FRED PFEIFFER
Interview No. 2
June 19, 2007
San Antonio, Texas
Martha Doty Freeman, Interviewer
This is Martha Doty Freeman. The date is June 191
h, 2007. I'm going to be interviewing
Fred Pfeiffer, former general manager of the San Antonio River Authority for the second
time. The interview is occurring at the River Authority's offices in San Antonio, Texas.
So we were going back into what we were talking about yesterday. I guess when we finished
up, it was-
Water quality and sewage treatment, and you asked me about the Upper Cibolo, and I was ~ 1:
drawing a blank. And after going and skimming through the 50-year history, I recall also
that as part of this water quality and as a spin-off, we saw an opportunity to consolidate
Randolph Air Force Base and Schertz and Cibolo and Universal City and Converse. And we
put together a study, and, to put it mildly, it went over like a lead balloon. Randolph, at that
particular time, "Oh, well this is confidential. You can't look at our sewage treatment. It's
confidential."
And, of course, as we were putting together the cost for doing this thing, we put together true
cost. I mean, we put together how much it cost to pay the people, how much it cost for
putting aside retirement and all of this. Of course, the Air Force when they compare the cost,
there's no retirement. There's no anything.
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It all looked expensive to them.
Yeah, so it was so expensive for us to take over their plant, so that didn't get anywhere. And
then, as I discussed earlier, the developers in Converse eventually so we started in small
plants on the west side of the divide between Cibolo Creek and Salatrillo Martinez, and then
eventually all of that was put together. The Salatrillo plant took on Converse, Live Oak, and
then eventually the western part of Universal City; and then the Upper Martinez was taking
on some undeveloped areas in the city's ETJ and I think eventually some of Converse. And
then the Lower Martinez, or Martinez II as we call it, came on later as development occurred.
Now, what's happened since then, I don't know.
I was thinking again this morning about what we had talked abou~about all the different
groups in this region who deal with water, I guess primarily water acquisition. Do you see
any benefit to having a variety of entities working to acquire the same resource, or is it ...
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0lY, I think that's one area where competitiveness is counterproductive. Just like in the
sewage treatment business, everybody wanted- all the developers wanted to put up a little
shotgun sewage treatment plant, it was the cheapest thing to do. But it created all sorts of
water quality problems because they weren't operated properly. So the key word was
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regionalization. You put together several of these and bui!Jf a bigger, better plant, and so
you've got better treatment, better service, better water quality.
2
As far as I'm concerned, the same philosophy goes with water: You build a bettel)~arger
system and you serve a lot of people that come into it. Regionalization. So where Bexar Met
was going after something separately from the City Water Board and then SARA was going
after something separately, it was really sort of counterproductive.
Were there attempts to bring those groups together and have them work cooperatively?
Yeah. There was one study done, and it was joined by- and it's in the 50-year history ­SARA,
City Water Board, Edwards Underground Water District, Bexar Met, the City of San
Antonio. There was either five or six entities that pooled their resources and did this Medina
Lake swap study that 1 mentioned yesterday, and it just didn't go anywhere.
Why? Why do you think?
The people- Bexar-Medina-Atascosa District No. 1, which owns Medina Lake, just didn't
want to do it, and they owned it, so it just didn't go anywhere. There was one where we were
planning to utilize the capabilities of Braunig and Calaveras Lakes as well as the- all of the
waste treatment of the City of San Antonio. That was the water source to trade for Medina
Lake water. So that's why all these entities pooled together to do this study to try to get this
thing done. Good idea, didn't work.
Do you see that ever happening; in other words, cooperation at a high level so that the
planning occurs in a regional way amongst all these different groups?
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Your question again was do you think it will ever happen?
Yeah. Or what do you think it would take to make it happen?
Well, it did happen in fits and starts and things like this. There was one time where when Joe
Acevas was the head of the City Water Board,He said, "Fred, we're going to rally around
you. You go and seek the water resources, and we'll join in" and so on and so forth. So we
had the beginnings, nothing formalized. And then Bexar Met started going off on their own
and didn't want to join in, and then when SAWS changed their management and outlook,
then they drifted away, and then Bexar Met tried to come in to us and say, "Let's put together
something," but we knew they didn't have the resources even though they were out acquiring
things and doing things. We knew that they were in financial problems, and that was not an
alliance that in my analysis that we wanted to get involved in, and we did not.
Did you see any leadership on a state level?
Well, eventually, yeah. The old Senate Bill 1 under Lieutenant Governor Bullock, I mean,
that was the -let me just go back. The U.S. Study Commission that Lyndon Johnson put
together was a statewide planning effort. And then after that under John Conn¢iy when he 7
~ was governor, there was a water plan put together,, .s o there were state water plans put
together that were just sort of plans and guidelines; f.nd they were put on the shelf and that
was the end of it.
4
Under Senate Bill 1, which was when Lieutenant Governor Bullock was pushing that, that
was the beginning of these regional planning efforts that each region would put together a
plan, comprehensive plan, and the~"¢;ould be adopted by the state; and if there were any
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conflicts between the regions, then the state would work those out. And that was done. Are
they being followed? Not necessarily.
But that's still the guideline. It's supposed to be the guideline for anything that develops
now. What came out of those regional plans and got incorporated into the state plan is
supposed to be the guidance, but a lot of the planning and the projects and the projections
that were made in the first planning cycle, to my knowledge, are not being followed very
well by SAWS now. They're going out on their own and doing their thing.
What was your region considered to be?
~~
Well, it was San Antonio-Guadalupe, it wa~Region L, I believe it was. And it went down to
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Dimmit County, ~pper Nueces, did not include Corpus Christi. It was New Braunfels, it
went down to Victoria, so it was- basically the Upper Nueces River Basin and the San
Antonio and the Guadalupe Basins.
Did you have any participation in helping to create that plan?
5
I was the secretary at that point. And prior to that, some river authorities put together what
was called the- what preceded the Senate Bill 1 planning effort was the Trans-Texas
planning effort, and I was chairman of that planning effort. So all of these - there was just
one platming effort after another platming effort that never really - it really never took. And
it still boils down to local goverrunents wanting to do something, and what it really boils
down to in the San Antonio region is never reaching a consensus and with the political will to
do it.
San Antonio recognized at one point - the City Water Board - that we needed a
supplemental surface water supply to supplement the Edwards. So they went after Canyon,
and SARA tried with the City Water Board blessing went after Cuero, got an arrangement
made. Then they didn't like that arrangement. So they couldn't get Canyon, they couldn't
~f\.I~ J
get Cuero, so t~yl ftarted proceeding on Cibolo, and with the aid of the City Water Board got
it authorized by Congress to build a Bureau Rec project at Cibolo.
And then that changed, they didn't want that. So they decided that they'd go after Canyon
again. Well, they went after Canyon again, got a contract with the Guadalupe-Blanco River
Authority for I think it was 30,000 acre/feet of water out of Canyon, and the City Council
turned it down.
Then they decided to go after Applewhite. Got the permit for Applewhite, was halfbuilt, and
then the citizens of San Antonio voted and turned that down. So every time, it was just-
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(} people ask, "What was - who was behind ... '? ';;l,eu, there were different reasons at different
times why the thing didn't work.
Some of it, especially on Applewhite, was a lot of distrust in the current governments of the
City of San Antonio, so "Oh, those guys are putting something over on us." So that distrust
went into the citizenry, and the citizenry didn't want to spend any money, and so a very vocal
City Council person, Glen Hartman~ a weatherman, very popular, and he lead
the fight against Applewhite. And he'd get up with his booming voice, "They're going to
spend a million dollars a year whether we take any water or not." Of course, it was a take-or-pay
contract; when you don't need the water you don' t pay for it - I mean, you do pay for it,
but it's there.
Nothing was put into perspective, because this is a water utility, and $1 million a year in a
utility the size of that is practically nothing. City Public Service was spending a million
dollars a day for fuel for their power plants. That sort of puts it in perspective, and yet this
was so, "Oh, myltbd, we're going to spend a million dollars a year, and this is such a waste
and blah, blah, blah." So citizens voted it down. So nothing got done.
Now, one good thing that eventually happened is that the City upgraded their wastewater
treatment plants a lot because SARA and the State was pushing on them because they were
doing such a bad job. So when they built Dos Rios, their major sewage treatment plant, and
eliminated the old Rilling plant, which was really bad, really, water quality downstream on
the San Antonio River was not good at all.
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Joe Acevas was head of SAWS at that time. Oh, man, Joe was a good guy. He would come
over to our board meetings. We had several downstream board members, and they would
just rake him over the coals, and old Joe took it. He used to laugh. We would get together
after, he'd laugh and he'd say, "Oh, that just comes with the territory."
What was it they were raking him over the coals about?
Because they were polluting their river downstream. They were dumping all the stuff on
) -tk-them,
and they weren't doing their job right. So we ended up suing-them, and San Antonio
J\,.
