FRED PFEIFFER
Interview No. 1
June 18, 2007
San Antonio, Texas
Martha Doty Freeman, Interviewer
This is Martha Doty Freeman. The date is June 181
h, 2007. 1 am interviewing Fred Pfeiffer,
the former general manager of the San Antonio River AuthorilJ,for the first time at the River
Authority offices in San Antonio, Texas.
The first thing I wanted to ask you about was to provide just a brief biographical background,
your education, how you happened to gravitate towards engineering and law.
Well, I guess- I grew up here in San Antonio, hom in San Antonio, and I had an older
brother, four years older. And when he graduated fi:om high school, he went tfuniversity of
Texas and was in~vil$ngineeli.ng, and he graduated with a B.S. in JiviyEngineering. And
as I was going to high school, of course, he was in college. I got into student government
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and thought that that was soti of my thing. Then I went to University ofTexas and followed
in civil engineering on my brother's footsteps. There, a fresh young thing, I decided I'd run
for student govenunent up there, and I did and got elected to the student assembly atJhe
University ofTexas as representative from the Engineering School and was president of my
group co-op which I was a member of and my brother had been a member of. }. don't kn~
was working for the Highway Department during the summertime to make money.
What were you doing for them?
1
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Just on a surveying crew, just a studen~and they were just tryin~- they were giving sununer
jobs to civil engineering students to, I guess - hopefully we would go to work for the
Highway Department when we got out of school.
So when I graduated, I either had to go to work or do something else, and I was working for
the Highway Department that summer, but I just decided- really, before I graduated, I guess
I decided to possibly go to law school because I did take the law school exam and passed it.
Where did that interest come from?
I think it was from my student government and everything, and lawyers probably were going
to be doing that. Although when I was going through law school, I was sort of interested in
patent law, which would have blended with my engineering background.
But anyway, in law school, I was putting myselfthrough law school. My father put me
through or gave me money - I was on his tab through engineering school, but once I
graduated, I was on my tab and made enough money in the summer of' 59, which was after
graduation from engineering school, to accumulate a little bit of money, and so I started law
school and did pretty well. But I ran out of money after the first semester, so I had to find a v/'
job because I was broke, so I went to work for M.E. Ruby who was doing the (is6.Yeffile)
.,!_,.
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work at that time. And I was doing survey work for them.
Now, were they a contracting firm?
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Yeah, M.E. Ruby was a contracting firm and working for the Highway Department, a
contract with the Texas Highway Department. So I was making enough money to limp
through, but, boy, it was tough because I was getting up very, very early in the morning.
shower real quick and go to class, and depending on what was going on at what time, then I'd
get through with class, go back to the job. So that was sort of the way I ended up my first
year of law school, and my grades fell tremendously, but I passed everything is the main
thing.
Then I worked for the Highway Department again in the sununer, I believe, yeah, I had to.
Yeah, I worked for the Highway Department again.
Was there anything in law school that particularly captured your interest at that point?
No, no, not really. I was just kind of (inaudible). But then my experience with the Highway
Department - in the last year I worked for the Highway Department, I was working at the
district office, District 15 office, here in San Antonio, and I was doing work with a fellow
~o vrz.r K
named Arthur Gursick ~and we were responsible for doing the alignment of 1604,
and we did the alignment during that summer all the way from US-90 West all the way
across the top, north, and then east and all the way to what is now I -10 on the east side. And
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it was interesting because we kept running into these dam sites, which, I didn't know at the
time, ended up being the flood control projects for the San Antonio River Authority.
So I had that experience, and then it just happened that the City of Austin decided that they
were going to do a city freeway project, MOPAC, and they had hired W.C. Cotton who was
Mike Cotton's father. Mike Cotton was the quarterback forfh.e University of Texas at that
time. His nickname was Dub, aRCl Dub needed engineers, and he was politically collllected
and got the job, and he needed people to be able to lay out MOP AC Expressway. So I just
came off of experience of laying out 1604, so I was the main perso~ was laying out
MOP AC. So that's what I did to earn money and put myself through law school. Made good
money. I was making $2 an hour, and then I got raised to $3 an hour. That doesn't sound
like much, but that was pretty big money in those days. And I was working about 30 hours a
week and going to school full-time. I got out.
What year did you graduate from law school?
In 1962.
And then, of course, I was 1-A, single, 1-A for the Selective Service and was either going to
be drafted or had to join the military, which - going back. After engineering school, I had .,
those same decisions to make{ either stay in school or go into the military. And I'd taken
exams, the officer qualifying exam, passed, and was offered a commission- not a
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commission, offered to go to officer school, OCS, which I decided not to d~JXKf go to law
school.
So getting out oflaw school, here came the same decisions. I had to take the bar and then
what was I going to do. So I took the Navy qualifying exam. Navy flew me from Austin to
Houston, took the physical, took the exam, passed the exam. Well, at that time, lawyers, if
they were commissioned - they got a direct commission, and they were commissioned as a
Lieutenant Junior Grade, which is an 0-2, and you didn't have to go to officer qualifying. So
1. I put in for that1 get a letter from the Navy, and the Navy says, "Oh, we don't need officers,
but we sure do need civil engineers and you can show up and go to OCS." I said, "Oh, man,
I just went three years to- I don't want to go through that."
So I decided to join the Air National Guard, which I did. Took the bar exam, passed the bar
exam, and then went to basic training. Three of us in the same basic training flight were all
people who had taken the Texas bar together, and we were in basic training at Lackland Air
Force Base. And I had connections with The Austin American, had a friend that worked for
The Austin American, and they got the bar results before everybody else because they were
going to publish it. So I had that connection, and I knew that I had passed the bar almost
before anybody else knew it, and my other buddies did too. I don't know what this means
except- kind of rambled in here.
So where were we? How did I get interested in the River Authority or this type of work.
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Yeah, or just water issues.
Well, I was doing engineering work putting my way through law school. And then I went
into the Air National Guard, and at that time, I knew I had to get a job, but I had to do my
military obligation, which was about six months. So I was enlisted, I was not officer.
Were you based in San Antonio?
Only for basic training. Then I went to Lowry Air Force Base for my technical school, and I
was a weapons mechanic and learned how to ann bombs, take care of machine guns, all sorts
of nifty things, rockets and things like that.
(Laughter.)
Up there, they had certain classes you would go to, and of course, with my engineering and
physics that I'd had going through engineering school, I just took the exam and didn't have
to go through a couple weeks of their training up there.
So I got out early and came back to San Antonio, and then I had to find a job. And I had a
job offer as a lawyer with one of the major law firms,lhey weren't paying very much in
those days. I also went to the Highway Department. One of my good friends that I went all
the way through elementary school, junior high, high school, UJ.T.Z: his father was
administrative engineer for the Highway Department. So I went to see them, interviewed
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there, and he offered me a job, and he was really tight. That guy was tight. I mean, he
offered me practically nothing. I said, "Man, I've been through all this, and I had all this
experience and you're offering me this. I don't want this." So I decided (inaudible).
At that time, I would have happy if he had offered me a job. There were certain
administrative jobs at the Highway Department that was dealing with real estate, and that
would have been a perfect fit, in my mind, but he wasn't going to pay me what I thought I
was worth, so I decided I'd just go and be a lawyer.
