v.
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley. California
THE PATTERSON FAMILY AND RANCH: SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY IN TRANSITION
Volume II
WATER. DEVELOPMENT, AND PRESERVATION IN SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY
Interviews with
Mathew P. Whitfield Wallace R. Pond
John Brooks Robert Fisher. M.D. Laurence W. Milnes William D. Patterson
Interviews Conducted by
Ann Lage
Carole Hicke
John Caswell
in 1955, 1982, 1986 and 1987
Copyright (c\ 1988 by the Regents of the University of California
Since 195A the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral history is a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California. Berkeley and other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.
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This manuscript is made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office. 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
To cite the volume: The Patterson Family and Ranch; Southern Alameda County in Transition, Volume II, "Water, Development, and Preservation in Southern Alameda County." an oral history project of the Regional Oral History Office conducted in 1955, 1982, 1986-1987, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 1988.
To cit« individual interview: Mathew P. Whitfield, ISeneral Manager of the Alameda County Water District. 1953-1977." an oral history interview conducted 1986 by Ann Lage. in The Patterson Family and Ranch; Southern Alameda County in Transition, Volume II, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California. Berkeley, 1988.
Copy No.
MATT WHITFIELD ca. 1977
Photograph by Steve Rubiolo
DONORS TO THE PATTERSON FAMILY AND RANCH ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
The Bancroft Library, on behalf of future researchers, wishes to thank the following organizations and individuals whose contributions made possible this oral history project.
Alameda County Water District
Brooks Family Foundation
City of Fremont
East Bay Regional Park District
Oliver De Silva Company
David and Joan Patterson
Dorothy Patterson
J. B. Patterson Trust
Regional Oral History Office The Bancroft Library
University of California Berkeley, California
THE PATTERSON FAMILY AND RANCH: SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY IN TRANSITION
VOLUME I AGRICULTURE AND FARM LIFE ON FREMONT'S NORTHERN PLAIN. 1890-1980s
FRANK BORGHI
Dairying on the Patterson Ranch, 1924-1950
ELVAMAE ROSE BORGHI Girlhood in a Patterson Ranch Farm Family, 1931-1948
RUEL BROWN DONALD FURTADO TILLIE LOGAN GOOLD WALLACE MCKEOWN GENE WILLIAMS
MEL ALAMEDA
Observations of a Ranch Worker's Son, 1918-1950s
Working for Henry Patterson, 1930s-1950s
The Logan Family in Alvarado
A Neighboring Farmer Recalls the Early Days
The L. S. Williams Company: Farming in Southern Alameda County, 1930s-1980
Farming on Fremont's Northern Plain in the 1980s: Agriculture's Last Stand
VOLUME II WATER, DEVELOPMENT, AND PRESERVATION IN SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY
MATHEW P. WHITFIELD General Manager of the Alameda County Water District,
1953-1977
WALLACE R. POND JOHN BROOKS
ROBERT B. FISHER
The Pattersons and the Incorporation of Fremont
Consultant to the Patterson Family: Master Planner, Developer, and Politician
History and Politics: The Creation of Ardenwood Regional Preserve
LAURENCE W. MILNES Ardenwood Regional Preserve and the City of Fremont WILLIAM D. PATTERSON The Alameda County Water District, 1914-1955
VOLUME III THE PATTERSON RANCH. PAST AND FUTURE: THE FAMILY'S PERSPECTIVE
GEORGE WASHINGTON PATTERSON
DONALD PATTERSON
Overland Journey. 1849
Family Lore: The Pattersons and Their Land Since the 1850s
WILLIAM VOLMER
JEANETTE KORSTAD
and MARILYN PRICE
SALLY PATTERSON ADAMS JOHN E. ADAMS
DAVID G. PATTERSON
ROBERT BUCK LEON G. CAMPBELL
WILCOX PATTERSON GEORGE PATTERSON
BRUCE PATTERSON ABIGAIL ADAMS CAMPBELL
Whipples, Beards. Ingalls. and Pattersons: Looking at the Hawley Family Tree
Haw ley Family Memories
Growing Up at Ardenwood
A Son-in-Law Remembers Henry Patterson and Assesses Ranch Development
Overseeing the Transition from Ranching to Property Management
Patterson Property Management. 1970s-1980s
Balancing Agriculture and Development, Family and Public Interests
Donald Patterson and Patterson Ranch Management, 1950s-1980s
Recalling the Pattersons' Past: The Family. Land, and Historic Homes
Youth on the Patterson Ranch. 1950s-1963
Summers at Ardenwood with Grandparents Sarah and Henry Patterson
TABLE OF CONTENTS — Volume II: Water. Development, and Preservation in
Southern Alameda County
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION by Leon G. Campbell
MAPS. SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY, 1956 and 1987
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XV
MATHEW P. WHITFIELD
WALLACE R. POND
JOHN BROOKS
ROBERT B. FISHER
General Manager of the Alameda County Water District, 1953-1977
The Pattersons and the Incorporation of Fremont
122
Consultant to the Patterson Family: Master Planner, Developer, and Politician 141
History and Politics: The Creation of Ardenwood Regional Preserve 208
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
Laurence W. Milnes, "Ardenwood Regional Preserve and the City of Fremont" 264
William D. Patterson, The Alameda
County Water District, 1914-1955 278
INDEX
328
PREFACE
The Patterson Ranch
The historic George Washington Patterson home and ranch in Fremont. California, provides the focus for this oral history project which explores changing patterns of land-use in southern Alameda County over the past 130 years. George Washington Patterson was a forty-niner from Lafayette, Indiana, who left the gold fields to settle on the rich alluvial plain created by Alameda Creek, on the southeastern shore of San Francisco Bay. He accumulated properties to form a 4,000-acre ranch in this area known as Washington Township and an additional 10,000 acres inland in the Livermore Valley. In 1877, he married Clara Hawley and added on to his home to create the Queen Anne style mansion that now is the centerpiece of the Ardenwood Regional Preserve, a historic farm operated by the East Bay Regional Park District on former Patterson ranch lands.
Since George Patterson's death in 1895, three generations of his descendants have continued to oversee the ranch operations, sharecropped in the earlier years by tenants who grew vegetable crops on family farms and later leased to larger-scale and more modernized agricultural operations. Agriculture continued to flourish on Patterson ranch lands while surrounding lands succumbed to the pressures of urbanization from the burgeoning Bay Area metropolis in the post-World War II population explosion.
The rapid urbanizations of the area brought with it inevitable political changes. The several small unincorporated towns of Washington Township — Alvarado and Decoto; Irvington, Mission San Jose, Niles, Centerville, and Warm Springs; and Newark — incorporated into the three cities of Union City, Fremont, and Newark in the 1950s. The Alameda County Water District, formed to conserve the ground water for the area's farmers, expanded its operation and its water supplies to deliver water to suburban customers. The Alameda County Flood Control District channelized Alameda Creek, putting an end to rich alluvial deposits, but making year-round farming and, most significantly, housing development possible on the northern flood plain.
By the 1970s the Patterson family succumbed to development pressures and began selling off major portions of ranch lands for housing development. Their sale to Singer Housing of the lands surrounding the historic mansion and its landmark eucalyptus trees precipated the controversy that, after several years of lawsuits and negotiations, resulted in the creation of Ardenwood Regional Preserve. In the 1980s, the family has organized into a corporation with professional management from family members and has managed the development process in accordance with a master plan that emphasizes planned development and preservation of open space. Three regional parks are on former Patterson lands: in addition to Ardenwood, the Coyote Hills and surrounding marshlands are preserved, and in Livermore, the Del Valle Regional Park stands in the middle of Patterson cattle lands. Adjacent to
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the industrial park and the suburban housing tracts, lands still held by the Patterson family are leased to a modern truck farm growing cauliflower, lettuce, and specialty vegetables for Bay Area gourmets.
The Oral History Project
With a series of twenty-six interviews, the oral history project explores the transformation of the Patterson ranch as a case study of the complex evolution from agricultural to urban land use. The idea for the project came from the collaborative thinking of Knox Mellon and Leon Campbell. Dr. Mellon, former director of the California State Department of Historic Preservation and professor of history, was assisting the Patterson family to place Ardenwood on the National Registry of Historic Places. He saw the potential for an oral history project and found ready support among the Patterson family, particularly his friend and fellow historian, Leon Campbell, who was part of the management team for Patterson Properties. David Patterson, who has a keen interest in tracing family history, also took a supportive role.
Dr. Mellon came to the Regional Oral History Office with his idea, has worked steadily with us to formulate and direct the project, and has served as interviewer and consultant throughout the three years to the project's completion. Leon Campbell was instrumental throughout in arranging funding and serving as advisor. Because of his ability to look at the story of the Patterson Ranch with a historian's eye, as well as his first-hand knowledge as a family member, he was asked to write the introduction to the project, which places the twenty-six interviews in historical context.
As the planning for the project evolved, three main themes emerged, and these are reflected in the organization of the interviews into three volumes. Volume I focuses on agriculture and rural life on the northern plain of Washington Township in the prewar years and on the agricultural operations of the L.S. Williams and Alameda and Sons companies, the two outfits which farmed on the ranch during the transitional period from the mid-fifties to the present.
Volume II tells the tales of water, development, planning, and historic preservation in the area — topics seemingly diverse which are seen to be closely interrelated in these histories. Volume III focuses on the Patterson family, past and present. Two generations of family members combine nostalgic looks back to rural childhoods with insight into the processes of present-day property management by a family corporation.
Each volume has been enhanced with interviews completed on previous occasions for other purposes, but ones which added so centrally to our project that we requested permission to include them here. These include. in Volume II, the interviews with William D. Patterson, son of George
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Washington Patterson, on his work with the Alameda County Water District; and Larry Milnes, assistant manager of the city of Fremont, on the city's role in the negotiations leading to the establishment of Ardenwood.
Volumes I and III have interviews which were recorded in 1975 and 1977 by family member Donald Patterson for the family archive at the Society of California Pioneers. These include the interview with neighboring farmer William McKeown in Volume I and cousin William Volmer in Volume III. Donald Patterson also recorded his own recollections on tape and later was interviewed for the Society of California Pioneers by Stanley Bry. Transcriptions of these tapes are included in Volume III. The project was further enriched by the volunteer assistance of Bill Helfman, a Fremont resident who recorded two interviews for the project. His interview with Donald Furtado is in Volume I.
To enhance the reader's understanding of the interviews, illustrative materials have been included. Maps of the southern Alameda County area in 1956 and 1987 are in the introductory pages for each volume. Family trees of the Patterson and Hawley families are included in Volume III (pages 2 and 31). The 1981 town development plan for the Patterson Ranch is in the appendix to Volume II. In addition, interview histories preceding each memoir give specifics on the conduct and content of the interviews.
All of the tapes for the project interviews are available in The Bancroft Library. Society of California Pioneer tapes are in their archive in San Francisco. In addition to the transcribed interviews included here, three interviews recorded for background information are available on tape only. These are interviews with Dorothy Wilcox Patterson, wife of Donald, and Eleanor Silva and Mary Dettling, former housekeepers for the Henry Patterson family.
Research Resources
Many resources exist for research on the subject matters of these interviews. The Society of California Pioneers has papers and business records and photographs of the Patterson family. A guide to these papers, a useful bibliography, and other information exists in Faces in Time: An Historic Report ^n the George Washington Patterson Fam ily and the Ardenwood Estate prepared for the East Bay Regional Park District by Susan A. Simpson, 1982. The local history collection and the Grace Williamson collection in the Alameda County library in Fremont is another valuable source. Their collection includes many untranscribed oral history interviews with individuals prominent in Fremont's history. The library of California State University at Hayward also includes works on the history of the region. A CSUH master's thesis in geography gives specific information about the history of land use on the Patterson Ranch; it is based in part on a 1971 interview with Donald Patterson (Jerome Pressler. Landscape Modification through Time; the Coyote Hills. Alameda County. California. 1973).
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Research Use
The diversity and the universality of themes explored in this series of oral history interviews insure that they will be consulted by a vide variety of researchers. They are intended to be of use to the East Bay Regional Park District in planning and interpretation. They provide information on the history of agriculture, particularly the loss of agricultural lands to urbanization and the problems of farming in an urban setting. They discuss the process of land planning from the perspectives of city officials, developers, and property owners. They give an indepth history of the Alameda County Water District and illuminate the role of water in development. Finally, they provide a candid look at a family business over four generations and give insight to the dynamics of personalities and intra-family, inter-generational conflicts in shaping decisions in family businesses.
Ann Lage Project Director
September, 1988
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
INTRODUCTION by Leon G. Campbell
The three volumes of interview B prepared by the Regional Oral History Office of the University of California, Berkeley, dealing with the Patterson family and ranch between the years 1851-1988, constitute a case study of changing land use in southern Alameda County from the days of the first galifomios to the present. George Washington Patterson (1822-1895) came to California with the Gold Rush but remained to found an extensive farming and ranching enterprise in Alameda County. Originally known as Rancho Potrero de los Cerritos (Cattle Ranch of the Hills), the 4.000-acre Patterson Ranch has remained in family hands as an agricultural and livestock enterprise to the present day. Under the ownership of George Washington's sons, Henry (1878-1955) and William (1880-1961). the Patterson Ranch became a dominant economic institution in southern Alameda County and the family an integral part of the emergence of Fremont as a major Bay Area community.
Situated between the eastern terminus of the Dumbarton Bridge, which connects Alameda County with the West Bay, and Highway 880, the Patterson Ranch is a prominent feature of the East Bay landscape. Today known as "Ardenw ood-New Town" in honor of the Shakespearean title sometimes used to describe the ranch, Ardenwood serves as the western gateway to Fremont and the entire South Bay. Despite the fact that the planned district of Ardenwood is less than four years old, the size and scope of the changing land-use patterns on the Patterson Ranch resemble those taking place on the Irvine and Bixby Ranches in southern California, where uninterrupted family ownership has retained influence over time and throughout change.
Several important themes emerge from the various interviews contained within the three volumes. Volume I, Agriculture and Farm Life on Fremont's Northern Plain, chronicles the transition of the Patterson Ranch from a family farm in the nineteenth century to a large-scale agricultural enterprise operated by the L. S. Williams Company during the 1950s. The several interviews of tenant farmers and Patterson Ranch workers covering the period from approximately 1900-1950 constitute an excellent social history of farm life in Fremont's Northern Plain. Collectively, the memoirs of farmers and ranch workers not only inform about the Pattersons as owners but as well provide a third-party perspective upon changing public uses including the development of the Nimitz Freeway (1953), Alameda County Flood Control Project (1965-70), and the dedication of Coyote Hills Regional Park (1968).
The oral histories in Volume I hint at subjects which Volumes II and III treat more centrally, namely the immense changes taking place in the area during the lifetimes of the individual interviewees, particularly during the period following World War II. During the fifties and sixties. southern Alameda County shifted from a rural to an urban orientation, resulting in the incorporation of cities and the initiation of water and flood control projects, as these new municipalities began to debate the land and water use issues which had prompted their incorporation.
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Volume I: Agriculture on the Ranch
The initial interviews contained in Volume I represent a broad sample of ranch workers and tenant farmers who were closely associated with the Patterson family during the postwar. As a group, they reflect the value of family and neighbors and of traditional virtues associated with farming and farm life. Quite apparent is the fact that these attitudes ran as deep in rural Alameda County as in more traditional agricultural areas outside California. Indeed, the Pattersons considered many of these individuals as their extended family, sharing with them an ethic of hard work and perseverance in the face of drought, flooding, poor crop years, and economic uncertainty. The interviews also cover the transition from cattle ranch to farming and provide important data on the presence of Chinese laborers. Mexican braceros, and migrants of all nationalities who came to comprise the ranch work force. Also recollected are recreational activities from horse racing to duck hunting, the introduction of the tractor to Ardenwood. and the life of the mind in a farming environment, particularly within the context of the development of Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley where many of the early Patterson family members matriculated.
The second section of Volume I covers the more recent history of the larger-scale L. S. Williams and Alameda family farming operations on the ranch. In addition to providing an excellent overview of the agricultural basis of the Patterson Ranch, this section chronicles the decisions to grow various crops and the reasons for so doing, particularly the ability of various crops to withstand increasing salinity levels as a direct result of the ranch's location on San Francisco Bay and saltwater intrusion into the underground aquifers.