?
River Authority sued the City of San Antonio and got tHem. Then the State,
because of the way the laws were written, the State joined in, so it was the State of Texas and
SARA that was suing the City, and I think we got about 90 or 100 - approximately $100,000
fine against them.
And we decided we'd just put that money away. We didn't stash it to do anything except to
do water quality work. And so thereafter, any time the City needed something, a study or
something, they'd just come to us, and then we' d take money out of that money that they
gave us. So they weren't really that upset with us because we ended up funding some of the
things that they wanted to do anyhow, so it worked out fme.
Did your board members from those downstream counties play any role in bringing it to the
attention ...
8
Oh, absolutely.
Tell me what happened.
Well, I think it was Mr. Snyder, he would come- or Mr. Hunt, I can't remember which. Mr.
Snyder was from Poth, Wilson County, and Hunt was from Kames County- Kenedy. And
one or the other came with ajar of river water, and it was just black and nasty. He just put it
~
on the table, and then he'd start railing on about how bad it was and we weren't doing
1'-
enough, so the board was kicking the staff to get after the City about these things. Yes, the
board was involved.
h la.J.-
Still on water quality issues, I noticed that SARA started provi14g-ltil:144 analytical services.
Yes.
How did that come about?
It was just really a spin-off of the original '61 legislation, which gave us water quality and
pollution powers. And when we made the study, then we started taking samples and doing
minor dissolved oxygen and other type things, an~ust developed a small laboratory.
A
And we didn' t have a real facility. We rented a house very close to the existing building-well,
the house that we rented we eventually got and is now part of the main office building
9
complex. So we had this laboratory, and it just expanded over time as we took on more and
more water quality programs.
Whose idea was that?
v Oh, that was probably - that was David Brune and the downstream people, that's what they
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wanted, and maybe Vic Braunig. I don't know. I dealt more with David when I came to
work for the River Authority, and those things were already in the pipeline.
So they would just test throughout - was there testing in the watershed, or was it all
downstream testing?
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It was anywhere where they- we tested on the Medina River in Bandera County. We would
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get water samples, anything that ran into the San Antonio River, it didn't matter, as long as it
J, "- was a tributary of the San Antonio River. We ha~ places that we sample all the time, they
were routine. And then if there was a water quality problem, then we would go out and take
samples on specific things.
Are you talking about the stream flow monitors?
Yes. They were just places that we always went. In other words, one of our personnel would
~,
go up
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and take a sample at that place every week or whenever, periodically, whenever it was.
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But that didn't have the same purpose as the testing for pollution, did it?
Yes.
Oh, it did.
Oh, yeah, because it was establishing baseline. A lot of times it was not polluted, but you
establish baselines, and you say, "All right. This is what it's supposed to be" or "This is
what it is normally." And then if things starf{-oing bad, then you would start looking at it,
what was causing it.
There was also this business about capacity problems and then engineering's designing
state-of-the-art facilities. This was just something in the history, and I wondered what it
might be referring to and how that came about?
When we- what was common in the state of Texas in municipal wastewater treatment,
sewage treatment, was called secondary treatment. Primary treatment was basically you
settled out what was corning into a plant and very little conversion. What came in other than
solids that would settle out went out. Secondary treatments you applied air, oxygen, and you
went through a process of trying to clean up the water and reducing the oxygen demand by
about 80 percent, reducing the demand by 80 percent more or less. So you had a degree of
treatment that was in the 80 percent range. Then the advanced secondary was better than that,
and then tertiary treatment was better than that.
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So you went from primary to secondary to advanced secondary to tertiary, eventually you
~<et ~
could go and make drinking water out of it. So we ~ secondary, we went to advanced
secondary, and we kept upping ours. And actually when we were going in for permits, we
would ask for better than the State was requiring. So that's in a generality in the history,
when we wrote our - we sort of summarized that in going for advanced.
Did you have to develop special equipment or procedures?
No, the equipment was all there. It was jus) are you going to spend more money to do a
better job. Are you going to put in- we basically put in more capacity. A lot of wastewater
treatment, you designed it for a million gallons a day, and then you put out a million gallons
a day, and then you pushed, and most developers or people would treat 11 0, 120 percent, and
it wasn't doing its job.
But we would go in for a million gallons, and then we'd build it for a million-two or a
~
million-three. We would oversize it so it would do a better job. There would be a greater ...
time of oxygen or air put into the system, and therefore you got a better treatment and your
end result was better. So that's basically what we - we over-designed, and by over-designing,
we got better treatment. That's what we did at first.
Maybe we could talk about flood control some. What about all those dams that you-all did?
I guess there was some overlap with {au ponservation also -
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Right.
- and in your work with SCS. Can you tell me anything about those dams that you-all
participated in or what your participation was?
Going back and skimming through the history, and it did jog my memory that Colonel Tuttle,
who was the first general manager and chairman of the River Authority, was very much
interested in these things. I don't remember the exact tenninology, but there was a Soil
Conservation district, a national group, that was interested in promoting the development of
small watershed projects and small dams, flood control dams. And Colonel Tuttle was one
of the primary movers, and he got very interested in that and was one of the primary movers
in that and was one ofthe representatives that testified for this, and it got passed by Congress
to establish a pilot project.
And as a result of that pilot project, because of Colonel Tuttle's participation, the San
Antonio River Authority in the San Antonio River Basin was granted two pilot projects. One
was down in Karnes County, and one was in Bexar County. And then as these projects were
being built- and just like the Corps of Engineers project, the local sponsors were responsible
for securing the rights-of-way, and the federal ¢overnment- in the Corps' case the Corps,
and in the SCS's case, the Soil Conservation- was responsible for design of the project and
would build the project.
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So the same thing happened on these pilot projects: the River Authority secured the rights-of-
way. And at first it was always thought that everybody wanted these things and the
farmers all wanted these things and they'd just give easements for it, and they would. There
were a lot of donated easements. So it didn't cost anything. Everybody wanted these things.
Well, that went through the pilot project, and right at the end of the pilot project, there was
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one landowner that didn't want to get it, so the River Authority purchased the land. And then
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from then on, we were always purchasing land and buying easements because the whole
mood of the count~anged and no one was giving rights-of-way. I think people used to
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give rights-of-way for highways and rights-of-way for roads and streets, and those things
don't happen anymore.
Anyhow, the River Authority was very much at the forefront of the beginning of these small
watershed projects, of these small dams. And then studies were made, and we made the
studies based upon the flood control money that the State of Texas gave to the River
Authority. We had been requesting money from the State to do studies and to do certain
things, and in 1949 or thereabouts, there was a constitutional amendment to eliminate a
statewide flood control tax, and that passed.
And so the last two years of collection of that tax at the state level, the River Authority got
the Legislature to pay the River Authority in Bexar, Wilson, Kames, and Goliad County the
proceeds of that tax for the last two years of collection. So the River Authority got about $1
million is my recollection. And those last two year collections, about $900,000 is my
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recollection, and it might be wrong, it doesn't matter. But a pretty good chunk in Bexar
County and then little chunks in Wilson, Karnes, and Goliad County.
And with that money, the River Authority was taking and making studies with the Corps,
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with the SCS to establish - identify where flood control projects were needed. j<s a result of
that, we got the SCS to do studies that ended up being part of other- the pilot program then
went into what we called Public Law 566, and it established these things nationwide. The
pilot worked, and as these projects were then authorized, we had the Martinez Project
authorized, then we had the Salado Project authorized, so we identified I believe it was 85
dam sites to be built in the San Antonio River Basin. And I don't know, I think about 50-
some-odd were built, have been built.
So are you saying that the results of this pilot project then were applied throughout the
country?
Yes.
Where else were these projects going to be?
They were all over the country but basically in the South and in the Midwest. It's my
recollection there weren't very many up north. There weren't very many in California.
When you get into the desert area -
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(End of Tape 1, Side 1. Begimting of Tape 1, Side 2.)
-to my knowledge or in the West, but in the Midwest and in the South they were, and that's
where they were most popular.
So what were the criteria that were used to select where these things would be built?
You had to put- well, it was basically rural, you had to put land- to be eligible for a project,
there had to be a flooding problem. There had to be - then since this was soil conservation
driven, you had to put land - and it was a certain percentage, 60 percent, 80 percent, I don't
know- under soil conservation practices.
So local districts had to sign up farmers that they would terrace their land or rotate their crops,
"
whatever the conservation plan called for. So you had a conservation plan, you had to have
participation of a high percentage, and I think it ended up that to really be eligible, you had to
exceed the threshold; in other words, you had to be at around 90 percent for them to really
look at you because there were more of these things coming in than they had the capability of
funding.