And I went over to Houston, and I interviewed over there a couple times, got a job here in
San Antonio with a very fine lawyer. He was extremely brilliant, George Manning, but he
was all by himself and took absolutely no time to tell me anything. I was just supposed to
come in there and know everything and do everything, which I didn' t. It was a struggle for
',pJ..
me because I really felt inadequate,.And I was inadequate because I didn't have any real on-hands
expetience.
Did he practice a particular ldnd of law?
He was banking. He was the general co'4nsel for Highland Park State Bank and others. And
he was a lawyer for entrepreneurs and put together a lot of deals and made a lot of money,
and then he would become a partner in some of these deals. He was very successful. At that
h.ppello"r
time, he didn't do much trial work, but when he did do trial work and did ·~~work, he
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never lost. At the time I was with him and shortly thereafter- I kept up - he never lost. He
was that good. He was always a winner.
So what was it he expected you to do within his firm?
I guess he just figured that I'd be like him, and I didn't know how to be like him. And we
were friends, that wasn't the problem, it was just that I couldn't fit. I was working for him,
and then he decided that that wouldn't work, but he let me stay there and, "Here's your office,
and you can just. .. " Here I was, really, I had no income and no clients, and what was I going
/1 ~
to do. So I had to work for somebody, so .. .
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In the meantime, I bad gotten back to San Antonio from my military duty, and at that time
there was a county home rule movement o~ where the city and the county would join
together/md then in Bexar County there would only be one government. And there was a
precinct meeting to select delegates to this thing.
When I got back to San Antonio, I didn't have anywhere to stay, and so I was living with my
mother, and I just told her, "Let's go to this precinct meeting." There goes my government
+t---
gene clicking in or whatever it was doing, and s.a;'frrg, "Let's go to this thing and see what's
going on." Well, they were going to nominate delegates, and so my mother nominated me to
be a delegate, and here I was sitting around. It was like a precinct meeting, there wasn't
hardly anybody there. But the people that were there, it was pretty greased as to who was
going to do what, and they wondered, "What on earth is going on here? Who are these
8
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people at this meetint" So I met Leslie Neal, who was a real civic leader in San Antonio,
and Jim Lunz, and I had never met them, I didn't know who they were.
But Jim and I all of the sudden became friends very rapidly, and Jim was in the Jaycees and I
got in the Jaycees, and Jim suggested a couple things. And then Jim decided, you know, "Let
me take you by to meet David Brune at the San Antonio River Authority." And I said,
"Fine."
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So Jim took me by, I can't remember/it was late morning or early afternoon, but I
interviewed or talked to David Brune, and David said, "Well, glad to meet you and all of this,
but we don't have any jobs here and I don't have anything for you." So I left the office, and
that evening when I got home, my mother said, "You had a phone call from David Brune at
the San Antonio River Authority, and he has a job for you." ~at's how I got to the San
Antonio River Authority.
Now, at that time, I did not know that Leslie Neal was on the board of the San Antonio River
Authority also. And it wasn't Leslie that had anything to do with my hiring; that was strictly
Jim Lunz and David Brune. Although David Brune was the assistant manager and the
general counsel, Victor Braunig was the manager of the River Authority at that time.
So I went to work for the San Antonio River Authority as assistant general couns:} was my
title. I immediately got into drafting ordinances and resolutions, and we were doing a lot of
land acquisition for flood control projects, and so I was heavily involved in that, working on
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field notes, :;,et there was an engineering aspect, and contracts and deeds and condemnation
work, so I got involved in condemnation work.
And also there was a big lawsuit going on between the River Authority and~downers
on the lower section of the San Antonio Channel Improvement Project who had - the
landowners had sued the River Authority about taking their water rights which was the - we
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called it the San Juan Ditch, ~the San Juan Acequi~because the flood control
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project had taken out the darn v.4Heh diverted water into the San Juan Acequia. So I got
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involved with that with outside counsel. We }l.a.ve-'Outside counsel. David Brune's fonner
law firm was the law firm of the River Authority, and David had done work for the River
Authority as an outside lawyer and then just did so much of it that Vic Braunig hired David,
and then David left the law fum, but the River Authority was still using the law firm as
outside counsel.
Was that a fairly common pattern for professionals providing a professional service and then
coming in in a management capacity later?
I don't know it was common. I don't necessarily think that was common. Surely it can
happen, it did happen.
What was Brune 's old firm?
10
f\H ~~ .
It was - of course they all change names so often- Sawtelle Goode Hardy & Davis,
something like that. Bob Sawtelle, which is interesting because he was the lawyer for the
City Water Board, and Harvey Hardy and David were working for the River Authority, and
that ended up being really controversial because the River Authority- get into this later I
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guess, we sign these contracts to develop water resources, and City Water Board and the
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River Authority were at each other's throats there for a while. So that was an interesting
situation. Anyhow, Bob Sawtelle was the lawyer for the City Water Board, an outside
lawyer. Davis was just a lawyer. Harvey Hardy had been with the DA's office and I think j.Jc,-di . (. L.rr-city
attorney's office. I:lar still alive. It was John Goode..tliaiwas the federal judge that
was murdered by- what's the actor's name?
John Wood?
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wood was in that firm. John Goode was David's brother-in-law.
Quite a complicated, interconnected ...
No, John Wood was in that firm.
So Goode was Brune's brother-in-law?
I r: 0 r,.ii o. •.E 7_
Brother-in-law, yeah.
J . . --,_
And John Goode ran for Congress against Henr(y_·a_o_~_;__ l;_g/ a nd
obviously lost.
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So it sounds as if you jumped right in and got involved with projects on a wide variety of
levelsr
Yes.
How helpful was your engineering background on those?
~tJt)./V
Well, I think very helpful because not only was I doing- you know, I could read field notes
.-{
very well and understand field notes, and if there was any confusion, I could interpret those
things. But also we were doing - there were certain alignment problems and flood control -
whether it's flood control or a highway, when you're dealing with rights-of-way for public
works, a lot of it is the same skills. And I understood alignment, and I understood field notes,
and I understood you had to do certain things, and I understood elevations, so that was sort of
a natural for me. And when we would get into certain things, I actually would do alignment
that- instead of our chief engineer doing that, I was doing it.
So I was sitting there suggesting things and doing things, and as we're sitting right here, if
you look right up the river, I did the alignment coming from Alamo Street over here right by
the Pioneer Flour Mills. I was the one that was sort of barely sneaking it through between
the mill and the houses and the King William area.
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So I was doing engineering work while I was doing legal work, which all went - when you
get your engineering license, you have to have so much successful engineering time, and
working for Dub Cotton in Austin putting myself through law school, that was part of my
time. Working the summers for the Highway Department after I graduated was part of my
time. Working with some of this stuff with the San Antonio River Authority was part of my
time because some that I had to do under the chief engineer. So all of that put together, I
finally got enough time that I also got my professional engineering license. So I was dual
licensed once that occurred.
Were there any things that were fundamentally different between doing highway work,
though, and then doing work with a water resource?
Oh, yeah. In alignment and things like that, not a whole lot of difference because even on the
highway work, we were dealing with drainage because we had to - when we came to a river
or a creek, we had to make sure we had enough rights-of-way and !1 to fi~1re ~t from a
G.~-(-1 ' .. ' ,:J ~
preliminary standpoint how long the bridge had to be or how much~Haudibl~ we had to
have. So all of that was rough calculations on drainage, so we had to do that in alignment, so
I was dealing with water volumes in highway work.
