PUTAH CREEK COUNCIL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Directed by jesikah maria ross ([email protected])

A project of Dr. Eric Larsen’s Research Lab University of California Davis In collaboration with

AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH SID ENGLAND April 17, 2014  

PUTAH CREEK COUNCIL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Directed by jesikah maria ross ([email protected]) A project of Dr. Eric Larsen’s Research Lab, UC Davis In collaboration with the Putah Creek Council Audio Interview with Sid England Kusch/Madison Property ! April 17, 2014 Sid:

An office of general counsel in Oakland. I figured out how to get a hold of them to start figuring out what it was all about. And I believe – I’m pretty sure I probably gave Peter Moyle a call and said “What do you know about this?” Because my PhD degree was in the Department of Wildlife, what was then called Wildlife and Fisheries Biology. Peter was one of the professors, so I knew Peter. So I think I probably might’ve gave Peter a call as well.

jesikah:

So I had a little bump. Do you have a cell phone on?

Sid:

No. I mean I have it turned to be quiet. It’s on.

jesikah:

Can we . . .

Sid:

I can turn it off.

jesikah:

Yeah, I’m going to ask you the question again. I got a little blip. So let me actually – that was so good, but let me take you back. Tell me again your name and your occupation.

Sid:

My name is Sid England. I’m the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability at the University of California at Davis. And what I do at my job is I work on environmental planning and review issues for campus projects. I also work on natural resource management for the campus. It’s a large campus. It’s 5,300 acres. So in that role, I work on endangered species issues; I work on habitat management; I also work on things that have to do with water resource management for the campus. And particularly along the stream front of the campus, which Putah Creek forms several miles of the southern border of the campus. And then more recently I’ve started working on environmental stewardship topics where we’re trying to reduce our carbon footprint and the amount of waste we generate and a whole variety of other things. And remind me what brought you to Davis and when?

jesikah: Sid:

I came to Davis in 1980 to be a grad student to work on a doctoral degree in ecology. I got my PhD at UC Davis then went on and got a job at the campus and never left. I got hired as an associate or assistant environmental planner is where I started, and I was the first environmental planner that ever worked for the campus England

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to try to work on some of these issues. The first day that I arrived on my job after meeting my boss and everything, he says “I left some documents on your desk.” jesikah:

Hold on. When there’s a really good story and there’s a really big plane, I’m just going to pause.

Sid:

That’s fine. I’m used to this.

jesikah:

I know. I could tell. Something about this story, I had a little blip the first time, a little blip this time. But it’s such a great story. All right, start again. The first day?

(3:00) Sid:

So the first day I arrived in my new job, my boss after getting oriented and talking with him, he said “I left something on your desk. It’s a pile of papers. It’s something legal and I don’t really know what it’s about. Figure it out and let me know what’s going on.” So I went in there and it was the very first notice from the Solano County Water Agency that they were proposing to adjudicate the stream rights – the riparian water rights of Putah Creek. And so my job was to sift through that and figure out what it was, what was going on, what it meant and what we had to do in response to that. So that was the first day on the job in 1990.

jesikah:

I’m going to give this plane a second. Okay. So you got this pile of papers. It’s the adjudication. What did you do?

Sid:

Well, I read it and tried to figure out what it was all about. I kind of had a general understanding what it was about, but I had no idea what it meant in terms of process or particulars or whatever the university had to do. So I’m trying to think back to what I did. I knew that the university had an office of general council and I think I probably got a hold of them. And then also I may very well have given Peter Moyle a call; I don’t recall. But it seems like that’s probably something I would do. My degree, my doctoral degree, was in ecology but I was in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Biology and I knew Peter because he was one of the professors in the department. So I may have very well given him a call and chatted with him about it too and started figuring out what it meant and what we had to do.

jesikah:

Did you go to any of the early meetings of the Putah Creek Council?

Sid:

Not during the formation, no. No, they were already around and organized. They hadn’t been around long by the time that I got involved, but one of my fellow graduate students was Susan Sanders. We were graduate students together, so I knew Susan. So when the Putah Creek Council realized – when the drought started and the water level started to die and fish started to die and they decided they needed to try to approach the university to get us involved, that was easy. It England

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was a phone call. “Sid, this is Susan. Can I talk to you about something?” “Sure, come on over,” because I’d known her for a long time already by then. jesikah:

So that’s how the university got involved? Susan gave you a call?

(5:40) Sid:

Yeah, the original idea was the year before I think it was, or maybe it was earlier that year, Putah Creek Council wanted to buy water from the Solano Project, the Solano County Water Agency. And I’m trying to remember, I think the first year they may have actually been successful. I don’t recall.

jesikah:

Yeah, I think the first year they requested water and the request was met, and the second year they said no and they tried to buy water from the Bureau of Reclamation because they owned the . . .

Sid:

Right, so what happened was the Solano County Water agency said the only people who could buy water are people who are project members, so like Solano Irrigation District, Vallejo, Benicia, Fairfield, and the University of California at Davis. We received in the ‘50s, when the Solano Project was being designed, the people who were there then said “Yeah, we want this water supply. We’re an ag school. It’s great water for ag research and we want it.” So we signed up and we – the campus – gets 4,000 acre-feet of water per year from the project. They built us a pipeline buried underground all the way from the Putah South Canal all the way to campus, and it irrigates the campus. So the idea was could we get – could the Putah Creek Council use the university to buy the water? They would pay the university for the water then have the water go to the creek. That was the idea.

jesikah:

What happened?

Sid:

I think we made the overture. Well I of course had to work it up through management of the university to see if they would entertain it, and they said yes.

jesikah:

And how did you go through the process to work that up? I think you told me a great story about this.

Sid:

Did I already? Remind me what it was because I’m having a hard time remembering now.

jesikah:

I think, isn’t this the time you mentioned you called Susan and she came to your office?

Sid:

Oh, yeah. Yes, so in order to put a – I had to put a document together that laid out all the facts, and I didn’t know what all the facts were. I mean I had a rough idea, but I didn’t know really what was going on, the details of the creek. I could deal England

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with other parts, what did it mean to the university in terms of water supply and all that which was neutral because the idea was to buy it then let it go. And not from us, but to buy it from the project. So I had to put together a briefing paper. Susan came over in the office and I sat at the computer, and to a certain degree Susan dictated it, to a certain degree. There was a lot of editing and wording, smithing, and “Wait, I need this kind of approach if I’m going to move it forward” and that kind of stuff. (9:00) Yeah, so we put it together. I’m trying to remember, though. Somehow, Larry Vanderhoef who later became the chancellor at the university was the executive vice-chancellor at that time, so he was the person we had to ultimately go to to try to get the water down the creek. Yeah, I remember going in with Larry and talking to him about this idea. Wait, let me think about this for a second and make sure I have the chronology right here. Or was that later on a different topic? Yeah, the question came up. Larry is a scientist. I went in and I briefed him on what the suggestion was, and I said “So we would like to try to get this water down the creek because the creek is going to . . . fish are going to die; the drought’s going to be bad for the creek.” He said “We’re a scientific institution. Why can’t we study what the effects of the drought are on the creek?” Very reasonable question. And my answer to him was “Because we don’t have a baseline to compare it to, so we couldn’t tell anything.” He said “You’re right, without a baseline it doesn’t mean anything, right?” I said “Yeah.” He goes “Yep, I understand that,” and we went forward. We made the overture to try to purchase the water. It turned out that there really wasn’t any water to be acquired, or at least that’s the way it worked out. jesikah:

Right. I’m going to have you not . . . how did you know?