So the River Authority was working with the local soil and water conservation districts. You
had the Kames County, I think the Kames-Goliad County Soil and Water Conservation
District, you had the Wilson County, you had the Bexar County Soil and Water Conservation
District, or the Alamo - I don't know - Alamo Soil and Water Conservation District I think
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was the one we worked with in Bexar County. And we would become joint local sponsors,
but the River Authority was paying for it all because we had that flood control money that
was given by the State.
So we would do these studies and then get these projects eligible, and then they became a
project. And then we would sign an agreement with the SCS. And then on like the Martinez
Project east of town, there were going to be six dam sites, so we said, "Here's the plan: We
agree to do this, we agree to do the rights-of-way, and we agree to operate and maintain it
when it's completed, and SCS agrees to design and build it." So we had to then get busy and
get the rights-of-way.
Same thing with the Salado Project. We had to go through the whole thing, and there was 15
dam sites on the Salado Project. We had to get the rights-of-way, get the agreements W-ith-~
the landowners to put it into conservation practices. The Calaveras Project was the pilot
project, and it was completed. So we had the Calaveras Project, the Martinez Project, and the
Salado Project all in Bexar County, and all those were done.
ln Wilson County, there was the Hondo -wait a minute. In Karnes County, there was the
Escondido, which was the pilot project, and then they expanded that with the Nickels \)ttkof.r
~hannel Project, which was part of that, and then the Hondo Creek Project, which
was a three-dam project, and those were in Kames County. So it was mainly in Kames and
in Bexar County. I don't think there were any in Wilson, and I don't think there was any in
Goliad.
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Was SARA the only agency at the time that could have partnered with SCS?
No. Any of the soil - because in the "r est of the state, there were little soil, water
......
conservation districts doing it on their own.
So did you-all go after it?
Yeah, we went after it. This was one of the - and because we were bigger and better
financed, even though the SCS wanted to build these things, what was happening is
nationwide, but I know about Texas, they would get these things built, and the local
landowners - I'm going to digress a little bit. It's sort oflike you go back 50 and 70 years
and families buried somebody in their cemetery, the families took care of the cemeteries.
Now nobody takes care of the cemeteries. Families don't do that, you go and buy perpetual
care, or the family cemetery plot, nobody takes care of it. Well, that was sort of the basic
philosophy when these dam sites were built. Oh, it'll take you $100 a year to maintain those
dam sites because, you know, everybody'll get out there and cut the grass and do all the
things they're supposed to do.
Well, that did not happen, except for the San Antonio River Authority. We did. We
established a maintenance program, and we were the kids with the white hats. We were the
ones that were doing it right. So when the funds got tough and we were still trying to finish
up projects, the SCS would always bend over backwards to get us the funding - get
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themselves the funding to finish off our projects because they knew we were going to do
..<.
them right.
Well, without any prior experience in that, how did you understand that maintenance was a
fundamentally important part of the project?
Well, you just- when I came to work for the River Authority, the agreements with the Corps
of Engineers in the San Antonio Channel Improvement Proj~e county had the flood
A
control money, and they contracted with the River Authority to do it, and then the River
Authority contracted with the City of San Antonio to operate and maintain the completed
projects. We were always after the City because they weren't maintaining properly, and the
Corps would come down and inspect the projects and see erosion or see the grass wasn't cut
and so on and so forth, and they would write us a letter, and then we would write the City a
letter, and it was- so maintenance was always a problem or - let me say this: a concern.
So as we proceeded through the San Antonio Channel Improvement Project and added
different phases to it that were not in the original phase, the River Authority built into the
county contract some maintenance capability. And so like on the Bergs Mill stretch of the
project and Six Mile Creek extensions to the San Antonio Channel Improvement Project,
River Authority took oYrnaintenance because we recognized that we were going to do it
A. ~
better. And this was going on;r{ the same time the SCS projects were beginning to be
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problems statewide and everywhere, and we were taking those on. So we were taking on the
maintenance, trying to do it better, doing it better, and establishing little maintenance areas
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and buying equipment. So it just evolved. And we really had people wh6 wanted to do it
right.
I noticed that a number of those projects were in Karnes County. Was that because of the
influence of a particular board membe; or why Karnes County?
Well, I think it was in the expansion ofthe River Authority powers, the evolution of the
River Authority. At first, only the board members were from Bexar County and it was just
Bexar County. And then the legislation evolved, and so it was Bexar County and the banks
of the river, and then you had representatives appointed by the governor, one from Wilson,
one from Kames, and one from Goliad~ you just had the beginning of this extended river.
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And then, of course, in '61 when the whole legislation changed and you expanded it to the
whole county, then you had two representatives from Wilson, two from Karnes, and two
from Goliad. And so they were saying, "Well, all right, now. Here I am at the table.
Where's our projects? We need to do something here." But it really went back t5 as the
River Authority started looking with this flood control money in the)' 50s that came from the
Legislature, they were looking at doing projects wherever they could find good flood control
projects to do, and they'd do studies.
And the Corps I think did the original study on Nichols Creek in Kames County, and it was
dropped as a Corps project but then eventually picked up as an SCS project. So it was just
the basic thought, I think, of the directors, and of course as the River Authority evolved, it
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was the directors and Colonel Tuttle, he was running the show, he was chairman, he was a
board member, he wa~neral manager. And nobody got paid, there was no paid staff .
.<.
They were just doing it. Then when they signed the contract and got the money, then they
eventually started adding staff and doing things in a professional way.
Were there any board members from downstream who particularly stand out in your mind?
. r ' n."
::.u~~'·
Well, yeah. When I came on the .board, Ed S'lniter (pfioa~e was a crusty old guy from
Poth. He was the one that was really after us for doing more water quality work and after the
City of San Antonio for the water quality. Truett Hunt was always questioning, very frugal,
and wanted to make sure that we did not spend money- well, I'll just say he was frugal. He
didn't want us to get into things that he didn't think were really legitimate or would really
pay off or do good. And so he was sort of the conscience of the River Authority, so I
i..or e"z
remember him very much. Winston bmngs (phon~ from Wilson County, Stockdale, he
was very much for the Cibolo Reservoir project because Cibolo would have been close to
Stockdale. He was a fanner mayor of Stockdale. He was very instrumental in wanting that
to occur.
~
What about the years involved with beautification of the flood channel in this area and King
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William? What do you remember about that and about relations with the Conservation
Society?
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Early on when I came with the River Authority and the project from Lone Star Boulevard to
Alamo Street, that was the one where we had neighbors and the neighborhood organization,
the predecessor to the King William Association, it had a name and I can't remember it.
There was a group, and they were pushing us to, "Look at these beautiful trees here, you need
to save these trees," and it made an impact on - I wasn't in the decision making, but
obviously it made an impact on David Brune and Vic Braunig.
So we hired landscape architects ~nd worked with our planning- really internally came up
with a plan and then presented it to the Corps, and the Corps incorporated it into their flood
control plans, and some of those trees were saved. So that was the beginning, as far as I'm
concerned and knew, that was the beginning of our efforts to upgrade these projects and
coming into that area, then a little tiny park and a little walkway was put alongside the river,
along with saving these trees, and that was just sort of the beginning of us converting the
flood channel into a more park-like setting.
There was some lawsuit, wasn 't there, between Pioneer Flour Mills and SARA because one
of their grain elevators began to flood because of the construction of a dam. Does that ring
a bell at all?
No. There was problem - I don't remember whether there was a lawsuit or not. I think there
was a problem, and I don't know how it was addressed, I just don't recall that. I vaguely
remember that there was a problem.
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Okay. What about the Olmos Dam project, the modification of that? How did that all come
about?
Well, there was a lot of concern about Olmos Dam and where it was coming from just a fear
of a community that it's going to break, it's not going to work, it's going to crumble if it fills
~
up, it's a weak dam. So the City of San Antonio did a preliminary study on the dam and
A.
came up with some findings of the dam, and from that, I think, it was determined that there
had to be some modifications to Olmos Dam. At some point- I'm trying to think.
Now, '65, '76, yeah, '76 was the Olmos. I'm thinking of the contract amendments with
Bexar County and the pood ,Control tax.
In '65, there was a flood mainly that affected the downstream area and the Bergs Mill area,
and those were the ones that kicked off the problems and the thoughts of losing the Espada
Aqueduct. But Bergs Mill had flooded, and so we attempted to rearrange the funding, and
,.;..,
the county called an election, it failed. So we had to go back to the drawing boar! and then
1\
actually authorized the Bergs Mill extension to the south and the Salado project, I think.
Yeah, the Salado project and the Bergs Mill extension, and that was a $7.5 million extension
to the original contract. The original contract was for $12 million, and that extended it
another $7.5 million. So we were able to use that contract to buy the rights-of-way for the
Bergs Mill extension and to secure rights-of-way for the Salado Project, the SCS Project.