But with the River Authority, I wasn't doing any calculations on water volumes; I was just
doing alignment because the Corps had already said- we were doing the work for the Corps.
We were doing the right-of-way necessary for the Corps of Engineers which designed the
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project, so we had to just tweak these things and make sure we had enough rights-of-way
which was the local sponsor's obligation, and the River Authority was the local sponsor.
So when you talk about helping create this particular alignment, would the Corps - this
would be, what, the Galveston or the Fort Worth District?
Fort Worth Distlict.
At what point did it shift over from Galveston to Fort Worth?
I don't know.
It was before you came?
No. The San Antonio River Authority was dealing with both districts because Fort Worth
District has nothing to do with navigation; Galveston did. Galveston wti~tercoastal canal
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and all of the other thing, and so the barge canal project, which was one of the River
Authority's projects, we dealt with Galveston District. The flood control and water supply
projects were Fort Worth District.
So what would have been the sharing of responsibility in terms of design, because it sounds
as if you were implying that there was a certain amount of design input from this agency with
the Corps?
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No1mally, in Corps of Engineer work at that particular time, the Corps would design the
project, they would have an agreement with the local sponsor, and the local sponsor's
supposed to provide the rights-of-way. Well, the San Antonio River Authority, yes, that was
our responsibility, but we -
(End of Tape 1, Side 1. Beginning of Tape 1, Side 2)
-- the Corps was the -
It was basically a pretty straight trapezoidal channel with enough capacity to pass the design
flood. Well, as we were coming into the historic districts and everything and there were
some nice cypress trees, and we decided that, no, we can't take out those beautiful cypress
~~ (f
trees, we're going to leave some of them. So~iscussions with the Corps and say, tou
know, {au can do it another way, you don't have to do it that way."
So we had to come in with certain modifications that we were suggesting that the Corps
incorporate into their project. We were providing the rights-of-way and they would say,
"Okay. If it doesn't cost us any more money or so on and so forth," then they would
incorporate it. And they started incorporating some of this on the lower section below Alamo
Street between Lone Star Boulevard and Alamo Street, and there's several beautiful cypress
trees that are still in the channel that were left because of the modifications suggested by the
San Antonio River Authority, which were some of the neighborhood suggestions coming up,
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you know, "Don't screw up our river," and so on and so forth. So that was going on when
we were successful there.
Then when we got into this next section, this cutoff section between Alamo and Johnson
Street, where we had to sort of thread the needle between historic structures and the Pioneer
Flour Mill and had to come up with a wall section. And instead of just a plain concrete wall
section, we decided that we wanted- and whatever kind of railings the Corps was going to
put on, we decided we wanted wrought iron railings that fit the historic neighborhood. And
we decided that we would put some stone work every so often in the walls to break the stark
concrete look of it.
So those modifications were made, and the Corps would accommodate the design and would
pay for some of it as long as it- railing was railing, and they would pay for the railing. And
they would design the concrete with a little notch in it so that we could come in after they got
through, and then we could put in the stone work, so it was a shared cost on some of that. So
that's how the modifications and discussions early on went with the Corps.
Was this typical of water authorities, of river authorities?
No, no, not at all. We were sort of the cutting edge of getting the Corps to change their M.O.
At first they didn't like it, but as they saw the end products, they began to like it. And we
were modifying some of the things they did, and they began to get design awards for doing
that. It was not because of their design- well, it was their design in the long run, but it
16
wasn't their thought. The more we got into it, the more they liked to partner with us and do
things with us because it was mutually beneficial.
Was there any particular person there at the Fort Worth District who you found to be
amenable to these ideas initially?
No, I can't recall any person, any individual. Over a period of time, once we started doing
this, we got to be very friendly with every district engineer and every division engineer in
Dallas, which was very useful, because the[9<>nservation ~ciety here in San Antonio and the
neighborhood groups that we were dealing with - especially the Conservation Society - well,
I talked about the San Juan Ditch case. lt was landowners and the Conservation Society, who
was a landowner in the Bergs Mill area, and the litigation was them against us, and so we
were spending a lot of effort to defend the River Authority's positio;-ind they were trying to
v
defeat the River Authority's position back in that issue there. Digressing a lot, but I was
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working with Harvey Hardy on that"San Juan Ditch case in my legal aspect.
Tell me, since that's come up a couple of times in our conversation, give me some
background about how that San Juan Ditch case came about and who the key players were
and how it ended up being resolved.
Well, in a very rough analysis, basically governmental entities under their police powers
could do certain things; and if there were damages to individuals or property owners, they
couldn't get compensated or really didn't have that much standing because it was for the
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better - better for the community - to solve the flood control problem, to solve the police
problem - the police powers of govemment at that time were looked at much more strongly
than they are now. And so when the Corps of Engineers designed this project at Espada, the
dam was saved and Espadafitch kept flowing. But for San Juan pitch, the dam was taken,
and there was no more water for the San Juanpitch. And so the people along the San Juan
pitch, including the Conservation Society, sued the River Authority for taking their water
rights and their water - not their water right, their water.
Why did it get to that point? I would have thought that preservation of that flowing water
would have been fundamentally part of the design, the preservation of that flow of water.
Any idea why that happened?
J
I think basically- this was in the '50s, and they were trying to get the flood control done so
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rapidly, and the Corps was just going so rapidly, and the Corps, I imagin~ didn't come
fl
across Spanish aqueducts. The Espada had a lot of fanns that were still being irrigated off of
that. And the topography was such that it was easy enough to keep water in the old channel
to go over the old dam, and so that was kept intact.
When they got to San Juan, which was further upstream and the diversion there, there was
hardly any irrigation going on. There's not much going on here, and we've got to get this
flood control done, and I think they just went and did it. And when the suit was first brought
and everything, the River Authority won, and it went to- now, here's where I'm getting a
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little- it's either- yeah, it was the Supreme Court, and there was a five-to-four decision, I
think, in favor of the River Authority, saying, no, your police power does work.
It trumps water rights.
It trumps this damage. But on re-hearing, they changed their mind, and it established the law
in Texas from that point on; it was the re-hearing and it changed it. Then after that decision
was made that there was damages, then each one had to be tried individually, and that's how
I
I got involved. All of this earlier stuffl was not with the River Authority. I was involved in
\_.,
the individual trials of the landowners.
So what was the purpose of the individual trials?
Damages.
And did they ever have the water restored?
Ah-ha, yes. And so we didn't have to pay the damages, but we were losing on the damages,
so it would have got to be a point both, I think, because of the attitude of the River Authority
then was changing because we also went from an appointed board, appointed by the governor,
to an elected board. And David Brune and - we just had ~what you might call a more
enlightened- whatever you want to call it - aspect, and we decided to, "Well, look, let's
19
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build a dam and divert water back into the ditch, put it back into operation, and therefore all
" these landowners, they won't have a cause of action."
Well, it still sort of was - the lawsuit was over natural gravity flow . Well, the natural gravity
flow was still being diverted by a structure. So we put in a structure that would provide
gravity flow, but that ended up failing after we put it in. After about 10 or 15 years, that
whole structure failed, and so we put in a pump station. So now teclmically probably we're
not providing it by natural gravity flow because we have a pump station, but they're getting
water.
Which was the point.
