RALPH BROWN
.ffitsrvi8w No. I ~
June 18, 2007
San Antonio, Texas
Martha Doty Freeman, Interviewer - ~ tc/t:> 7
This is Martha Doty Freeman. The date is June JB'h, 2007. I'm interviewing Ralph Brown,
the legal counsel for the San Antonio River Authority. The interview is taking place at the
River Authority's offices in San Antonio, Texas.
Give me some biographical background about where you were born and raised and about
your education.
Well, I was born in Choctaw County, Oklahoma- that's in southeast Oklahoma - in 1934,
April l01
h, 1934. And I went through all public schools there, and I graduated high school in
1952. I was in the United States Navy until 1955, and when I got out of the Navy, I started
school at Arlington State College. It's now UT Arlington. I went two years there, and then I
transferred Jh:rniversity of Texas at Austin which is where I met Fred Pfeiffer.
II.
Were you in law school together there?
We were not. We were in undergraduate school.
How did the two of you happen to meet?
Fred lived in a co-op up there, and I happened to stay in that co-op one summer during
summer school.
I went to work for the Dayton Rubber Company in 19~1 I left Austin, went to Dallas. --(hey
transferred me to San Antoni<] so I sold fan belts and radiator hoses as a manufacturer's
representative until 1960 or '61. Then my company was going to transfer m~ I didn't want
to leave San Antonio so I started law school here at St. Mary's.
When I got out oflaw school in January of 1964, I was employed by a law firm down here
called Sawtelle Hardy Davis & Goode, and they were the lawyers for the River Authority.
And an individual in that firm named David Brune became assistant general manager of the
River Authority, he was an assistant to Victor Braunig. He left that firm to essentially come
full-time with SARA, and I left the firm with two of the partners, Harvey Hardy and Gordon
Davis, on January I, 1965, and we were doing a lot of work for the River Authority at that
time. That's when I became reacquainted with Fred; I actually barely knew him at Texas.
But Fred was working as the right-of-way attorney at that time with David Brune.
Tell me some about the firm Sawtelle Hardy Davis & Goode. Can you tell me something
about each of those partners?
Yes. Bob Sawtelle was very active politically. He was one of the individuals who had
founded the Good Government League in San Antonio, which became~ominant force in
city politics for quite a while. When the Good Government League took control of City Hal~
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the way the legal spoils were divided was that~ity Public forvic~which had the gas and
~It</. <1J.C 1'"1>( L•.tV<t-( /34 -<'R"i-f,£}
electric utilit)j went to a firm called Matthewk: , he~dea by Wilbur Matthews. The
water board and SARA came to Bob Sawtellt(.,Qnd actually Mr. Hardy, Harvey L. Hardy, had
been representing SARA even before the Good Government League took political control of
City Hall. Then there was a third law firm that was active in the GGL, took over
representati._qn of the transit system, which was the streetcar and bus company. And that was r ~ ifv)
Langfross Ladon and Oppenheimer.
Lang Cross-
(;_~ZJ ( CrlP<9
Lang, L-A-N-G, Cross, at that time it was cal\.ed~Byrd, B-Y-R-~Ladon, L-A-D-0-N, and
Oppenheimer.
Was this - what you described as sort of a division of the spoils, was this a fairly usual way
for these things to occur in large cities?
Yes.
How long had that firm been around in San Antonio?
The Sawtell;Jirm?
Uh-huh.
3
They were post-war. They were- all of those partners had served in the District Attorney's
office together after World War II. That's how they came to know each other.
I see. And then tell me some about Mr. Hardy.
Well, Mr. Hardy and Gordon Davis, the two partners who left the firm that f went with, are
both still alive. Harvey has an office in my office building. He was 92 years old on
December 2"d last year. He had a fall and broke his ankle about four months ago, and he's
not doing real well right now. He is getting around on a walker. In fact, I took him to lunch
last Tuesday. His mind is slipping a lot.
Harvey is a unique lawyer in that he was one of the older lawyers who never went to law
school. He went to San Antonio College for two years. I don't know ifhe got an associate's
degree or not; he probably did. His father and his grandfather had both been lawyers before
him, and he studied primarily in the office with his father and was self-taught. And he took
the bar examination when he was 21 years old, very soon after he turned 21 years old, which
I believe was in 1934 or '35. He passed it the first time he took i). which was very unusual
for people who hadn't been to law school.
He worked as an insurance adjuster until World Warn started, and he went into the Army in
the early phases of World War II and served in the Army that was commanded by General
Patton. During World War II, he was in the Battle of the Bulge and has a lot of decorations.
4
And when he came out of the Army, he went with the District Attorney's office here and
became first assistant district attorney, and for a while was acting district attorney after the
elected district attorney here was killed in a plane crash during the Korean War.
After he left the District Attorney's office, he became City Attorney of San Antonio, was
instrumental in writing the city charter that we live under now, and was instrumental in the
origins of the Good Government League. Then he was - the group at City Hall that he'd
served as City Attorney under, which was still in the pre-GGL days, they lost the very next
election. So he went out and went into private practice specializing in municipal public law
vay
and has had a very good, successful career doing that.
I(
When you were in law school. was there anything that you studied that interested you in
utilities or water or ...
Well, I went to work for that law firm when I was in law school.
So was that sort of the formulation of your interest and inclinations?
Exactly.
Was Mr. Hardy the lead lawyer in that group that worked with the San Antonio River
Authority?
5
Yes.
And then at what point did you become their primary counsel? How did that happen?
Well, SARA had relied primarily on outside counsel from its inception. Harvey and I were
doing a lot of their work with David, and David had been in the same firm with us. David
came and had a meeting with Harvey and me in 1967 and asked me to come into the River
Authority. -tfwasn't there on a full-time basis, but I had to have an office ther7and I had to
spend most of my time there. So that started - he said, "If you don't come over here, I'm
going to hire somebody else."
So how did that work out? Were you still a partner in this law firm F-Yes.
-- and an almost fitll-time employee of the River Authority?