These interviews also reflect the rapidly changing agricultural orientation of northern California as East Bay farmland was converted to housing and industrial uses and agricultural operations relocated into the Salinas Valley, which in turn reoriented transportation and marketing networks. Increasingly isolated from the large growers and packers in the Salinas Valley, agricultural operations in southern Alameda have been forced to either transship their produce to the Midwest and other areas by means of refrigerated trucks or to diversify and reorient their production towards local markets. Since 1984. the Alameda Company has shifted from agribusiness to more of a diversified local farm operation. The Alameda family operates at Ardenwood for only half the year, relocating to Arizona and northern Mexico to grow cauliflower and lettuce during the winter months on a more convenient and large-scale basis. These growers' interviews provide an important case study of the decisions required when farming in a community which is making a rapid transition to urbanization in a precarious agricultural environment.
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Volume II; The Context for Rapid Postwar Development
Volume II, Water, Development, and Preservation in Southern Alameda County, provides a more in-depth study of the dynamic tension between development, preservation efforts, and the water projects which have all impacted Alameda County during the period after 1945. the first-hand account of Mathew Whitfield, general manager of the Alameda County Water District during the years 1953-1977, provides a case study of this process of change in the East Bay. Whitfield's vivid recollections, the longest interview in the history, offer a fascinating study of family, water and South Bay politics during the postwar period. Whitfield's oral history may well be the most important single contribution to the project, for the actions of the Alameda County Water District in the 1950s provided the foundation for the subsequent growth of Fremont and the Northern Plain.
Whitfield was a close associate of W. D. Patterson, himself a director of the Alameda County Water District from its inception in 1914, whose recollections, based on a 1955 interview on the subject, are also included in this volume. Whitfield's perspective on the 1950s, the period in which the water district took a central role in planning for controlled growth, provides a context for assessing the subsequent changes which would alter Fremont and the Patterson Ranch thereafter. His reflections also touch upon an important aspect of Patterson family history not treated in this project, namely the events leading up to and including the creation of the Del Valle Regional Park in Livermore. which was created as the result of state condemnation of Livermore ranch land for the Del Valle reservoir. At one time the Patterson Livermore Ranch in Alameda County complemented the Fremont Ranch in an integrated farming-livestock operation. The Livermore operation is not treated herein in any detail, but is an important component of the history of the East Bay Regional Park system.
In addition, Whitfield provides an important perspective on the State Water Project South Bay Aqueduct, which linked both Patterson ranches to the future of water transportation projects. These decisions to import water for groundwater recharge and the subsequent Aquifer Reclamation Program of 1974 to counteract saltwater intrusion were determining factors in the continued agricultural development of southern Alameda County in general and the Patterson Ranch in particular. This interview thus provides an important complement to the Regional Oral History Office's series of oral history interviews on California water issues and relates changes on the Patterson lands to statewide water issues.
Another pivotal interview contained within Volume II is that of John (Jack) Brooks, an important developer in southern Alameda County from the postwar to the present and the primary planner of Ardenwood. Brooks's recollections, because of his long association with the Patterson family and his central position as a political force in Fremont, offer an invaluable look at the city as it has emerged to become the fourth largest municipality in the Bay Area. As Brooks makes clear, with the five communities making up Fremont, the Northern Plain was always anticipated to be a sixth or "New Town," its name today.
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Whether this concept of an urban area on the North Plain was acknowledged by Henry and William Patterson before their deaths as Brooks contends, it was apparently supported by William's oldest son, Donald Patterson (1905-1980), who, as the oldest surviving Patterson son, assumed management responsibilities on the ranch after 1961 under an informal primogeniture (Henry Patterson's children were both daughters). Brooks holds that Henry and Will Patterson had virtually agreed to enter a development plan just before Henry's death in 1955. Subsequently, he recollects that the city of Fremont had begun to insist upon cancelling the Williamson Act, which had protected the Patterson family from future tax increases as an agricultural enterprise, so that the Pattersons would in the future pay their fair share of taxes.
Although Brooks understates his role in the process, under his guidance and with Fremont's cooperation, Ardenwood was brought out of Williamson in 1981 and substantial parts of the Patterson Ranch were sold, initially to the Singer Company and later to Kaiser Development Company and to Brooks himself. No less important are Brooke's recollections concerning the advent of a planned district concept and the complicated series of negotiations which led to the creation of Ardenwood Historic Park and the preservation of the George Washington Patterson House at its present location adjacent to Highways 84 and 880. Brooks' s interview also describes in some detail why particular land-use decisions were made as they were and how a series of urban villages were created to establish a residential new town and a commercial and high technology center amidst a traditional farming enterprise.
The interview of Dr. Robert Fisher also provides valuable background on the politics of preservation involving Ardenwood. Fisher, the leading light in the Mission Peak Heritage Foundation, describes from his viewpoint how various interested local historical associations including the Washington Township Historical Society, Patterson House Advisory Board, and Ardenwood Regional Park Advisory Committee were all drawn into the question of who was to control and implement what had belatedly been recognized as an important historic and civic asset, namely, the Ardenwood Historic Farm and attendant Victorian mansion which formed its centerpiece.
The recollections of Fisher and of Larry Milnes. assistant city manager of the city of Fremont, provide a balanced view of how municipalities become involved in the process of acquiring valuable assets for future preservation, how these assets are administered, in this case through the aegis of the East Bay Regional Park District, which also operates Coyote Hills Regional Park adjacent to the site. Besides corroborating Brooks's reflections on the Ardenwood process, Milnes's interview describes how decisions were reached over the often controversial questions of deciding the focus and implementing the historical theme. Klines also depicts, from the city's perspective, the evolution of the Patterson Ranch from agriculture to mixed use.
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Following the gift of forty-six acres, including the family home, to the city of Fremont by the Patterson family in 1981, the city consulted the State Office of Historic Preservation in Sacramento to verify Ardenwood's historic value. This in turn led to the city and the Patterson family petitioning the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington. D.C.. to have the ranch placed on the National Registry of Historic Places, which was accomplished in 1985. Since then, the historic farm has become an increasingly popular tourist attraction featuring demonstration farming and the recreation of nineteenth century farm life.
In sum, this volume treats the interrelated themes of water projects, municipal formation, planned district development and historic preservation within the context of Fremont politics, 1950-1988. It would be naive to contend that the issues delineated have all been resolved or to deny that choices forced upon the various groups involved have not produced bitter disputes. Nevertheless, these interviews, offered by the primary surviving decision-makers in each area, provide basic data about the campaign which transformed the Patterson Ranch from a sprawling agricultural enterprise beset by regular flooding and other natural hazards into a Planned Urban District (PUD).
From the Patterson's perspective, however, a view no doubt shared by Fremont and EBRPD, pride is taken in the fact that a large portion of the Patterson Ranch has been converted to public use, first for the Nimitz Freeway in 1952. then for the flood control uses proposed by Alameda County, and later by the dedication of large tracts of permanent open space, including both the Coyote Hills Regional Park and the Del Valle Reservoir and Park in Livermore as well as the most recent dedication of the Ardenwood Historic Farm now operated by the Park District. The Patterson family's strong advocacy of open space preservation is reflected in the creation of no fewer than three East Bay Regional Parks on Patterson family lands and a substantial portion of the acreage within the planned district being dedicated to public use. This distinguishing feature of Ardenwood. like the better known Irvine and Bixby Ranches in southern California, for example, is intended to provide for the needs of future generations and is a part of the continuing stewardship of the Patterson family management group.
Volume III! The Family Recalls the Past and Confronts the Future
Volume III. The Patterson Ranch. Past and Future; The Family's Perspective, is devoted to the reflections of the third and fourth generation of Patterson family members. The variety of these interviews reflect the quite different personalities and temperaments of George Washington's two sons. Will and Henry, who apparently contemplated a division of their undivided landhol dings prior to their deaths, a decision which was never consummated. It was traditional in most large landowning families for the eldest son to assume management responsibilities following his father's death. This was true in the case of George Washington's eldest
son. Henry, who succeeded him in 1895 at seventeen years of age and subsequently with Will Patterson's oldest son. Donald, who assumed responsibility for ranch management in the period after 1961. Donald Patterson's interview, taped by the Society of California Pioneers prior to his death in 1980. provides interesting observations on both his father and grandfather and the nature of their lives at Ardenwood.
Perhaps the most insightful observation corroborated by many others in these volumes was the respectful and cooperative relationship between Will and Henry Patterson, who "never had a disagreement" and consulted one another on every major decision to be made concerning the ranch. Although the two sons differed in temperament and personality and were not what one might call close, they accommodated these differences pragmatically, with the quieter Henry running the ranch and his more outgoing brother Will dealing with the public. Their mutual respect and deliberate way of reaching consensus decisions in addition to their division of labors, both running the ranch and defending the ranch's interests in the South Bay. resulted in a profitable landhold. Ardenwood dominated the regional agricultural economy through the production of row crops (lettuce, cauliflower) and other high quality produce. Will and Henry were excellent farmers, good businessmen, and outstanding citizens, who extended and consolidated their father's agricultural presence in southern Alameda County.
The interview of David Patterson, Will's youngest son, who assumed management responsibilities for the ranch following the death of his older brothers, Donald and John (known as Jack), provides a frank assessment of the difficulties which a family agricultural enterprise faces when it suffers the loss of its patriarchs in a period of transition. During the period in which Donald Patterson ran the ranch, Henry's daughters. Sally Patterson Adams and Marjorie Patterson, were not actively involved in decision-making, this role having been assumed largely by John Brooks, a real estate developer who was close to Donald Patterson and both anticipated and orchestrated the development process.
The interviews with Donald's sons. George and Wilcox. provide considerable information concerning the ranch and their father. None of these memoirs, however, sheds additional light on the process of decision- making between the city, the Pattersons, and John Brooks, although it is likely that the public records of the period (1980-1984) would be helpful to historians interested in understanding the development process. The next stage of land use clearly mandated turning over of substantial portions of the ranch for residential development as rising land values and the shortage of available land for homes resulted in a new Fremont and a transformed Northern Plain.
Following Donald Patterson's death in 1980, David Patterson continued to manage the family farm as the city entered into a development agreement with Brooks. Despite serious rifts within the family, which included an abortive attempt by two of William Patterson's grandchildren to bring suit against their family to obtain the value of their undivided interest in the ranch property, the family held firm against this challenge. When the two
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young people hired the nefarious Kelvin Belli to sue the Patterson family and were defeated in court (1981). it prompted the Pattersons to move rapidly to incorporate as Patterson Fremont Management, Inc., (PFM) and to set up a series of limited partnerships to manage the land in order that one or more minority family members could not, through undivided ownership, lay waste to the family's plan for future ownership and management of the property. It was this incident which convinced the Pattersons that the days of consensus decision-making as it had existed with Henry and Will had ended. By 1982 the Patterson Ranch had converted to a true business organization.
Interviews of Sally Patterson Adams and her husband. Dr. John E. Adams, shed light not only on the personages of Henry and Sarah Patterson but also provide an alternative recollection on how decisions were reached during the 1960s and 1970s, as the transition was made from agriculture to development by individuals and forces outside the family. Sally Adams provides an intimate portrait of growing up at Ardenwood. John Adams, an ardent preservationist, casts a skeptical eye on the chain of events which led to the ultimate transformation of the ranch, contending that the demand for change was orchestrated by a prevailing coterie at City Hall rather than by population dynamics or other inexorable forces. Adams clearly believes that the ranch could have continued in farming had the family been given the opportunity to make this choice through timely dissemination of information and discussion of alternatives to development.
Interviews by the fourth generation of Pattersons are informative for their explanation of the transition from ranch management by individuals towards a corporate form of business organization. Bruce Patterson provides insights about his father. Jack, as well as the strongly independent natures of the W. D. and H. H. Patterson families. In this regard, interviews by the fourth generation of Pattersons make clear that the testamentary dispositions of their grandfathers, William and Henry, as well as their parents, has resulted in a current generation of Pattersons spread throughout the state and country, of different economic means and lacking common objectives for Ardenwood. This, in turn, has resulted in growing differences of opinion stronger than those developing during the tenure of the third generation. The implications of land being sold to outside developers and the first cash distributions to family members both raised expectations and produced further disputes, rather than silencing them. Certain limited partners began to question the decisions of those family members serving as general partners and to urge a liquidation of remaining ranch assets. In general, these disputes follow family lines.
Interviews with other members of the PFM Board include those by former president Robert Buck, a Patterson son-in-law and attorney who currently serves as PFM's legal counsel. Buck provides yet another perspective on the events leading to the Ardenwood development, particularly the Kaiser land sales and the creation of the Patterson Properties business enterprise during the 1980s.
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Leon Campbell, another son-in-law serving as PFM's executive vice president, recounts how he and Buck were called upon to assume management and investment responsibilities for the Patterson family. As the vast, undeveloped acreage appreciated in value, situated within one of the most rapidly growing parts of the Bay Area, they completed tax deferred exchanges, putting the family into income-producing properties which PFM managed and operated. As they assumed their posts in 1985, Buck and Campbell were increasingly called upon to mediate between decisions which had been made prior to the Pattersons' complete awareness of a political process which had developed apart from them and future policy issues which loomed ahead, such as those of wetlands, the subsidization of agriculture, and the Town Center development.
These business recollections are paralleled by those of Donald Patterson's other son, George Patterson, who provides a sensitive internal history on the family at Ardenwood, and Abigail Adams Campbell, daughter of Sally Patterson Adams, on her grandparents, Sarah and Henry Patterson.
Taken together, the several interviews by the fourth generation of Patterson family management underscores the dichotomy of events which have transpired in Fremont's North Plain during the period since 1980 and particularly since 1984. when the initial land sale to Kaiser Development Corporation was instituted. Hardly conclusive in their entirety, these last interviews restate the younger generation's perspective on their fathers and grandfathers, as well as their own perceptions about the rapidly changing nature of the real estate which they have been requested to monitor in the future. These changes have rendered the personal managerial tradition of the Patterson family largely unworkable, although considerable nostalgia for the "old ways" still exists, which often precludes certain limited partners from adhering to a general partnership organization. In many ways the family runs each other rather than running a business, a not uncommon aspect of organizations with strongly paternal origins. The challenge ahead will be to forge a new consensus to accommodate an era promising even greater alterations in the Patterson Ranch and the East Bay.
Conclusion and Acknowledgements
In conclusion, this oral history of the Patterson family and ranch, 1851-1988, has much to contribute to the general history of southern Alameda County and is particularly informative on the transitional years between 1945 and the present, which are largely omitted in the historical literature, by drawing on the reflections of those who were the primary actors during those years.
The Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library at the University of California. Berkeley, has provided an ideal method for understanding the linkages between the Patterson family, its agricultural and ranching enterprise, and actions taken by city, county and state
xiii
organizations in response to the pressures of rapid urbanization occurring in the East Bay during the postwar period. These interviews with the surviving senior members of the Patterson family and key individuals associated with the family agricultural and business operations over the past fifty years not only underscore the enormous changes taking place in the area during the lifetimes of those interviewed, but they also indicate how and why these changes were implemented. Often it appears that matters of great significance were reached by informal agreement rather than formal debate both within the family and perhaps outside of it. These interviews reflect a simpler time, prior to the advent of citizen-sponsored initiatives and environmental impact reports, a period when many leaders shared common assumptions concerning the value of growth and development to municipalities. Few could have comprehended the scope of growth which was to transform the Bay Area so dramatically during the postwar period and the reactions which it would produce.
The Patterson family is proud to have its history included in The Bancroft Library's treasury of interviews with major figures in the history of California and the West. The three-volume oral history project represents a substantial historiographies! advancement towards the development of a comprehensive history of the East Bay and its progenitory families.
I should like to thank the staff of the Regional Oral History Office at Berkeley, particularly Division Head Willa Baum and Project Director Ann Lage, for the dedicated effort which they have made in bringing this project to fruition through the recording, transcription and editing of these interviews. The trained oral historians on the ROHO staff, whose careful research and sensitive interview techniques are clearly manifest throughout the project, have clearly set the tone for the entire project. My long-time friend. Dr. Knox Mellon, former head of the State Office of Historic Preservation in Sacramento, who skillfully directed the nomination of the Ardenwood Regional Preserve to the National Register of Historic Places, has also been pivotal in finalizing this project. Dr. Mellon's liaison as a consultant to the Regional Oral History Office and ROHO's strong ties to state and local historical groups both assure that the project meets specific needs as well as serving the larger scholarly community through the questions it raises and the information it preserves.