Then in '76 is when we had another major and that was a $30 million expansion, I believe. It
added Olmos Dam and several other projects that were new projects that weren't covered
23
under the old contract, including the Six Mile Creek Project. So Olmos Dam, then, from the
/ity study, which we saw, "Okay. This is a county project and county funds. What do we
really need done? Well, we need this done down here, and we need this done here, and
Olmos Dam needed doing." So that was included in the Olmos Dam- Olmos Dam was
included in that contract. Boy, I hope I'm remembering this correctly.
So then we took the fity's study and utilized the same engineers that the jity used to design
the project, and so that project- that was a very interesting thing because we basically found
that structurally, from a strength standpoint, the dam was okay, but it was a little bit lighter
than normal concrete, wasn't quite as dense.
It was a gravity dam, and for whatever reason when it was built, it wasn't built with an
emergency spillway. It had six floodgates but no emergency spillway, so that the real
problem with Olmos Dam is you reach a 200-year capacity or a 200-year flood event, it
would go over the top of the dam. There was no spillway that would safely carry the excess
water, so it would go over the dam and start eroding out the bottom of the dam. Then the
problem was not the strength of the dam but the stability of the dam, and the problem was
that the whole dam may just collapse because of the erosion at the bottom and the pressures
of the water on the dam.
In essence, the center- on a gravity dam, your center of gravity basically has to be in the
center one-third of the dam. Well, if the pressures are such that pushing on the dam moves
that center of gravity to the outer face, then it can just tump over. So that was the problem,
24
so we had to figure out a way to modify the dam so it would pass a most probable maximal
storm. Didn't matter how big it was, it would go over. The dam would be safe, everything
}.k
downstream would flood, but the dam would be safe ana would not fail.
"
So that's what we did, we designed a project. But not only did we add considerable amount
of concrete to the downstream fac) which added weight, stability to the project, we also
drilled holes through the dam and put in steel tendons and footings underneath so that you
would actually in tension push the dam down by screwing these things down so it would hold
the dam in place.
My word. Was that a common way of dealing with things like that?
Yeah, it's fairly common. So the combination of the additional concrete plus the spillway
that was built all the way across the - the roadway was eliminated ve dam and put below
~~~~
the dam. And people were, "People are going to wash away and (inaudible)." Bridges and
everything - you build bridges for a 100-year storm, and that dam would hold 200-year, so
that's probably the safest place in San Antonio in a 200-year event would be on the road
below the dam, not on roads around the dam.
It was a very successful job. A lot of people didn't like the looks of it, and rightly so because
it w:S ~::~~~had arches and a little roadway across the top, and it was very attractive,
but it wasn't safe, so we went through that process.
25
..;
So it was controversial to an extenl but not outside of ..
Right. Well, people wanted it to look different. I think they still wanted the road across the
top, but something had to be done to fix it.
P' I know one of the things we talked about a couple weeks ago was the downtown flood control
"
tunnel and how that all came about. Why was it the C01ps initiated that study?
Well, we had been through the King William project and saving things and were successful
at doing that, so that the next section was really to protect the downtown, and we had to get
+r
through - San Pedro Creek had come up, .c lose to downtown, San Antonio River had come up
close to downtown, and we just had to figure out ways to get through downtown.
And traditional channelization was extremely expensive. You either had to lower the
channel; if you lowered the channel, it meant that every bridge had to be redone that was on
the river because the footings weren't deep enough. Or you had to widen it out; if you
widened it out there were certain areas you couldn't widen it out because of the buildings that
were there.
So the only way you're going to get capacity in that channel is to widen it out or to deepen it,
that would give you the capacity to carry the 1 00-year flood. The only other thing was to
divert some of the water, and that was the solution, to divert it. It ended up being really the
best solution because not only did you divert the water and then you didn't have to modify
26
~
the channel and capacity. There were still modifications needed in the downtown area, there
A
were a lot of places where the walls were crumbling and they weren't strong enough, they
weren't built to take a flood event of the magnitud~ were designing for or that was ,. ~
happening. So wall sections were being undermined and caving in, so those had to be
...
modified and were eventually modified in the last few years.
So the tunnel was the solution for the flood control, but it ended up being a multi-solution
that we built;fhe Corps didn't think about this; the Corps was just thinking about their flood
control obligatim~. But as the San Antonio River Authority got into it in public hearings, we
/1,
had a person come to us out of the blue and say, "Well, why don't you recycle the water?"
Q The first reaction was, "Oh ... :'but it didn't take long, and I was part of the decision making.
''Well, why don't we think about that? Let's see what that means."
So prior to that time it was not recycled?
Oh, no.
It just flowed through.
It was just like any river. No river's recycled. It just flows. And what was part of the
problem - and it ties to the drought and the water issues - is the Edwards keeps going down,
and we're trying to keep stream flow at Comal Springs and San Marcos Springs. We've lost
27
our springs. On many occasions, springs don't flow because the Edwards is too low for the
natural spring flow to happen.
So what happened? The City drills wells. There was a well beneath the Hildebrand Street
bridge, and it just flowed freely into the river, and that was the base flow of the river. And
~~~~ a well in the zoo, and it flows freely into the - carries the water from the zoo, and
that was the base flow of the river. But that was Edwards water that was being pumped, and
all of a sudden you're saying now, "Well, look. We're having to cut back and all of this.
Where's the base flow of the river?" Well, it's still a real problem, but in the last few years,
we've had enough rainfall that the springs have been up basically, and we haven't had a
problem.
But in designing this river tunnel and this idea of recycling, we can take the water that comes
through the river downtown, base flow, not flood flow, and as it gets to the outlet ofthe
tunnel, you can divert the water into the tunnel and the tunnel stays full all the time, so all
you have to do is put a pump at the upper end and lift the water out at the upper end and put
it in the river. So if you're in a drought condition, it's like the radiator in your car, it's a
closed system. You can sit there and pump it round and round and round forever. Now,
there might be- sure, there's going to be a little evaporation, little losses, but then you can
add a little bit of water and you would always have a river downtown, even during the worst
drought because now we have built in a recycling situation. We put in enough pumps so we
can put a lot of water down that river.
28
Here again, the pumps were designed I think for about 10 and they ended up being IS's. And
we started off with three ofthem, I think we ended up with four or five of them. So we have
a lot of pumping capacity so that if the water starts getting stagnant, you can always kick on
another pump and eventually - you're dealing with a lot of water in the tum1el, so you can
pick it up. And as you cut these on one by one, it starts catching up with itself, starts leveling
itself out, and so you don't run out of water.
So that was built in, and then also because we were at the upper end building on
Brackenridge Park land - even though it had been severed by the freeway it was parkland ­y.
J<...
and we were building on land right across from Roosevelt Park. We designed - made sure
1\
that these things looked good. They were built to look good, and they were built with water
features in them, too, so that they would have fountains and some of them were intemal.
And they would all add oxygen to the water also, so we have water features that add oxygen
to the water, and oxygen to the river water is extremely important. So we built in water
quality features as well as conservation features into this flood control project, so it is a
multi-purpose project.
I wondered if there are inherent water quality problems to a system like that?
There could be because in a very, very dry period, water that goes into the tunnel is
floodwater, and it carries a lot of silt and a lot of -
Waste materials.
29
All sorts of water quality problems can- or food materials, bacteria and everything can get
into the tunnel. And if it's stagnant, then, yes, you can have a problem. So with this
recycling and all of this, you can take care of those problems.
(End of Tape 1, Side 2. Beginning of Tape 2, Side 1.)
Did he actually- did Hap Veltman actually have an official role in this?
No.
It was just as a public comment?
Yes, just as a public comment. Hap had business interests on the rivert ~ a public­spirited
person and was interested in this thing. He had a lot of ideas and suggestions, and
that recycling was the one that really took. Another one was there was always talk about,
"We need to expand the river and go north to Brackenridge Park and have boats go up there."
And Hap would always say, "It won't work, it won't work, because who's going to get on a
barge and spend 45 minutes riding a barge or an hour riding a barge to Brackenridge Park?
They're going to get bored and they're not going to do it."
And I basically agreed with him until right before I left the River Authority as general
manager. And I sort ofhad a change of philosophy because we were talking about
30
developing the next section from Lexington on upstream, and knowing the maintenance
problems on the river and knowing you have to have marinas and safe harbor for during the
/flood periods, my though-t'was that why build in this newer section that you're going to make v/
nice, the development will occur, why build in a major expense and a safe harbor and all of
this prematurely when you don't need it.
-hll
In other words, wait ~the development occurs and you need it. Therefore if you have a
lock system, you can solve this problem, you don't have to build a big maintenance area, it
can still be where the maintenance area is now where we built all that in to the Nueva Street
Project where we have a huge marina and safe harbor and where all the garbage gets out,
unloaded. You don't have to build that up there at this time.
Now, eventually you may want to, but you don't have to do it now. And then if the
navigation works a little bit, then that's a plus too, so you get navigation for pleasure as well
as you can have all your park police and their little boats. You can have the maintenance
barges get up to there. You can have all of this, and then if a flood's going to come, you can
pull them back down and get them into safe harbor in the main channel in the downtown
level.