Yes. In fact, it turned out, I mean, with David Brune as a manager, everybody was full-time
.:G't?po>?~£1
and then some. I mean, I nominally w~left to keep a private office, but the only time I had
there was nights and weekends. Because David very soon after I came over to the River
Authority offices, in addition to being general counsel, 9-Cmade me administrative services
manager. So I had finance personnel and land- right-of-way acquisitionc£z'Y t~U-l/~.~-t- --tr,d ·
6
Give me an idea of the scope of the kinds of cases that you dealt with on behalf of the River
Authority.
Primarily eminent domain or land acquisition. Acquired the property }l.efefor this building
here. This property was acquired as part of what was then called the Ri verb end Project,
Flood Improvement Project. Then we got- we were fairly regularly sued for flood damage.
We had a major, major case where we were co-defendants with the City of San Antonio, the
Garrett brothers' case.
Tell me about that.
The River Authority was acquiring land for the Blossom - for a flood control project for
what's now Blossom Park, and our right-of-way person, Jim Thompson, asked Marjorie
Jordan, who was the lady in charge of the planning and zoning at the City of San Antonio, to '1. ... ! 'i.R;J
{/JAu tJW fk- \ 7
hold up on some building permits for the Garrett brothers, which she did and they did-\So
they ended up getting a judgment against SARA and the city for about 35 or $40,000, and
it's become a landmark case in what's called inverse condemnation law.
Explain that to me.
Inverse condemnation is a situation where the government effectively takes your property
)
without paying you for it. That was one of the cases - we had a case in the late '60s and
7
lasting into the J7os, early-to·mid)70s, SARA got into pollution abatement, and I filed and
prosecuted a lot of pollution cases against local businesses.
Let me go back and ask you one more thing about - is it Garrett brothers?
Garrett brothers.
Would Thompson have known the implication of what he was doing at the time he took that
action?
At that time, that was a fairly common thing. That case made the law that you can't do that.
Is it something that has implications outside ofTexas?
Well, it had a lot of implications inside ofTexas, statewide, yeah.
Did it go to the Supreme Cour~or was it just settled?
Texas Supreme Court.
Were there any outstanding condemnation suits that you were a part of that you can discuss?
8
Well, the most interesting case was the SARA v. Lewis case. It was also an inverse
condemnation case. In that case, the River Authority stopped the flow of water into the old
historic San Juan irrigation ditch by removing the dam that was in the way of the flood
control project that we were doing on the river. And the Lewises and other people who had
irrigationf rights in that old San Juan Ditch brought suit against the River Authority. That
case involved - has become a landmark case on water rights. I would say that and Garrett
brothers were the two most legally significant cases that I handled here.
Had you dealt with water rights issues before the San Juan Ditch case occurred?
Yes.
So did you have a lot of background in Spanish water law and those sort of related topics?
.yYeJ...,
I got a lot,~- 'fie did a lot of background work in Spanish law. We examined land titles
~
out in southern Bexar County going all the way back i..Rro the 1700s when they were initially
made. Before that, I knew very little other than what I had learned in law school, but we
learned a lot in that case.
Was there any point when you were doing your research you thought, "Oh, we shouldn't
have done that?"
9
Well, we realized when we did that- SARA realized when it happened that people were
going to be unhappy with losing the ability to irrigate out of that ditch. However, there were
only two or three individuals who still used it. It had become - it largely had fallen into
disuse. The company that had been formed to operate and maintain the ditch, they were
doing not much of a job of it. There were only three or four individuals that were still
actually irrigating out of it, and they were irrigating small tracts of land. So the legal
measure of damages that they had was the difference in their land value with irrigation rights
and without irrigation rights. So just strictly from an eminent domain standpoint, that
translated to the River Authority having not a lot of monetary liability.
On the legal side, up until that case happened, in the state of Texas, private property that was
taken in the exercise of what is called +i;"olice power, and the police power is the power of
the State to come in and destroy property, for example, to save a conflagration from
happening. Flood control was considered a valid exercise of the police power, and for that
you didn't have any liability. You didn't have to - the king didn't have to pay for Qroperty
that he took to save the whole community's life. That was the theory of it. S~marily
relied on that it was a police power taken in the furtherance of flood control and we didn't
have any liability for damages. If we did have liability for damages, then it was only the
difference in the value of the land with irrigation rights and without the irrigation rights. So
we lost out on the legal issue of police power. They said, "Yeah, it's a police power, but you
still got to pay for it." Which is right, it's the way it ought to be.
10
But in the- as far as the damages in that case themselves, the Lewises were looking for
about 3 5 or $40,000 in damages, and of course, in 1965 dollars, that was a lot of money. Our
appraisers said they should get 8,000, and the jury gave them l 0. So we came out okay
damage-wise; we didn't come out okay law-wise.
That was the very first case I ever argued to the jury, in fact. It was in 1966, I believe.
Was case law in Texas pretty well developed by that time in regards to irrigation rights?
Oh, yeah.
So there was a lot of- there was a body of literature to go to?
There's no question about that.
Any other particular condemnation suits that come to mind as being interesting or
establishing precedence?
Those were the two most precedential, I think. We have had other - we had a lot that were
appealed that were reported in the records, but those were the two most significant ones.
You mentioned a suit about water quality. Tell me about that. Was that with the City of San
Antonio?
11
The last one we had was against San Antonio.
I mean, were there a lot that occurred or some particularly important ones?
)
We had a series of pollution abatement cases in the ~70s. San Antonio in the meantime had
been lagging behind on their wastewater treatment forever. They had never kept up with it,
)
and they continued to be the biggest polluter of the river. Finall~ sometime in the early '80s,
I suppose, SARA did file suit against the City of San Antonio and brought -
(Telephone ringing. Tape turned off and back on.)
As we had to do, we brought the Attorney General into the case, and that case was concluded
with the State of Texas and SARA both getting about $400,000 each in monetary damages
trom the City, and the City building the Dos Rios wastewater treatment plant and cleaning up
-~,f,~'-1-
Mitchell Lake and finaudlbtertt into the 20th century. Of course, that case was never tried; it
was settled.