This oral history project substantially advances earlier studies carried out by the East Bay Regional Park District, which were designed to analyze the property exclusively in terms of its archaeological significance. By recording the reflections of two generations of Patterson family members about life and work on the Patterson Ranch, the project also relates centrally to the history of Fremont and to the entire East Bay which otherwise might be lost forever.
Through the incorporation of interviews with members of the Patterson Ranch labor force, water district officials and a broad spectrum of Fremont city officials and politicians, as well as interviews with other key individuals now deceased, recorded earlier by the Society of California
xiv
Pioneers, and interviews with individuals charged with the stewardship of the remaining lands of Patterson, this oral history project anticipates a full history of the Patterson Ranch and the South Bay. The subject should be of future value to scholars interested in urban planning, land use decision-making, agricultural history, the process of municipal formation and water issues, matters related to conservation and historic preservation as they pertain to the East Bay and, of course, the political matrix in which these issues are situated. In this regard, this project, which deals with life, land and politics on the Patterson Fremont Ranch, exceeds the sum of its parts.
The personal and financial support of several individuals and groups also made the project possible. Financial sponsorship of the project has been provided by the East Bay Regional Park District, the Brooks Family Foundation, the City of Fremont, the Oliver De Silva Company, the Alameda County Water District, and various members of the Patterson family, especially David and Joan Patterson, Dorothy Patterson, and the J. B. Patterson Trust. David and Joan Patterson have been steadfast in their determination to preserve the history of the Patterson family over time and have supported this work at every juncture.
The present project goes well beyond the Pattersons to focus upon the Patterson Ranch during the years in which it was transformed from a rural agricultural enterprise to the Ardenwood planned community. A "New Town" both in concept and in fact. Shakespeare's idyllic Ardenwood may be an elusive metaphor masking the difficult choices that changes in land use inevitably bring.
Leon G. Campbell Executive Vice President Patterson Fremont Management. Inc.
May. 1988
Fremont. California
XV
SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY, 1956
SAN LORENZO
from the 1956 Alai?eda County map California State Automobile Association
xvi
SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY, 1987
from the 1987 Alameda/Contra Costa map California State Automobile Association
Regional Oral History Office The Bancroft Library
University of California Berkeley. California
THE PATTERSON FAMILY AND RANCH: SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY IN TRANSITION
Mathew P. Whitfield
General Manager of the Alameda County Water District. 1953-1977
An Interview Conducted by Ann Lage in 1986
Copyright
1988 by the Regents of the University of California
la TABLE OF CONTENTS — Mathew P. Whitfield
INTERVIEW HISTORY lc
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION le
I WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP YOUTH, ENGINEERING EDUCATION. AND
EARLY CAREER lf
Mission San Jose Family If
Schooling A
Engineering Jobs 8
Wartime Service at Mare Island Naval Shipyard 9
II THE ALAMEDA COUNTY WATER DISTRICT IN THE 1950s 13
Hired by the Water District 13
Apprenticeship under Ed Richmond. 1950-1953 16
Planning for Growth: the 1955 Bond Issue 20
The ACWD Board of Directors in the Early Fifties 21
III WILLIAM D. PATTERSON AND THE WATER DISTRICT 24
A Private Person 24
Resolution 81: Blueprint for Growth 26
Quiet Support and Leadership from Will Patterson 28
Water. Flood Control. Development, and Growth 30
IV ISSUES AND PROBLEMS OF THE FIFTIES 33
Recharging the Ground Water through Percolation Pits 33 Pressure to Purchase Hetch Hetchy Water from San Francisco 34
A Controversy with Developers Conway and Culligan, 1954 37
Water District Role in Planning for Growth 40
ACHD and the Arroyo Del Valle 42
Patterson Interest in Flood Control and the Reber Plan 44
Board Member Jack Prouty 48
V THE STATE WATER PROJECT'S SOUTH BAY AQUEDUCT 52
Early Applications for Delta Water 52
Working with the Department of Water Resources 53 Ground Water Basin vs. Hetch Hetchy Water: the Primary
Conflict 54
Juris dictional Disputes with the Flood Control District 55
Early Water Conservation Measures 56
District Role in Del Valle Reservoir Planning 58
Transporting Water over Altamont Pass 61
Changing an Unreasonable State Contract 62
Fighting Saltwater Intrusion in the Ground Water Basin 63
The Aquifer Reclamation Program. 1974 66
Ib
VI THE PUMP TAX: CONTROVERSY WITH DISTRICT FARMERS 69
Enabling Legislation and Rationale for the Pump Tax 69
Pump Tax Hearings: Outraged Reaction from Farmers 71 A Shifting Balance of Community Power: Pump Tax Passed.
1970 73
Water Pump Meters 76
VII PROTECTING THE GROUND WATER BASIN 78 Standards for Well Abandonment. Well Drilling, and
Drainage Wells 78 Addendum on Saltwater Intrusion and the Aquifer Reclamation
Program 80 Legal Action against Water Waste by Quarry Operators.
1968-1974 84
Pump Tax Update 88 Protecting the Alameda Creek Watershed in the Liver-more
Valley 90
VIII THE WATER DISTRICT AND THE COMMUNITY 93
Fluoridation Controversy. 1969-1971 93
Trip to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 1972 98 Citizens Utility Company Buyout: Community Pressure*
Company Recalcitrance 101
Perspective on Environmental Impact Reports 108
Response to the Drought of 1977 109
Relations with Cities and Citizen Groups 113
TAPE GUIDE 117
APPENDIX A: Notes on History and Operation of Alameda County
Water District. August 1979 118
1C
INTERVIEW HISTORY — Mathew P. Whitfield
Matt Whitfield was first suggested as an interviewee for the Patterson family and ranch project because, in his position as the general manager of the Alameda County Water District, he had worked closely with William D. Patterson. Patterson was the leading member of the ACWD board of directors, having served as board member since the district's founding in 1914 and as an active president from 1932 to 1954. He retired from the board in 1958. It was hoped that Mr. Whitfield could give a first-hand account of Will Patterson's work for the district and his modus operandi and philosophical approach as board member.
As the research for the Whitfield interview progressed, however, it became apparent that a more comprehensive documentation of Whitfield and the water district would serve the larger purposes of the oral history project — to document the transformation of the Patterson Ranch as a case study of southern Alameda County in transition from an agricultural community to a residential and industrial suburb of the metropolitan Bay Area. The interview became an oral history of Matt Whitfield and of the Alameda County Water District during his term as general manager.
Matt Whitfield went to work for the Alameda County Water District in 1950 and served as its general manager from 1953 to 1977. Hired as a local boy. personally known by board member Dr. Grimmer, Whitfield managed a relatively small water district, which had been created to safeguard the local water supply and service a community that was primarily agricultural. By the time of his retirement, the district had expanded to service a burgeoning metropolitan area. He had worked with the district's board of directors to face the problems of rapid development and increased demand for water. The water district's timely response to demands of urbanization made possible the growth of the community whose water needs it served.
Whitfield's oral history recounts the milestones of the district's development: the 1955 bond issue; Resolution 81. which set up terms for development of water delivery systems in new subdivisions; ground water recharge and protection programs; the decisions and negotiations leading up to receipt of water from the State Water Project's South Bay Aqueduct; the controversy surrounding the pump tax on agricultural use of water from underground aquifers; and community furor over fluoridation.
It documents Matt Whitfield's low-key management style and his direct way of working with the district's elected board of directors, with officials of local governments, and with building contractors. It illustrates the contrast between the relatively informal operation of the district in the 1950s and the days of public hearings and environmental impact reports by the 1970s.
In addition, Mr. Whitfield was able to give a thoughtful portrayal of Will Patterson in his role as president and director. Whitfield's
Id
predecessor apparently had functioned less as a general manager and more as trouble shooter in the field. During his tenure. Patterson, as board president, had performed many of the managerial duties himself. During Whitfield's term, he withdrew from this type of active management, but until his retirement, he continued to hold a leadership role on the board and was very supportive of Whitfield as general manager.
In the course of research for this series, we uncovered in The Bancroft Library a 1955 interview of William Patterson discussing his role as Alameda County Water District founder, director, and president. It is included as an appendix to this volume.
The following interview with Matt Whitfield was conducted at his home in the Mission San Jose district of Fremont on May 29, June 5, and June 26, 1986. Mr. Whitfield was most cooperative in assisting research and selecting topics for the interview, and in the careful review of the interview transcript. Tapes of the three sessions are available in The Bancroft Library.
Subsequent interviewing for the Patterson project revealed a high degree of respect for Mr. Whitfield among those in the community who worked with him. This respect is further evidenced by the district's recognition of his leadership and service in dedicating the Mathew P. Whitfield reservoir in the Mission San Jose district on September 27. 1986.
Ann Lage
Interviewer/Editor Project Director
September. 1988
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California Berkeley, California 94720
le
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
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Date of birth
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Place of birth
Father's full name Birthplace Occupation
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Where did you grow up 1
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Occupation(s)
Special interests or activities
If
I WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP YOUTH. ENGINEERING EDUCATION. AND EARLY CAREER
[Interview 1: May 29. 1986]#0
Mission San Jose Family
Lage:
Whitfield!
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Today is May 29th. 1986, and this is the first interview with Matt Whitfield about the Alameda County Water District. We wanted to start with some personal background and background about the area. Before we recorded, you were telling me a little bit of history about the Gallegos water system.
It was owned by the Gallegos family. Juan Gallegos, who came over here from Costa Rica. They somehow acquired most of the properties around Mission San Jose.
This is the area we are in now?
No, they didn't come this far down yet; they came down towards Irvington and the Mission San Jose area. They had vineyards. They had a little water system of their own in Mission San Jose, which is now a part of Fremont, the Mission San Jose district. After the water district annexed Mission San Jose which was around 1940 sometime, the water district took their system over. They paid them a small amount because I don't think they had more than fifteen or twenty customers [laughs]. As I remember, my great-aunt lived down the other end of town, the opposite end of town from the Gallegos, and that's where the water came from.
So she got water from them.
##This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 117.
Whitfield: Yes. I think they had about a one-inch line, so on Saturday night not too many people could bathe at once [laughs].
Lage: Did this private delivery system continue until Mission San Jose
was annexed?
Whitfield: Oh. yes. Most of the people in town had their own wells, but the Gallegoses had water that came from springs, and they supplied probably fifteen or twenty customers in town.
Lage: Let's go now. after that little aside, to talk about your
background, your family. You started to tell me where your family came from.
Whitfield: You want to start back with my grandparents?
Lage: Well, not in tremendous detail but tell what your roots are.
Whitfield: My mother and father were both born in Mission San Jose and lived there all their lives.
Lage: Give me their names.
Whitfield: My father was Mathew Joseph, and I'm Mathew Paul Whitfield. My mother's name was Katie Boggini; that was her maiden name. In fact, her real baptismal name was Henrietta. That was because Mrs. Gallegos was her godmother when she was baptized in the old wooden church, St. Joseph's, up there. That's a Costa Rican name, but she never went by that, she always went by Kate.
Lage: Was she related to Mrs. Gallegos?
Whitfield: No. she was just a godmother. The reason she was a godmother was because my grandparents came from Switzerland. First of all. my grandfather came over here to work in the Gallegos Vineyards up in the Mission San Jose area. He didn't bring my grandmother with him. He had one child, my Aunt Mary, who was only six months old when she came from Switzerland. He worked for the Gallegoses so my grandparents lived on the Gallegos property that's now owned by the Sisters of the Holy Family. So my mother was born on the Gallegos property.
Lage: Were your grandparents Swiss- Italian?
Whitfield: Swiss-Italian, yes, from the Italian part of Switzerland.
Lage: How about your father's roots?
Whitfield: Let me say that in my mother's side of the family there were ten children. They're all deceased now. The last one just passed away about eight months ago. Then on my father's side of the
Whitfield; family there were eight children. There's three of them living
now; I have three aunts that are living. Tess. who's ninety-one;
and my godmother, Irene, who is eighty-seven; and the youngest
living is eighty-four, Winifred.
They were all raised in Mission San Jose and went to the local schools. All my father's sisters except one went to San Jose Normal when it was just a normal school and took up teaching. They were teachers after they graduated, in the general area of Fremont and Newark.
Lage: They're the ones you told me knew Tillie Logan*, who also went
to San Jose Normal.
Whitfield: Yes. I'd say that Tillie is in the age group of the older of my three aunts.
Lage: It must be unusual to find many people who have roots here for
that length of time.
Whitfield: No, because one of my grandmothers was twelve when she came
here. The other one from Switzerland was seventeen. So that goes back. I think my grandmothers would be over 120 biological years old if they were still living.
Lage: Now how about your father's family? Where did they come from?
Whitfield: My grandmother, Teresa Nolan, came from San Francisco. Her
family moved up into the Sheridan Road up by Sunol. There was a colony of Irishmen up there. My grandmother's maiden name was Teresa Nolan.
Lage: Was she Irish?
Whitfield: Yes, she's Irish. Then my grandfather came from England. He went from England to New Zealand and left New Zealand and somehow get into the town of Niles. So he was English. So I'm a quarter Irish, a quarter English, and half Swiss- Italian.
Lage: Well, a nice mix. As I was looking at the water district
records it seems as if your father worked for the district.
Whitfield: Yes, my father worked in the operations department. He put in waterlines and meters and all that kind of thing. That's when they had about three people working for them.
*See interview with Tillie Logan in this series.
Lage: It seemed that way. And he was paid almost as much as the
general manager, fifty dollars less a month.
Whitfield: Yes. Well, the pay scale was very low then. In fact, when I was hired — talk about pay — the board of directors didn't know what to do about what kind of salary I should get. I had been making $429 a month in the late forties when I was available to work for them, so that's what they gave me. But it was just slightly under what the general manager was making.
Schooling
Lage:
Whitfield: Do you want to talk about my education, or — ?
What was the community like here as you were growing up as a young boy?
Lage: Your education, but also —
Whitfield: Yes. Well, let me say that all my father's and mother's
families went to the Old Mission school up here in Mission San Jose, which subsequently became the second temporary city hall for the city of Fremont. That's the same grammar school I went to. It was in operation from 1915 to 1955. and then the state condemned it.
Lage: As earthquake — ?
Whitfield: Yes. Then Ed Huddleson bought it. He was the one who purchased the Witherly property where the Ohlone College now stands. So the city rented space in the old school for several years before they built a city hall of their own.
Lage: It was a public school?
Whitfield: It was a public school. I went there.
Lage: Was it small?
Whitfield: Yes, there were four classrooms, you know, and multiple classes for one teacher. In fact, my Aunt Tessie taught there in the year of 1919. She taught some of my mother's brothers and sisters when they were younger.
Lage:
When were you born?
Whitfield: I was born in 1917 in Mission San Jose.
Lage: Then what about high school, where did you go?
Whitfield: I went to Washington High School. In fact, some of my aunts and uncles went to Washington High School. It was at another location about five blocks from where it is now. That's where Tillie Goold and all the Logans went. In fact, my aunts used to ride an old horse and buggy down there every day to go to high school, from Mission San Jose.
When I went to high school there, Washington High was the only high school between Hayward and San Jose. Then this whole area — you see, Fremont's made up of five little towns, and then there is Newark; then Decoto, and Alvarado, which are now a part of Union City. Each one of those little towns had an elementary school. Then, of course, after the incorporations they all went into city unified school districts. There's three different unified school districts here now.
Lage: There was just the one high school, though, then.
Whitfield: It served the eight little towns around here, yes.
Lage: Did they have a bus; did you take a bus to school?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Did you have brothers and sisters?
Whitfield: I had one sister. She passed away in 1958. I have two nieces and one nephew, my sister's children.
Lage: We are skipping over this quickly, but I just want to get a
general view of your background.
