:53.208 --> 01:33:56.196 Grand Canyon and more conducive environment for habitat for the native 01:33:56.229 --> 01:34:01.996 fish. And that I think is largely responsible for the uh come back of the 01:34:02.029 --> 01:34:06.467 diminishment of the tr travel population because travel need coal water 01:34:06.500 --> 01:34:12.317 and the encouragement of the child to, to populate the main stem, not just 01:34:12.350 --> 01:34:15.446 the little Colorado, but come out into the main stem and utilize the food 01:34:15.479 --> 01:34:20.937 resources in the main stem of the river. So that seems to be the reason 01:34:20.970 --> 01:34:24.925 inadvertently through the drought created the habitat conditions that 01:34:24.958 --> 01:34:29.916 habitat conditions for the native fish. And there was just then the park 01:34:29.949 --> 01:34:34.015 did remove all the trout from Bright Angel Creek. You may know about that. 01:34:34.048 --> 01:34:37.366 They systematically went up the entire creek. They put a weir at the 01:34:37.399 --> 01:34:42.666 mouth and they fished all the trout out of right to a creek because it was 01:34:42.699 --> 01:34:46.717 a source spawning source for a new trout coming into the main stem, 01:34:46.750 --> 01:34:50.536 especially the brown trout, which are the most voracious predators of the 01:34:50.569 --> 01:34:54.925 uh of the child. Rainbows aren't so bad with the browns who are, who are 01:34:54.958 --> 01:35:02.958 also spouting up in Little Creek Arbore Pisces as I say fish. So it, it 01:35:03.418 --> 01:35:06.626 seems as though the population last I checked anyway, the population 01:35:06.659 --> 01:35:10.456 stabilized with the chub. And as long as we stay in this drought, we have 01:35:10.489 --> 01:35:15.265 the water temperatures necessary to kind of keep things happy lining on 01:35:15.298 --> 01:35:17.546 that cloud. 01:35:17.579 --> 01:35:21.015 Well, that was, you know, dodged a bullet by state. I mean, because of 01:35:21.048 --> 01:35:24.635 nature, you know. Yeah, by the way, that one of the big things that 01:35:24.668 --> 01:35:28.416 changed this program was the drought. You know, the operation linking down 01:35:28.449 --> 01:35:33.616 was the drought. Let's hold that thought it started in 2000. Let's take a 01:35:33.649 --> 01:35:38.796 break and um and come back to that because that's the next. So what uh 01:35:38.829 --> 01:35:44.546 let's go ahead and turn that off. OK. When we uh took the break, we were 01:35:44.579 --> 01:35:49.187 just about to uh talk a little bit about what you think uh over the over 01:35:49.220 --> 01:35:52.425 the long term of the program. What you think may have been the most 01:35:52.458 --> 01:35:56.246 significant changes that occurred during the time that you participated 01:35:56.279 --> 01:36:01.425 and the most significant events that altered the course or direction of 01:36:01.458 --> 01:36:05.746 the program. Can you talk a little bit about what some of those would be 01:36:05.779 --> 01:36:10.156 in your experience? OK. Some of these uh I'm just gonna re reiterate what 01:36:10.189 --> 01:36:14.416 I've already talked about a little bit just because I make it in a more 01:36:14.449 --> 01:36:21.116 brief form. Perhaps sig significant changes during my tenure to the APP. 01:36:21.149 --> 01:36:25.666 Uh One was I mentioned earlier, us Geological Survey becomes the Science 01:36:25.699 --> 01:36:31.756 Center uh replacing Bureau of reclamation as the science arm. Why did you 01:36:31.789 --> 01:36:35.046 say that was significant 01:36:35.079 --> 01:36:40.116 to develop trust between stakeholders that there was not gonna be any 01:36:40.149 --> 01:36:46.595 biased science that this is and us Geological Survey took, it always does 01:36:46.628 --> 01:36:52.845 always has taken its own very seriously as being independent and of any uh 01:36:52.878 --> 01:36:58.527 and staying out of the policy questions and just doing the science. So 01:36:58.560 --> 01:37:03.925 there's always been in this program, this very clear demarcation between 01:37:03.958 --> 01:37:08.666 the science and scientists and doing the work that is all run through 01:37:08.699 --> 01:37:13.317 GCMRC. And so even if it's a university doing science, it comes that's 01:37:13.350 --> 01:37:18.756 routed, the results of that science is uh that RFP is routed through GCMRC. 01:37:18.789 --> 01:37:24.456 So GCMRC can keep TABS as the, the independent science arbiter in the 01:37:24.489 --> 01:37:29.805 program to making sure that if you is we realized early on and we didn't 01:37:29.838 --> 01:37:35.196 all have agreement on what the good information was about coming out of 01:37:35.229 --> 01:37:38.456 the program, we weren't, weren't gonna be able to make decisions or policy 01:37:38.489 --> 01:37:42.116 recommendations because we'd just be fighting over what? Oh I don't 01:37:42.149 --> 01:37:45.336 believe that you a lot of what I believe is this, you know, it could be 01:37:45.369 --> 01:37:48.487 one of those games and we would never, we would fail completely without 01:37:48.520 --> 01:37:54.217 good science, sound science that everybody could trust was accurate, that 01:37:54.250 --> 01:37:59.425 was really important. And the bor had a history through environmental 01:37:59.458 --> 01:38:04.976 studies of in at least in some people's eyes of, of having a bias in, in 01:38:05.009 --> 01:38:07.595 the way they did the science. 01:38:07.628 --> 01:38:12.946 So that was really important. Um The 01:38:12.979 --> 01:38:17.756 and along with it, the transition work group moving from G CE S to the app 01:38:17.789 --> 01:38:23.717 was a really um a challenging time because we were inventing adaptive 01:38:23.750 --> 01:38:31.750 management. WW It was a new idea using stakeholder group to um use the 01:38:32.560 --> 01:38:36.987 best available information scientifically generated to put together policy 01:38:37.020 --> 01:38:42.446 recommendations collectively as stakeholders to, to the decision makers 01:38:42.479 --> 01:38:49.376 and, and that and that it was an adaptive process knowing going into it, 01:38:49.409 --> 01:38:53.706 we were gonna solve all the problems. Probably not, we might make some 01:38:53.739 --> 01:38:57.076 progress on problems, but there were always gonna be new challenges. And 01:38:57.109 --> 01:39:02.996 so it was never gonna be done probably, you know, we would hopefully make 01:39:03.029 --> 01:39:10.015 progress but that there was no end game. So that that whole concept of 01:39:10.048 --> 01:39:13.607 adaptive management apply, applying the adaptive management process to a 01:39:13.640 --> 01:39:20.196 complex ecosystem with complex group of stakeholders. You had complexity 01:39:20.229 --> 01:39:25.226 of ecosystems and multiple elements of the ecosystem, including cultural 01:39:25.259 --> 01:39:32.937 resources, recreational use, aquatic habitat, terrestrial habitat. And you 01:39:32.970 --> 01:39:37.796 put that with a bunch of stakeholders that all have a different desire to 01:39:37.829 --> 01:39:42.156 see certain things come out in a certain way and you absolutely have to 01:39:42.189 --> 01:39:46.416 have accurate information if you're gonna have um productive, useful 01:39:46.449 --> 01:39:51.876 discussions that can lead to useful policy recommendations and even then 01:39:51.909 --> 01:39:54.467 it's gonna be tough. 01:39:54.500 --> 01:39:58.976 Um So that was a, that was a big deal, le le learning about adaptive 01:39:59.009 --> 01:40:03.805 management and what we were doing with adaptive management. Uh The AM Wag 01:40:03.838 --> 01:40:07.857 River trip leading to the strategic plan was absolutely critical in that 01:40:07.890 --> 01:40:13.506 regard, establishing trust from that river trip. We went from being a 01:40:13.539 --> 01:40:16.765 bunch of people who didn't know, looked at each other askance in the room 01:40:16.798 --> 01:40:20.256 to a bunch of people. Oh yeah. Hey Leslie, how are you doing, you know, uh 01:40:20.289 --> 01:40:25.027 uh meetings and that goodwill went for a good time after that river trip. 01:40:25.060 --> 01:40:28.687 It there was a level of comfort that was established between the 01:40:28.720 --> 01:40:34.996 stakeholders from that informal river trip. Uh that really continued for 01:40:35.029 --> 01:40:41.737 quite a while after the trip. It slowly, we sort of lost the magic over 01:40:41.770 --> 01:40:46.277 time and people got more re entrenched in their positions, especially as 01:40:46.310 --> 01:40:49.437 new members came in and replaced old members for our particular 01:40:49.470 --> 01:40:53.036 constituency. They didn't have necessarily have that same bonding 01:40:53.069 --> 01:40:57.345 experience. So they, you know, they can't come in with their own 01:40:57.378 --> 01:41:03.126 predilections and, and you know, anticipations and so on. And so um but it 01:41:03.159 --> 01:41:07.555 was important to start off that way and to get a good strategic plan bill. 01:41:07.588 --> 01:41:12.175 Do you think another river trip could, could uh have the same effect 01:41:12.208 --> 01:41:18.265 serve the same purpose or was that a one off? I think it could. Yeah, but 01:41:18.298 --> 01:41:20.857 the only reason that river child happened was because the Secretary of the 01:41:20.890 --> 01:41:25.175 Interior said you guys are gonna go on a river trip. You don't have a 01:41:25.208 --> 01:41:29.067 choice. Secretary Ryan Zinke is not likely to tell everybody to do that 01:41:29.100 --> 01:41:33.656 today. And, and that's where it's important, the whoever is in the White 01:41:33.689 --> 01:41:37.845 House, it kind of comes from the White House because of the White House 01:41:37.878 --> 01:41:41.536 appoints the Interior Secretary, the Interior Secretary Depo appoints 01:41:41.569 --> 01:41:45.015 their assi assistant secretaries, the water and science secretaries, the 01:41:45.048 --> 01:41:51.116 one that's in charge of the adaptive management program. And that there 01:41:51.149 --> 01:41:55.166 was a trickle down effect of policy that comes from that in that regard, 01:41:55.199 --> 01:41:58.567 Bruce Babbitt, as the interior secretary was really interested in this 01:41:58.600 --> 01:42:02.976 program, getting it started making sure it works. So he, he was threw 01:42:03.009 --> 01:42:06.916 himself and his associate assistant secretary into it said, ok, guys, 01:42:06.949 --> 01:42:10.726 let's get together, let's do this, let's do this river trip can. But when 01:42:10.759 --> 01:42:15.027 the Bush administration came in, there was a sort of laissez faire kind of 01:42:15.060 --> 01:42:19.237 approach from an interior where it's like they just kind of let us kind of 01:42:19.270 --> 01:42:23.866 wander in the woods on our own without much direction from above without 01:42:23.899 --> 01:42:29.126 any kind of like, you know, you, you gotta know that the people that 01:42:29.159 --> 01:42:31.345 you're making the policy, if you're on the committee, you gotta know that 01:42:31.378 --> 01:42:35.765 they care that they're gonna do something about it. Otherwise all the work 01:42:35.798 --> 01:42:40.217 we do on a committee on the committee is maybe go to go to nothing, you 01:42:40.250 --> 01:42:46.217 know, or just, or we don't get any direction, uh you know, from interior. 