Probably that was the most significant one, but as far as having a practical impact on water
quality, real impact, the one case I particularly remember -
(End ofTape 1, Side I. Beginning ofTape 1, Side 2)
12
~
Two cases I particularly remembe) we sued a developer out in the town of Helotes who had
I\.
built a shopping- a small strip center, and they weren't connected to a sewage treatment
system at all. They had run a pipeline from their shopping center over to the Helotes Creek,
which is an important recharge creek, and they were just dumping their raw sewage right into
that creek. We investigated that and filed suit and got an injunction against them. I t ~~u~c-:.;.J
remember that because I was interviewed on the 5 o'clock news. Gotj;n the studio.
So in the case of the suit against the City, how would SARA have established a damage
amount for long-term pollution?
There were statutory penalties. The Water Quality Act at that time said that for every day
that a person who had a wastewater permit discharged in excess of their permitted amount or
less than their permitted quality that they had to pay, like, $1,000 a day damages or $5,000 a
day- $1,000 a day I think. So San Antonio, ifthey had had to pay all of it, it would have
bankrupted the City. But they did get a bond issue passed and got the Dos Rios plant built.
Where is that located?
It's on the Medina River south of San Antonio. The Medina is the main tributary of the San
Antonio River.
So you were really looking- the Medina comes in downstream from here?
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Yes.
So you were really looking at the pollution between that juncture and the coast.
Yeah.
And was that as a result of towns or communities downriver complaining?
Oh, yeah. As you know, the River Authority takes in all the counties down to Goliad County.
There's a small part of the river that gets outside of Goliad County into Refugio County, but
our board me~t;aising hell about the downstream pollution forever.
So the complaints when they occurred would be funneled through the appropriate board
,fJ_;
members. Is that how it came to the attention of SARA or how SARA -
Oh, people called, individual would callyd·- they'd call the office. More often, the people,
say, in Goliad County would call one of the Goliad board members, and then Kames County~
would call one of the Kames board members or Wilson County.
So was it really an initiative by those particular board members to push for this suit?
No, not really. It was more a management decision.
14
What about contracts? I assume that you oversaw all of the contracts that the agency -
Yep.
- got involved in. And did you help shape some of those or initiate some of those?
Well, in order of priority, the biggest contracts that SARA has had historically have been
with the United States government, and that has enabled us to bring in millions and millions
of dollars in federal funds for flood control here in San Antonio. Our basic agreement with
the government is that SARA acquires the land rights and we tum them over to the U.S.
~~- t...,.....J.._
Army Corps of Engineers and they build the projects. Initially, they did it.}6() percent. Now
a.-~
they do it less than..l--00" percent. But that has been our primary contractual agreement, a big
one.
We have, of course, contracts with the city of San Antonio for maintenance of the flood
control projects after they're built. We have contracts with several suburban cities for
wastewater treatment. Then we have contracts with landowners to buy land and lease land
for public projects. Those are by far the most importan~ basicall))about all. Aside from
personnel and personal service contracts that's about the scope of our contracts.
Innovation is the thing that keeps coming up as a way of operating within the Authority, and I
wondered if you could think of some way that applied to contract work?
15
What was that?
Innovation. Just thinking about things in unusual ways or new ways.
Well, I'm sure we've had some innovative stuff. Probably in the area of land acquisition,
you get away from the norm and try to give a landowner what they want so that SARA can
get what it wants. And then, you know, some of the multi-party contracts that we have with
Bexar County and the City of San Antonio, for example, on the river improvements now.
Yeah, they get kind of- funding of them becomes innovativ<t)
There was one - I saw a reference to the Texas Water Pollution Control Compact. Can you
tell me anything about that?
I believe at the time that was a piece of legislation that was done as a funding mechanism
primarily, as I recall.
Would you have been involved in helping to create that compact?
Yeah. I was involved with our bond counsel at the time, and our bond lawyer was Paul
Horton. And that's why I associate that with funding is because I remember Paul had a- it
was kind ofhis brainchild.
So for special-
16
Fred probably remembers more about it.
Okay. So for specialty legal advice, would you go outside of the River Authority group?
The only outside counsel that we had during most of the time that I have been general
counsel would have been Bert Hooper in Austin for water rights and Paul Horton in Dallas
for bonds and Harvey Hardy here for other stuff, but those were about it. That was about the
~
extent of the outside counsel. In recent years, society has become more litigious and SARA
Jl,
had gotten bigger, yeah, we have more outside counsel now.
You mentioned the business about water rights. Were you involved with water rights
appropriation permits, and how did those work? Did SARA initiate those permits, or how
was it done?
SARA has some permitted water rights, but that's not significant for SARA. Mostly we are
asked to comment on applications for permits. We have contested some. We've contested a
lot, in fact, of appropriation permits. We contested some last year, I believe, that were out of
the Cibolo River.
So how does the agency become aware of those permits?
We're notified by TCEQ.
17
So it's an automatic contact?
Yeah, when the applications are made.
And then how do you go about determining whether it's going to have some sort of negative
impact?
Our engineering department primarily would take a look at it and do the staff work on it.
Then the environmental department would do that. So staff-wise here, it would be between
the environmental, engineering, and perhaps water quality.
Have you seen an increase in those kinds of issues?
As water becomes more precious, yeah, you see a - I've seen lot more interest in that and
more - especially when you consider that essentially all of the water in the state of Texas has
already been - is already subject to appropriation permit somewhere. People keep coming up
with - that's where you get a lot of innovative stuff. They come in with junior rights and all
~
kinds of subsidiary water rights. Anything they can hang a tag on to get another drop of
1\
water, people are doing it.
How do you see the relations between the City and the River Authority and then all the work
that's being done in Gonzales and Wilson Counties with trying to get water to San Antonio?
18
Well, I think things were working pretty good until San Antonio Water System pulled out of
the Lower Guadalupe Project. As far as water for San Antonio is concerned, that wasn't a
big priority of SARA's. It was a priority of SARA's to have water for the downstream
counties and downstream cities. We seem to, at the present time, perhaps have a better
working relationship with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority and some of the other
agencies than with SAWS, although that's always a work in progress.
So who would be your strategic partners in terms of all of the issues that concern the River
Authority, you know, in the areas of pollution control and water and that sort of thing?