Which was the point, but also, fortunately or unfortunately, the ditch was really in terrible
condition. And you put water at the head gate, which was the only responsibility of the River
Authority - it wouldn't go anywhere because the ditch was in such bad repair, the water
would all leave, and it wouldn't get down to the people~ said, "Where's my water?"
"You know what? Landowner, you are the ditch company. You're responsible for your
conveyance down there. That's not our responsibility. We're~ at the headgate." Well,
not until the National Park Service got in much later, and they sort of took over the ditch, and~
it got repaired enough to get water down there.
So it was a combination that once the gravity aspect failed, the landowners really couldn't
come after the River Authority anymore because they didn't have anything to get the water to
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them anyway. Even if we put in a pump station, they had no way to get it there. So it sort'1r._
II
if somebody really, I guess, wanted to bring suit and say, "You've got to do something
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again," I don't kno¥tt would be successful or not because there's a wonderful pump
station there that can provide them all the water they need.
The biggest problem also is who determines the split of what water is left. When there's no
spring flow and there's very little water in the river, who detetmines who gets the San Juan
fitch or the Espada pitch,"lhey both have water rights. And so then who .. .
Be according to seniority of water rights.
Well, yeah, but then who's pumping at what time and, you know, it would be extremely
difficult in a drought period to determine who got the water if they were really using it. I
don't think there's a single person irrigating off of the San Juan Ditch. It is still extremely
valuable from a historic standpoint for the San Antonio missions, National Histon1'lsark for
that water to flow, but there are people ~still irrigate off of Espada. So that would be an
interesting- I would hope it would only go to litigation - or to a water rights person that
could divvy up the water and not go to litigation, because there's not a good answer to that.
Do you think politically speaking that the San Juan )fitch case played any part in that major
change that occurred in the early )60s?
Yeah, I think it did.
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Was it that high profile?
That's hard to say. I'm not so sure if it had much to do with it or whether it was just strictly
"2-
from a political - and I mean that meaning - I think it was mainly just Henry Gonzale~ that
wanted it changed because of- and I don't know how this came about, how it was perceived
as a problem, and I think it was a problem. But how it was perceived and how it came to
ligh(.lt was my understanding- well, Frank Drought~s the chainnan of the San
Antonio River Authority and an engineer here in town, and he was getting work from the San
Antonio River Authority, so obviously there was a conflict of interest of some kind. And I
-z,.
think Henry Gonzalez who was in the Texas Senate wanted that changed to eliminate that -
the old board of the River Authority which was appointed by the governor. The old River
Authority also, the original River Authority was Bexar County, and they had representatives,
but they had no physical boundaries of Wilson, Kames, and Goliad Counties. The legislation
in '61 changed that and set up political boundaries of Bexar, Wilson, Kames, and Goliad
Counties and elected officials from those that would serve on the board.
I see. So it wasn 't the entire county that was covered.
No.
And who determined what those boundaries were within each of those counties?
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Well, there wasn't any boundaries. There was just representatives. The governor would
appoint a representative from Wilson County, so they had to represent water interests in
Wilson County. Somebody from Kames County, somebody from Goliad County, several
~
from Bexar County, and then he would appoint the chairman - I don't knowfihe appointed
the chairman or the chairman was elected by the group. I don't know that. We could
probably go back to the minutes and detennine that, but I wasn't cognizant ofthat.
Going back to the relationship with the San Antonio Conservation Society on the San Juan
Ditch case, was there a point at which the relationship between San Antonio River Authority
and the Conservation Society changed? Because that must have been a fairly acrimonious
situation, and yet you were talking earlier about the cooperation between SARA and the
~ciety for design issues.
Yeah. I'm trying to think of the sequence. We were doing the river between Lone Star
Boulevard and Alamo Stre' saving the cypress trees and changing the aligmnent slightly to
do that and working with some of the neighborhood people which were somf- they were the
{
predecessor to the King William Association, and we were dealing with those folks, and
many of them were members of the Conservation Society.
So you had that relationship happening and people not happy with what we were doing but
seeing that we were doing things a little bit different. And then that was in the mid-.) 60s. We
were still having the individual suits of the San Juan Ditch going on, but about that same time
frame we were building the new - the gravity flow modifications to San Juan Dam to put
23
water back in the ditch. So that was sort of solving that problem and getting the
Conservation Society to sign off on that solution.
Then we did the segment of getting through right at the Pioneer Flour Mm and working with
-one of the houses on this side was O'Neal Ford's office, Wagner House, and we were
~
coming right between the~,ill and Wagner House which was one of O'Neal Ford's offices,
so you were dealing with folks who were very much involved in conservation, and we were
really trying to get things done and modify things, and I think all of this was building into
tllis, "Hey, these aren't such real bad guys after all. They're working with us now."
About that time in '68, David Brune decided- took the job with the Trinity River Authority,
and the board selected me as general manager of the San Antonio River Authority, and I was
just determined that we were going to work with the folks. And we did and really worked - Jrv
hard with the neighbors aRd this King William stretch of the river and ended up with some
people wanting it one way and some people wanting it another way, but with us being
completely open to listening to all of this. But when we had to make the final decision, there
were some people that weren't happy, but they were mad sometimes at their own neighbors,
not at us, because we had been so open about it that we could say, "Hey, look."
The Arsenal Street Bridge is a good example. We had a lot of people that wanted the
Arsenal Street Bridge closed, they didn't like to cut through traffic; and other people said,
"No, that's our pathway, we have to have that." So we would just sit there and listen to it
24
back and forth and back and forth. And finally it became evident that the vast majority
-tk
wanted it open, so we left it open. But we could have taken it out for flood control.
"'
..fl.--
So you build this sort of relationship, and then once that started happening, we would start
1\
inviting- the River Authority would say, "District Engineer, come on down to Fiesta/ ' so we
would get them working with - and we had good relations with the Conservation Society
personnel at that time. We said, ''Now, y' all send a letter up to the Fort Worth District
Engineer and invite him to your party on the river during Fiesta." And they started doing that,
and that was a big thing, and, boy, the Corps loved that. All the district engineers loved
coming down there and putting on their uniform and hobnobbing with all the folks in San
Antonio. So it really worked out to be a very good relationship which-
Cross pollination of cultures.
Yeah. And eventually in the sequence of things, we were trying to, down in the Bergs Mill
area again, the Espada Aqueduct which is one of the jewels of our historic remain~
/ ~·
was really being threatened by the flood waters. We ~to do something to protect it or it
would have been washed out. There was a lot of erosion damage. So we went to the Corps
·• ''ok~.~
and said, "Can you do anythinl, no benefit-cost analysis.~ can't be involved in this."
i\
.LterJei-
So my chairman at the time was Paul~d Paul and I got a meeting with the
ihief ofj.ngineers in Washington, D.C., and Beverly ~~as the president of the
Conservation Society, and Pinkie Martin was there, and I don't know what she was at that
25
' ~ • I
1,:- ~t! - . . ·
time. Anyhow, Pinkie and Beverly and Paul@r and I met with the chief of engineers.
We had a meeting in the afternoon, and right before the meeting, Paul and I met with Pinkie,
''What are we going to do? When are we going to go meet with them? What are we going to
say?" "We don't know."