01:42:46.250 --> 01:42:51.397 And so it's important that the top, top down influence is important in a 01:42:51.430 --> 01:42:56.527 committee like this. And likewise, it's really important to interior, to 01:42:56.560 --> 01:43:01.456 get feedback from all the stakeholders. Because as you know, inside the 01:43:01.489 --> 01:43:05.796 beltway community, they don't know what's going on outside that most 01:43:05.829 --> 01:43:10.746 people don't get out, they don't know what's going on in the Everglades or 01:43:10.779 --> 01:43:15.777 in the Columbia River basin or the Grand Canyon. And there's big adaptive 01:43:15.810 --> 01:43:20.656 management, problematic pro uh programs. 01:43:20.689 --> 01:43:25.206 And so they rely on the federal advisory committees to do that to provide. 01:43:25.239 --> 01:43:28.826 And that's why that, that act was passed. So the executive department, 01:43:28.859 --> 01:43:31.696 you know, executive branch of the government needs to have that kind of 01:43:31.729 --> 01:43:36.737 input, but it works both ways. During the Bush administration, it was more 01:43:36.770 --> 01:43:40.277 laissez Faire or you guys figure it out, you know. Well, you know, let us 01:43:40.310 --> 01:43:44.626 know when you come up with something, you know, more like that. And so we 01:43:44.659 --> 01:43:49.095 didn't get a lot of direct interest from the interior interior secretary 01:43:49.128 --> 01:43:53.277 herself. Did you get support when you make recommendations during those 01:43:53.310 --> 01:43:59.376 years? Pretty good? Um It seems like it didn't, it was just, you just 01:43:59.409 --> 01:44:02.496 didn't know. Um, 01:44:02.529 --> 01:44:06.366 the assistant Secretary for Water and Science under the interior secretary 01:44:06.399 --> 01:44:10.467 was involved in the Bush administration, Bennett Raley, he was good. He 01:44:10.500 --> 01:44:13.817 was very invested in the program. So, so I'm not saying Bush 01:44:13.850 --> 01:44:18.996 administration was out out there totally and we did have some support. Uh 01:44:19.029 --> 01:44:23.857 We just didn't know if Gay Norton herself was gonna get cared. You know, 01:44:23.890 --> 01:44:30.836 she never showed up or never, you know, she was a non entity. Yeah, we 01:44:30.869 --> 01:44:35.476 have the secretary's designee who is in charge of running the the program 01:44:35.509 --> 01:44:39.467 and uh this assistant Secretary for Water and Science Points, the 01:44:39.500 --> 01:44:45.586 secretary's designee. But, but that it was just, we didn't know. But when 01:44:45.619 --> 01:44:48.976 Obama got all of a sudden, we have much more interest in the program began 01:44:49.009 --> 01:44:54.036 the Assistant Secretary of Water and Science and um 01:44:54.069 --> 01:44:56.156 and 01:44:56.189 --> 01:45:01.765 um she came in was very hands on and she wanted to do things. Put her 01:45:01.798 --> 01:45:05.805 definite involvement in the program showed that she was invested in 01:45:05.838 --> 01:45:09.876 talking to all the stakeholders. She came and visited all the stakeholders 01:45:09.909 --> 01:45:14.286 in their communities where they lived, including myself. And um she 01:45:14.319 --> 01:45:18.967 traveled to meet us and spend time with us and hear about our concerns, 01:45:19.000 --> 01:45:22.925 you know, that there's a long ways and you get that kind of feedback. And 01:45:22.958 --> 01:45:28.446 so that was good. Um Then the the adoption of the high flow experiments as 01:45:28.479 --> 01:45:35.296 a pro protocol um operating protocol in the in the new EIS on the dam. Uh 01:45:35.329 --> 01:45:42.126 That, that to me was really important. Uh And um 01:45:42.159 --> 01:45:48.666 significant events uh the Sierra Club board voting to remove the dam was 01:45:48.699 --> 01:45:55.527 huge, that really colored the whole beginning of the program. Um 01:45:55.560 --> 01:45:59.885 It inspired people to make the program, wanna wanna make that program work. 01:45:59.918 --> 01:46:05.586 Because the alternative was if we fail, you know, the the dam removing 01:46:05.619 --> 01:46:10.246 people might take over, you know, if we fail at our task in protecting the 01:46:10.279 --> 01:46:14.456 Grand Canyon. So there was a real impetus on the part of people to be 01:46:14.489 --> 01:46:19.226 doing the right thing. Initially, the Trade Tower is coming down had a 01:46:19.259 --> 01:46:25.717 pretty big influence um in that it really took the wind out of the sails 01:46:25.750 --> 01:46:28.476 of the Sierra Clement, removing the dam because you know, all of a sudden 01:46:28.509 --> 01:46:34.015 , Glenn can and Dam got included as one of the top 10 infrastructural 01:46:34.048 --> 01:46:36.906 elements of the United States that had to be protected from terrorist 01:46:36.939 --> 01:46:43.107 attacks. So forget about removing the dam, Sierra Club. It's one of the 01:46:43.140 --> 01:46:46.897 top 10. So it got prioritized. And so basically I took the wind out of the 01:46:46.930 --> 01:46:51.925 sails of the people who wanted to remove the dam in that regard. Uh The 01:46:51.958 --> 01:46:56.765 trade towers has, um, has a strong effect on. I used to be able to visit 01:46:56.798 --> 01:47:00.626 the inside of the dam. I take, I've taken gone through all the dam tours 01:47:00.659 --> 01:47:04.737 of the I used, I think to have control. I've been invited in a long time 01:47:04.770 --> 01:47:08.567 ago and invited to the control room of the dam. Me and my students. I mean 01:47:08.600 --> 01:47:12.326 , you can't get near the control room today even if you're a member of the 01:47:12.359 --> 01:47:19.906 m wagon embedded by the secretary's office as a non terrorist. You can't, 01:47:19.939 --> 01:47:23.467 I, I can still go as a member of the committee. I would still go on these 01:47:23.500 --> 01:47:27.246 really cool journeys inside the dam, there's all these passageways and 01:47:27.279 --> 01:47:32.616 weird, weird little windows and you hear a lot of really cool stuff go 01:47:32.649 --> 01:47:36.187 inside the wall. Now, I got to do all that, but they wouldn't let me near 01:47:36.220 --> 01:47:40.635 the control room. Nobody gets to go in the, near the control room. It's 01:47:40.668 --> 01:47:43.317 just this really funny little feature. It's inside the dam. You know, it's 01:47:43.350 --> 01:47:46.857 right in the heart of the dam down there just by itself and it's got its 01:47:46.890 --> 01:47:50.595 own walls around it, but it's surrounded by concrete hallways and stuff 01:47:50.628 --> 01:47:58.628 and it's all 19 sixties technology. Yeah, if you ever see di like the, 01:48:00.418 --> 01:48:07.487 oh, but not even that. Yeah, the original starship starship. Exactly. Yeah 01:48:07.520 --> 01:48:12.866 , like more like, uh, uh, but, um, what's the name of the? 01:48:12.899 --> 01:48:17.586 But, uh, anyway, it's pretty cool. Um, let me ask you something on that 01:48:17.619 --> 01:48:22.586 before you leave that topic. It's, um, I think it's very interesting, uh, 01:48:22.619 --> 01:48:26.576 that you mentioned, uh, that, you know, the Twin Towers attack on 911 01:48:26.609 --> 01:48:32.937 changing, uh, significantly the, the whole concept that maybe Glen Canyon 01:48:32.970 --> 01:48:37.916 Dam should be decommissioned. And, um, and the, and the river flow around 01:48:37.949 --> 01:48:41.616 it. What do you think of the fact that the former commissioner of 01:48:41.649 --> 01:48:46.796 reclamation? Dan Beard has published a book a few years ago calling for 01:48:46.829 --> 01:48:52.967 the removal of Glen Canyon Dam? Is that, um, seems odd if it's been 01:48:53.000 --> 01:48:55.996 identified as one of our top 10 critical infrastructure that the 01:48:56.029 --> 01:48:59.147 commission of reclamation would actually come out saying that but um 01:48:59.180 --> 01:49:03.296 broader than that little conundrum. What, what do you think about his 01:49:03.329 --> 01:49:09.786 proposal? Well, thank you. What's my, uh I mean, uh Dan beer is welcome to 01:49:09.819 --> 01:49:13.456 his own opinion and he has his reasons for saying what he says and he's 01:49:13.489 --> 01:49:16.656 got some very good reasons and I think that um there are very good reasons 01:49:16.689 --> 01:49:20.946 , logical reasons to not have two giant reservoirs on the Colorado River 01:49:20.979 --> 01:49:27.095 system. Um It, it's an inefficient use of water for one. It's wasting a 01:49:27.128 --> 01:49:31.666 lot of water through evaporation and seepage when you, especially in this 01:49:31.699 --> 01:49:36.876 period of drought. And uh you know, the, the argument that why keep two 01:49:36.909 --> 01:49:40.726 res giant reservoirs half full when you can just have one fully, totally 01:49:40.759 --> 01:49:48.107 full. And uh it uh so there's a, there's a real logic to that period of 01:49:48.140 --> 01:49:53.237 drought, you know, water conservation. 01:49:53.270 --> 01:49:59.976 And uh and there's a real, a lot of societal value placed on the beauty of 01:50:00.009 --> 01:50:04.746 Glen Canyon Dam and the Glen Canyon that dam, but the Glen Canyon itself 01:50:04.779 --> 01:50:08.976 and the, and the river that flowed through it. And a lot of people very 01:50:09.009 --> 01:50:15.527 interested in um restoring that, bringing that back. And I think it's 01:50:15.560 --> 01:50:19.796 restorable. Personally, I think it can't hit the river if there was no dam 01:50:19.829 --> 01:50:24.616 there or the water was allowed to pass through the dam site and it became 01:50:24.649 --> 01:50:28.967 a natural flowing river. Again, it's very likely that there would be um it 01:50:29.000 --> 01:50:33.226 would come back fairly quickly. Even that bathtub ring will shed off 01:50:33.259 --> 01:50:38.946 pretty quickly. I've seen it feel off and just as the, yeah, just, you 01:50:38.979 --> 01:50:42.467 know, it's a bath tubing now. It's that calcium carbon coating on the 01:50:42.500 --> 01:50:46.696 sandstone, people think. Oh, that's there forever now. And, and it, it 01:50:46.729 --> 01:50:51.305 sheets off because it's, it's just a thin coating on the sandstone. The 01:50:51.338 --> 01:50:56.866 sandstone is loosely cemented and I, I watched it sheet off. And so I 01:50:56.899 --> 01:51:01.067 think uh springs are coming back, for instance, now that we have lower uh 01:51:01.100 --> 01:51:05.546 reservoir levels. A lot of, a lot of spring habitats in the side canyons 01:51:05.579 --> 01:51:09.607 of Glen Canyon are coming back because of the lower res reservoir levels. 01:51:09.640 --> 01:51:13.456 So they're not flooded anymore, they're exposed. And so the spring 01:51:13.489 --> 01:51:19.717 vegetation is turning and turning quickly. Yeah. And a lot of the springs 01:51:19.750 --> 01:51:24.425 may be um, water that was seeped into the wall now seeping back out again. 