So I changed my position on a lock and dam situation near Brooklyn Street. But Hap had
,J:;A4o
another reason, and I think it's valid, that ~not going to sell itself on somebody at the
Alamo or near the Hyatt getting onto a barge and wanting to go to the Museum of Art or
something, it's just too long of a deal. I think he's still correct in that. We'll see, because
31
there is going to be a lock and dam, and it will at least allow that possibility to happen as well
as having the lock and dam there for policing, for maintenance and so on and so forth . So
that' s a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
So the Museum Reach, is that primarily a walking improvement?
Well, there'll be walkways, but also because of the lock, there will be navigation up there.
But the navigation, again, you don't have to harbor those boats. They can still be harbored in
the main marina, and you can just take them up there. They will develop their own need and
their frequency based upon whatever happens. You really can leave that to experience. You
don't have to guess and have to project out because it will be there.
I suppose it also depends on the extent to which those museums create an audience and ...
I don't think it's going to be the museums that create the audience.
·what do you think?
1 think it's going to be the other development. There's going to be condominiums, there's
going to be major hotels, there's going to be restaurants, and that's going to be the demand.
Interesting.
32
And I don't think people are going to get on a barge to go to the museum. I think they're
~
going to get on a barge if it's beautified'\ looks great.'I?eople are going to want to be on it just
to be on it to see these other things and go to restaurants and things like that.
So how long - you know, once somebody comes up with an idea like this, how long does it
take for it to sort of come to fruition?
Long time.
Because you really have to have great foresight and planning and patience.
And the tunnel project helps the construction cost on all of this also now because during
construction times you can divert the water, and minor floods you can divert the water, and
it's not coming down on the construction areas. So the tunnel is a wonderful thing,
wonderful thing.
It solves all kinds of problems. So you're talking aboujit 's even beneficial to private
construction projects or anything going on the river?
No. I'm talking about the channel projects and so forth, things that are happening in the river.
Okay. Have you seen spin offi in terms of private benefit?
33
~
In the sense that from Lexington on up threugfi the museum - or to the tunnel inlet, you
reduce the- you don' t need for flood control purposes to buy any more rights-of-way. You
may need to get more rights-of-way because you want to do something else to the project,
but for flood control by itself, you can pretty well limit your rights-of-way needs to what you
have, what the River Authority and the Jity has.
Now, that's a detriment to a full development on the river because you're very nan·ow, but
from a flood control standpoint, it can carry the floodwaters. If you were doing this from
scratch and money didn't mean anything, you would probably want it wider so that you could
make better walkways and better landscaping and things like this so it would look better. It
wouldn't be so constrained. It's going to be pretty narrow.
So from that standpoint, flood control it's okay, but, yeah, it would probably be better- and
they may spend some money, and individual developers may decide to relinquish a few feet
so that their development will be better, but that's going to be - I don't know. I'm not
involved in that.
Were there any unexpected complications in doing a project like that, doing the tunnel?
Oh, yeah.
What?
34
Big time. The tunnel is done in basicallKblue shale formation, and when all the testing was . ~
done, it looked like this formation was fantastic and it was great. And so they did the San
Pedro tunnel, and everything worked fine, and they bored the tunnel, and it stayed in place,
and then they put in the lining, everything went great. So the San Pedro was completed.
And they started the San Antonio tunnel at the outlet, and they started going forward and all
of a sudden things started collapsing on them because it was in a fractured segment, and that
didn't show up in the testing. So the shattered- there was a fault line just to the north of
Brackenridge High School, and right beneath Brackenridge High School is where all of this
collapsing was occurring because when the machine bored the hole, it relieved the pressure
that was holding the shale together. And when the pressure was relieved, the shale just
started falling. At one time, there was a 30- or 40-foot cave above the machine that collapsed,
and all of this was underneath Brackenridge High School, the whole high school could have
collapsed into the tunnel.
So they had to stop everything. They had to - this delayed the project and cost millions of
dollars because they had to go in, they had to pump this thing full of grout. Then once they
got the thing stabilized and full of grout and everything, then they had to go forward a little at
a time and then put steel rods up above it to hold it in place and grout it in place and then put
a cap on it. Then the bottom part was okay. Then they could go forward a little bit and then
seal it, and it was very time consuming and very expensive and very touchy getting through
that project. But once you get past that fault area just north of Brackenridge~
was smooth sailing and it was fine again.
35
How did you deal with the cost overruns on something like that?
Thank goodness that was a Corps problem. Well, thank all the taxpayers of the United States
of America. It was not a- no, put it this way: The way the project was authorized by
Congress, 2.65 percent of the construction cost was borne by the local sponsor, so all of the
extra costs, 2.65 percent was borne by San Antonio River Authority Bexar County taxpayers
through the flood control tax. BU:t it was peanuts compared to the total.
Do you remember who the contractor was on that?
Obiashi. It was a Japanese contractor. I think Obiashi was out of San Francisco.
Were there panicked meetings in your offices or ...
No. There were panicked meetings, but they weren't in our offices. I went down into the
tunnel many, many, many times. The one time I went down beneath Brackenridge High
School, I didn't stay down long and I didn't want to go back. I did not like what was going
on, and it didn't mean that they weren't doing- and they did a fme job, but that was
dangerous. It was dangerous as far as I was concerned.
Did any other surface occupants raise questions or objections?
36
Only one. There was along the alignment of the project, and this was on South St. Mary's
Street, a house collapsed, and the owner of the house was- I don't think ever did file suit
against the River Authority but kept threatening to file suit against the River Authority, that
we created all this problem. Filed claims and everything. Houses on each side, houses
everywhere else, nothing ever happened. That house that collapsed was not structurally
sound, and our position was, and I think rightly so, that that house collapsed because of-tf--
neglect of the landowner.
Not another pocket of unstable shale or another fault or anything like that?
No, no. That was in the stable area. Like I said, I can show you where the vacant lot is now.
It's next to houses that are standing, perfectly good houses.
One of the other ones that you had mentioned was the Northeast Preserve McAllister Park
Project that began as flood control and then morphed into a multi-component or multi-purpose
project. Tell me about that.
The ¢ity- and I don't remember exactly the sequence and timing, but the fity was- Site 15
was where it is now, Site 15 revised, and we needed the rights-of-way for that project, and
the Jity had - this is like~ chicken and~gg, I don't remember which came first. I think
the(ity was determining that they wanted a park there, but we- and I use the term "we"
loosely here. I don't know whether it was the San Antonio River Authority or the City- got
a federal parkland grant- boy, I can't remember how that thing went.
37
But the City knew that we were going to in the early stages of this project need the land for
flood control. So we purchased some of the land, and then they got some parkland money
and added to the land, and I'm fuzzy on this. But anyway, there was flood control money put
into that, and the ¢ity knew it was going to be flood control, and they were part of the project
and secured land for it also. So it was all a joint thing that early on in the thinking that this
dam would be built.
And at the time that we were planning this, it was thought there would be water in this, and
there would be a pool, and th-is would be a lake in this park. In the latter part of the project
'Jr<r .c o("
/ when we ere designing it and corning to the qttestiotf, "All right, do you want the lake," the
fity changed their mind. They did not want the lake because there were ballparks and all
sorts of things that they had - that the park had grown up and matured before we built the
dam, before the SCS built the darn -
)J~
Oh, this i/an SCS project?
~~
Oh, yeah, i~an SCS project. It was the last SCS project done for us, and it was the biggest
and the most complicated and the most expensive, and yet the SCS, because of our
relationship, did it. And there's where the assistant manager of the River Authority, Blair
Warren, was very instrumental in working the SCS and keeping that on their radar screen.
He was very much responsible for that last one getting accepted and built.
38
And they had to break that down into three separate contracts because it was so big and so
much expense. It wasn't that expensive, it was that the SCS was not - now called the NRCS,
Natural Resource Conservation Service, they just weren't getting any money voted by
Congress, and so what money they got, they had to piddle there and piddle there. If they
started a project, they had to either have a little project that they could accomplish or they'd
have to break bigger projects down. And so they broke ours down into segments.
Then we also got the City to agree that if there were some cost overruns, we had to sweeten
the pot, too, you know, "SCS
1
ifyou do this, we'll throw in a little money." And the City
Public Works agreed that they would pick up whatever extra was necessary because it was so
valuable for flood control on Salado Creek.
So why was that identified as a flood-prone area? That somehow seems higher to me. This
is out near the airport?
Uh-huh.
Had there been a lot of new development out in that area?