After Washington High —
Whitfield: I went to San Jose State and I took pre- engineer ing because in those days San Jose State wasn't that big. First of all, my sister was taking teaching. My aunts, Tessie, Irene, and Winnie, went there and they became teachers. I was very young when I got out of high school; I was only sixteen, so I wasn't sure what I wanted, so I signed up for teaching. I was in there two weeks; then two of my buddies that went with me all through high school signed up for pre-engineering. I kind of liked what they were doing so I switched over to engineering. We could only go there two years, so I then transferred.
Lage:
It was just a two-year school?
Whitfield: In the engineering. It was just pre-engineering; it was four
years for teachers and ether professions. Then I transferred to the University of Santa Clara and went there three years. I graduated in 1939. with a bachelors of science in mechanical engineering. That's the extent of my education, other than some courses that I took and that type of thing.
Lage: When you were here in the local school district, did a lot of
the children go on to college? Were there teachers that encouraged you to do that?
Whitfield: Well, they encouraged me, yes. Of course, one thing — see. none of my mother's brothers or sisters went. In fact, my father always said his education was he graduated from the fourth grade. None of my mother's brothers or sisters or my mother went. Well, the younger daughters and son went to high school, and the older ones didn't. One thing about it was that one of my father's brothers, the only one of the boys that ever went part-time to college — he went to the University of Santa CLara. he was a football player — but he died from spinal meningitis when he was about 19 years old. So I always thought that if I ever went to college I'd like to go to Santa Clara.
Lage: But his sisters went to college to become teachers.
Whitfield: Well, three of the sisters became teachers, and one was a
milliner; she worked for a hat place in San Jose. But none of the boys — my father's brothers — went on to school.
Lage: Did your family encourage you to go? Was that a goal?
Whitfield: Yes. very much so. It was struggle because we didn't have much. You know, my father ran the ranch up there, and it was pretty close pickings sometimes.
Lage: Now what ranch did he run?
Whitfield: Well, he ran the property all of which at one time belonged to the Gallegos. The main part was the gardens: there were seventeen acres of gardens. Most of it is now owned by the Sisters ef the Holy Family.
Lage: Has it been preserved?
Whitfield: Oh. yes. The Sisters have their novitiate up there and their convent. It's a beautiful place.
Lage :
Is it something people can go and see. or is it — ?
Whitfield: Oh. if you wanted to go. I work very closely with them. I ran their festivals for years.
Lage: This was a sideline, running their festivals?
Whitfield: Oh. yes. I'm a Catholic, and I used to run them. Well, we had a wonderful time, yes. It's was an annual fair, raising funds for them. I was kind of their advisor on things when they were building up there. My father used to go up and help. too.
Then there were a hundred acres of prunes. In fact, some
of it was right up here on Palm Avenue, twenty-seven acres. I
started my professional life as a prune picker, [laughter] On
my knees, picking prunes for my father, yes.
Lage: So your father managed that ranching operation?
Whitfield: Yes, he ran all the ranching operations for them. Lage: Was that later after he worked for the district?
Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
No, that was before. He left there in 1941. I think, and then he went down and worked for the water district for about four or five years. Then he took over a service station and ran that until he retired. In fact, the service station was right across the street from the water district yard, which was about as big as my backyard.
My goodnessl Times have really changed, notice it more.
In this area you
Yes. Well, when I was growing up there were just these little towns. You knew, maybe five or six hundred people at the most.
And then just open space, farms — ?
Farms, orchards, a lot of row crop, not too much irrigation up in this area like there was down in the valley in Centerville and in through there. But the orchards had to be irrigated, the prune orchards once or twice a year. I think they had about four acres of apricots, toe.
Was that irrigation system based on wells? Yes.
8
Engineering Jobs
Lage: What kind of jobs did you have after college?
what year?
You graduated in
Whitfield: Nineteen thirty-nine. Let's see. the first j ob I had was — well. in fact, when I got out of Santa CLara there were eleven in our graduating class of engineering. I was the only one that had a job because in these days there weren't too many jobs around.
Lage: This was Depression time.
Whitfield: Yes. So this fellow — I think his name was Cochran — had called up Dean Sullivan at Santa Clara and asked if they had any young engineers that might want a job. So he asked me if I would be interested. It was just a one-man operation; he worked out of his house. He did design work. It was in industrial gas burners and that kind of stuff. I took the job at $115 a month. I was with them for, oh, a year, about a year. He went out of business.
Then I called Dean Sullivan and asked if there was anything else. There was another one-man operation in San Jose and his name was Erstead, He had invented and built a burlap bag turning machine. You know, when they sew the burlap and then they cut the bags out. Then they have to be turned so that the seam is inside. When I saw that machine [laughs], it was an inventor's nightmare. I thought, "fiov am I ever going to figure what this thing does?"
Lage: Now what would have been your job as an engineer?
Whitfield: I did a little design work, then I did drafting.
Lage: Relative to this machine?
Whitfield: That was the only thing he had.
Lage: Did he want you to kind of refine it?
Whitfield: Yes. Well, he had ideas but did a lot — you see. in those days when you got out as an engineer you usually went to work doing drafting work. There weren't any of these big plush jobs at forty thousand dollars a year.
Lage:
Were you a particular kind of engineer?
Whitfield: Mechanical. He was a very difficult man to work for. He'd go off on a tangent, you know, yell his head off. But he had reputation of being rather strange in San Jose because he'd go into one of these supply places and they'd practically throw him out all the time. [laughter]
Lage: That must have given you great experience to prepare you to work
for a board of directors later.
Whitfield: Well, none of them were like him, thank goodness. But, then. I wasn't very happy there. Then Dean Sullivan called me and said there was an opening up at Pacific Gear and Tool. Well, the chief engineer up there had graduated from Santa Clara as an engineer, too. That was at Pacific Gear and Tool.
At Pacific Gear and Tool, all the sens went to the University of Santa Clara and took engineering. One became a Jesuit priest. So they always had the "in" at Pacific Gear and Tool if you were a Santa Clara graduate. I went to work for them. I spent the first year or year and a half just drafting. Then I got into some designs. What they did was gear work and speed reducers. Have you see pictures of these big oil well pumps, the things that pump up and down? Well, they made the big gear drives to drive those. I did design work on these and that type of stuff for four years.
Then in 1944, I was deferred because Pacific Gear was doing mostly national defense.
Wartime Service at Mare Island Naval Shipyard
Lage: The draft must have picked up about that time.
Whitfield: Yes. it had. I worked for Pacific Gear until '44. I was
deferred. Then this fellow, another Santa CLara graduate who was there before me, we were both talking about going into the navy, but we had a wonderful boss to work for and we didn't want to leave him in the lurch. I said, 'Veil, you're a senior to me so you go first." [laughs] Then I waited about almost another year, and then I signed up. I got a commission in the navy as an ensign.
Then they sent me down to the University of Arizona at Tucson for a two-month indoctrination course. I was down there two months and then I was transferred back to Mare Island up at Vallejo. I spent the duration of my service up at Vallejo.
Lage: So you never got overseas?
10
Whitfield: No. I never got any experience at sea. I was assigned to the ship superintendent, which involved ship repairs and replace ments in the mechanical and electrical equipment area on auxiliary vessels, and I learned an awful lot because I had never been exposed to such a variety of equipment before.
Then I was transferred up in the planning department. What we had to do was there'd be two officers assigned to each ship. One would be for the hull repairs, and one would be for machinery and electrical. I was machine. But our job was to get everything done while the ships were in the yard for a specific time period. We had to report weekly on the progress te the captain whe was the repair superintendent.
Lage: It had some relationship to engineering but not — ?
Whitfield: Well, it was good practical experience of learning about
machinery and mechanisms and all because on a ship there's practically every type of machinery and equipment aboard.
I'll never forget the first time I went up to the ship I was assigned to. It was the Ell Dorado, a flag ship for landing- craft operations. I had done seme design work at Pacific Gear on some of the units that were involved. They had a CICi a communication information center. You see, this ship would go out and direct all the amphibious ships' operations. They were putting in this CIC, this communication information center. I walk in this compartment, as big as this room here, and there were wires hanging all over the place. [laughs] "Oh, Gedl If it's my job to get those wires hooked up, forget it." But it worked out.
Then I was transferred, after being there about a year. I was transferred up into the planning section under another captain. There were civilian planners assigned to machinery and hull work, but they had officers over them. We used to go out and meet ships way out at sea. and then we'd have conferences with their officers. They'd have their lists of repair and work and alterations that they wanted done, and we would make decisions en the way in as to what we could and could net do. Say, if they were in for thirty days or sixty days, we would decide what materials were available to do it and authorize certain work to be done.
Lage: It sounds like good training for the job at the water district.
Whitfield: Yes, it was very enlightening and gave me some good practical
experience. The only thing is I was only an ensign and we used to meet sometimes with commanders and captains, four stripers, yeu know.
11
Lage: Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield; Lage: Whitfield;
And tell them what you could do for them?
Yes, yes. In fact, we had a very senior captain who was over the planning section, my boss. Captain — oh, I can't even think of his name. He was a nice guy, though. Some of these officers, you know, like commanders, they'd resent the fact that an ensign would say, "I'm sorry, sir, we can't do this." A couple of them said, "Well. I guess we're going to have to go over your head." I said, "Fine." [laughs]
In our office we had two desks facing each other, and one would always be the mechanical man for officers that worked in our department, and one would be the hull man. When a captain rang, the planning superintendent or the repair superintendent, it was a continuous ring so you always knew when a captain called. So we got back to an office from this excursion after reviewing all the job requests. When I went in, I sat down at my desk, and I was there about half an hour and [making a ringing sound] it was the captain, the planning superintendent.
He says, "Whit, come on in. I've got seme friends of yours in here. I went into his office where there were several of the ships officers. I thought. "Oh no, I'm in trouble now." So he said. "Captain so-and-so wants to know, you turned him down on such-and-such. Why?" I went through about ten different things, you know, and he'd say, "Why did you do it?" "Well, we don't have that equipment available. It is too short a time," or whatever the reason might be. He knew all these other officers. He turned to the captain, 'Well, Bill, that's the story. "
[laughs] That's nice to be backed
up.
Oh. wonderful. It certainly gave me a feeling of courage. I tell you that, yes.
So after the war you came back to Washington Township?
Yes.
How eld were you then? Would it have been '45?
Yes, it was 1945, and I was then 28 years old.
I didn't tell you about my job after Mare Island. I went to work for A.B. Chance Company. They manufactured high voltage electrical equipment, switches, tools, etc., in San Francisco.
Lage:
This was after the war, then?
12
Whitfield: Yes. that was in '47. Their home plant was in Centralia.
Missouri. When they first moved out here, the union pulled them out en strike. They pulled five companies out on strike, and they were one of them. Well, they hadn't even gotten established out here.
Then when I was with them, after a couple of years, they did the same thing again, so A.B. Chance Company just made up their mind; they said. "Well, we're net going to fight this anymore." They had just started to build up some sales territory and all that so they just decided to move all the production work back to Centralia. Missouri. So I went back there with them for about three weeks te familiarize them with the San Francisco operations since they had not done this kind of work before.
Lage: Did you ever think of moving back there?
Whitfield: No. I was their methods engineer in San Francisco, and I did
some design work, too. But then when they took everything back, they just left an assembly shop. No. I stayed with them while they were in the transition while they were moving. Then I was just in charge of the assembly department for a time.
They wanted me te come back, but I'd never been to the Midwest before. When you lived in Centralia, Missouri, you either worked for A.B. Chance Company, or you raised corn and soybeans, or you had a little store in town. It wasn't very big. But they were a very wonderful company to work for.
13
II THE ALAMEDA COUNTY WATER DISTRICT IN THE 1950S
Hired by the Water District
Whitfield: So I was in between jobs, and I think I've told you before that Dr. Grimmer, who was en the board of directors [of the water district] when I was hired. Dr. E.M. Grimmer was our family doctor. He was a fishing and hunting buddy of my father's. We were going up to Winchester Bay in Oregon on a fishing trip, both families, and I was driving Dr. Grimmer's car for him.
Whitfield: He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was in between jobs. We got talking about it. He said, "Well, you know, we've been thinking about hiring a young engineer for the water district because the present general manager is getting way up in years, and we know things are going to start growing around here." He said, "We've been talking about hiring someone. Would you be interested?" I said. "Yes, I'd be very much interested."
When we got home, he said, "Well, I'll call Will Patterson." who was president of the board, "and talk to him about it." So I went down and had an interview with him. Then they said, "Maybe we ought to have the rest of the board" — well, I knew some of the ether beard members anyway.
Lage: Did you say you talked with the two of them?
Whitfield: Yes. We went down to Mr. Patterson's together to talk about it.
Lage: That was a long time ago, but do you remember any of the conver
sation?
14
Whitfield: They knew I was an engineer, and I brought them up-to-date on what I had been doing and what my experience was, what my educational background was. I didn't knew Mr. Patterson before that but Dr. Grimmer knew me well. But they knew me, they knew the family. Mr. Patterson knew my father.
Lage: Was Mr. Patterson really a part of the community? Other people
I've talked to spoke of the family as if they were sort of removed.
Whitfield: They were to some degree. In fact. I didn't even know of the Patterson family. I lived in Mission all the time, and they were down in the north plain area. Of course, in those days everything was spread out. and there were just individual little towns. They weren't recluses or anything, but they didn't participate in functions in the community. They helped out on things, charitable things and all that.
Lage: But your father did have seme contact with him?
Whitfield: Yes. my father knew Will Patterson because of having been in the farming business.
Well, the interview was just generalizations. "Mould you be interested in it?" I reemphasized that I never had much experience in design or anything in the water works business. There wasn't too much questioning of me. I think they were kind of pleased to find that they found a young engineer who would be interested.
Lage: Whitfield: Lage: Whitfield:
I wonder if they were happy to find somebody from the community?
Oh. I think so.
Knowing Dr. Grimmer was a big help?
Oh, yes. There was only one board member that I didn't know, and that was Louis Amaral. He was from the Alviso district, down the other side between Centerville and Alvarado. Then I met with the board of directors and had another preliminary discussion. They asked some questions; then they said, "Well, we'll have to give it some thought."
Lage : Whitfield:
So I waited around a while. Westvaco in Newark.
What was it?
I had an offer to go to
That was a chemical plant. I went down and applied down there. In fact, dark Redeker. who has been on the water district board since 1966, worked for Westvaco. Anyway, I went down, and I was
Lage:
Lage:
15
interviewed. They didn't have any openings down there, but they had an opening for plant manager up in Pocatello, Idaho. I wasn't too interested in going there, but it was a job. So I waited around a couple of months.
So I waited, and finally I met Dr. Grimmer once, and I said, "Hey, I haven't heard anything." Oh, he said, "Yes, well, the real problem is we don't know what to do with Ed." I said. "Well, what do you mean?" He said, "He's getting old. We're kind of a little squeamish about bringing someone in and letting him know that he's going to be retired or something like that."
Ed Richmond is mentioned as being involved in water since 1906.
Whitfield: Oh, yes. You see, the Alameda County Water District took over the plant in Alvarado from the Oakland Water Works. You remember reading about that? They had several wells in Alvarado which pumped out of the water basin. Ed Richmond operated that plant for the Oakland Water Works. So in 1930 when the water district took the plant over, they took Ed over also. They made him general manager.
And he'd been there ever since.
Whitfield: Yes. He was in his late seventies.
Lage: I see. They felt squeamish about retiring him.
Whitfield: Yes, because they didn't have any retirement benefits. He had
worked hard. He physically worked; he put pipes in and all that stuff. He was very conscientious, but he was — until you got to know him — a little hard to work with. They had another engineer who was retired from Southern Pacific, Herb Harrold. He was secretary of the board. In fact, he was a trustee of the high school when I was there.
Lage: But he was an engineer, not a board member?
Whitfield: Yes. he was an engineer. He was retired from the Southern
Pacific. See, in those days, they didn't have any maps of where the pipes were, anywhere. Everything was in Ed Richmond's head. So they hired Herb Harrold to come in and get the information from Ed and put it en paper, on drawings.
Well. Ed could be in a bad mood seme day [laughs], and he didn't want to be bothered with Herb, and he wouldn't go out with him to show him where the pipes were. So when I got there I got in the middle.
16
Apprenticeship Under Ed Richmond. 1950-1953
Lage: How did you deal with that problem with Ed Richmond? Did you
have a better time with him?