01:51:24.458 --> 01:51:30.546 Um But, uh, nonetheless, there they are. Um, so there, there is a public 01:51:30.579 --> 01:51:34.305 sentiment to support, still strong out there supporting the re the, uh the 01:51:34.338 --> 01:51:39.366 , uh the return of, of a na A na a natural environment there and the res 01:51:39.399 --> 01:51:46.246 where the reservoir is today. Um It really put uh another big effect of is 01:51:46.279 --> 01:51:49.996 that sort of cover that. Um, 01:51:50.029 --> 01:51:54.336 I, I knew Dan Beard and, you know, he was part of the program in King and 01:51:54.369 --> 01:51:59.265 Dan Under Babbitt. And so I, I got a chance to meet him and talk to him 01:51:59.298 --> 01:52:04.296 informally a little bit. And, uh, so I got a sense of his, why he thinks 01:52:04.329 --> 01:52:07.616 he, I haven't read his book but, but I got a sense of why he thinks he 01:52:07.649 --> 01:52:11.116 does what he does. Um, 01:52:11.149 --> 01:52:15.397 a lot of people ask me a question. What would you like to have Glen Canyon 01:52:15.430 --> 01:52:22.055 Dam decommissioned? And my answer to that at one time would have been. Yes. 01:52:22.088 --> 01:52:29.586 Um It still is that um if it's, if it's conceivable and feasible to do 01:52:29.619 --> 01:52:31.666 and still 01:52:31.699 --> 01:52:37.555 um adequately distribute water as it's being utilized today from the river 01:52:37.588 --> 01:52:42.487 in a way that's fair. And even that was the other big thing that happened 01:52:42.520 --> 01:52:46.687 with the drought. Um The drought being one of the big influencers on the 01:52:46.720 --> 01:52:52.607 operation of Glen Canyon Dam starting in year 2000 and then the Trade 01:52:52.640 --> 01:52:58.376 Towers the next year. Uh We didn't, it took a few years before everybody 01:52:58.409 --> 01:53:04.527 realized we were in a drought. It took year 2002, 01:53:04.560 --> 01:53:09.777 25% of normal runoff from the Rockies reservoirs. 01:53:09.810 --> 01:53:17.345 By spring of 2005, the reservoir, Lake Lake Polygon from 99% capacity fall 01:53:17.378 --> 01:53:25.378 rem fall in 1999 or roughly 90 per 90% fall. It was all the way up to in 01:53:26.659 --> 01:53:31.777 five years. It went to 33% capacity. The lowest it had ever been since the 01:53:31.810 --> 01:53:36.536 filling of the reservoir made everybody go who especially the base and 01:53:36.569 --> 01:53:41.366 state people going like we got, what are we gonna do? We're in a drought 01:53:41.399 --> 01:53:46.246 and initially people are going like, oh, I'll in next year, I'll in next 01:53:46.279 --> 01:53:49.496 year and when it doesn't, and it keeps, and then that was when the basic 01:53:49.529 --> 01:53:54.027 state started their own process negotiating in with the federal government 01:53:54.060 --> 01:53:59.217 on how to redistribute water in, uh, how to share the shortages, not just 01:53:59.250 --> 01:54:02.717 share the surpluses, which is always what they thought about before. How 01:54:02.750 --> 01:54:05.487 do we share the surpluses? So they now they're going like, oh, how do we 01:54:05.520 --> 01:54:09.265 share the shortages guys? And so that was when that criteria was developed 01:54:09.298 --> 01:54:12.717 for balancing water between the two reservoirs, upper bases and lower 01:54:12.750 --> 01:54:18.196 basin reservoirs so that nobody gets cut too short. Was that part of the 01:54:18.229 --> 01:54:25.385 2007 shortage sharing agreement shortage criteria? That was it, but that 01:54:25.418 --> 01:54:28.305 was not adaptive management didn't get brought into that pro process at 01:54:28.338 --> 01:54:32.326 all. The Adaptive Management program. We didn't get any say there. Um The 01:54:32.359 --> 01:54:35.647 basic states were negotiating that in Vegas by the by with the Federal 01:54:35.680 --> 01:54:41.357 government interior and figuring that out. And as much as some of us asked 01:54:41.390 --> 01:54:45.116 to be involved in it, asked to be able to give input into that process. We 01:54:45.149 --> 01:54:49.925 were not all not allowed to, we, we weren't invited into that room. Uh So 01:54:49.958 --> 01:54:52.937 we continued on being a doctor management work group, working with low 01:54:52.970 --> 01:54:57.135 reservoir levels and initially the high flow experiments um, from the dam 01:54:57.168 --> 01:55:00.765 were anticipated to only occur in high water years when there was a, a big 01:55:00.798 --> 01:55:05.086 surplus of water coming down. Anyway, that basin, they said, yeah, we 01:55:05.119 --> 01:55:08.987 might let you do it then, you know, when it wasn't gonna see any sweat off 01:55:09.020 --> 01:55:14.567 their back. But now we're going to drought and, and, and that extra water 01:55:14.600 --> 01:55:18.046 going around the turbines and not going through the turbines matters even 01:55:18.079 --> 01:55:22.576 more to them. And that's part of the reason that it took so long to get 01:55:22.609 --> 01:55:26.397 the high flow protocol established because we were in the drought and the 01:55:26.430 --> 01:55:29.506 leaders in upper patient states didn't want to release that water around 01:55:29.539 --> 01:55:34.607 the turbines even though it's really relatively small amount of water. Uh 01:55:34.640 --> 01:55:37.336 I think they always looked at it as the camel with the nose under the tent 01:55:37.369 --> 01:55:41.467 , you know, he, you give them that they want more of this and the same 01:55:41.500 --> 01:55:44.237 with the budget. They didn't want it. They wanted to cap the budget right 01:55:44.270 --> 01:55:47.515 away as soon as the program started so that the budget wouldn't get out of 01:55:47.548 --> 01:55:50.226 control because they imagined all these scientists would want to just keep 01:55:50.259 --> 01:55:55.946 studying things and it would just balloon. And so they were able to get a 01:55:55.979 --> 01:55:59.885 cap, a budgetary cap put on the program and it was totally artificial cap 01:55:59.918 --> 01:56:03.446 , it was just whatever the budget happened to be. The year before the debt 01:56:03.479 --> 01:56:07.487 management program started, that became the budget yearly. Annual budget 01:56:07.520 --> 01:56:11.635 from then on because the ba and states and the uh hyper power people were 01:56:11.668 --> 01:56:16.116 going like we got a cab. Do you remember about when that cap was adopted 01:56:16.149 --> 01:56:21.385 right away? So like 1996 or 9798? 01:56:21.418 --> 01:56:25.217 Uh yeah, it was one of the first big discussions. And has that changed 01:56:25.250 --> 01:56:29.866 over time to your knowledge? Did you ever up it, the cost of living 01:56:29.899 --> 01:56:35.467 increases, you mean? Yeah. Um yeah, that it has, it has grown a little bit. 01:56:35.500 --> 01:56:38.765 Does it change by administration? I could imagine one administration 01:56:38.798 --> 01:56:41.826 would try to strangle the budget and another one would try to, you know, 01:56:41.859 --> 01:56:47.067 build it up. Does that happen? No, because as, as Randy Peterson for 01:56:47.100 --> 01:56:50.357 reclamation said, Andre, when I was arguing, hey, I think we should open 01:56:50.390 --> 01:56:53.696 up the cap on this budget because we really, I was making the argument in 01:56:53.729 --> 01:56:56.456 the front, front of the committee that we really don't know what it's 01:56:56.489 --> 01:57:00.366 gonna cost to do this problem. Let's not just artificially put a cap on it 01:57:00.399 --> 01:57:05.187 , let's start the program and start doing the science to see where it 01:57:05.220 --> 01:57:11.817 naturally falls as a budget. And uh but uh um hydropower people won that 01:57:11.850 --> 01:57:16.706 argument. They said, oh and Randy Peterson told me one day, he says, you 01:57:16.739 --> 01:57:20.217 know, Andre, you know, this thing about, you know, I know you wanna get 01:57:20.250 --> 01:57:24.546 open that budget cap up on the program. He says, but one good thing about 01:57:24.579 --> 01:57:29.906 that budget cap is that they're never gonna cut it, 01:57:29.939 --> 01:57:34.416 it, it can go up and it can go down. So it's a guarantee that you'll get 01:57:34.449 --> 01:57:39.937 that much money anyway. Every year it was, it was an institutionalized 01:57:39.970 --> 01:57:46.067 amount. And so they weren't gonna remove the money and hydropower, people 01:57:46.100 --> 01:57:50.756 are gonna get away with that. So, so, and when you make do with what you 01:57:50.789 --> 01:57:56.046 got, you got $8 million budget, that's what you do. And every year that we 01:57:56.079 --> 01:57:58.967 had the big budget arguments or, you know, that was a big part of what we 01:57:59.000 --> 01:58:05.086 argued about. And so where are we gonna spend the money in? And uh so that 01:58:05.119 --> 01:58:09.076 , that was as the, as the m wag, that was a big part of our discussion. 01:58:09.109 --> 01:58:15.086 Anyway, uh the long term drought was a big deal, 33% of capacity in 2005 01:58:15.119 --> 01:58:21.425 that um induced the warmer water releases from the dam, which improved the 01:58:21.458 --> 01:58:28.366 habitat for the native fish. And it also can um caused a great deal of 01:58:28.399 --> 01:58:36.166 concern about uh um the quality of water coming out of the dam because 01:58:36.199 --> 01:58:42.095 there was one year. The reservoir has a does not overturn every year. It's 01:58:42.128 --> 01:58:46.626 not like the lakes that overturn um seasonally, you know, where the cold 01:58:46.659 --> 01:58:50.036 water, it's cold enough on the top in the winter time that it put all of a 01:58:50.069 --> 01:58:53.156 sudden the cold water sinks and the bottom water comes up. So it doesn't 01:58:53.189 --> 01:58:56.226 do that because it's in the desert and temperatures aren't great enough to 01:58:56.259 --> 01:58:59.425 make that happen. The reservoir is too big for that to happen. But what it 01:58:59.458 --> 01:59:03.226 does do is it stratifies the reservoir stratified. Such that right at the 01:59:03.259 --> 01:59:08.086 bottom of the reservoir is a, is a, the bottommost layer is anoxic 01:59:08.119 --> 01:59:12.916 environment water and, but there's no oxygen down there in the water so no 01:59:12.949 --> 01:59:20.256 fish can live in that water. And if, if that oxygen and we had a situation 01:59:20.289 --> 01:59:25.996 where it happened one year, the, um, the reservoir was low. There was this 01:59:26.029 --> 01:59:30.756 big ox pool down there dead pool down at the bottom of the reservoir. A 01:59:30.789 --> 01:59:37.706 big influx of cold water came in from a relatively large runoff event and 01:59:37.739 --> 01:59:40.987 the wa reservoir levels are already down. The pen stocks are drawing water 01:59:41.020 --> 01:59:45.656 from pretty low from, uh, pretty well from closer to the an ox deadpool 01:59:45.689 --> 01:59:50.786 than it used to be. And, and this big push of cold water can run all the 01:59:50.819 --> 01:59:55.055 way down the reservoir. Shove that anoxic water up to the pen stocks and 01:59:55.088 --> 02:00:00.135 all of a sudden reclamation realized that they were about to feed 02:00:00.168 --> 02:00:05.175 death water into the Grand Canyon which would kill the trout fishery for 02:00:05.208 --> 02:00:09.866 sure, down the stream of the dam. And they were like, ah, and they, uh, 02:00:09.899 --> 02:00:14.296 they caught it pretty quick and they introduced water somehow. I can't 02:00:14.329 --> 02:00:20.425 remember how they did it. They got water, oxygen rich water fed in to the 02:00:20.458 --> 02:00:23.166 outlet. I'm not sure. I can't remember how they did that now, but they 02:00:23.199 --> 02:00:27.737 were able to prevent the destruction of the trout fishery, but it was Nip 02:00:27.770 --> 02:00:31.696 and tuck. It was one of those things where that's an, that's an outcome of 02:00:31.729 --> 02:00:34.746 the drought. You know, the reservoir levels are low and there's an ox body 02:00:34.779 --> 02:00:38.126 of water down there and the conditions and you will learn a lot and 02:00:38.159 --> 02:00:42.476 something like that, you know, was that in 2005 when you said, I think it 02:00:42.509 --> 02:00:47.987 was 05, when that happened, when that 33% of capacity spring runoff, even 02:00:48.020 --> 02:00:52.756 reservoirs all the way down to 33%. And that the runoff year for 2005 came 02:00:52.789 --> 02:00:57.027 in pretty strong and it shoved that annex of water down to the pen stocks 02:00:57.060 --> 02:01:03.845 . I think I heard today it's about 56%. Uh Do you have that kind of anoxic 02:01:03.878 --> 02:01:08.726 uh problem at a, at half full reservoir or only when you get down to say a 02:01:08.759 --> 02:01:14.246 third fall? Do you know, I don't know where that level is today? It, it 02:01:14.279 --> 02:01:20.897 happens because um organic decomposition uh of the sediment of the organic 02:01:20.930 --> 02:01:24.607 materials at the bottom of the reservoir. Use up the oxygen, the aerobic 02:01:24.640 --> 02:01:29.696 bacteria use all the available oxygen and, and they basically make a dead 02:01:29.729 --> 02:01:36.226 pool down there. Nothing can live in it that needs oxygen anyway. 