~
So we had a meeting about 3:30, so we got to the chiefs office at 3:30, chief invites us in,
.A.
and pretty soon here comes the- I don't remember what their titles are, but in the chiefs
office, there's the chief and two other generals; they're the three generals, and they (i~e1
~~
~together. All three of them were there, and we met with them, and that was a
done deal after that. We got protection for the - all of a sudden, that project went from a
benefit-cost ratio that 'We can't do this" to all of a sudden it was a successful project, and we
bypassed the floodwaters and protected the aqueduct.
Now, who would have brought it to your attention that the aqueduct needed protection?
p.,..,~····
You know, I don't remember. I remember that there was erosion and the floodwaters were
ll
getting worse because more and more development on Piedras or Six Mile Creek was
happening, so there was more and more floodwaters coming down. And I don't recall where
the genesis ofthat was, who said, "Can you help u)" or whether we did it internally or
whether the Conservation Society or somebody else did. I just don't remember.
26
So structurally speaking, from the standpoint of an organization, if it had been coming from
the Conservation Society or from architectural historians or some group, how would they
have known to come to you-all instead of going directly to the Corps?
Well, because we were the local sponsor.
And that was generally well-known in the community, that that was what the structural
organization was?
Uh-huh.
Okay. I wanted to go back to the jcequia business and the main canal. Those are such
specialized structures, and I wondered, there's really no place else in Texas except in the
Valley where there are those kinds of colonial structures. And I wondered where you-all
went for the information when you were first tJying to reconstruct a gravity flow system?
How did you know how to do that~ how to design that?
First of all, the Espada, we left it intact and reinforced it or whatever - that happened before
my time. But they did some type of work on the original structure, which is still there. The
Corps channel went to the west of the original channel, and the River Authority in the Corps
channel built a dam, gravity dam. So the Corps built it wide enough so that the River
Authority could build a dam to get enough water behind it so we could divert water into the
27
old river chalUlel, and the old river channel then- but the Corps channel was wide enough to
be able to handle the flood flow. So that worked.
Okay.
At ~Juan, which is further up, the gravity -~ations were such that when you took
it out, there wasn't enough room to make the channel wide enough to put a gravity dam up to
divert water into the old river channel. Now, they did make a- there was a gravity dam put
((
in there, but it wasn't tall enough, so the solution to that was strictlJ'~iow tall you going to
It
make it to make it go around or what are you going to do? You've got to have one, then, that
does not impede the flood flow.
So we added wing walls and gates to it, and they were very crude gates. They were just
hinged at the top. This was on top ofthe gravity dam that was sitting in the bottom of the
channel, and with that gravity dam, there was enough flood flow capacity so that the design
flood would pass. So we had to add height, so we added these gates, and the gates were
hinged from the top, and they had shear pins. So you just hold the gate in place and put these
shear pins in, and when the floodwaters got up so high, it would push so hard it would shear
~
the pins and open. I mean, .it-was nothing magic about this. And sometimes they work and
sometimes they didn't work.
But the problem was that this was not a solid dam. It had been a dam that had been designed
- an earthen dam that was capped with concrete, and there was leakage, and then there was
28
~
erosion, and then you had voids in the dam and structural -without the dirt under there, the
A
shell wasn't strong enough on its own. It had to be fully concrete for it to work. So that
thing failed, that thing didn't work, and then the gates, they didn't work eventually.
[ Ja•~
And so we just had to get rid of all of that and put back a solid concrete p.ooi ·that is not near
./f.-
as high and eventually put in a big pump station. Lift the water up, put it into - I mean, we
~
still have the original dam, it's way up high on the adjacent bank, but the flood control
'J-channel
is so much lower that you had to get the water up there, you have to get it up by
1\
gravity with big gates -
(End of Tape 1, Side 2. Beginning ofTape 2, Side 1)
've.
- and I wondered which ones you had to deal with and how they affected what the River
-<
Authority did?
Well, the River Authority, the drought is the water supply issue, the spring flow issue. The
River Authority in its evolution, flood control and navigation were its two main powers when
~
it was established, and not until 1961 aad-the major rewrite of the Authority's enabling
legislation occurred did water supply and recreation and all these other aspects come into
play. And the River Authority was much involved in all this flood control work, not only
charu1el work but also the small watershed projects that rural dams, and it was all flood
control.
29
Gio V\ -z. ~ [ Q l--
And also, because Henry Gonzale~nce he got into Congress, was enamored by the thought
of a barge canal, and that thing got resurrected, and we had public hearings and everything
and tried to get the Galveston Corps interested again in the navigation project. And that thing
was never going to work because there's just not enough water in the river.
l';\-~1'\2-0.\ QZ. ~
And besides, I don't think Henry G~es ever, understood the elevation of San Antonio,
because San Antonio is higher H'f'clevation than Dallas and Fmi Worth. Everybody thinks
they're going up to Dallas and Fort Worth; you're going down to Dallas and Fort Worth. So
there were fewer locks getting to Dallas and Fort Worth, and they~ navigation scheme
going which they could never get off the ground because it cost too much money. But from
an engineering standpoint, it was much easier to get to Dallas and Fort Worth than it is to get
to San Antonio because you had to have more locks, and of course the population and
everything for Dallas and Fort Worth is so much greater.
That's why David Brune went to the Trinity River Authority was because he had been
through the initial restarting of the San Antonio J avigation project, at least in concept,
G ON a-1 (JZ- 1"
because of Henry Gonzales. So he went up there, and they went through all of this, and
through elections they lost that; they never got their navigation project. And ours just finally
(;rot' 1- o..' (! ~
j~ faded away. But Henry Go~very time we would go and visit him, he was just dead
set on having this navigation project, and he just never understood the physics of it, the
mechanics of it. He just never understood it.
30
I wondered why it popped up again in the J60s?
Just because it was a great idea. We could have all of this economic development. We could
be a port, the Port of San Antonio. Look what Houston did. Of course, that was a deep draft
navigation.
Were there some serious droughts between the ios and 2000 that you-all had to deal with in
particular ways?
See, you had the drought of the 1 50s, and there was just a tremendous concern that the
Edwards would not sustain the growth of San Antonio, there wouldn't be enough water. You
had some evidence, and there still is - this is still a bone of contention - that if you draw the
Edwards down too far- there's massive amounts of water there, but if you draw it down too
far, there's bad water in the Edwards, and bad water would encroach into~d water and
then ruin wells and what would this mean and so on and so forth. During the latter part of
the drought of the )50s, there was in the wells right along what we call the good/bad water
line, that there was some movement of this.
So the City Water Board decided, "We've got to supplement our water supply to make sure
we have enough." So they wanted to build Canyon Dam, and GBRA wanted to build
Canyon Dam, and that was a big controversy. Well, the River Authority -let me go back.
After the drought of the Jsos, Lyndon Jolmson was U.S. Senator and decided that Texas
needed to have a water program or something. So he introduced legislation and got it passed
31
to establish the U.S. Study Commission-Texas, and this was under the auspices of or under
the guidance of the Bureau ofReclamation.
There were commissioners selected from all parts of Texas, and the person selected- and I
don't know who did the selection, maybe the Bureau ofReclamation, I don't know who did it,
but Victor Braunig was the person selected to represent the San Antonio River Basin. Victor
Braunig had been the manager of the City Public Service Board and had retired, and he was
selected.