Oh, yeah, big time. The Salado project is in the hills, in Hill Country up there, and the water
~,#
just runs off~ So you want to collect the water that was - Salado Creek had several
... I ~~'t -H-~ ~q.{liL~
tributaries. You had the main Salado, you had Mud Creek you had Panther Creek. So you ~
-; ~ ~ .
put all- you just needed to put little dams, small watershed dams in all of these to collect the ~ . ::>
39
water, so collectively they cut down on the flooding as it went downstream. So there's two
ways to provide- two or more ways to provide flood control: One is you dam it up and hold
it and release it safely; or you build capacity in a channel so that the channel can take it.
Well, on Salado Creek, you didn't build a channel so we built retention, and the retention
was not in one big dam like Olmos Dam, it was in 15 small dams. And they worked both in
parallel and in series because of all the tributaries - on the tributaries, a lot of times you had
three dams in series. So the upper dam would hold and then the lower dam had its capacity,
and then the lowest dam had its capacity.
( qBJ
And during the big flood o~78, a lot of these upper dams were spilling, meaning they were
going over the emergency spillway. But the lowest dam in the ones in series always held,
always held everything, so there was not one drop of flood water coming from those dams in
series. So collectively what darns we had in - and that last one in McAllister Park was not in.
If it would have been in, it would have lowered Salado Creek at Loop 410 substantially, and
'If v.>e.. ~ ~ 4 ~ (7"f'C;.
there was a lot of damage in that area. But overall, it lowered it substantially because the
1\
dams themselves all did their job. And those dams, many ofthem are also recharge dams, so
that was another benefit from the Salado Project.
So the McAllister Park project was part of that larger Salado Creek series, I mean, the dam -
was there a dam that got built at McAllister Park?
Yeah. That was part ofthe Salado project.
40
And it was the last part of the Salado project?
Je':h, ;reah. Now, one thing on the tunnel project that I would like to mention because - and
I don't remember, it was(aftertr think[ the San Pedro tunnel was started and maybe even
completed. But we started into the San Antonio tunnel at the outlet area, and you had the
railroad there and apparently which is something that came up- I don' t know why we did
not discover it earlier. It did not show up in any of the test holes, and why, I don't know.
When the contractor started his vertical bore to establish the outlet tunnel, he started turning
up hazardous waste~me of it was pretty bad stuff. And the Corps of Engineers wanted to
(\
shut the job down. And I said, "No. We're not going to shut this job down." The jtate
wanted to shut the job down, the water quality people at the jtate wanted to shut the job
down.
If that would have occurred, I thought we'd have to have a study done, then we'd start all
over again. We're talking millions and millions and millions of dollars. First of all, we'd
have to take care of all this stuff. Then you'd have to rebid the job and all this stuff. The
delays would have been fantastic.
And I just had communication with both the} tate and the Corps of Engineers, and I said,
''No, you're not going to shut this thing down." I said, "San Antonio River Authority will do
anything. We will take the hazardous material, we will handle the hazardous material, We
41
will do anything you tell us to do. EPA, no matter what you tell us, we will do it. Corps of
Engineers, whatever you tell us, ftate, whatever you tell us, we will do it. But you will keep
this job going."
. '
~ l Q. I C' !i.! •
Well, I told my chairmaiJPaul Herter j:.} didn't tell my board what was going on. And they
kept the job going. And I told Paul, I said, "I don't know what this is going to cost, but we
must keep this job going because if this thing is delayed, San Antonio is still vulnerable.
We've got to get this thing done.':
The long and the short of it: We were able- we had a plan to where we could take this
\ro1~1 o:vr\ . . ~
material and temporarily store it and then move it from there to Bobstown ~c). There
was a place to take certain types of hazardous material and other places. So we were able to
parcel it out and do it in a logical manner and very safely, and it was al1 done.
Well, we finished the tunnel project and had the dedication in January of '98 I guess it was,
and then we had a big flood later that year, and the project was done.
/ Y~~
Yea ktm~hat was one of the things that I was -"that was one of the times where you take a
chance and you do it for the right reasons. Could I be criticized? Could I have been fired?
,.-
Yes, the answer to all of that is yes. But a decision was made, lhis is what we're going to do,
and we did it. It turned out perfect.
Splendidly.
42
(Tape turned off and turned back on.)
I get the impression from the story you just told me that you had a fair amount of leeway with
your board, that they were permissive?
I had a lot of confidence in my board. I always tried to give them the information. I didn't-on
this one, I did not because it ~as so high profile because of pollution issues and hazardous
waste issues. Thefty had gone thro~ll sorts of problems on the Alamodome site, and I
knew how volatile that was, and I knew if we were going to do it-we weren't trying to not
ll
do it right. I just didn't want the job shut down. We were going to do anything they told us , ~ ......__
to do. We were going to do it right and take care of it. But I didn't want to have to go
through a new study, shut the job down, rebid the job, do all the things that would have
slowed this thing down and just cost millions upon millions upon millions of dollars extra
and then delayed the job.
Well, at what point did you actually go to your board?
Well, they eventually knew it because we were moving stuff out to the- it all came out, but
the decisions were all made and the job kept going. And it never hit the press or the media
that this was going on.
How did you keep that from happening?
43
Because we just kept going. We just did it. We never ballyhooed it. We never said anything.
We just kept going. We just took care of the problem. Why ballyhoo that we've got a
problem going on when there's not a problem. Why say, "Oh, we're moving hazardous
~
waste around, we're doing thisA we're doing that," and create a firestonn for something that
we had under control. We had total control of it. And it worked wonderfully. And we saved
millions of dollars, and we saved downtown San Antonio.
Do you remember your feelings or your impressions when that flood happened and - I mean,
had the tunnel actually been tested up to that point?
No, heavens no.
So this was the first real test of it?
Oh, yeah.
Were all the engineers down there watching?
Oh, I was. I was in Seguin when that flood was occurring. I was at a meeting at Texas
Lutheran University, and it was raining and raining, and they were showing television, and
we went into- there was a television going about all the flooding in San Antonio. I said,
44
"We better shut this thing down because it's a serious flood." And so we did, and I came
back to San Antonio.
I didn't have any problem getting back to San Antonio until I got off of Durango and tried to
get to my house, and I couldn't get to my house because of the street plan. The river wasn't
flooding, the street was all flooded. And I had to go around the block and come in another
way to get to my house. And my house had flooded in the '21 flood, and of course the tunnel
and all the project- we were perfectly safe. Went out in the backyard and looked at all the
water down running through the river and hadn't even got up very high on the sidewalk. I
mean, it was perfectly safe because the tunnel was all functioning-
(End of Tape 2, Side 1. Beginning of Tape 2, Side 2.)
-he'd been down in the turmel (inaudible) "Let's go." He had a convertible, and so I had my
~
video camera, and){e went down there and took video of the - I was just taking shots of the
tunnel flowing and going. Then we went upstream. As we went upstream, we'd stop at
various bridges and see the flooding, and it was all contained in the channel. Then we got up
to the tunnel inlet, and we were watching how it was functioning and ran into my chief
~~~
engineer who'd been there1 So we were watching all of that and taking video of that.
And then the next moming I went back. Overnight it had had another five or six inches of
rainfall, which created - from the time I was there the day of the flooding until the next day,
45
~
the additional rainfall had ~ a tremendous amount of erosion at the tunnel inlet site,
but it took it all. So it just did a magnificent job.
Yeah, I was sitting there watching it happening. It was nice that it was functioning.
So sort of like having a second river to carry water?
Yeah, it was doing what it was supposed to do.
Where does it come out?
Right south of Brackenridge High School where the Lone Star Brewery is, right there,
Roosevelt Park, just north of Roosevelt Park.
So then what happens downstream from there with that amount of water coming through?
Were there other modifications that had to happen?
No, because the channel down there is big enough to take- see, the river- what happened is
you're diverting 8,000 cubic feet per second and allowing 6,000 to go through downtown.
By the time it joins back up- they join back together and it's the same amount. You're not
adding any more water, it's the same amount of water. So downstream was developed to
handle 16,000, and by the time it gets down there, it's 16,000. So you have the 8,000 and by
46
that time it gets done, what's added to it is 8,000, so you have 16,000. So the channel from
there on down was large enough to handle it.
So it 's just that the channel up here isn't large enough to handle 16,000?
That's correct. So to get through the downtown area, we had to get a channel to handle, well,
14,000 in the downtown area. So how are we going to do that? Either you have to widen it
or deepen it to get the capacity, or you have to bypass, and the tunnel was the bypass.
Thinking about industrial development, I noticed there was this San Antonio River Industrial
Development Authority that was formed. What was the idea behind that? How did that all
come about?
Well, these quirks in federal law. To encourage business development, industrial
development, local entities could sell industrial development bonds, which were tax-free
bonds, so it gave a break to somebody. A company could finance their expansion or new
business or whatever by making an agreement with some kind of govemmental entity to sell
bonds for them, and then they would pay it back. The benefit was that they were getting
cheaper financing. So the federal government set these things up, and the River Authority
got into that business to encourage economic development in the San Antonio River Basin.