Yeah. The Nueces River Authority, the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, San Antonio ~ =' .# .f.; r;. ,
Water Systems, the Cibolo Creek Municipal Authority, the Canyon Regional Water
perhaps~ downstream counties, Bexar County, Wilson County, Karnes County, Goliad
County, and downstream towns.
Now, you mentioned the Nueces River Authority. What's the connection there?
The Nueces River Authority, SARA, and the GBRA have worked for some time with SAWS
on recharge projects for the Edwards.
Oh. And what are those projects? They involve use of underground water or surface-
19
(J
No. Getting recharge from surface water detr~~detaining surface waters until it can
recharge into the Edwards. I don't think the project - we had a project out in Nueces County,
I think the Nueces River Authority had some problems with it and it hasn't been able to get
off the ground yet. There have been some recharge projects in Medina County I believe.
It seems to me from reading the material that SARA over the years has just gradually
expanded its reach more and more and more.
Primarily - when I first started with SARA, the emphasis was on flood control and
wastewater tn~alrnent am! wastewater treatment in areas that didn't have it, which at that time
was primarily the eastern part of Bexar County. And that has now expanded. We completed
essentially all the flood control work that there is to be done when the tunnel was built, and
we're now getting more into the river redevelopment, expanding the River Walk - ~Z:,-H...._
redevelopment and water supply. And for many years we would be hands-off on water
supply until recent times.
Really?
But now SARA is involved more in finding water supplies, helping communities
downstream especially that don't have water supply systems, build them. We recently
completed one in Goliad County and some others downstream. So, yeah, the areas of interest
have expanded.
20
Do you think, just looking at it objectively, that it's because that's the nature of any sort of a
bureaucracy or is it because of an understanding of complexity, or why do you think there 's
been this trend with the Authority?
i:h
Well, the reason that all institutions - all institutions chang~ring my lifetime~ primarily
•
( ,.;l.
been the increase in populatior{ihere-'} just a lot more of us. And there are a lot more
problems and there are a lot more social problems, economic problems, so I'd say it's more a
population explosion, and it's the nature of"~"' bureaucracy. Going back to Roman time~
who invented bureaucracies, it's always been the nature of a bureaucracy.
Tell me what your dealings were with other river authorities. Would you have a lot of
interaction with different river authorities as the legal counsel?
Oh, not pat1icularly as legal counsel. We've had some longstanding ongoing relationships
with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority primarily over water supplies out of Canyon
Lake. That's more of a City of San Antonio issue. SARA has been involved in it, either
we've had - through our membership in the Texas Water Conservation Association, we
regularly meet with all of the river authorities in the state, so we have ongoing relationships
with them. But strategically, I would say the most important river authority that we've dealt
with during my time certainly has been the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority.
Why has that tended to be the situation?
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Because they're an adjacent watershed.,1hey're directly adjacent to us. San Antonio River
flows into the Guadalupe River downstream, and we just have a lot of common areas of
interest. We have a common interest in pollution abatement certainly. We have a common
interest in spring flow at the San Marcos Springs and the New Braunfels
Springs and the springs here locally. We have a lot of common interests with the GBRA.
There's been some competition between the two agencies but not really a lot of turf warfare
during my time. Generally, we've had good relationships with GBRA.
Do you see there being situations where there might be conflict because of the need for wate:;
and they have sort of an innate interest in some of those areas that SARA might have an
interest in as well, where each could acquire water?
Well, there's only one real conflict, and that has been more with the City of San Antonio than
with SARA, and that is the priority that the GBRA has put on maintaining spring flow in
New Braunfels and San Marcos in order to keep up river flows and downstream flows in the
Guadalupe and Blanco Rivers, but SARA really kind of has a common interest with them in
maintaining spring flows, the way I see it. The GBRA is largely responsible for the creation
of the Edwards Aquifer Authority that we have today that's controlling groundwater. And
tv
they did that because ot:.the lawsuit that they brought to maintain spring flow.
Most of the sympathies in San Antonio and Bexar County and perhaps some of our
downstream counties may have been more with San Antonio, I don't know. Although I have
other clients that have a lot of serious problems with the GBRA, and I have represented
22
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landowners in condemnation cases against them in recent times and representing another
agency in a lawsuit against them no~ ;<s far as SARA and GBRA, I think our relationships
over the time I've been here hd;eally been good. I think we need to maintain spring flows.
What about with Edwards Underground Water District? Is that a similarly-
Well, Edwards Underground Water District was a predecessor agency to the Edwards
Aquifer Authority today. It was a water conservation and improvement district that was
created by the legislature roughly along the lines that SARA was created. But there were
several differences. Number une, they had an appointed - I'm talking about the old agency.
The old Edwards Underground Water District had an appointed board of directors; we have
an elected board of directors. They never took a very active role, really, in doing water
conservation. They did build a couple of recharge structures over in Medina County that we
they didn't have any legal or legislative authority to permit water wells such as the Edwards
Aquifer Authority has today. There wasn't a cap on the gross amount of water that could be
withdrawn from the Edwards in the days of the old Underground Water District as there is
today. They were represented the whole time that I was aware of their existence by a lawyer
_ea.~-e:!...;~ \ named Harry SweeH1geH~-
In Austin? Is he from Austin?
~ ,;< ; ~~re. As far as I know, Harry's still with us. He's older than I am, so he's endangered.
23
What about government relations in general? Did you have a lot of interaction or some
interaction with the state legislature?
We never - yes and no. During the time that David Brune and Victor Braunig and Fred
Pfeiffer managed the River Authority, we never had any paid lobbyists up until about ten or
twelve years ago. What lobbying was done, we did it. Fred would do it, and I would do it,
and David Brune would do it. And we did, we passed - in 1961, as Fred probably told you,
there was a very comprehensive revision of the SARA statute that we still live under today,
and it required a local eledion1 W hau a local election here that we participated in, and it
took a lot of lobbying to get it done.
So in other words, SARA itself was lobbying to get this change in its original charter?
Yes.
That's interesting. Someone had told me that Gonzales was interested in it as well.