Sid:

I was clicking them.

jesikah:

And also your hand, you slap your hand. I don’t want to stop you from gesturing.

Sid:

I talk with my hands.

jesikah:

It’s great. I want you to talk with your hands, but if your hands go to each side as opposed to on top of each other . . .

Sid:

I’ll try.

jesikah:

Wow. Okay, so the executive vice chancellor’s behind you? England

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Sid:

So we went to . . . we approached the Solano County Water Agency to see if we could buy the water, and the answer was if there was any water to sell, it had to be offered to all the other member units and every one of those would have to say no before it could be used for any other purpose. So that effectively killed the . . . made it so that couldn’t happen.

jesikah:

So what was the next step?

Sid:

I don’t think any more water got into the creek that year, I think. People started then documenting fish mortality and predation, you know, how many pools were left and what was happening to the fish in those pools and those sorts of things.

jesikah:

So do you remember going down and seeing the dry creek and the fish massacre?

(11:50) Sid:

Sure. Yeah, I remember going down and seeing the . . . I don’t remember seeing the large die-offs, no. I don’t think I ever experienced that myself. But I certainly knew about them. I saw photos of it, and I certainly went down and saw the . . . it was really interesting. One of the things we had to do in the course of the lawsuit and the negotiations was we had to change the language. We realized this early on. The way it was being described is during the drought, the creek goes dry. No. The creek ceases to flow, but there are these large stretches where there is still water or there are still big ponds. That’s different. Ceasing to flow is different from being dry. But if you have not enough water coming down at the right times of season, the right seasons and the right time of year, then those ponds eventually will dry up. That’s when fish started to die because the big ponds were drying up in there. There wasn’t sufficient water to keep them filled.

jesikah:

So is it not an issue that it doesn’t flow? It’s an issue that it goes dry? Or the other way around?

Sid:

Well, the issue was that the picture being painted was that Putah Creek went dry regularly, and that’s not the case. It ceased to flow on some years, and even then it’s not the whole creek. The upper part of the creek below the diversion dam and in Winters certainly had flow. Then near where we are right now, the university’s Russell Ranch is just north of here. The Russell Ranch is a gaining reach. There’s a geological formation called the Plainfield Ridge, and it starts up in the Dunnigan Hills and it runs down south and just about where we’re sitting, not very far, we might even be sitting on it as far as I know or very close. It’s underground. You can’t see it, but you can tell the topography’s different a little bit and they don’t farm the same types of crops because the soil’s not as good. England

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The Plainfield Ridge intercepts the subterranean flow that comes from the coastal range to the east/west of us here. It comes subterranean then it hits the Plainfield Ridge then it turns that ridge and it forces that water south. And as a result, right in this stretch here, there’s a gaining reach where actually water comes up from underground into the creek. So the flows that do come here actually increase through this part of the creek. So the idea that the whole creek would go dry is not really the right way to describe it. jesikah:

So did you ever attend any of the Putah Creek Council meetings?

Sid:

Oh, yes. I did. I attended – once we got involved in the process . . . well, I think it’s important to understand some of the sequence of events here. So the university became involved in defending itself in the water rights adjudication. So that was how I really got started in managing the legal part of the process for the university, okay?

(15:00) So the Solano County Water Agency was meeting with all – they treated the water users of the upper watershed above Lake Berryessa, they worked with them and negotiated with them separately. And those that were downstream, they worked with them separately. So we were in the lower watershed, the university was. So getting ready for that process, we had to get our sort of advisory team together to figure out how we were going to approach the process. We formed sort of a nucleus on campus. Marge Dickinson was our director then, the director of government community relations. And I worked with our triumvirate of professors. We had Peter Moyle who was our fisheries/stream/creek expert; we had Hap Dunning who was our legal and water law expert; and we had Vern Scott who is a water resource engineer. So we had a biologist, a lawyer and an engineer, all three professors, all three very distinguished. They became our advisors in how we should go forward in this process. And one of the things we did was we had to hire an attorney and the attorney we hired was a fellow named Alan Lilly which was, from our perspective at the university, one of the smartest things we did in this whole process. jesikah:

Why’s that?

Sid:

Alan was absolutely critical to everything that flowed afterwards, and puns in water and water litigation and water management are unavoidable. So everything that flowed after that with Alan, he was just crucial every step along the way in helping all the parties in the litigation and in the negotiations that went on. Anyway, Alan turned out to be great. England

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So our first involvement was that, so I was attending meetings on that, on the litigation of the water rights, probably in parallel or maybe a little bit preceding. So what happened was over the years at the university, I’ve been in thousands of meetings and there are a handful that are truly memorable. One of them was at the Solano County Water Agency, or actually it was at the Solano Irrigation District in their big conference room, their board room. (17:50) They had all of the downstream water users and those people, most of them, brought their attorneys. We sat in that room and it was to discuss the pending litigation. The Solano Irrigation District and Solano County Water Agency people, their directors, or not their directors but their management and their lawyers would start to explain what was going to happen and what they thought – where they thought this was going to go. Then they would ask what do you think, a response from people in the room, at which time the heads of 20 attorneys would go down and they would all write notes and nobody would say a word. And then the Solano folks, again, would say what about this? They’d toss something else out. They’d say “What do you think? Would that work?” And the heads of 20 attorneys would go down and very little would be said. There would be some comments, but very little. Finally after this went on for it seemed like a very long time, I think the suggestion was that a special water master be approved or something, I forget. Finally Ann Schneider, who was a water attorney from Sacramento, and I can’t recall who she was representing at the time, said “You know, we might be able to work some of these things out. But in order to be able to do that, we need to know this, we need to know that . . .” And there was a list of items she said these are things we need to know before we can even think about the other things. The Solano group said “So you’re saying you might be able to do this, but in order to do that you need to know all of this?” “Yes.” And people sort of generally agreed it was a consensus in the room. So the Solano folks said “Okay, we’re going to leave the room. We’re going to caucus and we’ll be back in a little bit.” So they left. They were gone for probably 20 minutes or half an hour and they came back and they said “We want to thank you all for coming today and taking the time. We will file the papers with the court on Monday.” And that was the adjudication of the water rights. So we had then – we were a . . . the university was named in a lawsuit to adjudicate the water rights. Simultaneously or in the same general timeframe, the Putah Creek Council started to move forward with its 5937 lawsuit. They were approaching the university and the City of Davis saying “We think you should be joining us, just one of the reasons being the whole southern board of the campus England

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is the creek and we have put it into the Putah Creek Riparian Reserve. So we’re trying to manage it for habitat values and everything.” (21:10) But what we found with the university was if you could think of all the ways somebody could be involved in this process, we had every one of those perspectives. So for example, we received 4,000 acre-feet of water a year from the project. If a resolution of the lawsuit over the flows in the creek led to less water from the project, that potentially could affect our supply of water from the project. So there’s one. Number two, we used groundwater recharged from the creek. It helps our groundwater supply. Number three, Peter Moyle and other people on campus used the creek for teaching and research. The list goes on and on and on. But then it gets even more interesting because the university – not the Davis campus, but the university as a whole, owns property, a big ranch, down the main prairie district. I can’t remember the name of it anymore, but there’s a reclamation district in Solano County, and water from Solano Irrigation District goes to that piece of property. So most other parties to the lawsuit had one issue. We had multiple. So we had to figure out how do we balance these and what do we take – what are we trying to achieve? So we had our triumvirate of Hap Dunning and Vern Scott and Peter Moyle, and we had multiple meetings to talk about what should be our position? And the position that we recommended to leadership at the university was we should enter in and join with the Putah Creek Council because we had multiple interests along the creek that all would be benefited by more flows from the creek. jesikah:

Did it surprise you that that came back as the position?