Whitfield: Well, let's go back to — this was the board before I got hired. So we met again with the beard of directors. They said. "Ve want you to come to work for us. but we just don't know what to do with Ed." 1 said. "I'll make a suggestion if you really want me to come to work for you. Appoint me assistant to the manager and I'll get in. learn all I can as fast as I can." That's what I did. [Hired September 20. 1950.]
In these days, they wrote water bills out by hand. Sometimes that's what I had to do, doing that.
Lage: What kind of staff did they have besides Ed Richmond?
Whitfield: They had Ed Richmond. Herb Harrold was paid by the hour, and he was secretary of the board. Then they had Jewell Amaral. who I went to high school [with].
Lage: Who was the board member's daughter?
Whitfield: No. he was her uncle. That was Louis Amaral. Lage: Was she clerical staff?
Whitfield: Yes. There was her and Marie Santos. I knew all her family;
they were from Mission. There was a total of eight. That's all that was in the office, but there was a total of eight employees when I went to work for them. I was one of them.
So that's what I did. I went in, and I did everything Ed asked me to do, except a couple times. You know. I always wanted to get out in the field and see what was going on. He had me locked in there too much of the time.
Lage: Was he jealous of letting go of his j ob by training you. do you
think?
Whitfield: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. But one day there was a big water main leak over in the underpass at Niles. We always had a problem with that darn pipe over there. I was in the office. It was billing time, and I was doing bills. So I waited about four or five hours, and Ed didn't come back, so I got in the car and went over.
17
He said. "Vhat are you doing here?" I said. "I've come to see what's going en. what the problem is?" "You're supposed to be back there doing bills." And I said, "Well. I'm going t© stay and watch to see what's going on," "Well. I want you to go back." I said, "Listen, I'm net going back. I was hired to learn what's going on in the district, and get educated in the field of water engineering. I'm going to go out and see what's going on from now en." He said, ''Okay." [laughs] And after that everything was fine.
Lage : So that was resolved without your having to take it up with the
board.
Whitfield: Yes. Oh, I w ouldn1 1 take it up w ith the board. Ithinkyou're right, though. I was very lucky because, when I worked for this guy Er stead down there in San Jese. I learned that at times I was going to run into people who were hard to get along with. I felt that I could have enough patience to stay long enough to learn something.
When I was up at Mare Island we had Captain Burris, who was the repair superintendent. He was a pusher. We had to have a conference every week and a progress report of what was going on on our ships. I never had any compunction in answering him. I'd tell him the truth. If you were behind, you were behind. "Why are you behind?" "Well, we can't get this, we can't get that." So I had learned to work with him. He was very gruff, and most of the guys were scared stiff of him. It didn't bother me.
In fact, [laughs] when I was up in the planning section, we had a ship come in that had main propulsion gear problems. This required setting up an inspection group to resolve the problem. The group was composed of two officers representing the repair superintendent, two officers from the Design Section, a repre sentative from the gear manufacturer, and myself. At that time they were in the process of changing the planning superinten dent. Commander Moore, who was the design superintendent, was filling in as acting planning superintendent. So whenever you had a gear problem with the main propulsion of a ship, you had to report it to Commodore Lee back in Washington, D.G.
Well, the question came up of who was going to call and make the report. Commander Moore called me in and wanted me to. He said, "Would you be qualified to call and explain it?" "Yes." He said, "Well, you've got to go down and talk to Captain Burris about it." He called Burris and told him I was coming down. We had a repair superintendent and a machinery man and a hull superintendent. Their offices were together, and
18
Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield: Lage :
Whitfield! Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
they had a window right between where they could talk back and forth. So the window was open and this other captain was Bill something or other. He was a younger man.
Anyway. Captain Burris says, "Sit down. Whit." [laughs] I said. "Yes. sir." He said. "Your Commander Moore tells me you're a little bit too bashful to call Washington. D.G." I said. "Well. I don't knew why he said that. He asked me if I would do it, and I said sure. I can't understand me being too bashful or scared to call a commodore back in Washington, D.C.. when I speak very frankly to you." He turned to the window and said. T3ill. did you hear what this young upstart said." He put his head back, and he laughed. So I had a good experience, and I was well prepared.
And you learned that you do have to sort of assert yourself. Yes, once in a while.
Was the district board involved just with day-to-day problems, like leaks, or were they deciding to plan for some of the growth? Was there an awareness that there was going to be a lot of growth?
Oh, yes.
I'm thinking about when you first came on, the first couple of years.
We had the Conway and Culligan problem in the period between when I came there and 1955.
You're already general manager, though, when that happened.
Yes, I was. But that's what started us. The reason Patterson and Grimmer wanted somebody in there with an engineering background was because they knew it was going to hit.
Tell me mere about that, growth?
Can you remember discussions about
Well, they always said, 'Ve've got to plan because the develop ment is going to be coming down this way, and it's going to come pretty fast." And it did. Say after '55 and in there, we were putting on three or four thousand new customers a year. When I went there we had two thousand customers.
Lage:
So there were day-to-day problems but then there were long-term ones too?
19
Whitfield: The first big problem we had — Ed Richmond didn't get along with the various fire chiefs. In fact, my father was a fire chief, the first volunteer fire chief in Mission San Jose, but he never had any difficulty with Richmond. But, in fact, he knew Ed Richmond pretty well.
But. anyway, the first thing that had happened was — you know, the fire hydrants you see out on the street are two- nozzle-type. Well, in the early days, in a small district sometimes they put in a wharf hydrant which was just a four-inch pipe coming up with a valve en top. That would satisfy for the area they were in. In those days, the fire districts paid three dollars- a- month rental for a fire hydrant, but the water district paid for putting the fire hydrants in. Ed was always trying to save money, so he was always trying to get by with just putting in the wharf hydrants.
Joe Fashote, who just passed away a couple of years age. was the fire chief in Newark. He knew my father quite well, too, because they were both fire chiefs.
Lage: This was a volunteer fire chief?
Whitfield: Yes. at the time. Ed had a big tiff with Joe Fashete because he was supposed to put in, in certain streets in Newark, I think it was four hydrants. Well, Ed decided that he wasn't going to put in the standard hydrants; he was going to put in wharf hydrants. Apparently, he was going to put in three-inch wharf hydrants. Joe Pashote said that if he did we won't pay the rent. They got in a tiff and Ed just stopped the job.
So they had a public meeting in Judge Norris' court down there with Joe Pashote and some of the other fire chiefs.
Lage: And representatives from the district, the water district?
Whitfield: Yes, the board of directors and me, and I guess Ed Richmond was there. I had to catch a plane — I was going to a meeting in Los Angeles, a water district meeting — and so they left it on the basis that I would get together with Joe Pashote and talk about it. [laughs] Of course. Joe was adamant with Ed Richmond, but he wasn't with me.
So I went down, "Joe, really, what's the big to-do about, what's the problem?" I said. "Nothing toe big it can't be solved." tod dammit," he said, "that old stubborn so-and-so. He wants to put in all wharf hydrants. I said, "Well, what do you want?" He said, "I should have standard hydrants, or I want four-inch ones." "There's no problem there. Where do you want them?" So we agreed on them.
20
Lage: And did he get what he wanted?
Whitfield: Sure.
Lage: Because it was a reasonable request?
Whitfield: Sure. There was no reason to fuss about it. Pashote and I were buddies all the time. [laughs]
Lage: The board didn't usually get involved in little things like
that? Except in this case they had to have a hearing about it.
Whitfield: Well, because. I guess, Pashote must have complained to board members.
But then after that. Mr. Patterson then found another consulting engineer, a Stanford graduate. Will Patterson went to Stanford. Will Patterson had three boys and they all went to Stanford. So whenever he was looking for information about engineers he always went to Stanford. So he got Thad Binkley. who was a consulting engineer.
Lage: Did he stay on with you for a while?
Whitfield: Yes, he was with us quite a while. Lage: But it was just on a consulting basis?
Whitfield: Yes, on a consulting basis. He did a lot of the engineering for our percolation pits and all that kind of stuff.
Lage: Was he a specialist in water?
Whitfield: Yes. In fact, he ran his own water company over in the peninsula over there, too. He specialized in water.
PI anni ng f or Growth; The 1955 Bend Issue
Whitfield: So then we started thinking in terms of planning for growth. The only bond issue that the water district ever had was in 1930. a quarter of a million dollars to buy out the Alvarado plant. The Oakland Water Company, or the People's Water Company — it was named both at one time — had acquired the prescriptive right to pump eight million gallons of water a day from Alvarado into Oakland. There was a thirty-inch line that went to Oakland. When they were going to sell out, our water district didn't want them to sell it to anybody else, who would
21
Whitfield: then have a prescriptive right to pump it out. Se they floated a bend for a quarter of a million dollars, and we paid that off ever the period that I was there.
Then it was decided, because seme of the towns weren't even connected with pipes, and we had no major mains anywhere —
Lage: Many people were getting water from wells, isn't that right?
Whitfield: Yes, wells. For storage we only had the hundred-thousand gallon tank up at Mission San Jose and a one- hundred-thousand gallon reservoir over in Miles, in the Niles Canyon area. New they've get eighty million gallons of storage.
Knowing we didn't have storage and we didn't have adequate wells and all that, in 1955 we had a bend issue. That's when the planning started — it preceded '55.
Lage: Planning for the future needs?
Whitfield: Yes, yes, and for the major expenditures. Se we had a
$4,297,000 bond issue, which was the biggest bend issue ever floated down here. They were general obligation bends paid out of water revenue. If you have a general obligation bond, you have the backing ef the taxes although we never used taxes. We paid for it out of water revenue sales, like a revenue bend. But revenue bonds you pay a higher interest rate.
Lage: Did you do a lot of campaigning for that, or was it
controversial?
Whitfield: No, it wasn't. I went out and did all the promotional work, went out and talked to the chambers of commerce and whoever wanted to listen. It was successful.
The ACHD Beard ef Directors in the Early Fifties
Lage: Let's go back just a little bit to earlier in the 1950s. I'm
thinking about the board at that time. What kind ef people? You mentioned Bernardo, Amaral, and then there was Patterson, and Grimmer, and Prouty. What were their backgrounds?
Whitfield: Well, Dr. Grimmer was purely medical. He was a physician. In fact, for years there was only Dr. Grau over in Niles and Dr. Holman in Centerville and Dr. Grimmer here. Patterson was in business and agriculture, a big land holder. He owned land where Del Valle is [in Livermore Valley]; I think he had about
22
Whitfield: three thousand acres up there and about three thousand acres
down here. Then Louis Amaral was one of the fanners that farmed a lot of Patterson's property. He leased it eut en shares.
Lage : Did he have his own ranch at all or was he mainly — ?
Whitfield: No, I think he leased everything. He and his brother had a garage down in the Alviso district where they both lived. Later, when he got out of farming, he was in the insurance business. Manuel Bernardo years back was the constable around here, and then he went into farming. He owned about twelve or fifteen acres of apricots down in Centerville. Jack Prouty was a schoolteacher, originally.
Then, when the war came along. Bailey was the next big farmer, next in size to Patterson.
Lage: What was his name?
Whitfield: Lloyd Bailey. He had a lot of property, too; he was a very wealthy man.
Lage: Was he involved with the water district?
Whitfield: No, but somehow Jack Prouty figured he was going to get into the farming business. I don't know what the relationship was with him and Bailey, but he supervised a lot of Bailey's operations for years. He never did go back to teaching.
Lage: So these were mainly men of substance on the board, or is that
not a good generalization? They were elected.
Whitfield: They are elected, yes. What do you mean?
Lage: Well, men of means. They had a fair amount of money?
Whitfield: Well. I don't think Bernardo did, no.
Lage: They had ties to agriculture basically.
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Did they take a real hands-en attitude towards the water
district or did they pretty much leave it in Richmond's hands?
Whitfield: Well, in the days before I got there, when Ed Richmond was
manager, it was my understanding that Mr. Patterson did all the negotiating or making agreements and all that. He did all that type of thing.
23
Lage: From just looking briefly at the minutes ©f board meetings this
morning. I do notice a change when you come on as general manager. [Appointed general manager September 10, 1953.]
Whitfield: I hope for the better! [laughter]
Lage: You are much more involved. You are shown in the minutes far
more than Richmond is; he's barely mentioned. When you come on, the minutes note a 'General Manager Whitfield this and General Manager Whitfield that."
Whitfield: He didn't participate. When they had their board meetings before, well, they never had any agendas so 1 talked to Mr. Patterson. I said, "Would you like me to prepare an agenda?" Well, that worked out fine. I would give them write-ups in advance, you know, a little explanation of what was coming up.
They never had anybody to really help them in this; Herb Harrold never had much push. He was an older man. you know.
Lage:
They didn't have a real manager, it sounds like.
Whitfield: They didn't. They had a good pipe man, and a good pump man and a good installer, and a very hard worker. He knew how to tell people how to do things, and that's what he was.
It sounds as if Patterson took more of a managerial role before you came on.
Lage:
Whitfield: Right, he did.
24
III WILLIAM D. PATTERSON AND THE WATER DISTRICT
A Private Person
Lage: Since we want to develop a little information about William
Patterson, can you recall any conversations with him or dealings with him? Was there any problem with his giving up this managerial role when you came on?
Whitfield: No. it was just a smooth transition. I think he was very
relieved because Patterson was getting older, too. He'd been »n it since 1914.
Lage: That's right. That's a long time.
Whitfield: But he was a wonderful man. I loved the guy. He was so laid
back and once I got to know him I knew that, boy, if I ever need a friend to defend me in the water district, he'll be there. He let you know that he had confidence in you and you felt very secure.
I was very lucky in working twenty-seven years. I think I served under about twenty different boards of directors. I only had one board member who gave me a bad time — threatened my job and all that.
Lage: That is lucky when you can say that.
Whitfield: Yes, because it's political. When you work for elected
officials you serve at the pleasure of the board. I had no contract. A couple of times some of the board members would say, *X)h. I think we ought to have a contract with Matt," I said, "If you want one, it's all right with me. I don't care for one." I said. "I'd rather j ust serve at your pleasure. If you don't want me. I don't want to be here."
Lage:
That made them feel comfortable.
25
n
Whitf ield: Did Tillie Goeld tell you about the Pattersons?
Lage: Not about the Pattersons but I talked to her about farming in
the area.
Whitf ield: I meant about Will Patterson, personally.
Lage: Well, not really. I mean, she didn't knew him at all according
to her. Her farm was in that same area. Mr. Goold said they lived in a different world, a completely different social world.
Whitf ield: Yes.
Lage: And he [Mr. Goeld] seemed to sort of steer clear of the
Pattersons so as net to create any problems.
Whitfield: Well, you know, one example of — a let of people thought it was terrible — Will Patterson had a beautiful home. All this cherry weed banisters. 1 used to go down there and meet with him. But when he passed away, he left it in his will that the whole thing was to be burned down,
Lage: I heard that. None of the family wanted to live there.
Whitfield: Yes, none of the family. He did not want — like the other house, I guess — he didn't want people traipsing through it and making a public thing out ef it.
Lage: Didn't he ever assume that anybody would want to live in it, a
non-family member.
Whitfield: I think what really concerned him was that these old buildings ultimately become public buildings.
Lage: You don't think he would have liked what's happened to the other
house [the G. W. Patterson home]?
Whitfield: No, because he was a very private person.
Lage: So he probably wouldn't like us running around getting oral
histories about him.
Whitfield: Oh, I don't know. You probably wouldn't get any personal
history from him about himself, but I'm sure he would support what you're doing now. When John Caswell wrote the history of the water district, Mr. Patterson thought that should be documented.
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
Lage:
26
A lot sf the family has historical interest. Donald Patterson did some eral history interviews. He taped himself; he taped a couple people in the community. Dave Patterson new has an interest.
I've only met Dave a couple times. He was younger. Jack Patterson, who was about my age, was Will's third sen. He passed away rather young.
Did you knew Donald Patterson?
Oh, yes. Don was very active before and after his father passed away, coming ever to talk about the water district. He was on the water committee of Fremont.
What would he have dene with the water committee?
It was the water committee of the chamber of commerce, and they had a subcommittee on whether we should have ground water reper eolation; they had a committee that was slanted against the ground water. We had a lot of opposition to spending money to recharge the ground water basin. Donald Patterson, like his father, was a great supporter of the ground water projects.