What would have been SARA's interest in seeing it changed?
Money.
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(End ofTape 1, Side 2. Start Tape 2, Side 1)
We got a pretty significant slice of the county - what was then called the County Road and
Bridge Tax, I believe, and that's why it had to be voted on locally. And part of the price of
Henry Gonzales' support was going to an elected board, because prior to that, we had had an
appointed board. But he supported what we wanted, what the management wanted then, and
we had very good relations with Henry Gonzales.
Wu.Y there uny other significant Legislation that you lobbied for that comes to mind?
We had some amendments concerning water quality that I remember lobbying for and going
before some of the committees. Historically, we didn't go in and ask for too many
amendments after the election, after the comprehensive amendments in '6l. Yeah, we did
get some expanded water quality powers, and I lobbied for them. Fred and I both did.
Who, if anybody, would have been opposed to that? Who would have spoken against it?
We had a senator, Senator John Traeger, from Seguin, who is now dead, was kind of a
perennial thorn in our sides. There was a Representative Nugent from Kerrville that was a
problem. Locally, I think most of our local people supported it.
What kinds of things would Traeger and Nugent have taken exception to?
25
Traeger had a constituency out in the town of Schertz primarily who didn't want us to have
any control over the Cibolo Creek, and they, in fact, formed their own district to build and
operate a wastewater treatment plant on the Cibolo called the Cibolo Creek Municipal
{_' tt ;rJt)'
AuthorityA They certainly beat us on that.
Nugent was pretty much the same. He didn't want us being able to control water quality t:J(
the Medina River, but he kind of lost out on that. We were able to get the legislation we
needed, that we felt like we needed. You know, CCMA is a fact a life, we live with them
now. One of our board members was formerly their general manager, I think.
Did you ever do any lobbying with Congress or with the Corps of Engineers in Fort Worth or
Washington?
Yeah.
What was that about?
-rt,~
Agaiurappropriation for the flood control projects here . . WI went to Washington a couple
times, maybe three times, with Fred, but mostly he and David Brune handled that when
David was here, and then Fred and some of the board members would normally take more of
an active role in going and handling the stuff in Congress. I don't have a personal
26
relationship with any of our Congress people. Bustamante, I have a good personal
relationship with him. Of course, he ultimately went to prison.
(Laughter.)
I didn' t have anything to do with him going to prison, thank God.
73/t.ttr
And I though an awful lot of Henry Gonzales who helped us a lot. Unlike Fred and btuty
Warren and some of the others you'll be interviewing, they're all Republicans. I'm a
Democrat. That's okay too.
Well, that gives the agency a good spread.
Yeah.
J
Did you have any place in SARA 's negotiations with developers in the early '70s when they
were talking about private wastewater plants?
Oh, yeah.
Can you tell me anything about that? Who were some of those people. and what role did you
play?
27
Jerry H~had been a former city manager of San Antoni~represented the Ray
Ellison Group, major home builders in those negotiations, and an individual named Sam
Parnes represented another major home builder here. SARA had come to odds with what
was then called the Texas Water Quality Board. It was managed by an individual named
Hugh Yantis, and Hugh Yantis actually - he and Fred, they kind of had an oil-and-water
relationship. They did not- they couldn't communicate. Robin Lloyd was their general
counsel then, he now has a prominent law firm in Austin. And they filed an administrative
proceeding with the Texas Water Quality Board to shut down our wastewater treatment
plants.
Wow.
And we were able to gather enough support locally, primarily from developers~ity Hall
to - we actually beat Hugh and Robin Lloyd two or three times in proceedings before their
--A~.i}t-f--
OWn board. And then Jerry H-ieicle and Sam Parnes and some of the other developer
representatives whose nameS!: don't recall right now- but we got together and we came up
with a plan, and the developers put up a few million dollars, and we built some wastewater
treatment plants, got off the hook. I would say- you asked about innovative stuff. I guess
th a t wasth e most m. novatl.v e th m' ~g Ipa rti.c i.p ated 'm .
1\
And it was that developer-SARA partnership?
28
Yeah. Because that had never been done before. And what we did, they gave us money to
build the plants, and we gave them each .a·certificatc?that entitled them to cormect one house
(~~u;ti)_,
to the systel1}<1 And it worked out real well.
And those are plants that SARA is still operating?
Yes.
Was that during a time of expansion for SARA?
Yes. There was a lot of building going on locally at that time, and, yeah, we were expanding
in our wastewater treatment rapidly- faster than we could do it, and at the same time, we
were kind of winding down with flood control.
Now, why was that?
Well, the flood control - well, once you control the flooding in the rivers, there's not much
else you can do except what's being done now, and that's going back and say, "Well, we
didn't do the right thing by making a wider and deeper charmel to get this water out of
downtown." So now we're going back and putting the bends and crooks back in the river
and beautifying it.
29
I would have thought, though, that if SARA was on the one hand, participating in assisting
o.f
development, that that increased development would have had an impact or:,;atlcl would have
resulted in greater opportunities for flooding.
Flooding, I mean, you get more inflow into the river, and you get more consumption of
Edwards water, but that doesn' t - flooding, you know, putting water~the second floor of
the Gun"ter Hotel, where it's been, no, that takes an act of God. The wastewater that you can
feed back into the stream has never been significant.
~
So all of the really significant measures to counter flooding fkrrte been accomplished by a
certain time?
Well, they were accomplished - starting in 1954, Congress annually appropriated money to
channelize the San Antonio River from downtown all the way out to the Wilson County line.
We started having more f1oods down there downstream a~ in this part of
)
downtown San Antonio, so then in the '70s, the Corps of Engineers came up with the concept
of the tunnel, and the tunnel really provided the final solution to San Antonio's flood control
problems. We don't have any flooding on the main stem of the river anymore like we
historically had since the tunnel has been built.
Were there any interesting legal issues involved with the construction of the tunnel?
30
Yes. We had never- we had to acquire subsurface easements from every landowner from
downstream frof1~ere on the river up to Breckenridge Park to build a tunnel.
My word.