Sid:

It didn’t surprise – well, it didn’t come back. That’s what we formulated as a recommendation. It didn’t surprise me that Peter had that position. As I got to know Hap over time, it doesn’t surprise me. But Vern is a water resource engineer. That’s what he does. And even then, he was later in his career, but he was a civil engineer. That’s the kind of stuff he did. And he said this is – we need to do this. The way the system is setup, more flows would be better.

(24:00) So when we went back to leadership, by that time I believe . . . I believe by then, Larry was probably the chancellor or the acting chancellor. Is that right? Because I remember we went back . . . we wound up meeting with the chancellor and with Bob Gray who was I think in the provost. Oh boy, is that right? It may have just been Larry. Larry was probably the provost and executive vice-chancellor then, so England

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he probably had both roles. But the fact that he had three distinguished professors who covered most aspects of the issue, I think, was a compelling argument. jesikah:

And what was your position? You’re a trained ecologist and these are your contemporaries who are bringing this up.

Sid:

Yes, well, it seemed to me to be the right way to go too because the amount of water that folks were talking about wanting to get the extra releases down the creek was not a tremendous volume of water and was not going to affect the water supplies. That was my – I learned much more about it later on. And also early in my career I’d worked for the Army Corps of Engineers for a while and I’d kind of seen some things that went on there. You know, I grew up in Southern California and all the water wars down there, and usually the environment doesn’t really get everything that it needs. I thought that was probably the right way to land and everybody landed that way. And it helped. If I had gone in as a staffer and made that recommendation, sitting there with a PhD in ecology, I don’t know how far it would’ve gone. But when you have three professors, all highly respected and all from different fields, I think that certainly helped. Plus then we also had our legal reviews from Alan Lilly saying here’s the different ways it could go over time and what the tradeoffs are going to be and what your risks are and those things. So we had really good legal analysis from Alan Lilly.

jesikah:

So you became – technically at this point, you’re becoming a co-plaintiff. Is that right?

Sid:

Yeah, let me think of the right word. So we were a defendant, I guess, in the water rights lawsuit. Oh, and then we filed . . . I think what we technically did is we filed a countersuit against Solano Irrigation District and Solano County Water Agency. It was a counter lawsuit to the water rights lawsuit to bring in the environmental issues.

(27:00) And then what happened somewhere along the process was there was a motion in the court to take the lawsuit by the Putah Creek Council and the city, and to merge those into one. So I believe the way it actually happened was we did not join the Putah Creek Council and the city’s lawsuit. We actually independently filed our own lawsuit and then the two became merged. jesikah:

I think I heard that as well from Dan. Before I talk more about the lawsuit, let me see if there’s . . . you told a great story. Heads down.

Sid:

It was amazing. England

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jesikah:

Any stories come to mind? I asked if you attended any of the Putah Creek Council meetings and you laughed.

Sid:

Yes, so you asked – before I could go into that . . . so now we’re at the point where the university is involved in a lawsuit not only about the water rights, but about the flows in the creek. So it was incumbent upon me to make sure I knew what our co-plaintiffs were doing. So yes, I started attending routinely monthly, bi-weekly or whatever it was . . . I spent a lot of evenings in Bill Julian and Robin Kulakow’s living room talking about issues and the approaches to problems.

jesikah:

You asked me – you made a comment before about asking Peter Moyle about a dual role. Did you ever feel like in some ways you had a dual role?

Sid:

No, I did not. I did not ever feel like I had a dual role because a couple reasons. It’s very clear in my mind that my job was to represent the interests of the university. I am an environmentalist, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve been on the Audubon California Board for nine years. I’m on the board of the International Crane Foundation now. I’ve been on Yolo Audubon for 20 years. But in my local role like with Yolo Audubon, I’m very clear I do not ever – part of my . . . do I want to talk about this? Let me back up. I did not feel like I had a dual role. I am trained as an ecologist and I am an environmentalist personally, but I have a job for the university. I brief leadership on what I think the issues are. I help them formulate their policy. They make the ultimate decisions and that’s our job then is to try to implement that.

(30:00) But I’m also very clear that in any local environmental activities I have, I make sure people are never confused whether they’re talking to me as an environmentalist or me as a university. And people dealing with issues and agencies and things, I’d never mix those roles. I’d never even bring them together, because those people have to be very clear that I’m working there for the university. So no. However, one of the reasons I’m hired by the university is because of my expertise. So bringing that to bear in the process is part of my job. It’s to make sure I can say this is what the ecology of the stream is; this is the values that are there; this is what the consequences are from that perspective. Other people at the university like Vern Scott or like Hap Dunning can bring other aspects of it as well. jesikah:

Can you describe one of the more humorous moments that you experienced at one of these Putah Creek Council meetings? Or a standout moment? England

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Sid:

That’s a hard one. No, I don’t think . . . there were so many of them. It was a . . . we were always sort of like what’s the next issue we have to anticipate? Then I could bring information back to the university and help us . . . let the city and the Putah Creek Council . . . we couldn’t always go as far as they wanted to go. The university had certain considerations and certain constraints, and we always wanted to make sure we were informing them and our co-plaintiffs that “Hey, we understand where you want to go but we have a little trouble with that. So just know that that might be a little bit of a difficulty.” It didn’t happen often, and never on anything big. One of the things I think that was very beneficial was when we were negotiating internally what we thought the flows in the creek should be, it was all sciencebased, okay? There was never – it would’ve been more difficult for the university if we’d been involved with a group of people within an organization that was trying to grab for the brass ring as opposed to saying “This is what the creek needs to be healthy. Here are the scientific reasons why. These are the benefits we see at the other end.”

(32:55) So everything we . . . you know, and with the people involved, you would never expect anything different. But when you get started, you don’t know for sure how it’s going to go. So it was very easy as we went forward. jesikah:

Do you think the university joining in with the Putah Creek Council was a game changer?

Sid:

I think, you know, the university is a very large, well-respected organization that tends to be fairly conservative about many things. And when they join in – well, when we filed a countersuit that raised environmental issues, it got noticed. I think that certainly didn’t hurt. I certainly think that when we ultimately got to court, when it was the City of Davis and an environmental group and the University of California, that didn’t hurt either.

jesikah:

Were there other movements happening at the time? Or larger contexts that kind of influenced either the university joining or just how this suit went forward?