02:01:36.259 --> 02:01:38.626 So there are the stratification of the reservoir that you have to pay 02:01:38.659 --> 02:01:42.925 attention to the other. The big thing that I'll mention is sedimentation 02:01:42.958 --> 02:01:47.836 of the reservoir. Um This is something that one of my frustrations in this 02:01:47.869 --> 02:01:51.006 program. I was never able to get reclamation to do anything about as much 02:01:51.039 --> 02:01:54.717 as I got to know. Those guys really well worked closely with them. We were 02:01:54.750 --> 02:02:02.237 friends and I'd bring up the Duke University study. Uh This guy from Duke 02:02:02.270 --> 02:02:05.055 University, I don't know if you heard of this. He studied the 02:02:05.088 --> 02:02:08.897 sedimentation of the reservoir in during that those early years of the 02:02:08.930 --> 02:02:15.687 drought from 2000 to 2010 or eight, something like that. There was he, he 02:02:15.720 --> 02:02:22.546 , he, he used motor beam uh sonar array to study the contours of the 02:02:22.579 --> 02:02:25.116 bottom of the reservoir. Learned a lot of interesting stuff. What's 02:02:25.149 --> 02:02:29.277 happening down there by the way, big under underwater landslides, for 02:02:29.310 --> 02:02:34.885 instance, um Also determined that indeed t turbid flows, density currents 02:02:34.918 --> 02:02:37.976 of, of sediment rich water were traveling all down all the way down the 02:02:38.009 --> 02:02:42.206 length of the reservoir and coming up against the base of the dam which 02:02:42.239 --> 02:02:47.265 had been observed in Hoover Dam and Lake Mead in the forties and fifties 02:02:47.298 --> 02:02:51.607 that there's this how we discovered turbidity currents in, in geology 02:02:51.640 --> 02:02:55.357 because that reservoir, nobody could figure out like me why the sediment 02:02:55.390 --> 02:02:58.836 was coming all the way down to the dam and getting close to the P talks. 02:02:58.869 --> 02:03:02.166 How could that happen? You know, it's the sediment comes in 100 and 20 02:03:02.199 --> 02:03:05.555 miles up there. How could it get all the way out of the dam? Well, there's 02:03:05.588 --> 02:03:11.046 this density currents when the sedimentary delta cows off and sediment 02:03:11.079 --> 02:03:15.916 gets ch ch turned up with the water, cool water, it slides down along the 02:03:15.949 --> 02:03:20.006 bottom and flows all the way down the length of the reservoir. So, 02:03:20.039 --> 02:03:24.376 sedimentation is occurring behind Lake Highland Canyon Dam as well and he 02:03:24.409 --> 02:03:27.737 was able to document that and document that. Actually. He, he was able to 02:03:27.770 --> 02:03:31.095 actually see a turbidity current go by him when he was doing his traverse 02:03:31.128 --> 02:03:35.595 up the San Juan River arm. He actually got photographs of it. So he knows 02:03:35.628 --> 02:03:39.305 it happens and, and he was able to measure the mo rate of sedimentation 02:03:39.338 --> 02:03:43.647 behind the dam. It's very slow, but it's CRE creeping up the backside of 02:03:43.680 --> 02:03:46.286 the dam. And here's the thing that I've been trying, I was trying to get 02:03:46.319 --> 02:03:52.217 reclamation to, to think about or at least address. And that's it. When 02:03:52.250 --> 02:03:56.067 that sediment gets up to the intakes for the bypass tubes, which are the 02:03:56.100 --> 02:03:59.805 four jet tubes that shoot water at the base of the dam. They enable us to 02:03:59.838 --> 02:04:04.027 do a high flow experiment right now. They're pulling clear water out of 02:04:04.060 --> 02:04:07.175 the reservoir. But if that sediment, what wants to do this does and it's, 02:04:07.208 --> 02:04:12.006 and it's, and it's inexorable, it will get there. Um Segmentation is not 02:04:12.039 --> 02:04:16.397 stopping the reservoir, you can't stop it and, and once it gets there, the 02:04:16.430 --> 02:04:19.817 question is gonna be a decision that has to be made. Do you let them fill 02:04:19.850 --> 02:04:24.345 in with sediment and never use the bypass tubes again? Or do you use the 02:04:24.378 --> 02:04:28.576 bypass tube as a means of moving sediment through the dam, thereby keeping 02:04:28.609 --> 02:04:34.006 them clear? And if you do that and you, and you spurt muddy water, I mean 02:04:34.039 --> 02:04:40.237 , muddy clay rich water out of, that's the finest sedimentary particles 02:04:40.270 --> 02:04:46.036 behind the dam into the blue ribbon trout fishery downstream. Guess what 02:04:46.069 --> 02:04:50.277 happens to Blue Trail history? 02:04:50.310 --> 02:04:54.956 Yeah. And, and, and the Humpback chub will probably be fine but not the 02:04:54.989 --> 02:05:01.446 trout, right? Ok. And so, and then, but then you go, oh, but maybe we have 02:05:01.479 --> 02:05:05.836 more sediment so we can build more beaches. That would be good. Maybe for 02:05:05.869 --> 02:05:10.826 the sandbars in the Grand Canyon off the straight offs always. Yeah. But 02:05:10.859 --> 02:05:14.956 there's gonna, if they let them fill it, it's just sediment in, then you 02:05:14.989 --> 02:05:19.765 lose that fundamental capacity of the dam to move water through it. Cause 02:05:19.798 --> 02:05:24.265 there's only three ways to get water through that dam besides leakage. 02:05:24.298 --> 02:05:28.027 What is the, is the bypass tubes? That's the lowest down on the backside 02:05:28.060 --> 02:05:32.706 of the dam. Midway up the backside is the pen stocks for the turbines, 02:05:32.739 --> 02:05:35.857 drops water through the turbines and then the spillway is all the way up 02:05:35.890 --> 02:05:41.765 to the top which are, haven't been used since 1983. Probably. Well, 02:05:41.798 --> 02:05:46.737 actually they did, uh They ran them in 84. 84. Uh Yeah, they had two years 02:05:46.770 --> 02:05:52.036 of high flows. Yeah, when they re-engineered them, they had to test them 02:05:52.069 --> 02:05:56.897 in 84. So they did a, a modest test to make sure that they wouldn't 02:05:56.930 --> 02:06:00.946 cavitation would destroy the linings. And again, 02:06:00.979 --> 02:06:06.256 they didn't do much of a test anyway. So you got, those are your three 02:06:06.289 --> 02:06:08.687 mechanisms getting water through the dam. And if you're relying Oaks 02:06:08.720 --> 02:06:12.206 wholly on the pen stocks, then if you lose capacity to move sediment out 02:06:12.239 --> 02:06:16.217 around the dam through the bypass tubes, then that spells the ultimate 02:06:16.250 --> 02:06:20.265 destruction of your pen stocks because you can't move sediment down 02:06:20.298 --> 02:06:24.357 through the turbines or it will destroy the turbines. 02:06:24.390 --> 02:06:29.046 Um Do you have any sense of uh when that day will come? I mean, there's 02:06:29.079 --> 02:06:33.296 always estimates of how long a reservoir will function until it's filled 02:06:33.329 --> 02:06:38.506 with sediment. It'll be within the next III I, I'm just the thumbnail 02:06:38.539 --> 02:06:44.635 estimation based upon the Duke study and uh the rate of sedimentation due 02:06:44.668 --> 02:06:49.027 to low water levels of the reservoir. Uh 02:06:49.060 --> 02:06:51.696 As long as we're in this drought, continue to be in this drought and 02:06:51.729 --> 02:06:55.567 reservoir levels are low and sediment continues to cave off from the 02:06:55.600 --> 02:06:58.696 deltaic regions and move down the stupidity currents to the dam. We'll 02:06:58.729 --> 02:07:02.246 still get an increased rate of sedimentation, get to the base of the dam 02:07:02.279 --> 02:07:06.116 higher than it would have been if the reservoir levels were high full. 02:07:06.149 --> 02:07:08.726 That was one of the outcomes of the Duke study determined that this 02:07:08.759 --> 02:07:12.456 drought, drought levels of the reservoir were inducing the turbid TBI 02:07:12.489 --> 02:07:16.385 turbidity occurrence, going all the way to the dam. And um it'll probably 02:07:16.418 --> 02:07:22.805 be on the order of 100 years before uh or last before the uh oh, this 02:07:22.838 --> 02:07:27.675 bypass tubes get clogged or start to get clogged, I would guess, maybe 02:07:27.708 --> 02:07:30.845 even less than that. 02:07:30.878 --> 02:07:35.015 But I would have to look at the studies and we would have to have that, 02:07:35.048 --> 02:07:39.595 that researcher come back and do a return study, reclamation and sponsored 02:07:39.628 --> 02:07:44.397 the study themselves. They did originally in 1986 but they did it ahead of 02:07:44.430 --> 02:07:48.885 their researcher do a series of cross sectional, just a single line of 02:07:48.918 --> 02:07:53.055 sonar line, not multibeam array, but just a beep, beep, beep, beep, cross 02:07:53.088 --> 02:07:56.857 the reservoir. But profiles have said what the bottom of the reservoir 02:07:56.890 --> 02:08:01.277 look like across several cross sections and then extrapolate between those 02:08:01.310 --> 02:08:05.286 and say like a and that was when the reclamation study came out with. Well 02:08:05.319 --> 02:08:08.916 , it'll tul the re the reservoir will take 700 years to fill up with 02:08:08.949 --> 02:08:15.607 settlement all the way. That was their conclusion in the eighties, 86. But 02:08:15.640 --> 02:08:21.805 the thing that I, I keep saying to reclamation long before you fill up the 02:08:21.838 --> 02:08:26.376 river reservoir of sediment, you're gonna have a reservoir half full of 02:08:26.409 --> 02:08:31.967 sediment and or a quarter full of sediment and you reduce the capacity of 02:08:32.000 --> 02:08:36.826 storage of water. Each time you reduce the volume of the reservoir. Each 02:08:36.859 --> 02:08:39.826 time you reduce the volume of the reservoir, it becomes less capable of 02:08:39.859 --> 02:08:44.196 handling an incoming annual flood 02:08:44.229 --> 02:08:50.175 and you have a chance of it going through over the spillways again. 