And since the tunnel was basically 130 feet below the surface of the ground, they couldn't
show any damages, and we acquired nearly all of those~ying them $500 a copy for the
I)
easements. There were a few people who we actually - [think there were three - we
actually had condemnation hearings on, and they didn't get any more money than any people
who settled with us. But there are always going to be a few holdouts.
Yeah. So that sounds like an enormous legal event involving lots of lawyers.
It kind of was.
Did you have to hire -
Everybody - all of the people that owned this property in this stretch are business people, and
they all have lawyers, yeah. And there was a lot of discussion, a lot of debate about it.
I wondered if SARA had to hire a lot of additional lawyers just to get that paperwork done?
No, no, we did all that.
31
Goodness.
The Corps of Engineers have their own lawyers, but all they do is just approve or disapprove
what we send them. Jim Thompson and I essentially did all of those land acquisitions for the
tunnel.
Sounds like a mining project as much as anything else.
Yeah, that's right. Have you been down in it?
No.
You need to do that.
Does it pop up somewhere where you can actually go into it?
Yeah, there's places where you can go into it. There's some elevators to go into it.
How large is it?
As tall as this room.
32
':/mazing project.
It is an amazing project, it truly is.
What about the bond sales for different purposes? Somehow the idea of a water authority
doing bond sales and that sort of thing is interesting to me;or even on behalf of other towns.
Bonds are paid by revenues, such as wastewater treatment bonds for example. If they are
paid by the money that SARA gets in monthly service charges from customers, then the
bonds don' t have to be voted on. But if bonds are not paid from revenues, if they're paid
from taxes, they have to be voted on. That was one of the things in the 1961 election, of
course, was the tax, the flood control tax. But most of the bond issues that have happened
while I've been here have been revenue bonds to build wastewater treatment projects
primarily.
So would you help craft a bond issue? Was there a legal aspect to that that you participated
in?
Well, it's a very arcane legal process, but we let our bond counsel do that.
And who would that have been?
McCall, Parkhurst & Horton in Dallas.
33
You mentioned them before I guess. What about the Industrial Development Act in the
formation of the San Antonio River Industrial Development Authority? Can you tell me what
that was about and the importance of it?
Well, it was another funding mechanism that was primarily dreamed up by our bond lawyers.
If I told you ~before about it, that's about all I know about it. It was another layer of
bureaucracy, and they would - enables the bond guys to sell more bonds.
Did you du work fur other river authorities ur utility districts at the same time you were
general counsel for SARA?
Yeah.
Which ones did you do work for?
G i,tlt-0 LO
There was a district called Watee (phonetic) Municipal Utility District. It was out on I-35,
and they bought water from the City of Schertz. They operated a water-supply system. They
bought their water from the City of Schertz, and then they had a wastewater treatment plant
that they built, they contracted with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority to operate it.
And I represented them for, I don't know, 15 or 20 years maybe.
34
And~represent the Fort Clark Municipal Utility District out at Brackettville, a.!JP I
[tJ l'iCJ~-
represented the City of Brackettville going back to 1974, I think, or '7511. And I represent the
)
City of Del Rio going back into the '70s. I still represent them. There was a utility district
(!(}N(.OI<./)
called the CGekara (phonetic) Utility District out in northern Bexar County that's I don't
know, the Helotes, Leon Springs area. It's now gone out of business. It's been absorbed by
the City of San Antonio. And I represent some other utility districts.
At some point, I seem to remember maybe five or ten years ago the City of San Antonio was
~
looking at acquiring water rights along- out of the aquifer going towards Brackettville.
'\
Yeah.
And Brackettville was concerned about the impact. Can you tell me anything about that?
Would that have been done through SARA, or would it have been done through the City of
San Antonio or how- what was that about?
No. There was group who bought a ranch out north of Brackettville, and they did some
studies on it to determine how much groundwater they could take out of that ranch. And they
have a very reliable underground pool of water out there. It's a sub- it's one of the sub-stratas
of the Edwards, well, I mean, it's part of the Edwards really. That group tried to
market that - they tried to market that to SAWS, and it looked f~r a while like ~A WS was . ,,~ )
. . . . . (1;6. ~· ) 7i ·"' 49 . u// tk tt_-td uu 4 )1"£1/~
gomg to buy It, was gomg to go with tt, and the)f\emplorecr~/acqmre the land nghts to
build a pipeline from the Brackettville area up here.
35
~en there got to be a lot of widespread opposition to it out in Brackettville, and SAWS
declined to buy that groundwater, so truthfully, they never paid me a nickel to do anything,
but they did employ me to do the pipeline if they had done it. I'm thankful they didn't; it
would not have been a good thing, probably, tor Kinney County. I have a lot of friends and
clients in Kinney County, including some pretty substantial ranching interests out there that I
represent. So it was probably a good project for SAWS not to buy off on, in retrospect.
Do you think the liabilities of it would have outweighed the amount of water they could have
benefited from?
)
You know, during the drought in the '50s, those springs out north of Brackettville for the first
time in recorded history went dry, essentially went dry. The levels got so low out there in the
Edwards that they just weren't reliable, and I don't think - even though I saw the studies on
this well field that they were going to drill out there, and I knew one of the ranchers whose
J
springs did go dry during the drought of the '50s on Pinto Creek out north of Brackettville,
knew him personally, he passed away a couple of years ago, I just don't think it would have
been that reliable1 source of water. I seriously question the wisdom of this well field that
A
SAWS is drilling over in Gonzales County, too.
Oh, really? Why is that?
Oh, it's just kind of a gut feeling I have.
36
You don 't think that it's substantial enough?
I don't think it's a good substitute for what the Lower - what that Lower Guadalupe project
would have done.
Which project was that, the Lower Guadalupe?
It was a project between SAWS, SARA, and GBRA to bring water up from the mouth of the
~
Guadalupe down there arTivoli back to San Antonio, some, quote, unappropriated water.
I don't know where anybody finds such a thing in Texas.
But SAWS pulled the plug on that project this past year, and I question the wisdom of them
doing that, but. ..
And the other two partners couldn't have carried it on?
No.
Why is that?