Sid:

I think from the university’s perspective, I don’t know what would’ve happened if we hadn’t already been involved in the adjudication of the water rights on the creek. Since we were already named in a lawsuit, sort of the decision was “Well let’s get all the issues in there, not just the ones that are selected by the people who filed the lawsuit.” So if that adjudication of water rights had not been under way, I don’t know how it would’ve come out to try to get the university involved England

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in a lawsuit. We were already in a lawsuit; it’s just what issues are we going to argue? So I think that really was a nice set of events that came together. jesikah:

And if my memory serves me, that adjudication was the one that the Solano parties did as a response to the Putah Creek Council to try and figure out all the water rights of all the landowners along the creek. Is that right? Is that the same adjudication?

Sid:

Well, there’s only one adjudication and I have to say at this point I don’t know that I can say that one led to the other, because there was also an effort from – and again, I can’t speak 100 percent for Solano’s goals. But they were in the process of trying to maximize their use of the water so they could eventually get a license for the water right from the project. In order to do that, you have to show beneficial use of the water and you have to protect and have all of the water available for your use.

(36:00) Riparian users downstream, they’re kind of a wildcard out there. So I think part of it was for them to tighten that up a little bit. And another thing that was going on at the same time or in that timeframe was they were trying to acquire ownership of the dam. And so I think they were looking at kind of a unified future that they were trying to see if might work for them. So having water rights downstream from there might have been very beneficial. It might even have changed the yield of the project; I don’t really know. So that was going on at the same time as well. jesikah:

So did you go to the trial?

Sid:

Yes, I was there every day.

jesikah:

Can you paint a picture – I’ve never been.

Sid:

I was there every day. What I mean is our attorney, Alan Lilly, thought that it was important for the judge to understand that it was important enough for the university to have somebody there every day and see somebody there in the audience every single day. So it wasn’t just the attorney and nobody at the university cared enough not to be there – or cared enough . . . nobody cared enough to be there. So I went every day until the day that I went on the witness stand. And then after that, that was like three and a half weeks of going every day. Then for the next two weeks of the trial, Marj Dickinson and I alternated. So we always had somebody there. And there was another reason why. We knew I was going to be a witness, so I could hear everything that was said up until the day I went to testify. So yeah, I was there every single day. England

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jesikah:

Tell me what it was like to be on the stand.

Sid:

It was . . . I had a very limited topic that I was testifying about. It was the value of the Putah Creek Riparian Reserve to the university. The reserve is our land along the creek. Some arguments were being made that it wasn’t really valuable to the university. We were saying the water would damage the reserve and that we used it, so we needed to go in there and we needed to lay the foundation to say this is important to us. So having water and not having drought and not having large fish die-offs is important. So I went in there and talked about our efforts for habitat restoration, how we used the creek for teaching research, a wide variety of research projects that are done on the creek, and those sorts of things.

(38:55) So it was not . . . I’ve never been on a witness stand before or since, so it was a little bit nerve-wracking but it wasn’t that bad because I knew I really had a limited thing and I was well prepared for it. And I also had seen this was a trial that all the parties agreed would be decided by the judge, not a jury. And by the time I’d been there that long, I had seen Judge Park and how he ran his courtroom. He was a very, very fair judge and really ran his courtroom in a professional way. I remember at the end of that trial thinking that much of America’s view of a courtroom was the image of the OJ Simpson trial. And if the same people could see how Judge Park ran his courtroom, their view of how the judiciary works in the United States would be very different. jesikah:

Could you give me an example? What was professional about it?

Sid:

For example, Peter Moyle testified for I don’t know how many days, but a long time. And then another witness who testified was a fisheries biologist that was a consultant for the Solano County agency. I can’t remember his name right now. They didn’t agree completely on various things. A third witness who testified was an engineer that worked for the Solano County Water Agency who talked about flows and sort of the hydrology of the creek. So Judge Park said to whichever attorney it was at the time, it could’ve been Alan Lilly or it could’ve been Tim O’Laughlin, I don’t remember who was doing the questioning at the time. Oh no, I do know. It was Tim. He said “Do you mind if I ask the witness a couple questions?” So the attorney can’t say no to the judge, so he says “Go ahead.” England

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So he started asking questions. Yes, it was the fisheries biologist in the stand for Solano. He started asking him questions for a while, like one after another after another after another, trying to get to the heart of the issue. He said then “So where you disagree with Professor Moyle is here. Is that a fair statement?” He said yes. He goes “Professor Moyle, you’re still in the back. Come up to the front and sit at the end of the attorney’s table there. Bailiff, please remind Professor Moyle that he’s still sworn in.” Okay. (42:00) What the judge then proceeded to do was to moderate a debate between Peter Moyle and this fisheries biologist. Then they got to a point where I remember the judge said “So one of the questions then is whether the flow would get out of the bottom and would actually spread into the adjacent benches in order to create the kind of habitat where the fish could breed and do this, that and the other. Is that really an issue, how much water that would take and everything?” Yes. So he brought up the engineer from Solano, had him sit at the other end of the attorney’s bench, get his notebooks out and say “What would happen if this volume of water came down?” That was a two-hour process. It wasn’t two questions and we got it; it was question, question, question. That could only happen in a jury trial. jesikah:

A jury trial?

Sid:

Excuse me, it could only happen in a judge trial, not in a jury trial. And it was because Judge Park knew the issues, knew what he was trying to get to, understood the facts that were needed in order to make a decision. And by then it was close to lunch, I remember, and Judge Park turned to Tim O’Laughlin, the attorney from Solano, and said “Well, I think I’ve probably completely destroyed your line of questioning so let’s take a long lunch break and we’ll convene at whatever time and you’ll have a chance to figure out where you want to go from here.”

jesikah:

And how did Tim O’Laughlin take this whole thing?

Sid:

Well, it’s one of those situations where it’s the judge. You take it and you figure it out. But he was obviously – the judge took control of the room to try to find out the facts, which I think my analogy with the OJ Simpson trial was if at some point when some of the hyperbole was going on in that room, I’m sure everybody watching the TV said “Why don’t you ask this question or that question? Or why can’t you . . .” And that’s what the judge did, he went right to it. Not just the questions the attorney wanted to ask. I’m sure many attorneys might think that is not a way to run a courtroom, but from my perspective we got right to the facts. Hear the great horned owl? England

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jesikah:

So great.

Sid:

So when I got on the stand, I had seen that kind of – how the judge ran the courtroom. So it didn’t mean I couldn’t get hard questions from the other side in cross-examination, but I also knew it was going to be fair.

jesikah:

Were you on the tour with him when he came out?

Sid:

Yes.

jesikah:

Can you describe where you went and what you did? And actually I should give you the whole question so you can use part of the question in the response. Were you with Judge Park when he came to take a tour of Putah Creek during the trial?

(45:00) Sid:

Yeah, I was. I was part of the group where the court actually met on-site and we did a tour so the judge could have a metal image of what the creek looked like, what the facilities were, what the conditions were and when we talked about different parts of the creek he could understand what we were talking about. So yes, I was out here.

jesikah:

What impressed you the most about that?

Sid:

Well, one of the things about Judge Park was he was an avid fly fisherman. And so as a real avid fly fisherman, he had a basic – more than basic, he had a good understanding of streams and how they work, about fish biology and those sorts of things. So there was a certain level of education that you didn’t have to give him because he had a background, so you could build upon that in other ways. So that meant that you were talking with somebody who had some knowledge and understanding about how the system worked.

jesikah:

And also part of the issue involved, right? 5937 is about keeping the stream in good condition for fish.