Did Donald Patterson, do you know, take a role in running the ranch?
Whitfield: Yes.
Resolution 81; Blueprint for Growth
Lage: We had talked about trying to get a picture of William Patterson
and how difficult it is to do that. You mentioned you might be able to tell of an incident that occurred that would show something of his style.
Whitfield: I mentioned to you that I felt very comfortable with him. and I always felt that I had his support if I ever needed it. That time came when I recommended to the board that we change our policy on resolution 81.
Lage: First, tell us about resolution 81.
Whitfield: In 1955 we adopted resolution 81. which took about six months to prepare. That was the future format and the bible on how we were going to pay for things: who was going to pay for water mains, whether there was going to be reimbursement, or oversize, and all that.
27
Lage:
For the new developments?
Whitf ield: Far anybody that came in and wanted service, for developers and all that.
Lage:
Or industry, too?
Whitf ield: Yes, for everybody, but primarily for the new developments coming in.
Lage:
Now, who developed resolution 81?
Whitf ield: Well, it was dene jointly between Thad Binkley, Morris Hyman. our attorney, and myself. Morris Hyman is now president of Fremont Bank.
Lage :
Whitf ield:
Did the board give you any direction, what they would like to see?
a policy direction, en
Lage:
No. We talked to them about what we were going to do: First of all, the developers were going to have to pay for certain-sized mains, and under certain conditions they'd get reimbursement. Then, when we needed oversize, if the subdivision needed a twelve-inch line to serve it, based on hydraulic calculations, and then we decided that we want to put in an eighteen-inch line, then the subdivider would have to put the eighteen-inch line in. After we saw the bids and all that, then we would reimburse him for the difference in cost between the twelve and eighteen, under certain conditions.
Lage:
Whitf iel d :
That seems fair enough, their share.
You were trying to see that they paid
Their share, yes. So we developed this policy. Then we tried to figure out the details. If you had a street, and the developer hooked up to one side, well, they'd have to pay for that side. If the other side wasn't part of their subdivision then we would set them up for reimbursement of half of their costs for putting in the water main. Then we had it where you had a three-sided lot or a four-sided lot [laughs] or a five- sided let, the whele thing.
So this is a very detailed policy?
Whitf ield: Yes.
Lage: And then that came before the board for approval?
Whitf ield: Yes. They got advance copies of it. Subsequently--
28
Lage: They approved of it. I assume? Did they vote on it, were there
any hearings?
Whitf ield: No. there were no hearings; we reviewed it with them at a meeting and they then adopted resolution 81.
Lage: But they didn't hold public hearings. It wasn't controversial.
Whitf ield: I think it would have been controversial the other way around — if we didn't have a policy — because a lot of the farmers and property owners, everybody says, "Well, you know, these developers are going to come in and get everything free." In fact, I had many compliments about it because once a developer got in here — and I always said one thing, "We're going to tell you right up front what you're stuck with, and we're going to tell you what you're going to get back."
The reimbursement — they set up for reimbursement for ten years. If they got it all back, fine; if they didn't, they didn't get any more. But in some of the other districts where they worked they weren't sure what they were stuck with. What they want to know is, "What am I stuck with financially before I get into this thing?" They don't want someone coming around afterwards saying, "Hey, you've got to put in $10,000 more of this in there." So most of the bigger developers always complimented us. They would say, "Well, we may not agree that we should put all this in. but we know what we're going to be stuck with and you don't stick us with anything extra."
Lage: Were they required to pay more than most places around here?
Whitf ield: Well. East Bay MUD [Municipal Utility District] and all those didn't have these charges like we did because we didn't have anything to work on.
Lage: Well, you were building in new areas. There must have been a
corollary in Santa Clara County, I would think.
Whitfield: I think Binkley got copies of some extension plans that other entities had, and of course, he had been in the water business himself.
Quiet Support and Leadership from Will Patterson
Lage:
I've been taking you off the track here, something about Will Patterson.
You were saying
29
Whitfield: Subsequent t© that resolution we found that the growth was
coming in more, that we were going to have to begin making them pay for larger sized pipes and sometimes not getting reimbursed until later on.
Lage : How would they be reimbursed — when another developer came in and
shared the pipe?
Whitfield: When anybody hooked onto a pipe that was put in by other than
the water district funds, there would be a charge, a front-foot charge, say, for a six-inch main or ten-inch or whatever it is. So that went into reimbursement funds. Now, it didn't go directly to the developer that put that pipe in, it went into one big pool. At the end of the year we knew how much a credit balance we owed each developer, so it was prorated based upon the credit balance that they had coming. So even though I put twelve hundred feet of pipe along this street, and even during the next year if no one hooked up to that pipe, if someone hooked up to a pipe in the ether side of town, I'd still get a part of that money.
Lage: So any future growth in the area would contribute te that
reimbursement.
Whitfield: Yes, rather than have to keep track of whose money it is we did it this way, which worked out fine.
But anyway, subsequently we had te change the policy to make it mere severe on the developers. We had prepared the plans to put into effect — I think this was probably in June or something like that, but my recommendation was that it was to be adopted, but net te be put into effect until August or Septem ber, and then we were going to insist on having written contracts all the time. My rationale for delaying until August or September was that I had negotiated with people. They'd come in with their drawings, and I would tell them what they have te put in and all this kind ef stuff.
When I briefed the beard on it. seme of them. Dr. Grimmer, for some reason, decided "No, let's not wait. Let's just cut it off like this," [slaps his hand] "and make it effective immediately." I had maybe a dozen developers that I had talked to, or maybe ten or something like that. I just thought it wasn't fair to impose this upon them when they may have had all their plans, financial plans, made. Mr. Patterson sat back, he never said a word. Everybody else talked, get more vociferous: "Well, we can't let them, blah blah blah — "
Lage:
30
Then there was a long silence, and somebody turned to Mr. Patterson and said, 'Will, what's your opinion?" He said, •Well, it's very simple." He said, "Matt has explained to us." He asked, "How many people have you talked to?" And I told him. Tlow much money do you think it involves?" And I told him. He said. "Well, that's my opinion. I agree with Matt. We've gotta be fair about this thing." Without any fanfare, it passed unanimously.
You mentioned that Mr. Patterson seemed sort of a serious person on the surface. Not full of smiles and net a gladhander.
Whitf ield: No. he was a gentleman, but he wasn't a politician- type. He was just a very sedate gentleman.
Lage: You said something about his sense of humor.
Whitf ield: Yes. Well, maybe I shouldn't tell you this one. but I hope
you've got a sense of humor. At the time, Marcella Hewett was the secretary to our board. I think that it was on this same occasion; one of the comments Mr. Patterson made about why we shouldn't enforce this policy immediately was — he said. "I think we should just stick it to them gently." [laughter] And I thought. "My, that's unusual for Mr. Patterson to say something like that." .So the next time 1 saw him. I said. "Mr. Patterson, we've got a real problem. The first problem we've had with you since I've been with the water district." "What's the matter. Matt?" I said, "Remember the comment you made about sticking it — ?" [laughs] He said, "Yes." and he kind of smiled. I said. "Mrs. Hewett wants to knew how you want that phrased in the minutes." And he laughed. I'd never seen him guffaw before, [laughter] That's the only one that I can think of.
Water, Flood Control, Development, and Growth
Lage: Did you detect Patterson's attitude towards development and
growth? Did he have any sense this change was a great thing, er was just an inevitable thing?
Whitfield: I think he would have preferred that the status quo remain, but I think he was pragmatic enough to know that it wouldn't, and he wasn't going to fight it,
Lage:
Did he sell off any of the lands while he was still alive?
Whitfield: Yes.
31
Lage:
Oh. he did? Into development?
Whitfield: Yes. He was on the flood control board, but I have never had any indication on anything that he ever voted on or anything that he was thinking of his own interest. I'm sure in the back of his head he was, but he never said anything about, "I don't want that to happen to my land," or anything like that.
Lage: Well, the flood control project certainly had a let to do with
allowing development.
Whitfield: Oh, sure.
Lage: And probably especially on his land.
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Was the water district involved with flood control in any way?
Whitfield: No, we cooperated with each other. The only problem we had with flood control, at one time, was with some of the city fathers and ether people in the community that weren't in favor of spending all the money we were spending on recharging the ground water basin. They wanted maybe more Hetch Hetchy water. They tried to impose zone eight over eur district.
Lage: Now you're going to have to clarify zone eight here.
Whitfield: Well, the flood control district is county-wide, but they're
broken down into various zones of flood plains. Then when they float a bond issue, it's assessed against that zone. At one time, they wanted to have a whole zone five that covered all Livermore Valley and our district, but there was to© much politics in that. There were a lot of politicians who wanted to say something about it.
But there was a feeling that they would prefer to have zone eight under flood control, under the manager of the overall flood control district, who was more politically inclined than we were. Then they wanted instead of us contracting directly with the state of California for the south bay aqueduct, then zone eight would have contracted.
Lage: Then they would have become a water district.
Whitfield: Yes. Our board and our attitude was, "Why have another layer of government?" In other words, they would have bought water from the state and sold it to us. So why have another political layer in between, with more expense. Then you have them controlling where the water goes.
32
Lage: Now when did that come up?
Whitf ield: That came up prior to '62 when we were negotiating contracts for state water.
Lage: I see. Maybe we will talk about that again mere next time.
33
IV ISSUES AND PROBLEMS OF THE FIFTIES
Recharging the Ground Water Through Percolation Pits
Lage: We've brought up a lot of things that were happening in the
fifties, but let's look at them more directly.
Just when you came into the district or just prior to it, wasn't the Shinn Percolation Pit opened up?
Whitfield: Yes. that was in '49. That was opened up where they took water from the natural runoff and any releases that came from Calaveras Dam were diverted. That was at '49. They had opened it up the year before I came in.
Lage: And they diverted this natural runoff into an old quarry?
i
Whitfield: Yes, an eld abandoned quarry.
Lage: And that allowed it to percolate down?
Whitfield: Yes. The Shinn Pit, that was one of the first quarries that started. It's right up back of Miles.
Lage: Was Shinn connected with that quarry, or was it named after the
first president — ?
Whitfield: It was the Shinn property. The whole area belonged to Shinn. Lage: He was the first president of the water district.
Whitfield: Yes, Joseph Shinn.
Lage: Was that a common way of dealing with water problems, or was it
a new solution that this district found?
34
Whitfield: I think Santa Clara County had gene into it years back and in southern California there was a lot of recharging. The old channel of Alameda Creek was the main source of water to recharge the ground water basin. Now. when they put the main flood control channel down there we were concerned that they might install a concrete lining in it. We made our position clear on it to the Corps of Engineers, who were doing the work.
Lage: The Corps of Engineers did like to concrete things.
Whitfield: Oh, yes. because then you can confine it and have less area to worry about.
Lage: Did that negotiation present any problem, or did they listen to
you?
Whitfield: No. no, there was no real problem. We made our position clear all the tim e.
Pressure to Purchase Hetch Hetchy Water from San Francisco
Lage: When Fremont became incorporated, did that bring a new layer of
problems to you. or was it easier to deal with just one city instead of the five little towns?
Whitfield: Well, with the five little towns there wasn't really any dealing with them. We floated the bond issue before Fremont came in. and the people voted for it. I guess they felt like we did, that we needed to look to the future. One of the anecdotes about Louis Amaral — when we were talking about importing water from the state plan, he would say. "The only amount of water we will ever need is a ten-inch pipe flowing down Alameda Creek year around." That wouldn't be a drop in the bucket. [laughs]
Lage: Was he the one who wanted Hetch Hetchy water? I came across the
notes in the minutes, and I thought it was Amaral saying we want Hetch Hetchy water and forget this ground recharge. Was that Amaral?
Whitfield: Well. I don't remember.
Lage: It was a little bit later on.
Whitfield: Or Jack Prouty?
Lage: No. it wasn't Jack Prouty.
35
Whitfield: Lage:
Whitfield;
Lage : Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
Lage:
There's always been a big to-d© about that, wanted us to get more Hetchy water.
The city of Fremont
Maybe we should talk about that, now, as one of the main issues. It probably went on mere than just in the fifties. Was this a continuing tension?
Well, at one time, before we had enough pipes put to connect it up, Irvington, where Dr. Grimmer lived, was supplied by Hetch Hetchy water. We didn't have any storage for it. We had isolated the areas where we didn't have any pipes where we had Hetch Hetchy water. In fact, this area here, this subdivisen here, was all Hetch Hetchy water from a connection sn Mission Boulevard.
I see. So you brought it direct, purchased from San Francisco.
Yes. But then subsequently we got water mains installed around it, and then we took the areas off. which was always a complaint then because Hetch Hetchy water was softer. I'll never forget when we took this area — this was before I lived up here — off Hetch Hetchy water. The people came down to protest, and one very attractive lady got up. She was complaining about how hard the water was, and she said, "I just wish you could come up sometime and see me trying to take a shower." [laughter] That about brought the house down.
They really noticed it when you changed from Hetch Hetchy water.
Yes, because Hetchy water was softer. Well water has more minerals in it. It was about two hundred and something parts per million with total dissolved solids.
Then we put in the Bernardo Softening Plant over there which was controversial. We went to an election on that, too.
Why was that controversial?
Whitfield: Well, because some people wanted us to spend it on Hetchy water, and some people didn't want soft water.
Lage: But could you have purchased enough water to satisfy the
district's needs from Hetch Hetchy, from San Francisco?
Whitfield: I don't think we could have.
Lage: And what about the price, was that higher?
36
Whitfield: Oh. the price was higher, yes. Very much higher. You see. one of the reasons why we rebelled all the time about going all Hetchy was that the other entities that buy water from San Francisco have no say in the rates they pay. They come under the San Francico Public Utility Commission. They don't come under the Public Utilities Commission of the state of California. So wherever the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission sets the water rates, that's what you've got to pay. You have no recourse, no political recourse by voting for supervisor or anything like that. So we could have another municipality deciding or predestining what you're going to do.
Lage: They probably have first claim on the water as well.
Whitfield: Yes. right.
Lage: But that was a continuing thing. People would rather you didn't
put so much into the percolation pits and —
Whitfield: Yes. Well, there were some people adamant against spending
money to recharge the ground water basin and wanted all Hetch Hetchy water.
Lage: What about candidates that ran for the board of directors?
Whitfield: Some were in favor of using mere Hetch Hetchy water and less
ground water. After they got on the board because they didn't like what we were doing, and when they got in and learned about it, then they saw the rationale and supported the ground water program.
Lage: How were they educated? Was that part of your role?
Whitfield: They were just educated by attending the board meetings to see what we were doing and asking questions.
Lage:
Did you ever see them individually to show them around?
Whitfield: Oh* yes. if they wanted me to. I always offered. You know, if you want to come in and talk about things, I'd be very happy to spend the time with you or take you out and show you.
Lage: And most, when they saw the overall picture, agreed with what
you were doing?
37
Whitfield: Yes, they saw the light. In fact, if you read this history* the ending is very complimentary about hew the water district is operating, yes.
A Controversy with Developers Co re? ay and Culligan, 1954
Lage : Let's talk about this Conway and Culligan issue which was about
•54.
Whitfield: Yes, it was before Fremont was incorporated, not too long before that. I guess we were down in the old office — we rented space in the county building, the one en Martha and Peralta Boulevard that's gone into a nursery school now. They built the court house out here. There was a big to-do about where that should go out here. It was a bunch of politics, you know, somebody wanted it in their various areas, but Dr. Grimmer owned the property down there. He said, "Well. I'll settle it. I'll give them the property." And he did. That's where it settled. But I think that's where we were at the time.
We get a phone call from this guy, Glassbrook or something like that. He was from Oakland. I had never heard of Conway and Culligan before. They were from over in San Mateo. I think it was San Mateo, somewhere on the peninsula. He called me up and he said, 'K)h, we're going to put in 350 homes en the Stevenson property in Irvington where the old dairy is. I want to step by and see you and see about putting in water mains and getting water." I said, "Fine."
Lage: Did the Stevenson property belong to the same Stevenson that
became mayor?
Whitfield: No. I think this was the cousin; this was Max Stevenson. That area is new called Irvington Square. It's out of Irvington towards Warm Springs.