So he was involved in putting together the U.S. Study Commission plan for Texas, and that
included development of a lot of reservoir projects, including Cibolo, including Cuero I and
II, including Goliad, including the Trans-Texas- there was a big what they eventually called
Burley's Ditch because Harry Burley was the regional director of the Commission of
Reclamation and he was very much involved in this, and they had this big massive water
conveyance project that paralleled the coast but was about 40 miles inland and you take all
these eastern waters and move it to the west.
He knew quite a bit about the overall state water picture, and when Vic was selected as
general manager of the River Authority, he was a person that knew a lot about the state water
picture and had been involved with Walter McAllister, who was the mayor, and others and
decided, "Hey, let's do supplemental water." It's my understanding that there was some type
of an agreement that, yeah, the River Authority could go after it and maybe try to get Cuero
32
and these built. In the meantime, the Water Board wanted to get the pe1mit for Canyon Dam,
which was a Corps of Engineer project. Vic was working on the other.
\. r · r I,.. Q(~VrJ ~ ~i\l C-\"- .... ';J
Well, what happened is the Board of Water EngineerS)~ the Texas Water Commissier;;~d ----
decided that the permit should go to the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority instead of the
City of San Antonio for Canyon Dam. So the City Water Board decided to sue the Texas
Water Commission or Board ofWater Engineers, and so that was the big Canyon lawsuit.
~ V2.~'lnk-,n~ 11_ . .9--:-'
~ ~f(P the meantime, Vic Braunig struck a deal with Robert.:Ver~~) who was the
general manager of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority- now, remember you~ae-L-J~
Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority defending their Canyon permit and building Canyon Dam
- . t . ~ 'I ....~ ~. '" (_
with the Corps of Engineers, and here's Robert.:Y~~~~d tl~e G~AA making a deal with
the San Antonio River Authority to build Cuero, and San Antonio River Authority was going
to do Cibolo, anKewere going to build Goliad and then swap out water with taking Cuero
water, which was closer to San Antonio than Goliad water and higher in elevation, and then
whatever water that we took that they needed, then Goliad would supply them at the lower
level because at that time it was thought that all the industrial development that was going on,
Dow Chemical and all of th:is, was going to have tremendous water needs out on the coast.
Well, that never really occurred, but at that time, that was the real thought that was going on.
~ere going to have this tremendous industrial development that needed big water.
Are those the plants that are down near - down from Victoria?
33
I
Uh-huh, yeah. They just t~water conservation measures and so on and so forth.
Anyhow, that water demand did not materialize. But anyway, here's the River Authority that
signed this contract with the GBRA to develop and get 180,000 acre/feet of water out of
Cuero, and City Water Board suing and fighting the Canyon Dam and everybody mad at
everybody, and all this was in the mid) 60s. I was much involved in that, too, because I was
sort of on the barbeque and chicken circuit with David Brune because we were putting forth
the River Authority's position that this is a solution until the big conflict between the River
(( 'J
Authority - even though Vic Braunig and Mayor McAllister at one time said ~ after it, but
then they got mad because we did go after it and get it done and they couldn't get it done. In
the meantime, nothing ever got done. After 40 years, nothing's still done.
But anyway that's how the drought - the drought was driving the water supply issues, and
the water supply issues was driven because Vic Braunig had been appointed - retired from
City Public Service - appointed to the U.S. Study Commission because of Lyndon Johnson's
fear or the drought of the) 50s creating this problem for Texa5 and then Vic being hired by
the River Authority as its general manage/and then Vic and David and then here comes Fred
in, and we were trying to get water for San Antonio and trying to figure out how we could
help the Edwards and build recharge structures and things like this. So the drought drives all
~oe7h-ofthe
water supply issues. Rainfall~) drive/the flood control issues.
Were there any subsequent droughts that had anything- I mean, they wouldn't have
approximated that effect, but that were significant in terms of policy?
34
The answer to that is yes, but I'm trying to think of the sequence because you had so many
different players and things, roles, positions changing. At one time, this was after - Robert
Van Dyke- I had become manager of the River Authority. Robert Van Dyke was the
manager of the City Water Board and had been having difficulty- well, they couldn't get the
Canyon deal. But they figured that they needed to have a supplemental water supply, so he
wrote a letter to me, the San Antonio River Authority, general manager of the City Water
((
Board writing to the general manager of the San Antonio River Authority, Would you please
II
pursue Cibolo Reservoir and Applewhite Reservoir and we will sign contracts with you.
Well, here's where, maybe rightly or wrongly, from my standpoint of observing and knowing
yields and things like this of reservoirs, I wasn't that much enthused about Applewhite, but
we bad Cibolo in the process of going. We had the politics all worked out. Cuero had sort of
floundered and wasn't going anywhere. We had a lot of opposition for Cuero around Cuero.
People did not want it. But you had a lot of people around Cibolo that wanted it; this was
going to be a great economic boom for them, recreation, and this is going to be a big deal.
(~
Chick Kazen was the Congressman that was on whatever committee that Bureau ofRe~ had
their stuff, Interior Committee I think, House Interior- Interior and Insular ~ffairs or
k"-
something like that. So he and his colleagues -and at time, all of the people in the Bureau of
Reclamation, both Republicans and Democrats, they were the best buddies and they went to
everything, and there was no animosity between these guys at all. I remember Biz Johnson
was a Democrat from middle California, northern California, I don't remember. I can't
35
remember the Republican from northern California. They were the best buddies. And Chick
Kazen, they'd go to these hearings and they were really good, good fiiends.
But anyhow, we had this legislation to authorize the construction of Cibolo Reservoir, and it
passed
1 ~thorization for Cibolo passed as did Lake Texana%.e bill, and maybe Choke
A
Canyon. I think all of them were the same year, same time frame. So all we had to do was
sign contracts and we were going to have a project. Well, about that time, city govenunent
it'san Antonio - the City Water Board, their Chairman Kaufman went up to testify for the
bill, so we had the City Water Board testifying, "We need this project and so on and so
forth."
So we got it authorized and writing all these things and getting ready for it, and about this
time, city government in San Antonio changes, and Charles Becker becomes mayor and
Kaufman either dies or his tennis up. Anyhow, three things happen, and, of course the
~"Crm~~
mayor is part of the City Water Board, he's one offive members. Reverend(~, I think,
was on there, and his term - two terms expired, the mayor changed, a new chairman came in.
And I went to a meeting over there sitting at the City Water Board and John Schaffer, the
new chairman of the City Water Board has their engineer get up and say, "You shouldn't do
I J (J I J
£ ,:·-....fl -t'-·l""'
this. You~ build Cibolo." Pow. That project was dead right there right in front of my
eyes.
And Chick Kazen was beside himself. "What happened?" ~nd everybody was wondering
what happened. It was just - quite frankly it was an engineer that had his project that he
36
wanted to build and wanted noibuild omKs to build the competing project. And so they
)
listened to that engineer, and it was dead. It was absolutely dead. And since that time,
people all around Cibolo now decide they don't want it, so it's a dead topic. And it could
have been built.
Was that the one that you f elt fundamentally, though, wouldn't provide enough water?
Well, no, it would not. But there were other things happening. At one time, we had several
of us, City Water Board, Bexar Met, SARA, and the Edwards, we had all come and put
together a study about Medina Lake, and we were going to get Medina Lake water and swap
out sewer water for the irrigation aspect, which would have been, from an engineering
~~
standpoint, health standpoint, everything els~ perfectly legitimate. But you can't make
somebody do something they don't want to do, and Bexar-Medina-Atascosa District No.