Sid:

Yes, right. So I think that also helped. One of the things I remember distinctly was spending three days, long days, in Peter Moyle’s living room. It was Peter, Dan O’Hanlon and me. It seems like there was somebody else there, but mostly it was us prepping Peter for his testimony and talking a lot about what keeping the stream – the fishery – in good condition meant. What Peter worked out and we talked about a lot was it’s not just whether a fish has . . . I lost my train of though. Oh, when we were talking about keeping a fishery in good condition like 5937 requires, it isn’t just whether the fish, do they England

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have deformities and do they have lesions and this, that and the other. It’s the whole ecosystem and the grand sense of the fishery. We spent a lot of time talking with that, and it was really good because I am an ecologist and was able to contribute to that conversation more than just . . . Dan did a great job of getting him ready from a legal perspective and coaching him on how to do his testimony, but we were able to have lots of good conversations about some of the other aspects of it which was great. (48:00) So that was really . . . Peter’s published papers on it since then. You want multiple size classes; you want a diverse fishery. You don’t want just one species, you want multiple species. You want reproductive individuals, etc., etc. So when you say is the fishery in good condition, it’s not just do I have salmon or do I have this or do I have that; it’s all of the life history of all of the species. And Judge Park understood that because he understood, I think – I mean I never had a personal conversation with him, but he knew how streams worked. jesikah:

Was there a moment where you kind of were sitting around that table with Peter Moyle and thought “Wow, I was a graduate student getting my PhD with this dude, and here I am contributing, playing a major . . .” Basically you’re playing a starting role at this point in helping him present the knowledge in your shared . . . God, what’s the word . . . attempt.

Sid:

Right.

jesikah:

That’s kind of cool. Did that strike you?

Sid:

No, it didn’t. I never felt like I was sitting in the room in the grad student role. I came back to the university to earn my PhD after having worked a number of years, run my own consulting firm. I came back a little more mature, maybe, than some people who come right out of undergraduate work. And Peter was not – he wasn’t on any of my committees. I did my PhD work with somebody else. I just knew Peter as a member of the faculty. And Peter is . . . you know, he is an incredible fisheries biologist, an incredible ecologist, but he’s one of the most down-to-earth people you ever want to meet, okay? So there’s never . . . no intimidation, or what’s the other word I want? No arrogance.

jesikah:

I was going to go to big, inflated ego.

Sid:

No, Peter’s easy to work with. Peter and I – one of the things I do with the Yolo Audubon Society is a Christmas bird count. I coordinate one of the parts of the England

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count, and we go up and I count birds actually up by Lake Berryessa. Peter has come with me on the count every year for 20 years, so he’s a friend as well. (50:50) jesikah:

You know, I want to go back a second. You were saying you were going to all these Putah Creek Council meetings in your role as a university representative, and you also said “I’m an environmentalist.” Did you have a sense at the time that the Putah Creek Council was like other environmentalist groups, or different?

Sid:

Oh, very different right from the start.

jesikah:

Can you give that to me in a full sentence?

Sid:

Yeah, yeah. Working with the Putah Creek Council right from the beginning, you knew you were working with a sophisticated organization. It was local, it’s homegrown. I’m sorry.

jesikah:

What did you just hear?

Sid:

Red shoulder hawks. Working with the Putah Creek Council, you knew right from the beginning you’re working with a sophisticated organization. These are, most of them, Davis graduates, most of them with graduate degrees, Susan Sanders a PhD in ecology. Also, they were approaching this from a scientific perspective. If they hadn’t, they couldn’t get somebody like Peter Moyle probably involved. And you know, Steve Chainey had worked on the creek from kind of almost a land-use perspective and an ecosystem management perspective for a long time before that. So no, you knew right from the beginning you were working with professionals. And again, back to what I said earlier, it was because when we were formulating what we thought the flows needed to be, it was all science-based. And if it hadn’t been, it would’ve been difficult. So it was very easy to work with them.

jesikah:

So do you feel like that was . . . I mean professionals is one thing, but is that different from other environmentalist groups at the time?

Sid:

There’s a wide range of environmental groups, and they’re all trying to accomplish their goals. Most of the large national organizations are science-based, but you can sometimes get small groups, local groups especially, that are not so much. And also there are groups that litigation . . . maybe the arrow comes out of their quiver a little too fast. Not so with Putah Creek Council. They didn’t want to do this. That wasn’t their first thing they wanted to do. They wanted 3,000 acrefeet of water down the creek, or 2,000, whatever it was that first year, just to keep the ponds from going dry so the fish wouldn’t die. England

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And when they couldn’t move forward with that, they looked around and said “What tools do we have?” And I think they I wouldn’t say reluctantly, but only upon careful analysis of the alternatives, they decided that was where they had to go. So they were different from some groups in that way, but there’s a lot of very thoughtful environmental groups that work cooperatively before they think about going to litigation. jesikah:

Were you in the room when Judge Park read his ruling?

(54:00) Sid:

Yes.

jesikah:

Can you describe the – yeah, paint me a picture of that moment, what he said, what people did. Or even just how you felt.

Sid:

Yeah, I was in the room when the judge – he read his decision from the bench. You’re always, of course, on pins and needles. After the end of the trial, I would’ve been incredibly surprised and disappointed if the judge hadn’t ruled to put more flows down the creek. But he didn’t have to give us what we asked for. He could’ve given less; he could’ve given various parts of it. He actually, if I remember right, didn’t give it all that we asked for. So you’re sitting there wondering what’s going to happen. But from the beginning when he read the first sentences of his decision, you knew it was going to be favorable. So you could lean back and you could – you still were anticipating what’s going to come, but you knew it was going to be . . . that you had spent a lot of time and a lot of effort, and that you had accomplished getting more water in the creek. The rest was just listening to what were the details and what were the flows and can we live with what the decision was? But you knew from the beginning of what he said in the judgment that it was going to be better for the creek.

jesikah:

What happened after the ruling?

Sid:

Well, I mean immediately in the courtroom?

jesikah:

Well, yeah. Actually . . . actually, I meant what was the next step that was taken? But if you want to talk about immediately . . .

Sid:

I remember that we were very – we consciously tried not to show . . . we knew we were going to continue working with the Solano County folks, especially the university. We get water from them for the university, for the campus. So trying to gloat or be overly joyous or anything like that, that isn’t what anybody did. But I don’t know what it was. Somewhere shortly after that, we all went down to the England

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Tower Café and sat outside and had a beer or a glass of wine and a meal and enjoyed the victory. But I think even by then, we knew that Solano County Water Agency and Solano Irrigation District were going to appeal the ruling. jesikah:

How did you know?

(56:55) Sid:

They have to file notice within some short period of time, or maybe even they telegraphed it, I don’t recall. But we knew it probably wasn’t over; we knew it was probably going to be appealed, so we’d just go on to the next step.

jesikah:

So the Solano Water parties appeal. What do the Yolo parties do?