02:08:50.208 --> 02:08:54.286 And so you're gonna lose the capacity of the reservoir to be effective 02:08:54.319 --> 02:09:00.756 progressively over time. Long before it fills with mud, right, becomes 02:09:00.789 --> 02:09:08.789 less useful. So you were um you were listing off uh the key events that 02:09:09.220 --> 02:09:12.916 led to significant changes. Did you get through all of those or are there 02:09:12.949 --> 02:09:19.095 a few more you wanna mention? Yeah, the uh the failure of the Adaptive 02:09:19.128 --> 02:09:23.246 Management program, the perceived failure of the program happened in the 02:09:23.279 --> 02:09:28.756 mid two thousands. Uh The Grand Canyon Trust representative who I worked 02:09:28.789 --> 02:09:32.496 very closely with throughout the length of the program. Another guy you 02:09:32.529 --> 02:09:39.546 should talk to Rick Johnson if you haven't. Um 02:09:39.579 --> 02:09:44.626 He's also just, yeah, he was very involved just like I was, we worked hand 02:09:44.659 --> 02:09:49.916 in hand in glove for a lot of years. Um 02:09:49.949 --> 02:09:53.187 The Grand Canyon Trust decided to come out with the opinion that the 02:09:53.220 --> 02:09:57.147 Adaptive Management program had failed. We were failing with regard to 02:09:57.180 --> 02:10:00.885 restoring the habitat for the chub and bringing the numbers back 02:10:00.918 --> 02:10:04.595 sufficiently. We are failing with regard to the archaeological sites and 02:10:04.628 --> 02:10:07.746 we are failing with regard to sandbars in the Grand Canyon for the 02:10:07.779 --> 02:10:14.656 recreational river runners and that came when um in 2008. I think it was 02:10:14.689 --> 02:10:20.476 when the US GS scientists, sediment scientists published a paper in the GS 02:10:20.509 --> 02:10:27.086 A today journal cover cover article. Question is, is there enough sand 02:10:27.119 --> 02:10:32.317 question mark? And it addressed the question of over the long term 02:10:32.350 --> 02:10:38.366 existence of Glen Canyon Dam. Can we ever get enough sand to come into the 02:10:38.399 --> 02:10:43.885 Pia River or other tributaries to ever create a sustainable amount of sand 02:10:43.918 --> 02:10:49.217 in the sand bars of the Grand Canyon or are we, are we on a losing streak 02:10:49.250 --> 02:10:53.246 here that's not gonna end? And their, their, their question was really 02:10:53.279 --> 02:10:56.317 aimed at saying, no, we aren't going to be able to, there's not enough 02:10:56.350 --> 02:10:59.836 sand coming in the period there for the long term sustainability of 02:10:59.869 --> 02:11:04.206 sandbar habitat in the Grand Canyon. And that's a big deal. Go sandbar 02:11:04.239 --> 02:11:10.885 habitats critical for a lot of resources. And um that was when the trust 02:11:10.918 --> 02:11:14.397 came out with it's failing. We gotta do a new EIS on the dam. You know, 02:11:14.430 --> 02:11:18.976 completely re what, what we, how we decided back in 1997 the secretary 02:11:19.009 --> 02:11:24.536 decided to run the dam based upon the first EIS isn't working a preferred 02:11:24.569 --> 02:11:28.015 alternative is not a preferred. We have to rook at it and figure out what 02:11:28.048 --> 02:11:33.397 else we can do. So that was when the second EIS on the dam was done. That 02:11:33.430 --> 02:11:39.737 started with the Obama administration 2008. It became known as the temp 02:11:39.770 --> 02:11:47.256 long term experimental and management program plan And so that, that was 02:11:47.289 --> 02:11:50.987 what was developed and a preferred alternative came out of that went 02:11:51.020 --> 02:11:54.987 through the whole eis vetting process. Again, I don't know, public 02:11:55.020 --> 02:12:01.246 meetings, public scoping and uh a new operational plan that included high 02:12:01.279 --> 02:12:07.076 flu experiments as a protocol um was adopted. 02:12:07.109 --> 02:12:11.027 I was disappointed that they continued to fluctuate the daily fluctuations 02:12:11.060 --> 02:12:16.817 from the dam. Um high flows during the day and low at night because those 02:12:16.850 --> 02:12:20.906 do erode the beaches in the Grand Canyon. I'm convinced of that. And one 02:12:20.939 --> 02:12:24.845 of the reasons I know that is because I've worked down there for 44 years. 02:12:24.878 --> 02:12:30.015 And I, I'm a sediment scientist. I'm a geologist and I'm a good observer 02:12:30.048 --> 02:12:37.897 and I read the papers and um I started uh our own citizen science program 02:12:37.930 --> 02:12:41.345 to monitor the beaches in the Grand Canyon. Do you know about that uh 02:12:41.378 --> 02:12:45.546 Doctor Beach program? I've heard of it but nobody has talked about it yet. 02:12:45.579 --> 02:12:49.187 In those interviews, I probably work since it's my baby. I guess I should 02:12:49.220 --> 02:12:54.607 talk about it. 1996 flooded from the dam, the first high flow experiment 02:12:54.640 --> 02:12:57.937 we knew it was coming. You know, we got reclamation was on board. 02:12:57.970 --> 02:13:03.166 Everybody was, nobody was gonna stop it. And I sat down with Tom Moody, my 02:13:03.199 --> 02:13:08.536 colleague at UCRG. And I said, Tom, how are we gonna know independently 02:13:08.569 --> 02:13:11.796 those of us who care most about the sandbars in the Grand Canyon who use 02:13:11.829 --> 02:13:15.397 them on a daily basis and have been around for a while. I've been watching 02:13:15.430 --> 02:13:19.456 them. How are we gonna be able to monitor whether this flood flow works or 02:13:19.489 --> 02:13:23.156 not? And with the effects of this thing, I mean, from our own independent 02:13:23.189 --> 02:13:27.296 observation. So we sat down one day and invented the Adoptive Beach 02:13:27.329 --> 02:13:33.916 program whereby we identified 44 critical campsites in the Grand Canyon 02:13:33.949 --> 02:13:41.217 that are either in high demand, highly irritable or um in, in, in three 02:13:41.250 --> 02:13:45.046 critical reaches where they're most in need. The beaches are most in 02:13:45.079 --> 02:13:51.885 demand. And we said, OK, that's our data set. Um Now let's get boatman to 02:13:51.918 --> 02:13:56.055 adopt them. And then we do Ahoy. And so we established photographic 02:13:56.088 --> 02:14:01.696 photography, repeat photography sites at each of these 44 and have been 02:14:01.729 --> 02:14:06.956 running that program ever since the photographs from the those uh repeat 02:14:06.989 --> 02:14:11.737 photography, pictures I believe are available on a website that uh we've 02:14:11.770 --> 02:14:17.416 looked at, you see the change over time in those beaches A US GS website. 02:14:17.449 --> 02:14:22.756 It is. Yeah, we finally got them to accept it as a, a data source, even 02:14:22.789 --> 02:14:25.836 though not particularly scientific. 02:14:25.869 --> 02:14:29.265 It took him a while to get over that and, and he said, no, actually there 02:14:29.298 --> 02:14:33.706 is a pretty good data set here. Maybe we should put it in our bag of 02:14:33.739 --> 02:14:37.956 tricks here. And it, it's remarkable uh just to look at the changes over 02:14:37.989 --> 02:14:43.635 time for a long time, sentiment, scientists were pooh pooh and like uh the 02:14:43.668 --> 02:14:50.076 systematics are all wrong and today we can do it better. And, you know, 02:14:50.109 --> 02:14:54.147 but, you know, it was just a citizen science program, a citizen monitoring 02:14:54.180 --> 02:14:59.076 program is all it is. It's not claiming to be a scientific project or it's 02:14:59.109 --> 02:15:04.046 just people, lots of eyes, lots of eyes and cameras looking at the same 02:15:04.079 --> 02:15:09.626 thing over. So they, they did accept it and now it's part of their data 02:15:09.659 --> 02:15:14.175 set, which is good. So I'm I'm proud of that program and I work and I 02:15:14.208 --> 02:15:17.987 still, I still adopt beaches every year and do my photography of beaches a 02:15:18.020 --> 02:15:22.546 year. Are there other citizen science programs? Uh going in? It was a 02:15:22.579 --> 02:15:27.756 really good one developed a few years ago by the um aquatic biologist at 02:15:27.789 --> 02:15:35.256 the UGCMRC, Ted Kennedy who realize that since the food base for the fish 02:15:35.289 --> 02:15:39.857 are a big part of the food base are these midge flies that hatch by the 02:15:39.890 --> 02:15:46.187 gazillions every so often down there and, and then they become fish food. 02:15:46.220 --> 02:15:52.476 Um a critical understanding of the food source, the food base for the 02:15:52.509 --> 02:16:00.366 aquatic ecosystem is not when the bitch flights um catch where and what's 02:16:00.399 --> 02:16:04.956 inducing them to hatch. How many are there? So K Kenny came up with this 02:16:04.989 --> 02:16:09.616 really simple thing that for river runners to take down on river trips 02:16:09.649 --> 02:16:13.366 with them, which is like a little light trap that you put out at night. 02:16:13.399 --> 02:16:19.967 And it's a way of sampling the bug population and, and systematic and it, 02:16:20.000 --> 02:16:23.845 it's used the same way every time by everybody and he was able to get 02:16:23.878 --> 02:16:26.437 people really interested in that river runner. So, you're like, oh, I'll 02:16:26.470 --> 02:16:30.406 help. I'll help, you know. And, uh, and so it, apparently it was a very 02:16:30.439 --> 02:16:33.926 successful program. I'm not sure if it's still actively going on or not. I 02:16:33.959 --> 02:16:37.305 haven't heard about it for a couple of years but, but it was touted by GC 02:16:37.338 --> 02:16:42.935 Marcy as a, a great citizen science because you know, how do you, if, if 02:16:42.968 --> 02:16:46.837 you're, if you're aquatic biologist, you might get down the river once a 02:16:46.870 --> 02:16:52.685 year or twice. OK. How many days in the year are there? Three and 65? You 02:16:52.718 --> 02:16:58.046 spent 30 of them on the river? That's 1/10 of the year that you're 02:16:58.079 --> 02:17:01.467 actually down there observing. I mean, how else do you get handle on 02:17:01.500 --> 02:17:04.616 observationally what's going on down there? You can't be everywhere in the 02:17:04.649 --> 02:17:09.337 river's ecosystem at once if you're a scientist, but you can have lots of 02:17:09.370 --> 02:17:12.626 eyes and ears up and down, distributed up and down the river ecosystem at 02:17:12.659 --> 02:17:16.805 any given moment throughout the season and you can get a broader database 02:17:16.838 --> 02:17:22.246 at that more accurate. So, utilizing the, the presence of a lot of river 02:17:22.279 --> 02:17:24.586 runners down there who are interested in contributing, I think was an 02:17:24.619 --> 02:17:30.746 important, important thing. And uh yeah, um what else is there enough sand 02:17:30.779 --> 02:17:38.185 ? So the, the new Eis on the dam? Um 02:17:38.218 --> 02:17:42.657 I think I've already got gone. My, my accomplishments in the program, I'm 02:17:42.690 --> 02:17:48.135 most proud of the high flow experiments being, having those be tied to an 02:17:48.168 --> 02:17:51.476 understanding of how they affect the archaeological resources as well as 02:17:51.509 --> 02:17:56.016 the um fish habitat, as well as the recreational habitat being an 02:17:56.049 --> 02:18:01.616 essential part of the landscape. Uh element of the river ecosystem sandbar 02:18:01.649 --> 02:18:07.035 , you can't discount them, they matter too much, getting that and then 02:18:07.068 --> 02:18:12.536 connecting that to the high flow experiments being operational way to just 02:18:12.569 --> 02:18:17.507 restore the sandbars on a long term basis. I'm proud of this working on a 02:18:17.540 --> 02:18:20.935 strategic plan and getting that broad-based buy in by all the stakeholders. 