37
SAWS was putting up, I don't know, 80 to 90 percent of the money. GBRA and SARA were
putting up the rest, still an awful lot of money because it was an awful huge project. They
opted to go with mining- I just don't know about groundwater mining. We've been doing it
with the Edwards, too, since we run out of water, so I don't know.
So do you think there's a -
¥ ...k"looks like what SAWS has opted to do- and they're doing some other mining, you know,
they're going into the Carrizo Wilcox formations out south ofhere and east of here to get
water.
Are they behind those deep wells in Wilson County?
Yeah.
So since Wilson County is part of the SARA territory, aren't their actions going to have some
impact on what SARA does or on SARA 's water resources, essentially?
Yeah.
So how does that work?
38
I don't know. I don't know - you know, jurisdiction-wise, there is an underground water
district called the Evergreen that has nominal control over the Carrizo Formation down in
Wilson County and Frio County, and SARA doesn't really have the jurisdiction over that.
But everything that SAWS does impacts SARA's downstream constituency.
So putting on your forward-Looking eyes, what would you see happening in the future with
that conflict getting resolved somehow?
Oh, I think with the rate of industrial growth that we're having here in Bexar County and
SAWS' reluctance to really do long-term water resource planning and development, I think
they're going to go from one water crisis to another. That's what I foresee.
Interesting.
And you know, it can shut development down, it can shut economic growth down. That's
not all a bad thing either, but it 's not a popular thing; it'll never be a popular thing.
So what do you see as being a more responsible way of dealing with that?
Dealing with long-term water supplies?
Yeah.
39
(End of Tape 2, Side 1. Beginning of Tape 2, Side 2.)
.Z ~ --for reservoirs, Cibolo Reservoir. I understand that it's becoming virtually impossible to
build reservoirs, surface water reservoirs, anymore. You've got to harvest the water that
comes down and take care of it, and you've got to conserve- utilize - use less, conserve
more, build more projects. I think building more surface projects is the answer, and I think
that will inevitably happen, but it's going to happen a long time off because it's going to take
a real crisis situation before there will be popular support to do it. But I belong to the Sierra
Club, I'm an environmentalist. I think that to have water supply for the coming populations,
you've got to build it.
I wanted to ask you about some specific cases, and I guess a couple of them we've talked
about. But there was the Pioneer Flour Mills case with SARA. Were you involved in that
one at all?
Yes, I was, but I don't remember a whole lot about it.
It had something to do with a change in the river channel and the construction of the dam
and the rising water in the grain elevator.
Yeah. That happened right in this area where we are, where we're sitting today. But I don't
recall a whole lot about it.
40
Okay. What about condemnations for those SCS dams? Was there -
I remember a lot about those.
You do? Well, tell me about those.
Well, one we've already talked about, the Garrett brothers. That dam is out here, what's now
called Blossom Park and McAllister Park. We had another- we bought the land rights ;ithe
very first ones I remember buying out there were out on Blanco Road right across - adjacent
' to Camp Bullis, and we bought those land rights in the mid-'50s from an investment group
·rl't~f;o
that Art·~, who was in the successor firm to the old Sawtelle Hardy Davis & Goode firm.
He was one of the partners in that group, as was Paul He&r who later became board
chairman of this agency. But we bought those land rights for $450 an acre. And then we
~lo.sse.-
condemned from the Glassen (t3konetiej family that owned a large ranch directly across
Blanco Road, and I condemned the land rights on about 300 acres from them that we ended
-#- -~
up paying $650 an a~ for. Partially as a result of that case, I have represented j Classen
~~~ A
famil~for abou the last 25 years, one of my major clients. I have recently negotiated
sales of land for them to developers for in excess of $50,000 an acre within a stone's throw
)
of this property we bought for $650 back in the '60s.
So even though you were heading up the effort to condemn their property, they came to you
to represent them?
41
Much later. Much later.
They must have admired what you - your performance even though they were losing their
property.
I started representing them much later, and they have been and are today very substantial
clients of mine.
That was a family that went way back out in that area.
They owned the original ~ssen Ranch, went all the way from Camp Bullis, which was part
of it, to Schertz. It was a huge ranch. Yeah, their progenitor came over here from Germany
about 18 5~I think.
So was there a lot of acrimony involved with a number of these condemnation suits?
Not really. The only one that there was really any - and there wasn't any acrimony - never
any acrimony, I don't think, between SARA and the landowners because SARA's always
had a very liberal policy toward landowners and trying to negotiate. Historically we've
negotiated over 80 percent of land rights that we've acquired. We've only had to resort to
condemnation in very few cases, and even in the case where we filed condemnation cases,
we normally settle them before they ever get to tri al.
42
But with the landowners' lawyers, the only lawyer in San Antonio that I really, really serious
personal disagreements with is a lawyer named Craig Austin who represented a lot of
landowners against SARA, and we developed a very bad relationship. His health is now
failing him. He has Parkinson's and he's in bad health and he's not doing well, and I~
finally - even my heart is soft toward him, but we had a pretty bad relationship. It got so bad
-we got such a heated argument one day before Judge Carolyn Spears that- did you live
here in San Antonio?
For a while.
Did you ever know Carolyn?
No.
Well, we had this heated argument before Carolyn Spears over a case right down the river
J.L "
here where he represented a dentisy and she got up and she just said, Gkay. She said, "I'm
leaving. Y'all argue, fine. Do what the hell ever you want to. I'm not listening to this
bullshit anymore."
(Laughter.)
That's wonderful. So did that bring you both up short, or did you continue the argument?
43
Yeah. There wasn't any use arguing, she wasn't going to be there to listen to us. I got a lot
of Craig stories. We actually tried a case to a jury up here on the same project for one of the
dam sites out off 1604, but he represented a developer named Randy Djin. Randy lived out
there on the property. And f had offered them $250,000 to settle their case,..1his was after
land values had started really going up. It was the last acquisition r believe we had out there.
And they wanted $500,000. We tried it to a jury, and the jury stayed out about 25 minutes
and gave them $90,000, which was our testimony. I'd offered them a big multiple of what
our evidence was to settle it, but they wouldn't take it. That was a great case, great case tor
me, great win.