Sid:

Well, let’s see. Can you . . . maybe you can tell me, I don’t remember, was that when we had our first attempt at mediation with Dendy and Fazio? Was that after the decision? Or was that before?

jesikah:

That was before. Well, there was two. There was an attempt before and after at mediation, but I believe the Fazio/Dendy was before because it was around . . .

Sid:

That’s right, because we had . . . that was around the dam purchase, yes. Because what it meant was by the time we went into the courtroom with Judge Park, we had already formulated what our desired flows were. And what Judge Park did in the beginning before the trial started was he wanted to know if both parties would mind if he tried to mediate a settlement between the two, which that’s great. The judge can find a solution? Let’s get it done and let’s save a lot of problems. But . . . and there were only certain people. I never got to be in those discussions. I think it was Steve and an attorney or two and some small group from the other side. The judge went back-and-forth and back-and-forth. But the proposal that we submitted was actually what we wanted based on the science. And it wasn’t like we . . . the group didn’t go forward and say “This is where we want to wind up, so we’re going to go in and ask for more so when we get less we’ll wind up . . .” And that actually gave – to wind it back to where we think it ought to be? It wasn’t done that way. And that actually made it difficult for the judge to try to find a middle ground. So actually, it was an honest way to do it, but it actually turned out to be perhaps detrimental early on I guess. I don’t know if it would’ve even been possible to find a settlement, but it certainly didn’t leave any room for negotiation.

jesikah:

That’s interesting.

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Sid:

Then we won the trial and we found out there was going to be an appeal. And somewhere along the line, we made a second attempt at a negotiated settlement.

jesikah:

Were you in any of those meetings?

(59:50) Sid:

All of them. I was in all the earlier one before the trial with Bill Dendy and I was doing all the meetings after the appeal was filed. And the Bureau of Reclamation got involved also in that process, and the reason for that was the project – the Solano Project, initial contracts were for 40 years? 1958 or ’59 was when the contracts were signed, so they expired in like 1999. And you start negotiating the contracts two or three years before that. So we were actually getting into the contract negotiation for the users of the water project at the time that the discussions were going on for an attempt to settle the appeal.

jesikah:

That seems like leverage.

Sid:

For whom?

jesikah:

For the Yolo side.

Sid:

Well, except the university was the only participant in the Yolo side who was getting water. [Laughs] So the . . . I’m not sure who brought him in, but there was a federal mediator brought in to try to help us find resolution. The thing I remember about the fellow was he was doing several cases at once, and one of the ones he was also doing at the same time was to try to negotiate the contract for the San Francisco Symphony. I think Willie Brown was the mayor, and he was spending part of his time down there trying to negotiate that, then he was coming up here. It was odd. He did not know anything about water. Anyway, he actually helped bring a group – folks closer together, but again, I don’t know if a settlement was really possible at that point.

jesikah:

Was this the point where Lester Snow . . .

Sid:

No, that was later. Lester Snow’s involvement in the Bureau of Reclamation came later. Not too long after that. We ultimately never did get to the court for the appeal, but papers were being prepared and filings were being made and all of that. And what happened was we got word that Lester Snow, who was the regional director of the Bureau of Reclamation, wanted to get all the parties together.

(1:02:55)

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So we had a meeting in his conference room and we had the different parties to the lawsuit and we had their attorneys there. And by this time, Solano County Water Agency had replaced Tim O’Laughlin from the Menasian Law Firm with Stuart Somack from . . . Somack, what’s his firm? Anyway. jesikah:

How are they different? Can you just say?

Sid:

Yeah, Tim is a very . . . what is Tim? I can’t think of the right word, and I also don’t want to speak about people. Let’s not do that.

jesikah:

Yeah, you’ve got it.

Sid:

[Laughs]

jesikah:

So was there a reason? Can you speculate why the main lead attorney was replaced?

Sid:

I think that after the final lawsuit, there was some . . . again, there’s the Solano County Water Agency; there’s the Solano Irrigation District; there’s multiple cities involved. I think not all of them were happy with the outcome and a decision was made to change their representation. I was not part of any discussions; I don’t really know what happened, but that was what the result was.

jesikah:

And before you get to Lester Snow, where is Brice Bledsoe in all of this? Who is he and what role . . .

Sid:

Well, Brice Bledsoe is – was – the general manager of the Solano Irrigation District. So in the lawsuit, there were two defendants that were named. One was the Solano County Water Agency and the other was the Solano Irrigation District. The contracts and the water rights for the project are held by the Solano County Water Agency, but they, the Solano County Water Agency, has a contract with the Solano Irrigation District to actually run – physically turn the knobs and the valves and all that stuff and run the project. And I don’t recall the exact numbers any longer, but the project has an annual yield of over 200,000 acre-feet of water as I recall. The vast majority of that water goes to the Solano Irrigation District. I mean like three-quarters or two-thirds. I don’t know the numbers, but a large percentage of it goes to the Solano Irrigation District because they use it for their farms and farmers and agriculture in Solano County. Some of it they also sell to some of the cities in addition to what the cities get. So they are the real big . . . they are the biggest users of the project, and they physically run the project.

(1:06:00) England

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So if water wasn’t . . . the theory – legal theory – was if not enough water was being released to maintain the fish in good condition, it was because jointly between the water agency who manages the project and the Solano Irrigation District who physically turns the valves on and off to maintain the flow, somewhere between those two it wasn’t being done. Not enough water was being released as 5937 required. jesikah:

And so Brice Bledsoe . . .

Sid:

Brice Bledsoe was the general manager of the Solano Irrigation District, and Brice had been involved with the project since the very beginning. Brice had a very, very strong position about doing everything to protect the water supply for his district.

jesikah:

Is he the one that said not a drop more? That was such a good quote that you guys kept saying, “Not a drop more,” and I was trying to figure out who was saying that.

Sid:

I don’t know. He probably did, but I don’t know. I can’t say yes, I heard him say it.

jesikah:

Anyway, Lester Snow?

Sid:

One thing I want to add too, I mentioned the triumvirate of Peter Moyle, fisheries biologist, and Hap Dunning, law professor, and Vern Scott. I have to say something about Vern. Vern was towards the end of his career as a professor at the university when all this got going. And way back in the 1950s, when the university was deciding whether or not to participate in the Solano Project and how much water to take, he was on the committees that were making those decisions. So we had this continuity also from the very beginning of whether we bring water out of Solano Project and bring it to the campus. We had this continuity of Vern’s perspective – long-term perspective – all the way to the end. So that was also very helpful because he knew the early discussions; he knew how the flows had evolved over time and everything, so that was also very helpful. So Brice had been involved from their side I think from the very beginning, and from our side, Vern had been involved right from the beginning.

jesikah:

Interesting. So tell me the story about when Lester Snow comes into the meeting and kind of throws down . . .

Sid:

So we had the meeting with the Bureau of Reclamation. All the parties are there and all the attorneys are there and Lester says “You guys are very close. You England

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almost have a solution. I think you ought to see if you can’t come together.” Everybody acknowledged that yeah, we are very close but we have some significant disagreements and Solano was saying “I think we have to go to court to get it decided.” (1:09:00) Lester said well . . . he says “You guys have been at this a very long time. I think you guys ought to be able to find a solution, and I think there’s no reason to keep this going. I think you need to find an answer, and if you don’t, then we are going to file a petition with the State Water Resource Control Board and the Bureau of Reclamation is going to ask for more water to be released down the creek.” I don’t know everything the Bureau of Reclamation does, but I think that is a very rare circumstance that the Bureau of Reclamation would say “More water for the creek.” They weren’t even named in the lawsuit. And somewhere in the conversation, Stuart Somack I remember saying “If you . . .” I don’t have that right. How did that happen now? jesikah:

Might as well wait until the airplane goes by.