He get in my office, and I don't know how he dropped the hint that they were net used to paying for putting in more than two-inch lines. I said, 'We've get to back up a little bit. We
*Larrowe, Martin, "A Short History of the Alameda County Water District: A Story of Survival in the Metropolitan Bay Area." (Research paper for History 4900, California State University. Hayward, 1978)
38
Whitfield: don't put in two-inch lines anywhere." He didn't like that. I said. "I can't tell you what mains you're going to put in until you bring a map in so we can lay it out and do the hydraulics on it."
ff
Whitfield: Fortunately they had filed a tentative subdivision map with the county planning commission, and they had hearings on that. They always had to put en the maps who was going to be the water purveyor. ACWD was on the maps; and that's where we get them, finally.
They had two wells on the property; they were irrigation wells. Then there was a Hetch Hetchy pipeline right down in that area.
So Conway and Culligan came over and said, "Well, we're not going to spend all the money to put the pipes in the sizes you want. We'll form our own mutual water company. We've got two wells of our own and" — they inferred later on — "we've had a discussion with San Francisco, and they'll give us a connec tion." Well, we've always had an understanding with San Francisco that they wouldn't serve in our district, unless we gave approval. So I took that with a grain of salt. We got together with the board, and they were having another hearing at the county board of supervisors. They were down there in full force, down in Oakland. That was before they had a courthouse in Hayward. Beth Conway and Culligan were there and their attorneys. I made a presentation about it's in our district and we have the facilities and all that. The supervisors decided that there was already a record en the map. and they weren't going to allow them to change it.
Lage: So did it end there or did you go on about it for a while
longer?
Whitfield: No. it ended.
Lage:
Lage:
So the threat was that they would secede, sort of?
Whitfield: Well, a mutual water company is one where it's owned by the property owners in it. and it's run by them.
I see. Now what were they unwilling to — ?
Whitfield: They thought that they were going to just come over and tell us what size pipes they were going to put in. We just told them they weren1 t.
Lage:
Was this a case where your board had to back you up?
39
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage : Did they all back you up? Did Stevenson come in en that, the
future mayor?
Whitfield: I can't remember whether he was involved in that.
Lage: But you did have run-ins with him another time, is that right?
Whitfield: Well, I didn't have any direct run-ins, and I don't think I want te mention his name in this regard. But I think I told you that Jack Prouty, who was an ex-directer of the water district, had property down there by Jack Stevenson.
Lage: Down in this same area of Irvington Square?
Whitfield: No. off Prune Avenue. Prouty was one of the people that was kind of backing flood control to handle zone eight, tee. Not officially, but — I think Jack was — because they had a lot of water committee meetings down at Prouty's house.
Lage: Now was this the same water committee Donald Patterson was on?
Whitfield: I don't think Donald was on it then. Lage: A chamber of commerce committee?
Whitfield: Yes. I don't think he was on it then. But I got a call at 3:30 one afternoon inviting me te come to a meeting. I said, "What meeting?" So I went down and, it was about the same kind of thing, you know.
Lage: Elaborate a little bit mere about what were the issues there.
Whitfield: Well, one ef the issues was that they — I think we had the same thing, toe. when Western Pacific came in down in the Warm Springs area, and they wanted water down there. A big tract of land. I think it was about the same time when the city of Fremont got the idea that maybe they should take ever serving water. The city went out and retained a consultant engineering firm, "Engineering Science," who I knew pretty well. He came dewn and interviewed me. He said, [laughs] "I just can't under stand them thinking that they can come in and set up a whole water district for the city of Fremont and handle it as efficiently as you guys do." So he wrote it. He didn't recommend it. He recommended cooperation with the water district. That was an actual approach the city took because they hired a consultant engineer for a feasability study.
Lage:
40
So there were a lot of feelings. Do you think there was the sense that they wanted more service to subdivisions and less to farmers, was that part of it?
Whitfield: I don't think se. no.
Lage: Because the farmers must have been in favor of this ground water
recharge.
Whitfield: Oh, they were, because some of their wells were going salty.
Lage: And the people who did mere drinking of the water were probably
the ones who wanted the Hetch Hetchy.
Whitfield: Yes. Well, you see, you couldn't afford Hetchy water to put in the ground water basin because, you know, it was a hundred and something dollars an acre foot.
Water District Role in Planning for Growth
Lage: Last time I asked you about planning, and you mentioned that it
was the cities that did the planning and told you what the needs were.
Whitfield: Oh, yes. When we floated our bend issue in '55. the industry in this area was completely disbursed throughout the area. I think Fremont was right: they took it all and put it down in the Warm Springs area. You know, that's where you should have an industrial complex. You dan't want industries splattered all over. So we just took the position that, you knew. fine. What we did is — I forget where our first reservoir was going to be. I think it was going to be over in Miles somewhere — so when they put it down there we put our first reservoir over here off of Washington Boulevard above the railroad tracks. Seven and a half million gallons, that was the first reservoir we put in.
Lage: What's the name of that one?
Whitfield: Middlefield Reservoir.
Lage: It's to service that industrial area?
Whitfield: Yes, so that we'd have some water to head down that way and now we've got another eighteen-million-gallon one down there. You know where Mission Boulevard makes a turn before you hit the 680
41
Freeway? Well, we built an eighteen-million-gallon reservoir down there. Right up here, on Paseo Padre, they're finishing a twenty-one-million-gallon one now.
Lage: So you more or less followed what they were planning as far as
growth and the areas for growth?
Whitfield: Yes. Our board has always taken the position that we're not in the land-use planning business for municipalities. It's up to them to decide what they want; the people decide, and we'll provide the facilities.
Lage: Did you have people, though, making projections about what
future needs might be in terms of population growth?
Whitfield: Oh. yes, continually. In fact, they're just finishing another update ef future needs.
I'll never forget, when we get involved in the Arroyo Del Valle Dam up there in the site up in Livermore, we hired Sid Harding, who was an old water expert who taught at UC California in the irrigation department. He was about seventy-five years eld. One day Hyman and I were talking about, "What are we going to do after twenty-five years?" He just kind of sat back, he says, "Well, what makes you two fellas think that twenty-five er thirty years from now a ceuple of guys just as brilliant er more brilliant than you will figure it out for the next fifty years?" Taught me a lesson. You know, if you plan out twenty-five years with a master plan fer the future, if you can cover for twenty- five years, you're doing all right.
Lage: Sidney Harding did an early oral history with our office — A
Whitfield: Oh, did he?
Lage: He has a little section in it on his work with the Alameda
County Water District.
Whitfield: Yes, he was a great man. He was very well respected in the state as a water expert.
Lage: He seemed to be involved all over. Now what did he do for you;
he was a consultant engineer?
*Sidney T. Harding. "A Life in Western Water Development." 1967.
42
Whitfield: Yes, he did a lot of the studies of the hydrology ©f the Arroyo Del Valle and all that.
Lage: Did he de any negotiating with other entities?
Whitfield: No.
ACWD and the Arroyo Del Valle
Whitfield: I think I told you. but maybe you want to wait, but the Arroyo Del Valle wouldn't be there except for us.
Lage: Why don't we talk about that next?
Whitfield: Yes. Well, we knew the state was coming through with the south bay aqueduct program for us. But the timing was slow. They didn't have any bond issues floated then. Our salt water intrusion was getting worse. Harvey Banks was director of the Department of Water Resources at the time. So we were. well, good friends, and he was an outstanding guy.
So we went up and met with the state people. The plans showed a tunnel being drilled through Brushy Peak — that's the Altamont area — to bring water in, which was going to take a long time and be very expensive. We said, "Ask Harvey if he could have seme of his staff just de a cursory study for us of a small temporary aqueduct coming over just for our purposes." When they got into that they decided that they found it more feasible than putting the tunnel through.
Then when we got into the Del Valle. when we applied for the unappropriated water of the Del Valle. the Department of Water Resources had disregarded the Arroyo Del Valle as a site for terminal storage. But when we got into it, then they decided to come back. There was some cloud en the geology of it that wouldn't make it feasible. Then they found out that they didn't research it enough, and they decided to build that dam themselves up there.
Lage: So the state built the dam at Del Valle?
Whitfield: Yes. in the state water plans. They were going to put one down at Evergreen in San Jose for terminal storage instead of up here.
Lage: This probably made it better for yeu.
43
Whitfield: Oh. yes. And then we got the advantage of capturing the local runoff. We didn't put up any capital for it. We agreed on a storage charge so that the local water that they save and release when we can percolate it, they charge us so much per acre foot for just storing it in there.
Lage: But you've got the water rights from the Arroyo Del Valle?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Along with Pleasanton Township County Water District.
Whitfield: Yes. At the time, see, Binkley and Hyman were also consultants for the Pleasanton Township Water District.
Lage: Oh, I was wondering how you worked so well with them.
Whitfield: Yes. Well, they called us and asked if we had any objection if they hired them, and then Binkley and Hyman asked us if we had any objection. We said no. It would be better because we have common problems: they've get a ground water basin that they have to protect up there. So we figured that rather than to litigate how much of the runoff from Del Valle is theirs, and how much in ours, we would come to an agreement en it so they get a share and we get a share.
Lage: Was it hard to reach that agreement, to come to some fair
understanding?
Whitfield: No, because the attorney and the consultants were familiar with both sides.
Lage: And wasn't there some question about ground water problems for
the people down the stream there, too? Did that come up? The people downstream from the place you took the water on Arroyo Del Valle?
Whitfield: No. no problem because we applied for the unappropriated waters. See. if someone has a right to the water, you can't get it. But when you apply for water in the state of California to export it somewhere, you apply for the unappropriated, that water that isn't being used.
Lage: Is it hard to get? What is the application process involved?
Whitfield: It's really a formality as far as the Del Valle was concerned. Sometimes there are bitter battles over taking water from one area to another. You know, like the Owens Valley down there in southern California.
Lage: Or like the Alameda Creek over to San Francisco.
Whitfield: Yes. But. see, in those days there wasn't any entity really to fight.
Lage : But you didn't run into that type of problem in bringing water
over from Livermore?
Whitfield: No, no. I think the water district gets about 4,000 acre feet a year on there.
Lage: Was Del Valle, the site of the reservoir, part of the Patterson
ranch over in Livermore?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Now, would that have been said to the state or to the county?
Whitfield: Oh, to the state, the Department of Water Resources.
Lage: But was there any reason it was chosen? Did the fact that it
was Patterson's private property have anything to do with why they chose it?
Whitfield: No.
Lage: It just happened to be a good site?
Whitfield: It's a good reservoir site, yes. And there is seme runoff in it.
No. in fact, that wasn't the best thing in the world for Patterson at the time because I think it's right in the middle of his property.
Lage: Yes, that's what I've heard, too. It sort of took a chunk right
out of it.
Whitfield: But he never fought it. He just figured it was the right thing to do.
Patterson Interest in Flood Control and the Reber Plan
Whitfield: Of course, channelizing the Alameda Creek may have been a mixed blessing for him also. You know, the farmers way down on the flood plain used to get a lot of new top soil down there from the runoff when it floodecLh
Lage: Yes. that's right. I've heard that, and Patterson was among
them. So the flooding benefited the ranch operation.
45
Whitfield: To some extent, but from the standpoint of damage that the flooding did when it broke the levies before, there's an economic balance point in there somewhere. But the development would never have occurred in this area if that old creek hadn't been channel iz e d.
Lage: Did you have the sense that it was being channelized so there
could be development? I mean, was that behind the campaign to get people to accept it?
Whitfield: Yes. to some degree.
Lage: Because weren't the local people taxed to fund the flood control
work?
Whitfield: Yes. In fact, Mr. Patterson was on the flood control board. He was during the regime when it was built.
Lage: Let's discuss briefly the Reber Flan* and then maybe we'll stop
for today.
Whitfield: You had asked me what the Reber Plan was and why Patterson
supported it. I think one of the main reasons he supported it was because the intent was to put this barrier across the southern end of the bay and make a fresh water lake. That would have precluded all the saltwater intrusion into our ground water basin, which he had a vital interest in because he was a big farmer, and he was pumping a lot of water.
Lage: So he was a big supporter of it?
Whitfield: Yes, he was. He knew Reber personally for years.
Lage: Did you get involved in that at all?
Whitfield: I went to a lot of meetings, hearings, on it, yes.
Lage: Who was holding hearings about it?
Whitfield: Well, they weren't hearings, there were just meetings explaining it. I'd been to a couple where Reber was the speaker.
* The Reber Plan was developed in the 1940s by John Reber, a self-taught engineer. He proposed to divide San Francisco Bay by a series of earthwork dams topped by highways and railways. The result would be two large freshwater lakes at the north and south ends of the bay. The plan was endorsed by the Alameda County Water District in 1947.
46
Lage: What kind of a person was Reber; was he an engineer?
Whitfield: N«. I d«n' t think he was. Lage: Was it John Reber?
Whitfield: John Reber. yes. I forget what he did. It was some field you
wouldn't expect him to evolve from, into the Reber Plan, though. But he had a lot of people supporting him. I don't know whether Patterson supported him financially or net, but he supported him for a long time until — Reber just wouldn't give in on anything. He had this master plan for metropolitan airports and lakes, navy shipyards and all that stuff.
Lage: So the fresh water lake down here was just one aspect.
Whitfield: I think that was probably what got — and I'm just surmising — but that probably get Mr. Patterson so interested in it because the saltwater intrusion started back in the 1920s here, into the upper aquifer. Then when they developed a centrifugal pump they could pump from a greater depth, and it started to ceme in worse.
Lage: Was the Reber plan seen as sort of a overall solution to their
problem?
Whitfield: Yes. We've always said that you never could afford te build a
storage facility as large as the ground water basin we've got in here.
Lage: Net subject te evaporation, either.
Whitfield: Yes. and it's safe from radiation, toe. te a greater extent than open-surface reservoirs. I think that was the main reason why Patterson was behind it. But when they got to the nitty gritty on it and Reber just wouldn't back down on any of these aspects, then you could see the handwriting on the wall; it didn't have a chance .
Lage: Did any public agency take it up or endorse it that you know ef?
Whitfield: I think eur water district endorsed it. I don't know whether the cities did or not.
Lage: It would have taken a tremendous amount of cooperative effort
since it included the entire bay.
Whitfield: Yes. Now you see the recent judgment that came out from the appellate court or the federal courts on the Water Resources Control Board that they never set the standards for protecting the delta high enough. That's a landmark decision for the courts to step in under another jurisdiction and tell them. I
47
Whitfield; think they didn't tell them te revise it, but I think legally it comes up within another year for review and revision and the court warned that they'd better think more in terms of the quality of water in the delta now.
Lage: That's right. Your district gets delta water, doesn't it? So
that would be a direct concern here.
Whitfield: Well, it comes from way up there.
Lage: Further up?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: I asked you about the Seito well, which was an issue about 1954.
Whitfield: Yes. In those days, we went out and rented wells that were drilled. We had three or four of them that we rented. The Seito well was down in Newark off Mayhew Landing Road. You knew, some of the well water is naturally soft in this area. It's a phenomenon in the ground water structure or geology that softens the water. Soito's. we found, was a seft-water well, so that's why we leased it.
Lage: Didn't the farmers in the area feel that when the district
pumped out the Soito well, they were going to start getting salt in their water?
Whitfield: Yes. or we were going te pump the water table way down. They wanted us te pay for them having to pump their water mere.
Lage: Amaral was involved in that. Was that near the Patterson
property?
Whitfield: No, it's only about a thousand feet out of the center of old Newark, I'd say.
Lage: So Amaral, at that point in the minutes, said he wanted te rely
more on Hetch Hetchy water instead of drawing out of the Soito well.
Whitfield: I think his intent then was te buy more from Hetchy.
Lage: Yes, instead of endangering the ground water. How did that get
resolved? Patterson wanted to pump, and actually he lost, according to the board minutes. Patterson wanted to continue to pump the well, and the beard voted 3-2 not to pump it.
Whitfield: Oh, did they? I have no memory ef this. [laughs]
48
Board Member Jack Prouty [Interview 2: June 5. 1986] i
Lage: Today is June 5th, 1986, and it's a second interview with Matt
Whitfield. We were going to start with a couple of windup things from last time. I had run across the portion of the minutes that talked about when Jack Prouty was asked to leave the board because he moved out of the district. You were going to give me some background on that and Patterson's role there.