02:18:20.968 --> 02:18:26.346 That was a lot of work. But um a lot of discussions, but we got that done. 02:18:26.379 --> 02:18:32.167 Um proud of the public outreach that the stuff that we did to try to con 02:18:32.200 --> 02:18:36.467 convey to the public that what's been going on because the public is very 02:18:36.500 --> 02:18:40.366 interested in this place. Um I've, I've given a lot of talks over the 02:18:40.399 --> 02:18:45.605 years to different groups to the annual River guides training seminar. Uh 02:18:45.638 --> 02:18:49.417 write articles for the Boatman's quarterly review. I get maybe you get a 02:18:49.450 --> 02:18:56.875 bunch of those and a whole bunch more here. But uh so that outreach effort 02:18:56.908 --> 02:19:02.156 me personally through my own organization and through uh giving uh invited 02:19:02.189 --> 02:19:07.676 talks to groups, you know, one time an example would be a whole bunch of 02:19:07.709 --> 02:19:11.066 medical doctors are having a conference in. So, and they wanted a keynote 02:19:11.099 --> 02:19:16.926 speaker and they knew about the dam and they knew about the issues and the 02:19:16.959 --> 02:19:23.196 call me up soon. Will you give us a talk? Sure. They went down there, the 02:19:23.229 --> 02:19:26.657 educated public, you know, the people who are pretty well educated, they 02:19:26.690 --> 02:19:30.775 understand the importance of the Grand Canyon and science and, and some of 02:19:30.808 --> 02:19:35.476 those kinds of groups, um guiding groups, other guide, hiking, guide 02:19:35.509 --> 02:19:39.275 groups in the Grand Canyon who are interested in the river because they, 02:19:39.308 --> 02:19:41.986 they see the river, but they don't know much about what's going on with 02:19:42.019 --> 02:19:48.296 the river, unlike river runners have a better sense of it. Uh What else? 02:19:48.329 --> 02:19:51.757 Yeah. So I, I've been able to do quite a bit of outreach along with the 02:19:51.790 --> 02:19:57.486 outreach program of the Adaptive Management Program. Um 02:19:57.519 --> 02:20:04.206 Yeah, I, I think that uh uh one of the challenges of not getting the 02:20:04.239 --> 02:20:08.706 program to really understand that if we want to protect the endangered 02:20:08.739 --> 02:20:13.046 fish down there and to really be obvious. And we, this, this is really an 02:20:13.079 --> 02:20:17.717 obvious thing that there was just a lot of denial about. And that's that 02:20:17.750 --> 02:20:20.866 if you're gonna protect and bring back an endangered species, you've got 02:20:20.899 --> 02:20:27.316 to and bring back its habitat habitat that it evolved to become successful 02:20:27.349 --> 02:20:33.275 in. And there was a very strong re reluctance and reticence to talk about 02:20:33.308 --> 02:20:36.837 that habitat and how we might be able to change that either through a 02:20:36.870 --> 02:20:40.467 selective withdrawal structure on the dam or the reintroduction of 02:20:40.500 --> 02:20:45.426 sediment somehow into the system or, you know, have been able to control 02:20:45.459 --> 02:20:50.717 um high flow experiments. I mean, all those sort of things that try to 02:20:50.750 --> 02:20:56.486 emulate the, what, what Rick Johnson used to call the range of natural 02:20:56.519 --> 02:21:03.935 variability. R and B and uh Rick was a big um pusher of the R and B and I 02:21:03.968 --> 02:21:09.885 was too, but uh most of the people on the pro on the committee just wanted 02:21:09.918 --> 02:21:12.976 to figure out how to protect the job and not have to worry about changing 02:21:13.009 --> 02:21:17.036 the habitat too much because that I think was perhaps a little too 02:21:17.069 --> 02:21:21.435 intractable a problem for a lot of them to think about. 02:21:21.468 --> 02:21:29.196 Um Yeah, so we still got the daily fluctuations. Unfortunately. Um 02:21:29.229 --> 02:21:34.956 uh In this new EIS uh that water goes up and down every day. It's more of 02:21:34.989 --> 02:21:39.757 an irritation than compared to what it used to be for river running. It 02:21:39.790 --> 02:21:43.396 used to be a real problem in the eighties, seventies and eighties because 02:21:43.429 --> 02:21:47.105 there was absolutely no regulation of the Rent Dam. They would just 02:21:47.138 --> 02:21:50.346 completely follow the load on electrical load on the system and the river 02:21:50.379 --> 02:21:55.596 would go way up, way down and we could never predict how much and you will 02:21:55.629 --> 02:21:59.646 be down there. This is one of the reasons that we as a river running 02:21:59.679 --> 02:22:04.525 community. We're so incensed at the dam and we hated the dam because we 02:22:04.558 --> 02:22:10.275 felt like we were ponds on the end of the yo yo string, you know, or you 02:22:10.308 --> 02:22:13.805 just like, there's some big guy up there with and you're the yo yo and you 02:22:13.838 --> 02:22:19.766 go, you know, and you have to adjust to this all the time. You wake up in 02:22:19.799 --> 02:22:21.717 the middle of the night, the kitchen's flooded. You gotta move, the 02:22:21.750 --> 02:22:25.676 kitchen water comes up unexpectedly, you know, I mean, there was a lot of 02:22:25.709 --> 02:22:29.866 problems with that. The boats get stranded, water drops way up. It's way 02:22:29.899 --> 02:22:32.346 out there. The boots are way up there. I gotta get them in the water 02:22:32.379 --> 02:22:36.956 somehow. Uh Just a lot of problems and back when it was completely 02:22:36.989 --> 02:22:40.555 unregulated, you knew the first EIS in the dam really solved a lot of 02:22:40.588 --> 02:22:45.126 those problems because the first preferred alternative back in 97 was the 02:22:45.159 --> 02:22:49.176 modified low fluctuating alternative, which really for severely restricted 02:22:49.209 --> 02:22:53.327 , very specifically restricted the rate at which water would go up and 02:22:53.360 --> 02:22:57.956 down each day. And how much so once that happened and once reclamation 02:22:57.989 --> 02:23:02.536 started delivering regular monthly predictions of how much water to expect 02:23:02.569 --> 02:23:06.467 for us who who are planning a river trip, we can work around it. We can 02:23:06.500 --> 02:23:11.146 work around predictability, we can work around knowledge, but we couldn't 02:23:11.179 --> 02:23:17.206 work around in the pre D pre dis era was complete variability. 02:23:17.239 --> 02:23:20.435 We used to try to predict how much flow is gonna come to us based upon the 02:23:20.468 --> 02:23:25.247 weather in Phoenix when we were on the river. Call it the warehouse. 02:23:25.280 --> 02:23:28.555 What's the weather in Phoenix? Because we knew that that would control the 02:23:28.588 --> 02:23:33.696 temperature, the, the amount of electricity demand on the system. Air 02:23:33.729 --> 02:23:36.855 conditioners. It was a hot day in Phoenix in summer time when you were 02:23:36.888 --> 02:23:40.706 gonna get a bunch of water coming downstream. If the big cloud cover came 02:23:40.739 --> 02:23:44.956 in and everybody shut off the air conditioners for a few days, they shut 02:23:44.989 --> 02:23:50.016 the water down on us and you could actually almost sort of generally 02:23:50.049 --> 02:23:54.596 predict it. I mean, that's how good we got to watch the relationship 02:23:54.629 --> 02:23:58.096 between weather and river flows because we had no other way of knowing. 02:23:58.129 --> 02:24:04.327 And uh in those early years, so we, we became water hawks, those of us in 02:24:04.360 --> 02:24:11.226 the doors anyway. Row doors in the canyon. What else? Uh, um, any 02:24:11.259 --> 02:24:17.555 surprises, anything that happened that really surprised you. Well, the 02:24:17.588 --> 02:24:21.546 drought, um, 02:24:21.579 --> 02:24:24.366 the uh 02:24:24.399 --> 02:24:31.616 trade towers, of course, it's sort of peripheral, but still, um, 02:24:31.649 --> 02:24:36.346 I can't think of anything else that comes to mind anyway. 02:24:36.379 --> 02:24:40.986 Well, let's, let's go to the sort of overall judgment about the value of 02:24:41.019 --> 02:24:45.206 the program. Do you, do you think it's been, you know, 30 years of, of 02:24:45.239 --> 02:24:51.827 effort and evolution? Um, should it be continued and has it been worth the 02:24:51.860 --> 02:24:57.747 time and effort and money? Oh, I think. Absolutely. Should you, it's, it's 02:24:57.780 --> 02:25:04.266 a, it's a, it's a resource of very high, high, high visibility, uh, place 02:25:04.299 --> 02:25:09.055 that a lot of people care about and will always care about and that's not 02:25:09.088 --> 02:25:12.346 gonna go away. Grand Canyon is gonna be there. People are always gonna 02:25:12.379 --> 02:25:17.346 wanna know that dam, what is it doing now? And, and um I still get it from 02:25:17.379 --> 02:25:20.855 people. People, I thought this issue of dam Decommissioning was kind of 02:25:20.888 --> 02:25:26.296 like sidelined and out of the picture the last 10 years or so, it's still 02:25:26.329 --> 02:25:30.866 out there. People still ask me, what about removing that dam? It still 02:25:30.899 --> 02:25:34.077 talking about moving that dam. So it's still in the collective 02:25:34.110 --> 02:25:38.616 consciousness and, and vocabulary of the public that this dam is not a 02:25:38.649 --> 02:25:42.396 good thing necessarily and it's moved to get rid of it and maybe there's 02:25:42.429 --> 02:25:45.396 some good reasons to do that. People always want to know, what do you 02:25:45.429 --> 02:25:51.426 think you do? You think it should be removed? Uh And uh so I don't think 02:25:51.459 --> 02:25:55.717 that's going away. Um There will always be that, that lingering resentment 02:25:55.750 --> 02:25:59.407 that people felt after having Glen Canyon down, taken away from them and 02:25:59.440 --> 02:26:04.917 not being able to have said anything about it back before. Um They drowned 02:26:04.950 --> 02:26:09.766 the place that no one knew. And I said that's the, the book goes. So what 02:26:09.799 --> 02:26:15.837 do you think are the most important values of the program over time? Has 02:26:15.870 --> 02:26:19.587 it been, you know, the adaptive management itself or has it been the 02:26:19.620 --> 02:26:24.587 public engagement? Has it been getting all of the players together to talk 02:26:24.620 --> 02:26:28.747 to each other and do the, is the scientific research the main 02:26:28.780 --> 02:26:32.555 accomplishment of the program. What do you think? Well, I think all of 02:26:32.588 --> 02:26:35.935 those things, I, I can't pick one of those things. I