Sid:

Yeah. I’m trying to remember how the . . . I’m trying to remember. Here’s what I’m trying to remember and I can’t recall. Lester said something that caused Stuart to say “We’re close now, but that will just cause us to retreat to our extreme positions,” at which point I believe that was when Lester said “Well, okay, but if you can’t find a solution then we are going to file a petition with the State Water Resource control board asking for more flows in the creek.” And doggone, I can’t remember exactly how it went right now.

jesikah:

That’s okay. Could you just repeat, though, what you said?

Sid:

So we had the meeting with Lester with all of the participants and their attorneys. Lester was really encouraging us to try to come to that final conclusion. He was bringing pressure to bear on everybody in the room, and I remember Stuart Somack making the comment that you’re going to cause us to retreat to our more extreme positions. Lester said “I understand that might happen, but I want you to understand if you don’t find a solution, this has gone on long enough the Bureau of Reclamation is going to file a petition with the State Water Resource Control Board and we are going to ask for increased flows in the creek. So you can either find a solution you want, or we will be making that filing.”

(1:12:05) That was the critical meeting that ultimately led to us being able to find a settlement that worked for everybody, because many things that had been England

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insurmountable barriers previously we found solutions to, and very favorable solutions for the creek. So that movement on the part of the bureau really provided some impetus because once somebody else is making the decisions or making the actions, you have lost control. If we were going to reach settlement then the parties could decide what the solution was going to be. So that was when we were able to come to a settlement, to reach our accord. jesikah:

Yeah, and was that typical of the reclamation to do or unusual?

Sid:

I don’t . . . I don’t know. The bureau’s a big organization and I certainly don’t know everything they do, but I’ve read lots of books about the Colorado River and about other places. It’s not – it is not what the bureau typically does, to go out and say “We’re going to put more water down the creek because we think that’s what ought to happen.” That’s not what typically goes on with the Bureau of Reclamation. So that was a pretty unusual thing for them to do.

jesikah:

Why do you think they . . . why do you think he made that call?

Sid:

I think there are a number of things. I have no idea what politics might have been involved. None. But again, the flow regime that the creek had at that moment was very poor. We didn’t just bring it . . . the lawsuit wasn’t brought just because we wanted more water; it was damaging to the creek. And it was happening in a time when as more and more projects that the bureau and other organizations, other agencies ran were going in for renewals and renegotiation and relicensing and lawsuits on big projects like over at Mono Lake and Friant Dam, which also Friant Dam was going on in that period as well. I forgot about that. They weren’t getting decisions that necessarily were what they liked. So here was an opportunity, I think, for them to say “This is not right. There’s not enough water going down the creek. The amount of water we’re looking at is not that big a deal, and so let’s try to see if we can’t get a settlement done.” So I think all those things were contributing.

jesikah:

Was there a possibility that there might’ve – if they had gone to appeal and Putah Creek Council had prevailed, it could’ve set a precedent?

(1:15:00) Sid:

Oh, I can see where you’re going. One of the considerations . . . did you ask David that?

jesikah:

Yes, I think I did.

Sid:

And?

jesikah:

I can’t remember. England

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Sid:

One of the things about a legal process like we went through is when you get a decision from the trial court, it’s not binding on anybody but you. It is not until you go to a court of appeal and get a final ruling from a court of appeal that it sets legal precedent. So the 5937 ruling we got and what it meant for how you interpret the health of fisheries below a dam is a unique ruling to Putah Creek. If it had gone to appeal and we had prevailed, that would have become precedent for all other cases afterwards. So there is some speculation that a number of the parties involved and other people outside the lawsuit did not want to see it go to a court of appeal and become precedent. I have no idea whether or not that entered into the decisions of why the bureau got involved, and given where we were at that point, it did not appear that was affecting the Solano County Water Agency or the Solano Irrigation District. So that’s just speculation at this point.

jesikah:

So by the same token, did you or the Yolo parties come under any pressure to also not settle? So it could go to a court of appeal?

Sid:

The university did not. I can’t speak for anybody else.

jesikah:

You know, you spent a lot of your career, in a lot of ways – early career – on this case. At least it sounds like it with so many meetings. What was the hardest part of it for you?

(1:17:45) Sid:

The hardest part of the process for me . . . well, I’m not a person who seeks out conflict. I mean I’ll deal with it when it comes, but I’m not. So this whole thing is about conflict, so dealing with that, that was personally . . . Another thing too is the university is a big organization with lots of interests and lots of subjects and lots of competing things going on. We had to figure out how to go forward with this. I worked very hard to make sure that people understood that I was trying to bring the best information forward to leadership. They knew the pros and cons. They knew the benefits. They knew the risks. And it wasn’t – that they could know I was bringing forward to them all the facts they needed to make a decision, and not that I was being an environmentalist in the room trying to push the university in a certain direction, because I wasn’t. I had a prior experience in my career. I worked for a federal agency on a large land-use plan as a wildlife biologist. That was my job. And we would bring information to management about what the effects of the various land-use England

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decisions might be on wildlife and their reaction was to shoot the messenger, okay? That never happened at the university. It never happened with Larry Vanderhoef or Bob Grey, but we always tried to bring all the information. And they being scientists and they being very professional university administrators would evaluate all of the information and make a policy decision. If they had made a policy decision that I personally thought maybe wasn’t the best for the environment, they have a lot to consider, all kinds of things. I was fortunate personally in they moved – they agreed with the directions that were being advanced by the team of people we were working with so it never came to that. I never got in that situation where I ever felt they didn’t think they could rely on me because I was bringing a biased point-of-view. jesikah:

Were you ever worried they’d shoot the messenger?

Sid:

No. I mean was I ever . . . worried they’d shoot the messenger? No, I had worked with them long enough that I felt confident in how they would approach it.

jesikah:

Were you ever worried you would have a different . . . they would take a decision you didn’t personally and professionally as a wildlife biologist agree with but have to agree with in your job?

(1:21:00) Sid:

I think early on, before . . . you know, we had a lot of internal discussions on policy. I didn’t know where it was going to land, but everybody came together. So early on, you don’t know where it’s going to land. You have no idea. But it became once we got through the analysis and the evaluation and we felt that the system could afford the volume of water that our – we knew that even if it led to . . . if our volume of water became less reliable, we didn’t think it’d be cut. If it became less reliable, we could live with that. We felt confident that the 4,000 acre-feet we got would hold up, but maybe there could be a little more variance that might make it a little less reliable. We talked about that. We realized how we would deal with that. So you know, we talked it all through and evaluated it. So no, once we got to the point where the university’s policy decisions were clear, no.

jesikah:

So by the same token, you spending so much of your time and energy on this and having your professional cred on the line, what are you most proud of? Actually, let me say what are you most proud of when you look back at all of the effort you put in to get to the settlement?