So we did that.
Was that a board initiative, or was that a management initiative?
47
I don't know. I really don't know. I just don't recall. It's funny. We did this, we did it well.
We had other entities in San Antonio, the City of San Antonio had one of these, and
companies would come to us because we didn't have the red tape that the City of San
Antonio had. They always had little zingers or "Do this, you have to do that." And we
would just say, "We'll do it for you." They wanted to come to us because they could get it
done, and we weren't charging them anything - we were charging them practically nothing.
We were making a little bit ofmo.ney off of it, but it was so smooth and so nice that they
wanted to do business with us. They didn't want to do business with the others because the
others were saying, "You do this" and ...
Bureaucracies.
The bureaucracies and then some of the bureaucracies - I know this happened. "Well, we've
got to go to New York for the closing," and they'd go up for a party or something. We didn't
do any of that. But some of these people made it their thing- their vacation out of it. I don't
know.
Enhance their quality of life.
So we did not do that. But during all of this, there would be hearings with the /tate or with
the federal govermnent. I would go up and testify against these things. I think they were­philosophically,
I was opposed to these things.
48
Why is that?
Why should certain companies get tax-supported, in essence, financing, and in a lot of places,
it was Wal-Marts that was going into small communities that were putting small businesses
out ofbusiness so Wal-Mart could grow bigger. I was philosophically opposed to these
things. I don't think they were right.
:>
That doesn't mean I wouldn't do t.Aem because they were going to be done, and I might as
well do it and make the money off of it if somebody was going to do it. But that doesn't
mean I couldn't speak against them and say, "Stop doing these things," which I did. I
testified against it.
I wondered, because in a way it seems counterintuitive to the other missions of the agency to
encourage large scale industrial development which automatically means more water
A
consumption and the potential for greater pollution, but at the same time, your other
activities are to find ways to acquire, conserve water and to control pollution.
Well, just because you have development doesn't mean you've got pollution. That doesn't
necessarily follow. It does mean that you would encourage growth. Generally speaking it's
still going on right now. The communities want growth. What is Chamber of Commerce
there for? To promote growth. What is the mayor doing right now? He's promoting Toyota
and everything else, promoting growth.
49
~o, you know, that's- growth in itself is not as popular as it used to be, but it's still pretty
popular. You know~ have good jobs, ifth:y have folks come her} to have enough
vitality that you can have a symphony .anti-health~ and have pro sports and things like this,
7 Jt.::,
it's quality of life. You know, it's good, W's good, so you might as well take care of it. Then
if you have need for water, you build for it. You need water quality, you take care of it.
In my mind, there was no conflict. And then many of my board members, they were all for it.
Just like the Cibolo Reservoir project. They wanted that because of economic development
in my area. "Oh, boy, I can have boating and it's going to be a boon to Stockdale."
Recreation.
~tude changed eventually down in the Stockdale area, but at the time we were doing that,
it was big time. We had a whole busload of people go up to Lake Tawakoni just to view that
project because that was a Sabine River Authority project and "Look what they did, and
we're going to do the same thing and have all this development." Economic development
was very much on the minds of the board members, so that was a good thing.
What about the xeriscape project of the mid-1980s?
_j~
You know, I hardly remember that. When I was reading through the thing or skimming
~
through the thing, I said, "Man, I don' t even remember this."
50
Not a big project.
No. I don't even know how it developed and where it went.
I noticed in some of the statistics that had come out recently that San Antonio has by far the
best record in the state for water conservation. I wondered about the extent to which you
think the Authority has contributed to that or been responsible for i/J.
Oh, I think we were probably one of the- if you look at the whole thing, we're one of the
ingredients in the recipe, but I don't think we were major in that. I think our attitude was
slightly instrumental in helping those things along. Re-use of water as we discussed earlier
about SAWS and thefty and not coming up with an alternate water supply, their re-use
project is one of the best. I don' t know who really got that one going and how it happened,
but it was well done, and they got it through and got people to sign up on it and converted a
rr.-~
lot oflawn irrigation, golf course irrigation, all of this to replace water, previons water. It's
wonderful. They did a fine job. They spent a lot of money doing it, but they saved a lot of
money. They're saving water, and that is a good thing that they did.
They need to talk to Dallas.
But in the state of Texas, I think El Paso and San Antonio are probably the leaders in really
doing things.
51
1 'm sort of curious about it because it seems as if there 's a different mindset in the part of
Texas that you're talking about from North Texas where there seems to be very little idea
about responsible use of water. And 1 wonder if it's an inherent cultural d(fference in Mo
parts of the state or if it 's simply an educational issue?
What happened in the Dallas area is during the )50s, they really ran out of water, and they
were pumping water from the Red River.~ water was really lousy. They got on a
massive building spree and they, quote, solved their problem. Well, they did solve it for 35,
40 years, maybe 50 years. But the thing is, they solved it so well that they didn't think they
had a problem anymore, and I think that's what happened. I think they solved their problem
and didn't think they were going to have a problem anymore.
Do the other things that needed to come along at the same time.
Exactly, yeah.
That's interesting. 1 also saw that there had been a real wide range of parks and recreation
initiatives. How was it that the employees got involved in running the concessions at the nvo
parks, the nvo lake parks?
vJ~7
jhat was by default. We really didn't want to. When we started the Braunig project, we
~
advertised~ot a concessionaire, and we had somebody running it. They built their own
52
facilities, and they did their own thing, but we had a lot of complaints. You got into a
situation where we were getting calls, so we were the middleman. "Well, you're not doing
this, you're not doing that." "Well, that's the concessionaire." "Well, what are you going to
do?"
~
So we weren't running it but we were getting all the complaints, so that was not such a happy
wL-- J\
time. And when all of a suddenffll0 of:the gu~didn't want to do that anymore and we even
tii.ed to rebid it and didn't get anybody to bid on the thing, then we just had to do it. So it just
sort of fell to us. Because of that experience and since we were being held responsible
anyway, so ~tfto the business, so we got into the wine and beer business, Frito
business, selling hot dogs.
Did you ever imagine that when you came to work here?
(Laughter.)
No.
And then I noticed that you worked with Parks and Wildlife at Goliad State Park. What was
that about?
' -_.J.')n Q.Y.
Well, that was one of our directors, Leonard von Dolen fpllenetic), and then their Jtate )C'
.. 'I
· .. o·" ' ~"' Sr
fepresentative, his son Tim von Dolen. They decided that they were going to, through Tim,
53
I guess, his promotion and his - he was fairly powerful. He had thought about running or
maybe did try to run for Speaker one time, so he had some push. And through the Goliad
{,l....
director, then, well, "Let's throw in a little money here too." So it was just part of- "We
1\
don't do much in the downstream counties, it's time to do something. So let's work with
Parks and Wildlife and develop a little conference room and an area down there."
7
So was it in the form of a grant1 er Jjld Parks and Wildlife come to you-all?
You know, I'm trying to think of whether we- I guess they built it. I don't know who built
it, whether we built it on their land or we gave them the money and they built it for us. I
don't remember. Now, maybe some of the other people you're interviewing might remember
a.-1;~~~
that, but I don't remember. I lmow that we paid for it, but I don't remember whether they
1\
built it or we built it.
On the bonding subject, I noticed that the board stopped levying the ad valorem tax at the
~ end of the )70s. I never heard of anyone starting it and then stopping it. )f always seemed to
go on for ever. What does that say about the culture of the River Authority and the board?
J,o~
r
It has to the board and the general manageffieftt: You had a board that was very conservative;
you "h"ad" a general manager who had a goal to eliminate, and it was done.
And why did the general manager want to eliminate that ad valorem tax?
54
It was philosophical. If all the other river authorities could operate without a tax, why
couldn't we? Why did we need a tax? If we could manage our affairs and get in and do the
job, why did we need a tax? We were able to do that.
Do you think the tax was necessary at the beginning?
Oh, I think so. I think early on, all of the water quality studies and things like that were able
to be done with the tax. Then you had something else happening. You had high interest
rates, and we had money that was- you had to have- what's the terminology? For bonds,
you have to have so much money . ..
In reserve?
In reserve, reserve money. You had to have reserve money. And we were taking reserve
money and investing it, and there were high interest rates. So we were able to earn quite a bit
of money. And earned money did not have any- tax money you had restrictions on what
you could spend it for. Earned money you had no restrictions as long as it was legal and in
your statutory powers. So we were able to take money that we had earned, and over a period
of time, we built up over $9 million in reserve money that we could spend on anything. So
we were eaming money and spending money, and we didn't need the tax. I say we didn't
need the tax, obviously things change.
It came back.
55
Well, I can't speak to that.
Yeah. So besides this wonderful interest money, what other sources of revenue were there?