say that's, there's 02:26:35.968 --> 02:26:40.346 just this one thing that's a big important thing. I mean, that the public 02:26:40.379 --> 02:26:46.946 are involved in it collectively as stakeholders in a program that values 02:26:46.979 --> 02:26:51.757 good, scientifically generated information to make decisions is, is, is a 02:26:51.790 --> 02:26:59.717 hallmark of a civilized country and in a democracy and, and um I think 02:26:59.750 --> 02:27:05.257 it's a great example of democracy in action. And uh so I think it's 02:27:05.290 --> 02:27:08.546 adaptive management as a process is something that we're gonna have to 02:27:08.579 --> 02:27:12.997 apply more and more of this time as we go on to difficult, challenging, 02:27:13.030 --> 02:27:17.116 complex and tractable problems having to do with our, our interface with 02:27:17.149 --> 02:27:23.827 the environment. Um Yeah, so as an example of that, I think this uh the 02:27:23.860 --> 02:27:28.096 Grand Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program has been a has been a great 02:27:28.129 --> 02:27:32.226 program. I was really disappointed when the Grand Canyon Trust came out 02:27:32.259 --> 02:27:36.337 with the opinion that it had failed because I took that a little bit 02:27:36.370 --> 02:27:40.986 personally because I felt like we had accomplished an awful lot and it may 02:27:41.019 --> 02:27:49.019 not be perfect, but we were mo moving along still. But I also understand 02:27:49.299 --> 02:27:53.157 why the impetus, the trust, the trust had to do that as an environmental 02:27:53.190 --> 02:27:57.486 organization with to satisfy their funders and their stakeholders in their 02:27:57.519 --> 02:28:03.546 own organization. They had to grandstand a little bit to, to continue the 02:28:03.579 --> 02:28:08.055 funding for the organization, they had to make a statement and they had to 02:28:08.088 --> 02:28:13.327 start a lawsuit. They, they sued the Bureau of Reclamation for failing to 02:28:13.360 --> 02:28:17.346 do with adaptive management, say to apply, apply adaptive management to 02:28:17.379 --> 02:28:21.025 the ecosystem. That was one of the reasons that, that I, that was when I 02:28:21.058 --> 02:28:24.855 started getting disenchanted with the program. That was when I, you know, 02:28:24.888 --> 02:28:29.157 I thought my time here is done. I said, you know, if I can't be a part 02:28:29.190 --> 02:28:32.507 because the trust green can trust was always my ally. We are always our 02:28:32.540 --> 02:28:35.876 ally. We always worked hand in glove, like I said, and o obviously yours 02:28:35.909 --> 02:28:42.126 and, and then to, then for them to reject the, the outcome of the program 02:28:42.159 --> 02:28:46.176 and process in the program was to be, it was, you know, like, OK, if this 02:28:46.209 --> 02:28:49.087 is gonna be a lawsuit now, just going to court, what's the use of having 02:28:49.120 --> 02:28:52.757 an adaptive management program? This is gonna be some decided by the 02:28:52.790 --> 02:28:57.997 lawyers now. So I was a cycler, you know, I was that plus the fact that I 02:28:58.030 --> 02:29:03.626 was burning out on meetings and, and plus the fact that we've gotten the 02:29:03.659 --> 02:29:10.907 high up experiment protocol instituted, which that was a really big. And, 02:29:10.940 --> 02:29:16.616 uh, and I realized one day at a meeting when the WW A representative 02:29:16.649 --> 02:29:20.786 started talking about the dam, he talked still was talking about it purely 02:29:20.819 --> 02:29:25.766 in terms of dollars and cents, how much money it makes and how that's, and 02:29:25.799 --> 02:29:31.077 , and he clearly, that was his whole stake in the program and he had no 02:29:31.110 --> 02:29:35.816 stake really interest in the environment. And I was like, after all this 02:29:35.849 --> 02:29:40.217 time, you don't have, you're still that disconnected from what we're 02:29:40.250 --> 02:29:43.327 trying to do here. You can only think about it in terms of dollars and say 02:29:43.360 --> 02:29:48.025 , I'm sorry, I got a little bit, um 02:29:48.058 --> 02:29:52.446 tired of that. It was time for me to move on and, and so I went to the 02:29:52.479 --> 02:29:55.247 organization and said, hey, is there anybody else in this organization 02:29:55.280 --> 02:30:01.956 wants to do my job? I'm not gonna be here forever and, and that's just the 02:30:01.989 --> 02:30:06.385 fact. And so they went about finding somebody to replace me. Who was that 02:30:06.418 --> 02:30:14.066 ? Uh Sam uh uh Sam and um 02:30:14.099 --> 02:30:22.099 OK, losing my brain. See here is that other person Grand Canyon River 02:30:23.138 --> 02:30:28.296 guide. Uh He's not doing it. He's not the guy anymore. Dave Brown is, I 02:30:28.329 --> 02:30:33.126 think his name is Dave Brown. Sam did it for a few years. Sam and Jerry. 02:30:33.159 --> 02:30:38.546 Jerry Ledbetter. No, uh Jerry. Uh 02:30:38.579 --> 02:30:43.135 gosh, why am I think of his name? 02:30:43.168 --> 02:30:48.296 It's OK. I will look it up. Um uh It's, it's always listed in the front of 02:30:48.329 --> 02:30:53.956 the Boatman's quarterly review. It's listed right on the inside cover box. 02:30:53.989 --> 02:30:57.426 It always says who's the to, to representative and wig representative? 02:30:57.459 --> 02:31:00.766 It's not in this early version, but in all the versions these days, it's 02:31:00.799 --> 02:31:04.275 always listed who that, who that person, the people doing the dept 02:31:04.308 --> 02:31:09.467 dimensional worker are. So it's continuing, we funded, it continues to be 02:31:09.500 --> 02:31:14.046 funded and by, by the Grand Canyon conservation fund that I think is 02:31:14.079 --> 02:31:18.096 renamed uh is something else, but it's still that source of funding. You 02:31:18.129 --> 02:31:20.766 know, by the way, I got the source of funding originally, got them 02:31:20.799 --> 02:31:25.467 interested in funding it because I had been doing the work for free. I had 02:31:25.500 --> 02:31:29.025 no funding for three years, four years. And I was just like, I can't keep 02:31:29.058 --> 02:31:35.486 going to all these meetings. And IIII, I had taken a wealthy guy down the 02:31:35.519 --> 02:31:40.967 river and ran into him in Santa Fe. And we, I had a drink and I told him 02:31:41.000 --> 02:31:44.676 all the stuff I've been doing and he runs a big family Found edition and 02:31:44.709 --> 02:31:50.016 he says, how much do you need? And, and I said, well, he says, send me an 02:31:50.049 --> 02:31:53.366 invoice and of all the work you've done for the last year for in this 02:31:53.399 --> 02:31:57.016 program sounds like it's really worthwhile. So I did and they funded it 02:31:57.049 --> 02:32:00.217 and then all the river up here are going. Now, wait a minute. Who's 02:32:00.250 --> 02:32:04.176 funding them? You know, now we'll, we'll do it. You know, they want that 02:32:04.209 --> 02:32:10.657 monetary control, they want to have it. They don't want some help. So that 02:32:10.690 --> 02:32:15.116 got the impetus for them to start funding it even though that was that, 02:32:15.149 --> 02:32:20.446 that grant was only a one year grant from my friend that uh got the, you 02:32:20.479 --> 02:32:24.896 got the ball rolling. Yeah. And I always advocated that it was a, it was a 02:32:24.929 --> 02:32:29.146 , I still wasn't getting paid enough. No, it's a labor of love. Yeah. 02:32:29.179 --> 02:32:34.247 Probably for most people in, involved in hew and twig. Well, most of them 02:32:34.280 --> 02:32:39.926 work for big organizations. A big, uh, you know, they have part of their 02:32:39.959 --> 02:32:45.266 job. It's part of their job. Right. So, somebody was going to ask you to, 02:32:45.299 --> 02:32:50.135 uh come up with a way of identifying the weaknesses in the program and how 02:32:50.168 --> 02:32:55.525 to strengthen it. Would you, what would you suggest in terms of the places 02:32:55.558 --> 02:33:02.185 where the program could perform better or accomplish more? Do you have any 02:33:02.218 --> 02:33:06.507 recommendations? 02:33:06.540 --> 02:33:13.696 Um 02:33:13.729 --> 02:33:19.657 Yeah. Well, um 02:33:19.690 --> 02:33:24.827 it has, it ha I don't know uh if some stakeholders need to be just removed 02:33:24.860 --> 02:33:30.055 from the committee because they really aren't there for the spirit of the 02:33:30.088 --> 02:33:35.646 Protection Act and they're there to and this was always the case. They 02:33:35.679 --> 02:33:39.935 were there to put the brakes on to get in the way to obfuscate, to protect 02:33:39.968 --> 02:33:45.167 the interests of the artist to make it a do nothing program. I can give 02:33:45.200 --> 02:33:50.486 you one character that I still resent. I mean, you just, um, I, I don't 02:33:50.519 --> 02:33:55.956 like the name people negatively but I mean, he was from Western Air Power 02:33:55.989 --> 02:34:01.077 Administration for years. He was, he was, he was the epitome of 02:34:01.110 --> 02:34:05.796 obfuscation. He knew exactly how to do it. He was real loudmouth dominated 02:34:05.829 --> 02:34:08.096 the conversation, you know, kind of like some people we hear about in the 02:34:08.129 --> 02:34:10.976 news these days 02:34:11.009 --> 02:34:16.217 and they always got to be the one talking in the room and they're always 02:34:16.250 --> 02:34:22.385 figuring out ways to slow things down, you know, and not get things done. 02:34:22.418 --> 02:34:27.407 You know what I mean? There are people at work and if you could have 02:34:27.440 --> 02:34:32.266 leadership of the committee that could weed those kind of people out or go 02:34:32.299 --> 02:34:34.986 over their heads to their superiors and say, hey, this person is not a 02:34:35.019 --> 02:34:41.266 team player. Yeah, gotta put somebody else in there. Um But the 02:34:41.299 --> 02:34:47.726 stakeholders identify their rep. So to accomplish that, you're saying 02:34:47.759 --> 02:34:52.366 you'd need a leader who could speak to the stakeholder groups and say the 02:34:52.399 --> 02:34:57.116 person you've identified and selected as your representative is Secretary 02:34:57.149 --> 02:35:00.206 of the Interior can do that. Um I'm not getting good advice from your 02:35:00.239 --> 02:35:04.486 person. You know, on this committee, you need to get somebody in there as 02:35:04.519 --> 02:35:12.519 a team player. Sure. I mean, you, yeah, iii I wasn't guarantee a job there. 02:35:13.979 --> 02:35:15.979 It's if uh George W Bush wanted to meet out of there, he could sent me 02:35:19.838 --> 02:35:26.126 packing anytime you wanted, you know, I or his interior secretary. But uh 02:35:26.159 --> 02:35:32.116 yeah, we were reappointed on a four year term and we had to be reappointed 02:35:32.149 --> 02:35:38.696 every four years, four years. That's a good opportunity to uh to change 02:35:38.729 --> 02:35:43.257 personnel when, when it's needed. Yeah. How about the science? Is there 02:35:43.290 --> 02:35:49.376 any, is there any science that you wish could have been done but wasn't 02:35:49.409 --> 02:35:53.616 for whatever reason. 