Sid:

Well, boy, there’s a number of things that I’m proud of. One is that we were successful in improving the health of the creek. That’s number one, the thing to be happiest about, the outcome. Number two is I think the university and everybody England

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who had to be involved in the decisions did the right thing every step of the way. And I don’t mean that because it agrees with some of my predilections. They looked at the data; they looked at the science; they listened to their faculty, and they did the right thing. They knew there were risks. They knew there were political risks. One of the things the university was involved in at the same time towards the end was the renewal of our contract, and that was a negotiation. We got to a point where we did not agree with the terms that were being offered to us. jesikah:

This is negotiation for your continued water?

Sid:

Yes, what our price was going to be and what our terms of delivery were going to be and all of that. This was also going on at the same time.

jesikah:

I’m sorry, can you say that again? I moved and I got so excited I kind of made a little glitch. So this was at the same time as . . .

(1:23:45) Sid:

As we were in the period where we were doing the – it was after the decision, I believe, and it was when we were in the phase where the bureau got involved. One of the reasons the bureau got involved was again, as I mentioned before, they were starting negotiations for the new . . . the 40-year contracts that were expiring, and they had to renegotiate the contract. There was a contract that went between the bureau and Solano County Water Agency, and there were what we call the member unit contracts which were the contracts between the Solano County Water Agency and the university. And so we had to negotiate that with them. They did not – they never were happy with the fact that the university, who was one of the beneficiaries of the project, was suing to put more water down the creek. We reached a loggerhead on that situation and we ultimately sued the Solano County Water Agency over some of the things they were trying to put in the contract. We actually had to get the water deliveries continued for a year. We didn’t have a contract in place while we were trying to resolve it. And one of the things that happened at the same time we settled the Putah Creek lawsuit, it’s like all hatchets were being buried and we also reached negotiations and reached settlement, and we laid . . . not only was our countersuit and the suit between Putah Creek Council and the city settled, but also our suit against the Solano County Water Agency over our contract renewal was also settled. So we got all those out of the way at the same time.

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jesikah:

Wow, as an alum, I’m kind of proud that my university took a stance on what they felt was right even though it might adversely affect them. That’s what you’re saying.

Sid:

Yeah, there was a risk. There were risks all the way along of what it could lead to. But you know, how many years ago was it now that we reached the accord?

jesikah:

2000.

Sid:

So it’s 14, 15 years? A lot of water over the dam since then.

jesikah:

So what lessons do you take away from your experience in this saga to keep water in the creek? To save the creek?

Sid:

Well, I think one of the biggest things for me is I mentioned I’m on the board of – I was on the board of Audubon California for nine years, and I’m on the board of the International Crane Foundation and I’m on the board of Yolo Audubon. When you’re . . . whether you’re working with people to try to accomplish an environmental goal, whether you’re negotiating something, if you’re in a lawsuit, let the science help you figure out what you should be doing because then you’re taking a principled position and your goals should be pretty clear. I think that always is going to serve you well when you’re trying to deal from an environmental perspective.

(1:27:00) jesikah:

And water is . . . it’s not going to get any easier here in California. How do you think the Putah Creek story can help other groups make decisions in the future? How can it – if I can say that in a better way. As decisions over water get more nuanced and challenging, how do you think this example can help people make better decisions in the future?

Sid:

Well, I think there’s a couple of ramifications of what we did here that will carry on. One is that even though the definition and the approach to what’s a healthy fishery didn’t set precedent, it’s out there now. It’s in the scientific literature. Everybody can read the trial court decision, and it’s there in the background. Everybody knows it, and it worked once. And so I think that is a lingering benefit. I’m trying to talk about things that are beyond the creek itself. So I think that’s one of the long-term benefits. The other is if somebody takes the time to read the settlement, we . . . it wasn’t just about the water. It was truly about the health of the creek. So the settlement included a certain amount of money per year for monitoring so we would know what was going on. It included money for habitat improvement. Some of those were annual; some of those were one-time funds. It also included money to create England

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a position of the Streamkeeper. The Streamkeeper, we now have a professional whose job every day is to wake up and see how can we make the creek a better place? I think one of the benefits – one of the things that was done too is that stream keeper works for the Solano County Water Agency. The general manager of the water agency is his boss. Now there’s a Lower Putah Creek Coordinating Council which meets to say this is how we want to move forward and all of that, but the goal wasn’t just to get more water; the goal was to make the creek healthier. And what that, I think, says is what we’re trying to do is to take the resources that we did get – the water and the money for habitat and all that – and use them to get the best results we could. So we want to make sure we create the best environment on the creek in an integrated fashion. (1:30:15) So I think people who are looking at these kinds of issues and they look at how we formulated a settlement can look at that and also that could give them ideas of how they might go forward. I think what I’ve seen Rich Marovich – the stream keeper that we hired – do is the value he’s getting out of the water we did get is much greater because of that approach. jesikah:

Let me see if there’s any other question that I did not ask. I guess my last question, I always ask if there’s anything . . .

Sid:

Anything you want to say. I’ve been thinking about that, if there’s anything I want to say.

jesikah:

But my last question is what future do you see for Putah Creek because of the work that you all have done?

Sid:

The whole attitude about the value of Putah Creek has changed. And let me just give you a good example. These are things . . . in the 1960s and 70s, the university used to mine gravel out of Putah Creek for the campus. And when we were pulling together the university background about Putah Creek and our water rights and things like that, we actually found a Regents item approved by the Regents to create an off-road vehicle area along Putah Creek near Old Davis Road. Okay? That attitude is gone. So it’s not just . . . Putah Creek was just this thing down there where the water flowed and it didn’t have any value. Well now everybody’s aware of it. People recreate here. There’s stretches that really aren’t . . . that people can get to. Rich, the Streamkeeper, is working even on those lands to improve habitat value, so that’s great for the wildlife. The work at Winters now, they’ve done all these improvement projects up there and people see it as an asset and amenity to their community. So it’s created kind of a bioregional England

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adoption of the creek as an asset to be taken care of, enjoyed and not to be abused. So I think that’s a long, ongoing legacy that changes that attitude to the creek. (1:33:00) jesikah:

Actually, I have one follow-up just because you sparked this. Why is it . . . put your wildlife biologist hat on. Why is it important that people feel this connection to their local creek?

Sid:

Well, there’s an author named Richard Luve is I believe his name. He’s written a book, I can’t remember the exact title, but he talks about a phenomenon called Nature Deficit Disorder where people now – when I grew up as a kid, I used to go out and play in the local fields half a block from my house. That connection with the local environment, you have to find ways now to create that. And so having a resource like this that whole communities up and down the creek look at and value and it’s a place where you can take your kid and you can come out and look at birds? I mean just sitting here talking to you, we had a great horned owl calling a minute ago just over our heads. Those are experiences that are hard to come by. So having this become a place that the community values, their eyes are on it now; they’ll protect it; they’ll adopt it. And over the long run, it’ll be a much better place than it was, or than it would’ve been if that hadn’t happened.

jesikah:

So is there anything about your experience with the Putah Creek Council or the lawsuit, settlement, future that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to talk about?

Sid:

I can’t think of anything right now.

jesikah:

All right. So hold on.

Sid:

Oh my God, it’s 8:00.

jesikah:

I know, I was just . . . let me stop this.

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