1, which owns Medina Lake, they didn't want to do that, so that kind of fell through. But you
could look at- if we got Medina Lake and you built Applewhite and you build Cibolo and
put them together with all of their different rainfall patterns and everything, all of a sudden,
each individually which had very small yields, if you put them in conjunction and you work
them that way, all of a sudden that yield goes up tremendously.
And that would have worked. It might not have solved all the problems, but it would have
worked. It would have been a tremendous water supply. So individually, no; standing on it's
own, no. But if you pulled water from this one that had a lot of water and put it- and that 's
where Applewhite would have been very useful for San Antonio. Standing on~n, it
.........
37
wouldn't have, but it's a very close-in reservoir, and feeding from other sources, it would be
the terminal reservoir which you would have put your major treatment plant at. It made
sense.
01-'
So seeing it 9/ a system.
As a system, as a system. But no one really touted this. Even the City Water Board did not
tout it as such. And so they got themselves in a trap and didn't know how to market their
solutions.
Was Applewhite one where there were cross purposes with the Conservation Society?
1r-V
No. Conservation Society didn't. ..
They didn 't really care? Because I know there were some very important historic properties
there.
There were, but they di9 not get that much involved in that. The Walsh property was one~ tlle.l,.,._~{'o;z:c::..
lN-"
them that was involved.
~
Explain to me the lines of authority of the City Water Board and San Antonio River Authority?
Where do they overlap? Where are they separate?
38
Well, they're totally separate. They're totally separate. The City Water Board is owned fully
100 percent by the City of San Antonio.
But you talked about their going after water in the same way that I've heard you talk about
the River Authority going after water, and you both do it for the service of San Antonio ...
0~\
Jecause if we didn't develop Cibolo, we had agreements or letters from Kenedy and Kames
City that wanted some of the water, so I mean, we can develop a water supply and through
contracts provide water for different parties. And I don't know that much about it. This is
where I assume, if you're going to be doing - you should be doing Greg in this oral history
n-t;, '·
because he's the general manager now I'm(retlf'li'i-g. They have these agreements with several
.____..-'
water purveyors, not the City Water Board, that if we develop water supplies, we're going to
be doing it in conjunction with everybody else and we'll be the lead agency. So the River
Authority is sort of the over incumbent. We can provide water to the City Water Board, we
can provide water to Bexar Met, we can provide water for Alamo Heights.
Well, why would the Water Board ever go out on its on and try and develop a project?
Because they have the authority to do it.
Just because they can?
They can, yeah, they can.
39
And when they choose to do that, how much coordination do they do with you-all?
Well, they don't, and that's the problem because - and that builds up some ofthe animosity
and some of the problems because you get- the River Authority looks at projects -we look
at bays and estuaries, we look at instream flows, we look at downstream problems, whereas
the City Water Board - for example Applewhite. When they were going to get their permit
for Applewhite- they're wonderful engineers -the way they got their yield is they would
just build a dam and take every drop of water, period. And that's the way they applied for
the permit. Not one drop of water would get through the dam. Downstream was -
For downstream users.
-wiped clean. Well, the San Antonio River Authority, they didn't ask us to do this, we went
in and supported their permit but with restriction that you had to make releases. So we would
go in, support the permit but with these things. And we prevailed. The Water Commission
granted the pennit but with the releases or the pass-throughs so the downstream water would
be protected.
So we come at it from a more holistic standpoint that, you know, you've got to protect
downstream- instream flows, downstream flows, so on and so forth, but just because we
want to protect that doesn't mean we don't need water. I mean, we have to save up some
water and use it. So we had some interesting times.
40
{\ce-.Jes """f
And over a period of time, we would have agreements. When Joe ~was the City
Water Board manager, we had agreements where Joe said, "Y' all go and start development.
We'll work with you. You go develop it." And then Joe's not there anymore, and then you
get somebody else in there, they don't want to do that anymore. So you have these things
never necessarily formally, but you have these agreements and you have this working
relationship that work looks very positive, and then it goes away.
When we were working on Canyon, they started to want to provide some water supply to
Boerne out of Canyon, Kendall County, and all that developing area up there, and they're
going to be putting in treatment plants and pipelines to provide their service area, and to do
that effectively, you needed to- you'd want to size it properly and have somebody pay for
the surplus when they didn't need it. So that would have been a perfect place for San
Antonio to come in and take some of that on an intetim basis. At the very first, San Antonio
said, "No, we're not interested in that." And I stepped up to the plate and said, "We are.
We' ll sign with you, GBRA. We' ll take some of that water and provide it to (inaudible)."
And all of a sudden, then they decide, "Well, maybe we better get involved." And it ended
up that they are, that they ended up. And Bexar Met was in the mix of all of this, and they
were ...
Now, how were they involved in it?
41
Bexar Met was establishe*d - I don't know when they were established, late ~Os I guess. l ~# Hc.r)C~'Id ·.
don't know. But they were providmg-water for basically Harlindale/outh andjouthwest
San Antonio or Bexar County, San Antonio, where the City Water Board was not. And for
whatever reason, they also had a little service area near Castle Hills, some in San Antonio,
they had a little service area up there. And in the )60s that's all they had. It might have been
10 percent of the water that was delivered in this area. So you had Bexar Met doing this.
Well, then Bexar Met started getting greedy ~ey had expansion.
Needy.
They had expansion. I actually- they got greedy and wanted to expand and buy systems that
- see, a lot of developers because of the Edwards, they could develop water supplies on their
own and- water and sewer supplies. So you had these little WCID, water control
improvement districts, they would set up and establish their own utility systems. I think their
~ I
basic plan was establish them, get them going, then when necess~ell them to the City
Water Board.
Well, they always wanted too much for them, and the City Water Board didn't want to pay a
premium for them and a lot of times they weren't up tdty Water Board standards. So there
ll
was one or two systems that the developers wanted to sell to get out of the business, and the
City Water Board said, "It's not worth it. Dollar-wise they're not worth it."
42
---
..
I~
Bexar Met said, (iuanaielc). So they'd go and buy them up, and they kept buying up these
systems all over the place getting further and further and further in debt But their game plan
J
was to encircle the~ity of San Antonio and to cut them off Yeah, to cut .them off. That was
their game plan.
What would be the point of that?
Power. Control.
Just only that?
~tually sat with their general manager and their lawyer when they did that. They
showed me, said, "This is our game plan."
And with the idea that that would make the City dependent on them for water supply or just
for the heck of it?
No. The /,ity would have theirs and they didn't care what the pity had because everything
was growing outside of it, and ifthey encircled them and had ofthe city circled and the City
Water Board couldn't do anything because they had the water supply systems all around
them, then they could as San Antonio and this area grew, which it's doing, they would be in
control. They would have the power. Now, where they were going to get all the water-
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(End ofTape 2, Side 1. Beginning of Tape 2, Side 2)
- I don't know that it was so much that they could control development as I'm not sure it
wasn't just raw, gut, "I want to be in charge." I don't know the answer to that.
I noticed that there were two projects where SARA worked with developers also: the Upper
Cibolo and the Salatrillo.
Uh-huh.
So the River Authority was doing equivalent kinds of projects with developers to what Bexar
Met was doing?
Now, that wasn't water. That was sewer.