02:35:53.649 --> 02:35:56.577 Um 02:35:56.610 --> 02:36:00.935 Yeah, I think that they need to look at the reservoir. I mean, there needs 02:36:00.968 --> 02:36:05.157 to be in the sediment sedimentation of the reservoir, the stratification 02:36:05.190 --> 02:36:10.167 of the water bodies in the reservoir. That is we learned that that's a big 02:36:10.200 --> 02:36:13.626 , can be a big influence on the quality of water that goes through the 02:36:13.659 --> 02:36:18.055 Grand Canyon. And we got to understand how that's changing over time. We 02:36:18.088 --> 02:36:24.757 gotta be monitoring that. And it was always a like, like pulling teeth 02:36:24.790 --> 02:36:28.626 with the hydropower people and the basin state people to try to, for 02:36:28.659 --> 02:36:33.055 people like myself, I always was in the beginning of the program with, we 02:36:33.088 --> 02:36:36.135 were always saying that, you know, we need to expand the geographic scope 02:36:36.168 --> 02:36:39.337 of this because we have this reservoir upstream, that's clearly 02:36:39.370 --> 02:36:44.217 influencing ha what happens downstream. We gotta know what's going on up 02:36:44.250 --> 02:36:47.866 there and we got to know what's going up the sides of the river canyon at 02:36:47.899 --> 02:36:50.577 the bottom of the Grand Canyon, not just where the water goes up and down 02:36:50.610 --> 02:36:53.577 each day, we gotta know what's going on with the archaeological resources 02:36:53.610 --> 02:37:00.907 up higher that are not directly influenced. That was a big, they 02:37:00.940 --> 02:37:05.786 have a good discussion. Every time we sought to kind of make the 02:37:05.819 --> 02:37:10.467 geographic scope of the program, broader and broader context, we are 02:37:10.500 --> 02:37:14.736 always getting thwarted. Uh oh no, keep it only, you know, really 02:37:14.769 --> 02:37:18.516 restricted. So geographic scope was always a big debate. They part of the 02:37:18.549 --> 02:37:20.757 program, 02:37:20.790 --> 02:37:23.157 the Hopi tribe, they say, well, where do you think the boundaries should 02:37:23.190 --> 02:37:27.305 be? So we, we thought it should be the 300,000 cubic feet per second line 02:37:27.338 --> 02:37:30.385 because that's the largest known flood that the Colorado River has ever 02:37:30.418 --> 02:37:34.685 had in, in the history of watching the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. So 02:37:34.718 --> 02:37:38.616 we figured if that's the biggest potential flood of the Pre Dam River, 02:37:38.649 --> 02:37:43.376 then that's potentially the height that we should go to up the flanks of 02:37:43.409 --> 02:37:48.007 the canyon sides to include everything within that good and cultural 02:37:48.040 --> 02:37:51.757 resources. And the hydropower people in the basin state were no, just down 02:37:51.790 --> 02:37:56.016 here. It's got to be restricted just to the 20,000 cubic feet for 25,000 02:37:56.049 --> 02:38:00.426 people per cubic feet per second. And then eventually, they finally said, 02:38:00.459 --> 02:38:04.146 yeah, OK. With the flood flow, maybe up to the 45,000, we were all like no 02:38:04.179 --> 02:38:08.066 up to the 300,000 because that's where all the archaeological sites are. 02:38:08.099 --> 02:38:13.355 And the Hopi came in and said, no rim to rim. I said it's gotta be the 02:38:13.388 --> 02:38:17.657 whole Grand Canyon and they're like, did they win the argument? They got 02:38:17.690 --> 02:38:22.635 their point across and I think that I was connected, but we did. Yeah. And 02:38:22.668 --> 02:38:26.296 like with our study of the, of the geo archaeology at the Grand Canyon, we 02:38:26.329 --> 02:38:32.796 did the um the uh unthinkable violation of the approbation of States 02:38:32.829 --> 02:38:37.396 protocol that geographic scope of all science on in a program be 02:38:37.429 --> 02:38:42.226 restricted to uh up to the 25,000 cubic feet per second level in the Grand 02:38:42.259 --> 02:38:47.376 Canyon only below below the dam. And we said we can't study the effects of 02:38:47.409 --> 02:38:53.025 what the Pre Dam River did because nobody did any studies of it in Grand 02:38:53.058 --> 02:38:57.566 Canyon on the archaeological sites. The only thing way we can do that is 02:38:57.599 --> 02:39:04.876 we go to a, a, a AAA control section of another river somewhere where we 02:39:04.909 --> 02:39:09.516 can study the processes there where we were uncontrolled by dams, interact 02:39:09.549 --> 02:39:13.396 with the archaeological sites and use that as a basis for understanding 02:39:13.429 --> 02:39:17.676 how the dam is affecting archaeological sites in the Grand Canyon. And so 02:39:17.709 --> 02:39:21.616 we just, we just got, we just went up to Cataract Canyon and did a whole 02:39:21.649 --> 02:39:25.396 study up there because there is largely uncontrolled by dam. So they get 02:39:25.429 --> 02:39:29.775 large animal floods, sedimentation is largely like a very close emulation 02:39:29.808 --> 02:39:34.635 to what Grand Canyon was like for the dam. But uh we just did it. Um I got 02:39:34.668 --> 02:39:36.827 away with it because I was on the committee and no one was gonna tell me I 02:39:36.860 --> 02:39:40.986 couldn't go spend money that was only supposed to be spend in Grand Canyon 02:39:41.019 --> 02:39:44.676 and go up to Cataract Canyon and spend it. But uh yeah, we did the first 02:39:44.709 --> 02:39:49.946 ever ever study of the rear, rear in the Colorado rearing cataract came, 02:39:49.979 --> 02:39:55.126 it was huge, but we got there and did a pretty good job with it. So we've 02:39:55.159 --> 02:40:00.896 kept pushing the boundaries a lot. So, um if, if somebody came to you and 02:40:00.929 --> 02:40:06.435 said, uh we want you to give, uh we want you to put together uh uh uh 02:40:06.468 --> 02:40:12.546 advice for new members of the hem wig and the twig. Um uh who are coming 02:40:12.579 --> 02:40:17.467 on to the program? What, what would you say? What would you like to say to 02:40:17.500 --> 02:40:21.616 people who are coming on new and fresh? What would be your best advice for 02:40:21.649 --> 02:40:27.486 somebody who's just getting started with this program? 02:40:27.519 --> 02:40:31.135 Um 02:40:31.168 --> 02:40:37.635 Do your homework, read the papers be involved in the, uh don't be afraid 02:40:37.668 --> 02:40:42.976 to speak out at meetings. Uh I realize that you're as important as 02:40:43.009 --> 02:40:48.885 everybody else in the room and what you say ma matters as much as everyone 02:40:48.918 --> 02:40:56.366 else learn Robert's rules of order. Um It's a powerful tool if you don't 02:40:56.399 --> 02:41:00.917 know it, you don't know how to, how to advocate for motion or make a 02:41:00.950 --> 02:41:06.185 motion, you know, you're go gonna be at a, at a loss. So those are the 02:41:06.218 --> 02:41:14.218 kind of things um uh try to keep the mo meetings moving 02:41:14.659 --> 02:41:19.305 and don't let people dominate the mo a meeting with unnecessary 02:41:19.338 --> 02:41:24.116 obfuscation, call attention to it because that's ultimately one of the 02:41:24.149 --> 02:41:29.946 things that really burned me out. Just the amount of time, 02:41:29.979 --> 02:41:37.316 two days of sitting on your butt all day long in a skyscraper in Phoenix, 02:41:37.349 --> 02:41:41.257 windowless room 02:41:41.290 --> 02:41:44.635 and And so, yeah, 02:41:44.668 --> 02:41:48.407 um, I don't know what else I would say that it's a valuable program it's 02:41:48.440 --> 02:41:52.525 worth doing if you care about the resources that you're, you're, if you're 02:41:52.558 --> 02:41:58.055 dealing with. And, uh, yeah, you know, be afraid to stand up and make 02:41:58.088 --> 02:42:04.577 yourself heard. It was a really interesting, I, I enjoyed it a lot because 02:42:04.610 --> 02:42:09.997 it was egalitarian and I was just powerful. My boy both kind of the same 02:42:10.030 --> 02:42:14.747 as the superintendent of the Grand Canyon and kind of the same as, like I 02:42:14.780 --> 02:42:18.435 said earlier, the head of the Department of Water Resources of the State 02:42:18.468 --> 02:42:21.486 of California, you know, 02:42:21.519 --> 02:42:24.967 you know, I'm Jerry. I knew Jerry really well. You know, you get to know 02:42:25.000 --> 02:42:28.036 these people and, and one of the neat things about it is if you can 02:42:28.069 --> 02:42:35.157 establish, uh, cordial, uh, relationships with people and keep talking 02:42:35.190 --> 02:42:41.167 informally or informally with them, people see you as a person and not as 02:42:41.200 --> 02:42:45.907 a threat or a, or, or, or an organization, but rather as someone that they 02:42:45.940 --> 02:42:50.286 can discuss things with and you're not gonna bite, you know, you're not 02:42:50.319 --> 02:42:55.467 allowed to get them. Um, so the, the cooper, the nature of things and the 02:42:55.500 --> 02:43:02.066 presumption that you're not in a, in a position of, uh, win and lose, but 02:43:02.099 --> 02:43:05.657 rather in, you know, I think we're, the only way you're gonna get anything 02:43:05.690 --> 02:43:13.055 forward is to give and take cooperating with each other. 02:43:13.088 --> 02:43:17.577 Yeah. And, yeah, it's a labor of love. 02:43:17.610 --> 02:43:21.827 I think that's a great place to end the interview. 02:43:21.860 --> 02:43:26.907 Ok. Thank you so much for your time and, and all of the work that you put 02:43:26.940 --> 02:43:32.257 into this over the many years. And you're welcome. And I would, I'm gonna 02:43:32.290 --> 02:43:36.667 be very grateful to borrow some of your files and we'll be happy to return 02:43:36.700 --> 02:43:41.907 them. But, uh, it's nice when somebody keeps good track because, uh, you 02:43:41.940 --> 02:43:45.176 can, like you were saying earlier, you can go back and ground truth, uh, 02:43:45.209 --> 02:43:50.696 recollections and, uh through that, that written record is particularly 02:43:50.729 --> 02:43:54.525 important to us historians because that's what we base our work on as our 02:43:54.558 --> 02:43:59.286 own record. Yeah. And you know, III, I hope you really want to look at 02:43:59.319 --> 02:44:03.007 those paper files because if you don't, that's, I won't be offended if 02:44:03.040 --> 02:44:05.426 that's something, you know, like I don't really want to look at all these 02:44:05.459 --> 02:44:09.217 paper files. I mean, but if it's something that isn't, is of interest to 02:44:09.250 --> 02:44:13.555 you, that's what we historians live and breathe on this, you know, the 02:44:13.588 --> 02:44:17.036 archival wear dusk mask 02:44:17.069 --> 02:44:20.935 because they haven't been disturbed in a while and they were how I just 02:44:20.968 --> 02:44:24.747 kind of kept the organizational scheme going over time. It's not perfectly 02:44:24.780 --> 02:44:27.616 well organized because there's so much cross-disciplinary stuff that goes 02:44:27.649 --> 02:44:30.935 on. It's hard to put everything in a neat category, you know, but they're 02:44:30.968 --> 02:44:35.247 all there. You'll see the, the file RD marked with, you know, categories 02:44:35.280 --> 02:44:40.157 as I gave you the schema for um, that little piece of paper is in there 02:44:40.190 --> 02:44:44.146 too and, uh, showing you what's kind of, the order of things are in there 02:44:44.179 --> 02:44:47.610 and it's not everything but.