How did that work? Who would tell you what to go for?
Oh, I'd have to get authority from Fred, settlement authority.
So he would give you a low and a high?
Well, our evidence would be what an appraiser - what our expert witness would say it was
worth, and 90,000 was what our expert said it was worth, and that's what the jury gave them.
But normally, when you have a spread like that in the evidence, you know, the spread being,
in that case, between 90 to 100,000 and 500,000, the jury will split the difference or do
~
something thereabout, yeu k:tto w; in order to save the time and expense, witness expense,
legal expense of a jury tria? )4e did offer them 240 or 250 to settle, and they wouldn't take it,
so they got 90.
44
Can you think of any other cases that were similar to that or where you f elt as if you ...
I tried another case in Brackettville for the City of Brackettville, came out the same way,
~t-)v
came out exactly the same way. Those are the only two that I;:eaOwhere they came in to the
penny - or the jury would come in to the penny on what my witnesses said it was worth.
Were you in volved at all in the Espada Aqueduct issue in the National Register?
Yeah.
What was your role in that?
We did some - we bought some land rights in connection with getting that done. I remember
I went out with the survey crew and right-of-way guy, Jim Thompson, to kind of identify the
areas. That's about all I remember about that.
Was there any thing that came up with -
I love that old Espada Mission.
Was there any issue associated with that that came up with the National Park Service or the
aqueduct being on the National Register?
45
The main thing I remember was having dinner with the Park Service over at Brown's
Mexican Restaurant, and we talked about it.
You mentioned that suit with the Texas Department of Water Resources about the water
quality violations. What about Applewhite Reservoir? I know there were condemnation suits
associated with that, weren't there?
There were. There were and there weren't. I mean, after the election and the Applewhite
initiative was defeated in the eiection, then the condemnation suits were dropped. I
represented the San Antonio Builder's Association in that litigation.
What part did they have in that?
Well, they wanted to see the dam built, of course. They wanted water. They wanted water
tor San Antonio like everybody else in their right mind.
Okay. Okay. Interesting. So even though they weren't a property owner, they had enough of
a standing to be part of the suit.
Yeah. I represented them in that case. You know, it was political. It was a political
~4
settlement, and I made a -~ you remember about that kind of litigation, for one thing,
46
during that trial I had an unfortunate second marriage that only lasted about six weeks, so I
remember. That's one thing I remember about the Applewhite litigation.
And the other thing was that some newspaper reporter asked me ab<).\lt it, and I made a real
6 u-..11rJ
sarcastic remark about San Antonio and Bexar County, 'j:!Hr~ g6ing to let some damn fool like
a*
Kay Turner set their water policy," and they published it. And Kay showed up the next
"'
SARA board meeting and demanded my firing. But she never got- it didn't die for lack of a
second because she never got a motion. And I knew Kay, I've know'K.ay a long time. I
knew her before she married poor old Tom Turner, God rest his soul.
What about that potentia/lawsuit that LULAC was going to bring about the at-large
formation versus single member?
They brought one lawsuit we tried to Judge Sessions, and they lost that lawsuit. And then
later they came back with another - filed another lawsuit that we answered, and that was
when we went to single-member districts to settle that case. I had tried another voting-rights
case against the City of Pleasanton between the time we tried the first SARA case and the
time we settled the LULAC case. I don't know, back at that time, I was pretty well up on
voting rights, on the Voting Rights Act, and I felt pretty good because of the success we had
had in the flrst case against LULAC. It made it a lot easier to settle the second case. By that
time, the majority of the SARA board, they were ready for single-member districts.
Really? Why was that?
47
Times change.
So had there been other public pressure to go to single-member districts?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Can you identify any changes that you saw happen as a result of going to single-member
districts?
I think there was - there's never been real wide-spread voter participation in SARA elections.
I think that it's improved some with single-member districts. I think we have a little better
voter participation. I think we have more- and you see more people interested in becoming
SARA directors with single-member districts than you did before. I think it's resulted in
more wide-spread community participation and certainly greater community awareness on
the part of SARA management and staff and directors, too.
I think the last one I wanted to ask about had to do with the Canyon Regional Water
Authority, the case before the Supreme Court. That's fairly recent, isn't it?
Yeah.
What is that about?
48
Well, the Canyon Regional Water Authority has a contract with the Guadalupe-Blanco River
Authority to withdraw water out of Lake Dunlap over in Seguin, and they bring water
through a pipeline up to the cities of Marian and part of Schertz and kind of come around the
southern fringes of Universal City~ere, and they supply the East Central Water Supply
Corporation, that's their major customer aside from those towns, with fresh water from a
water treatment plant. So they have a water treatment plant over at Lake Dunlap, and they
put it in this pipeline and bring it up to these various entities;fuey're member entities of the
Canyon Regional Water Authority.
They did an engineering study preliminary to expanding their water treatment plant which
indicated they needed to go deeper into Lake Dunlap to withdraw the water they were buying
from the GBRA. They notified the GBRA and believed that the GBRA engineering
department was okay with it. They went ahead and started building that new intake point out
into Lake Dunlap, and the GBRA was not okay with it. So the GBRA has filed an inverse
condemnation - well, they didn't file inverse, they filed a lawsuit to get an injunction to stop
us from building that pipeline, or building that intake point.
"Us " being ...
Canyon Regional Water Authority. So we filed an eminent- we filed a condemnation case
C-.8/? A
against - a direct condemnation case against (inaudible), and we won the case at the trial
49
court level, and the Court of Appeals, unwisely I believe, reversed it. Now we're in the
Supreme Court with it.
Are you still actively doing cases for SARA?
David Ross in my office is essentially doing all of SARA's work now. I say essentially all
&i.Jc.
t~, most of it. I don't have any problems in doing work for SARA, but it just kind of
worked out that way. You know, the management's younger down here, David's younger,
they work better with him, and it's okay with me.
If you had to rank them, what do you think would have been your most interesting case with
this organization?
Oh, probably, SARA - Lewis, the first case, and then the Garrett brothers. Those would be
the two primary cases. I enjoyed doing the pollution abatement cases, too. They were fun.
End of transcription.
50