For sewer. Okay. But what Bexar Met was doing was strictly for water?
Well, water and- I don't know whether they wanted to get in the sewer business or not, and I
don't know whether they ever did. I just don't know. Their main was water.
What was the reason for working with developers on these sewer systems?
44
Almost had to. I'm trying to remember how we got into the business. We got in through our
water pollution control business as a result of the 1961 legislation. We did a basin-wide
water quality study of the streams and creeks and everything and actually came up and made
suggestions to the Texas Water Quality Board that when they issued sewer permits that they
be stricter than what they were normally doin!7 jecause we had determined in our studies
that we needed a higher degree of treatment.
Then about this time, the City of Converse needed a sewer system, and the City of Live Oak
... -
-it was just a WCI~ they were going to build a sewer system, and Universal City needed a
sewer system. The topography of Universal City is things basically on the east side of Pat
Booker Road would go towards the Cibolo, and everything on the west side would go
~
towards Salatrillo Creek. And so it~ just by looking at the topography and looking at
all of these needs, you know, why have the developer here and the developer here and a city
here and a city here, we' ll build a plant and just tie them all together and then make deals
with these people to make sure it all works. And so it was just sort of necessity put it
together.
Because the development was going to occur, and there was going to be a sewage treatment
plant, but we lmew that these little sewage treatment plants operated by developers don't do
such a good job, so our water quality aspects said, "let's try to eliminate these things and put
))
it into a more regional context. So you started making deals with developers so that they
would not do that. And that's how that happened.
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) ) /
I think about the scale of development in the '80s, late '70s/early '80s, and how it exploded
in some parts of Texas. Did that happen in this area as well?
Oh, yeah.
What was the fallout from that?
Well, some of it- and it was very difficult because when we were putting these things
together, you would put them together based upon, quote, need. And here's a developer,
they're going to do this and they're going to put in this, no don't do this, we'll put in this
sewer line and so on and so forth. And you do it based upon a growth projection. Well, then
all of a sudden, development falls off and you're sitting there holding the bag, so you don't
develop anything for a while and you hold on, and then all of a sudden, here comes
development back in a certain area. "Well, you haven't provide us the service."
So at one point, I think it was with Ray Ellison, we needed to expand the plant and to go
through our normal procedure of engineering it properly, going out for bids, getting the
permits and all of this stuff, it was very time consuming, whereas if you - ~ade a deal
with Ray Ellison, "You build the plant, we'll get the permit. And you build the plant but you
do it to our specifications, and you just give it to us, and we will let you connect in it."
And we issued what was called connection certificates. This was just made up. We would
sign - I don't know how many of these things I signed. They were like little pieces of stock.
46
You get one residential connection - and they turned them in. They were just as good as
cash. And I must have signed 500 of those, I don't know, probably 300 of them. But I
signed all of these sewer connection certificates. We were just flying by the seat of our pants
trying to make things work, and they did. We were creative.
(Laughter.)
Well, it sounds like it. So if a developer wanted to have sewer connections or sewer capacity
and they wanted to make a deal with somebody, why would they go to San Antonio River
Authority as opposed to going to Bexar Met as opposed to going to the city.
In the sewer business, whoever gets there first locks it up. You're in a monopoly situation.
Oh. Explain that to me.
Well, you have a service area. If you've got a line already there or close by, it just takes too
much money for somebody else to build something. You have to go and get it permitted and
you probably wouldn't get the permit from the State because these are regional-type systems.
And you have service areas that you provide service.
So how did you-all sort out what your service areas were?
47
There wasn't anybody else there. Well, Converse was there, but once we signed and dealt
with the City of Converse and said, "Instead of you building this, we'll build this down here,
and you just sign up with us, and we'll provide you sewer service." Then they were out of
business. We have a contract- internally they had their collection system, so they have their
internal - they deal with the homeowner, they collect the sewer bills and so on and so forth,
but they pay us and we provide- we'll take care of this stuff you collect and we'll treat it.
So they were out of the business.
And same thing with Universal City on that service side. It all came to us. At Live Oak,
before there was a city of Live Oak, there was a WCID, and we actually eliminated - they
were going to build all of this and have a sewer plant. Well, we built a line coming down to
our plant, and the internal collection system was eventually taken over by the City of Live
Oak. So we have contracts with Live Oak, Universal City, and Converse.
Then there was land in between that either in ETJ's of some of these cities or the City of San
Antonio which never got incorporated into these cities, Live Oak, Converse. Well, we ended
up being the retailer there. We owned the internal collections systems as well as the sewer
line. Then we had to have somebody to collect our sewer bills for us, and that has to be the
water purveyor. Well, in that case, the water purveyor was the developer. And then
eventually a lot of times Bexar Met would come in and take over the water so we were
having contracts with Bexar Met to collect the sewer with their water bill, and that became a
problem for a while because they were collecting our money and not paying us.
48
Was there a suit over that?
y ·
There would have been. We finally got it-stflu~way. But it was - -
Sounds tremendously complicated and sort of piecemeal in a lot ofways.
Yes, it certainly was.
Nothing like stating the obvious. Have you seen any change in that sort of patchwork
organization?
I'm not so sure- probably. See, I don't know for sure what's been going on in the last eight
years. Once you get enough size, you don't have to make these type of deals. You just have
enough strength and enough finances that you don't have to make these little deals anymore,
~
and I kind of think, .t. he River Authority's size of their operation has probably taken care of a
lot of that. They don't have to make these type of deals anymore.
So it was financial considerations that led to these deals?
Yeah. When you have a little system with development here and there, and all of a sudden
somebody comes in and says, "I'm going to put in"- and let's say in that development you
were serving 1,000 homes. And you have a developer move in and says, "I've got J>OO
homes I'm going to build." That's more than double the size of your system. How you
49
going to handle that? Well, once you get enough lines in and you have 6,000, 7,000
customers, unless somebody comes in with 1,000, that's small potatoes. You can't
ovetWhelm me.
Right.
And so it's all a scale. So when you're beginning one ofthese smaller systems and you have
these huge blips come in and then you have to make deals or you have to do something. I
don' t think they have to do that anymore. I don't know.
So are the Upper Cibolo and Salatrillo the main systems for the River Authority of that type,
or are there other ones that the River Authority controls?
As far as I know, they only have the Salatrillo, Upper Cibolo - wait, Upper Martinez?
Where's Upper Cibolo?
I have Upper Cibolo and Salatrillo in '64 and then Upper Martinez in '67. Where is Upper
Martinez? Is that that same area?
Upper Martinez is - you've got an Upper Martinez and a Lower Martinez.
Oh, there's a Martinez II
50
Yeah, okay. That's the lower, yeah, Martinez II.
So by '86, there are three wastewater systems. Well, now, what happened to Upper Cibolo?
Hmm, interesting. It says Upper Cibolo is '64 with Salatrillo. And then expansion of
Salatrillo and Upper Martinez in '81, and then the addition of a third wastewater system, but
it sounds like it should have been a fourth, in '85 to '86, and that's Martinez II.
Yeah, Upper Cibolo is not ringing a bell with me right now, unless that's what we were
calling the Salatrillo.
Ah, okay.
Why can't I figure this out? There's one at Converse, (inaudible) on the Upper Cibolo
system, and the Salatrillo system . . .
Well, maybe I can go back through that history and see if it works out.
(End of transcription.)
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