~
~~
Oh, we made money on contracts and, of course, the industrial development bonds. We
1\
made money. We were operating like a business. That was the philosophy: &perat~ like a
business. Make contracts, do thi~gs for people. Our sewage treatment was self-sustaining.
We made our parks self-sustaining. So ~come was coming in, and we were trying to
operate a multi-faceted business, and we were able to do that for a while, so we were able to
eliminate the tax. We went from 2 cents to a cent and a half to a cent and then eliminated it.
So I suppose that model is what might account for some of the interestingforays into
different projects.
Well, yeah, I never really thought about it until you bring it up, but the industrial
development bonds, we were making money, so that was a way for us to make some money.
Philosophically, I could have been against it, but I was making some money. And if I'm
~)
trying to run a business, that's another thing. )fit's going to happen anyhow, let's make
some money.
To what extent did the Authority grow while you were here in terms of staffing and programs
and that sort of thing?
56
+ When I went to work for the River Authority, there was probably 10 people working here,
/.
might have been 12, l don't know, not very many. Manager, assistant manager, right-of-way
guy, a couple of- it might have been 10, I don't know, 10, 12 people. From the time in the -
I believe in that history, we were at 117, it said, in '87. And we hung around around 120 to
125, I guess, in that range until I left. I don't remember it being much higher than that.
And was that a reflection of the diversification of programs?
Oh, yeah. See, we were not into maintenance when I came here, we got into maintenance.
Then once you get into maintenance, then you start hiiing people. We got into the parks
business, and then you get into- when we went into the parks business, especially with the
concessions and the concessionaire did all that and he had to hire everybody. And then you
get into 24-hour operation at the parks, and you have at least one person there all the time
and many times three and four people there.
You need 4.3 people to get one person on the job 24 hours a day 365 a year. So to run a 24-
hour operation, you have to have some folks. So with the sewage treatment, we weren't on
24 hours on the sewage operation, but we were on probably 16 hours a day on that. The
bigger your sewage treatment operation got, the more people you needed. And in three
locations, the more maintenance you did, you needed more people. Parks and Recreation
needed more people. And then all of these need the staff to run it here. The people that work
J
for you want to get paid. They're funny about that. So you have to hire people to pay )liem.
57
(Laughter.)
So was most of the maintenance activity associated with these SCS facilities or other
activities?
s
Well, you had maintenance at the park. You had maintenance at the SCS, and you had
1\,
maintenance at the- of course, the sewage treatment, the whole thing is really operations and
maintenance. You run machinery and you cut grass, I mean, you do everything. It's labor
intensive.
~
Are there any sort of strategic partners on a federal or state level that come to mind as
.l
having been long-term and particularly important?
I think our relationships with the Corps of Engineers and the SCS were just exceptional and
probably about as good partnerships as were ever established nation~wide. I mean, we were
able not necessarily in the size of the projects but just in the relationships and being able to
get things done and get 'em done in a good way and successful way.
Our relationships were always very good with the Edwards Underground Water District, and
we provided them - we were almost their- when they started expanding and doing things,
) )
our personnel manuals and stuff, they would just take them and copy .them - I say copy them.
They were the guidelines. Just about anything they needed, we would provide them.
58
SAWS was- we always had good relations with SA WS1 working with them. We didn't
always agree with the~ but generally speaking had good relations with them. We just
couldn't accomplish certain things. I mean, that was unfortunate. When it looked like we
were going to have a change of management or a change of board, things wouldn't get done.
What about lobbying activities? Was that something you did?
Yeah, that's something I did. We never hired until very late in my tenure as manager, we
never hired - I take that back. I don' t know what David Brune or Vic Braunig did during
the '60s, whether they were the lobbyists or what. I don't think there was a hired lobbyist.
When I came to work for the River Authority, there was a fellow that was doing our PR stuff,
Peter Panfeld. He was an old newspaper guy and was out on his own. I don' t even know
how long Peter lasted. When I was manager, I never had anybody like that, so I don't know
whether I got rid of Peter or Peter died or Peter went away. I don't know what happened to
Peter Panfeld.
But anyway, then it was all internal. We had nobody - nobody was an outside consultant. It
was all internal, and all of the things that I did with the Legislature was all me. We didn't
hire anybody else. I was the one that if we needed a change in legislation, I promoted it. I
worked with the rjegislators.
59
It was not until - I don't remember exactly when it was when J olm Speck got in trouble. He
was general manager of the GBRA, and one of the Legislators filed a bill to eliminate the
GBRA, just eliminate it, and they put us in there with them because we had been working
together on various things. And I ended up hiring Senator Howard - he was not a senator
anymore. He was from East Texas, and he was a lobbyist. We hired him to help us with that
because ~ was just - it was a vengeful thing that was going to - and we were getting
sucked into it. We didn't do a thing. We were just sitting there minding our own business
and got sucked into the thing, so we had to defend ourselves.
(End ofTape 2, Side 2. Beginning ofTape 3, Side 1.)
- it was the first time you had hired anybody?
-~·
And when I say "hire,'' .I- hired. You have to understand that the legislation the way it was,
in '61 when the bill was written, it changed the way people were hired and fired. Under the
legislation, the board hires the general manager, and the general manager is responsible for
hiring and firing all consultants and all personnel. So when I say "I hired," that's what I was
~.(U -
doing. I was hiring. The board was not involved. jJ.L .
A
When I say - when major things happened, I would normally tell the board or confer with the
board. If I had to let somebody important or one of my staff people go, I let them know
ahead of time just so that they would know what's going on. But they never interfered with
my hiring and firing. Every now and then, I would hear a recommendation from somebody,
60
~
"You ought to do this," and I just never paid any attention to it. You f,rll into that trap, then
t..
you were trapped, you were trapped. Then they would take over, I mean, that's human
nature.
Did you have any input at all in terms of who became board members? Could you make
,:.
suggestions about individuals you though would be effective board members?
No. No and yes. Because under ?ur enabling statute, when a position is vacant during the
term, the governor appoints. If a governor's office called me, yes, I could have input, and I
did on occasion.
once, only once.
On occasion. When I say on occasion, it might have been once. It was
:o.~~·
Well, maybe twice now that I'm thinking about it. But it was the
"'
governor's office seeking some guidance, and I gave them suggestions. But as far as the
elections go, uh-uh, that was.- whoever filed and - you know, whoever filed filed. I didn't
try to promote anybody to m?~r anything like that. It just happened.
So what did you think about the whole business about the change from the directors being
elected at-large to being elected for specific areas?
~
Well, I thought,. .t he way the River Authority had been set up was wise to begin with in that
you had the downstream representation two, two, and two. So you had six downstream
representation and then six from Bexar County, so you had a little bit of by-place, but it was
county-wide by-place. Wilson County director represented all of Wilson County and had to
run in all of Wilson County, which is still the case.
61
In Bexar County, you ran at-large and by-place. And then when the lawsuit was filed against
us for not being representative and all, we won that lawsuit but agreed to go to- we actually
won that lawsuit but agreed to go to -did you talk to Ralph?
I did.
He would know more about this or remember maybe more than I remember. But we agreed
to go to four single-member in Bexar County and one fi'om each 1ounty ¢ommissioner
precinct and then two at-large. The two at-large - to me, at-large, you just have - you don't
~·
represent {i~~' and to me this was a good situation, to be able to have four
representing - and you didn't have to go through a redistricting or anything because the
county did that. So you just followed what the county did, and they had to have clearance to
get their precinct lines changed, so we would just follow wherever they went because they
would do all the work and we would just get it done for us. So that was easy. And obviously
the two at-large are (inaudible), so everything worked out pretty good.
If you won the lawsuit, why did the Authority decide to go with those four single-member
districts or seats?
I think it was maybe thought that this would be a compromise that would hold off an attack
in the future.
62
Do you think it's worked out beneficially?
I think it has.
Or have you seen that much change as a result of it?
No, not really. Maybe a little bit. These elections, the elections for the River Authority and
for these minor- and I say minor - water districts, school boards, which are doggone
important, nobody participates in them. Democracy is really tough in these areas because
everybody says, "We've got to have an elected representative." Well, it's not all it's cracked
up to be because of the lack of participation. And for all of the discussion, "Well, you know
the River Authority ought to ... "- we had the elections in January and they were not in
November.
We used have them in November with the general election. When we had them at the
general election, whoever drew No. 1 on the ballot won. It was just a lottery. It wasn't an
election, it was an lottery because nobody knew anything, and everybody was voting for
/
ll, President or governor or something, and then you get down to River Authority and nobody
knew anything and they just pulled lever No. 1, and that's who won.
So when we went to January, there wasn't but 2 percent of the people voting, but it didn't
matter where you drew. So whoever got elected, at least of those 2 percent or whoever was
voting, at least whoever they were voting for got elected. So you really had something other
63
than a lottery. Just because you have a lot of people voting doesn't mean anything. That's
my opinion.
(End ofinterview.)
64