Whitfield: Yes. The problem was that Jack Prouty had moved out of the
district, and the legal opinion was that he could no longer be a board member because of the fact he moved out. (Subsequently that land has been annexed.)
The attorney for the water district was concerned because, if he was was not legally on the board and he voted on anything that might have involved a bond issue or something, that might invalidate the action of the board. So the president ef the board, John Pi hi, asked Hyman's legal opinion. He researched it and he concluded — he checked with other attorneys — and concluded that you cannot be a member ef the board if you don't reside in the district.
Lage: Prouty didn't agree with that interpretation?
Whitfield: He didn't agree with it, no.
Lage: Earlier you were giving me a little background about Prouty' s
position on the board.
Whitfield: Jack was a friend of Joe Eastwood, and anytime we asked for an idea of what Joe's opinion was, he always used to say, "Well, maybe Joe Eastwood won't like this," or you know.
Lage:
Tell me more about Joe Eastwood.
Whitfield: Joe Eastwood II owned Pacific States Steel over in Miles, which in those days was the major industry out here besides West Vaco.
Lage: So he was an influential community man?
Whitfield: Yes. I think they had about four or five hundred employees. Joe Eastwood was a very interesting man because his father founded Pacific States Steel over on the Peninsula, and then they moved to San Francisco. He was an independent steel company and you had to be plenty rugged to succeed in the steel industry, you know, with big Bethlehem Steel and all those. He was a very forceful man and very outspoken.
49
Lage: Is this father or son that we're talking about?
Whitfield: Oh. this is Joe Eastwood — I never knew his father, but there's another Joe Eastwood who survived his father. After that they went out of business.
Lage: But the Joe Eastwood we're talking about is probably the second.
Whitfield: Yes, he was the main man over there.
Lage: Then you mentioned to me that there'd been a problem in the
flood of '55?
Whitfield: Yes. That was before the Corps of Engineer channelized the
Alameda Creek from Niles Canyon to the bay. The flood was so spontaneous it overtopped our levy into the Shinn Pit. and it went out in two directions then. It went down into the steel mill and flooded them partially out. It also flooded the Shinn subdivision over in that area, which was a fairly new subdivision. People, in fact, had just moved in that summer, and that winter they got floating around over there.
Lage: I read in the minutes about some of the people who came to the
board meeting to complain. It sounds as if you were put on the hot seat there.
Whitfield: We had a couple of public meetings in the old courthouse down there over it. It was a hot and heavy thing.
Lage: Was it a case where it could have been avoided through the water
district — ?
Whitfield: No. There was nothing to do because the flood was one of the big floods we had. We had one. I think, in '54 and one in '55.
Lage: That was a big flood year everywhere.
Whitfield: Yes, everywhere. The channel was of a minimal size, and that's one of the reasons why when we had talked previously about the interest in getting the Corps of Engineers to come in and channelize the creek, which they did.
Lage: I know there was reference in the minutes to the fact that the
flood control bonds had been voted down previously. Then were they voted for after that? I mean, did that provide the impetus to pass those?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: So Joe Eastwood would come to the water district?
50
Whitfield: He would come occasionally or call up. In fact, I got to be good friends with him after the flood situation. He used to call me up and [laughs] say. "Hey, Matt, now tell me honestly what the hell's going on over with the water district?" So I'd tell him. I said. "What do you think's going en that I won't tell you?"
Lage: Did he have a particular interest in the direction the water
district would take?
Whitfield: Oh. yes.
Lage: What kinds of concerns would he have, aside from the flood?
Whitfield: Well, ground water. He was all for the ground water recharge because they were relying on wells over there for their plant. Then they started to get smatterings of salt water intrusion. So that was his main interest. Then, after that* he took an interest in it, yes.
Lage: So Prouty saw himself as something of a go-between for Eastwood?
Whitfield: I think, yes. There was friction between John Pihl and Prouty on the board — they're both deceased now — because Prouty felt that he was being bypassed. He couldn't be his own official conveyor of information through this Joe Eastwood. [laughs]
Lage: You didn't mention on the tape that Pihl was manager for the
steel company, so he was a more direct representative of Eastwood. Did Pihl generally, then, represent the point of view of industry on the board?
Whitfield: Oh. yes. Well, he represented everybody. Lage: He didn't have a particular point of view?
Whitfield: No, but he ran for the board after the flood.
Lage: Was this attempt to have Prouty leave the board any kind of a
personal vendetta, or do you think it was just strictly that legal question?
Whitfield: Oh. no. The main thing was a legal question, You can see the logic of that. You can't go on operating if Prouty's on the board illegally, and it might invalidate our bonds or something like that. Or maybe make them more expensive to sell if you have that kind of a cloud hanging over the district.
Lage:
I notice that William Patterson was, I think, the only member who voted not to put Prouty off the board.
51
Whitfield: Did he? I don't remember that.
Lage: He voted no. Do you remember his feelings about this, or his
role in it at all?
Whitfield: Well, I think you hit it pretty well. He was very much of a peacemaker type of man. But I don't recall that he voted against it.
Lage: That's what the board minutes show, and then he spoke up for
harmony on the board. He hoped to avoid any more incidences that didn't show harmony.
Whitfield: Yes. Well, I think that was probably in all my time with the board the most delicate, undesirable thing to have to do.
Lage: Kind of a personal thing.
Whitfield: Yes, because we all knew Jack. Jack was on the board when I was hired, and he was well-known in the community.
Lage: What was his business?
Whitfield: He was school teacher in the Irvington school district. I don't know whether he was a principal down there or not. I think he may have been. Then when the war came along somehow he got in with Lloyd Bailey, who was another big landowner and a big farmer — not quite as big as the Pattersons. Somehow he helped Bailey run his operation for several years.
Lage: Patterson mentioned also at this meeting that Prouty had given a
great deal, donated things to the district; he particularly mentioned that he donated water rights from a certain well.
Whitfield: Prouty had?
Lage: That's what he said, that he'd given more to the district than
anybody else, and he mentioned a well.
Whitfield: Oh, I know. The Olive Avenue well. Well, I don't know that he donated it. I don't think he donated the lot to us. He may have, but I don't remember it. That's still in the system, off Olive Avenue.
52
IV THE STATE WATER PROJECT'S SOUTH BAY AQUEDUCT
Early Applicants for Delta Water
Lage: Why don't we go onto the state water project and how the
district fit into that?
Whitf ield: Well, the state water plan was long in formulating. There was a lot of study and design work and all that. The district, before I came to work in 1950, had applied for unappropriated water at the delta. This was long before the state water plan became a reality. We had the idea that we would build our own aqueduct someday.
Lage: Oh, I see. So the idea was to apply where water is available
and then in the future, if you need it, you have the rights?
Whitf ield: You apply for a certain amount of unappropriated water, but
anybody that has water rights on that stream or body of water has prior rights. You can't appropriate.
Lage: So you put your bid in for some delta water?
Whitf ield: I think they went in in the forties and applied for
unappropriated water of the delta, with the idea that maybe we would build our own aqueduct. Then the state plan came along, so then we took the position, well, if the state's going to build one we won't have to.
Lage: Did the water district have a representative in Sacramento?
Whitf ield: No. We used to go up and meet with them.
Lage: Did you lobby for or support legislation having to do with
water?
Whitfield: We took action in favor of things, endorsed things, yes.
53
Working with the Department of Water Resources
Lage: Did you have a pretty good relationship with the Department of
Water Resources?
Whitfield: Yes. Harvey Banks [the director of the Department of Water
Resources] was an engineer. Thad Binkley, who was a consultant engineer for the district in those days, was, I think, a classmate of Harvey's over at Stanford, so he knew him personally. Then we got to know him quite well. He was a good, straightforward, straight- shooter type of guy.
Lage: Not a politician type?
Whitfield: No. The subsequent one. Bill Warne, was more politically oriented.
Lage: Now, how would that be evidenced? When you say someone's
politically oriented, how does that affect the way you deal with them?
Whitfield: Well, I don't think you deal with them any differently except that you have the feeling you're dealing with a big operating politician, as compared to Harvey Banks, who was a very smart man. He knew engineering, and he knew the projects.
Lage: Maybe he knew his business better?
Whitfield: I don't think Warne understood as much about the state water plan as Harvey Banks did. Harvey Banks is still a consultant engineer for many districts. In fact, he's been consultant engineer ever since he got out of the Department of Water Resources. But I think his character and reputation in the state had a lot to do with the state water plan going through. I think Warne was back in Washington for I don't know how many years in some capacity or other prior to coming with the state of California.
Lage: He and Banks were both interviewed by our office.*
* Harvey 0. Banks, California Water Project. 1955-1961. 1967. William E. Warne, "Administration of the Department of Water Resources, 1961-1966" in California Water Issues. 1950-1966. 1981.
54
Whitfield: Well, don't let him read what I said. [laughter] He's not there anymore.
Lage: No. then Gianelli came in?
Whitfield: Bill Gianelli was a young engineer when this all started out.
Lage: Was he with the Department of Water Resources as a young
engineer?
Whitfield: Yes. And John Teerink. It was very interesting, the attorney they had was a very brilliant man, and he was totally blind, Russ — I can't remember his last name. He was amazing. The contract is about an inch and a half thick, and he had his Braille copy. Boy, he'd enter in the discussions, and he'd flip a page and quote what it said and all that.
Ground Water Basin vs. Hetch Hetchy Water; The Primary Conflict
Lage: New, in the mid-fifties, there seemed to be a lot of discussion
in the district about state water as one of the options or directions you were going to take. In my research I picked up a statement from [former Fremont mayor] Jack Stevenson, which must have been in the newspaper, that the district seemed lukewarm about Feather River water. Did they feel you weren't going after it hard enough?
Whitfield: I think what happens sometimes is people get excited about
something, and they think they're all for it prior to knowing what the facts are. I think the district has always taken the conservative approach: we want to pursue avenues, but we want to know what we're doing before we commit ourselves, before we go out forcefully endorsing it. and I think that's always been the district attitude.
We had the Hetch Hetchy lines going all through the district, and we had connections to them. There was some faction that wanted us to forget the ground water basin. The only conflict we had in our district was ground water basin vs. Hetch Hetchy water. Of course. Hetch Hetchy water was much softer, less mineral content and all that, but more expensive.
Lage: The state water system meant ground water recharging?
Whitfield: No. not necessarily.
Lage: You could bring it in as a surface distribution?
55
Whitfield: We have a ten-million gallon a day treatment plant up on the hill with South Bay Aqueduct water.
Lage: And that's for surface distribution?
Whitfield: Then since I've been retired, probably in the last five years, they bought another location for another treatment plant up there, because there's more capacity in the aqueduct. But southern California does both ground water recharge and surface distribution.
Lage: So were these two separate issues? I guess it was never tee
controversial that you would get the state water, ©r was it? Did some people say, "Forget the state water project?"
Whitfield: Well, there were some people who were against the state water, yes. But our main conflict was ground water vs. Hetch Hetchy water.
The problem with Hetchy water was that it costs more. There were times when saltwater intrusion was getting worse, and the board would say, 'Veil, let's go take more Hetch Hetchy water." But if you took more Hetchy water, then you had to raise rates, so then they'd back off. A board director in a community as small as this was never wants to raise rates, you know.
Lage: They seem very conservative fiscally.
Whitfield: Yes, right. So we finally got over that hurdle.
Jurisdictienal Disputes with the Flood Control District
Whitfield: Now where we got in a difficulty here on the South Bay Aqueduct was with plans of the flood control district. The flood control district has zones, run-off zones and all that. Herb Crowle, the public works director of Alameda County, and others, were en the side of creating zone eight, which would have been all this area down here.
Lage: Zone eight of the flood control district?
Whitfield: Yes, but it never went through.
Lage: Did Crowle want to combine it with water distribution?
56
Whitfield: No. he wanted a set-up like zone seven in the Livermore Valley. They do conservation work, and they import water from the state water plan up there.
Lage: And do flood control.
Whitfield: And do flood control. Our district doesn't do any flood
control. But if they created zone eight, it would mean that there would be another layer of government between us and the state.
Lage: I see. Zone eight would have contracted for water with the
state.
Whitfield: Yes, that's what they wanted. That would mean that we would have nothing to say about anything. Flood control would contract with the state, and then they would set rates for us, to sell it to us. The board never would go along with that. Why put somebody else in there responsible for determining your rate structure?
Lage: That's right. Why did Herbert Crowle support that? Would he
have had more authority in zone eight?
Whitfield: Oh, sure.
Lage: Any other local politicians that supported it, city politicians?
Whitfield: Yes, there were some people.
Lage: Again hoping to have a say over things?
Whitfield: Yes. I think there are certain people in the community who took up the idea, and maybe some of the cities too, and particularly Fremont.
Early Water Conservation Measures
Lage: Did the proponents of zone eight have a different approach to
water policy — less ground water recharge or any of these issues that we've talked about?
Whitfield: They may have been swayed more by less ground water recharge,
but the only problem is, Ann. with that issue: the ground water basin is like being just a little bit pregnant; you're either going to have salt water in it or you're not. So the steps that we've taken have been necessary to keep salt water out of the ground water. In the earlier years and the late forties it was
57
Whitfield: just local run-off that was diverted into pits to recharge the ground water. Then we got some releases. In 1936. we got releases from San Francisco in accordance with the Bailey formula again. The Bailey formula was determined when Spring Valley Water Company in San Francisco built the Calaveras Dam on Calaveras Creek, a major tributary to Alameda Creek.
Lage: The Bailey Formula went way back to an early court decision,
didn't it?
Whitfield: Yes. What that did in essence was. when you put in all these factors of humidity and rainfall and all this — I never did understand it — but you come out with a figure that will tell you how much water would have percolated from the Alameda Creek into our ground water basin had the water flowed uninhibited by the dam.
Lage: That's really an interesting figure.
Whitfield: Yes. It's a simple feature, but I never did understand the formula. I never had to calculate it. But then in the mid- thirties the ground water level went way down, and salt water kept coming in worse and worse. Mr. Patterson went to San Francisco and negotiated with Tom Espy and George Pracy. He was the general manager, chief engineer.
Anyway, they worked out a deal where if we took over some of the free water obligations that San Francisco had inherited from the Spring Valley Water Company, in the entire community, they would give us some advance releases. They gave us many thousand acre-feet of water. We used to have a hydrograph on the boardroom — it's taken down now — back to 1913, and you could see the water level going down, down, down, and then when they started releasing this water, up, up, up again. That was one of the district's first conservation efforts.
The first conservation thing was buying out the Oakland Water Works at Alvarado to prevent that eight million gallons of water from being exported. Then the next one was the San Francisco releases. They used the original Western Pacific borrow pit, where they dug out the gravel when the Western Pacific came through this community to make the road beds for the railroad tracks. San Francisco had a thirty-six inch water line that went down Per alt a Boulevard. The water district ran a pipe over into the pit and that used to percolate thirty million gallons of water a day. Of course, that was clear water with no turbidity in it at all.
Lage: That was Hetch Hetchy water?
58
Whitfield: No. it came from the Calaveras, the local run-off that was stared in their reservoir. So those were the main steps in trying to eliminate the saltwater intrusion. In other words, they tried to get the water level up to sea level, so the gradient wouldn't be inland; it would reverse the flow and prevent salt water from entering the ground water basin. They succeeded in doing that.
Lage: Then when was the next crisis period? Was there another real
crisis during the thirties, or were you planning ahead enough?
Whitfield: The planning that they did was to get everything that was
available within reason because the district didn't have the finances to build big projects. Before the South Bay Aqueduct came in, we didn't know what chance we had because there were no real bond issues in this district.
District Role in Del Valle Reservoir Planning
Lage:
This is another question that came up in the research. You hired Sidney Harding — I think we talked about that last time — in '57. In his oral history, he talks about his role in working with the state. Was he an important person in the negotiations?
Whitfield: Yes. he was. He helped with them.
Lage: Did he have anything to do with those key decisions, which we
need to get into, about the way the water would come from the aqueduct instead of through the tunnel?
Whitfield: Well, he was the consultant on the Del Valle Dam for us. You see, we had applied for the unappropriated water of the Del Valle watershed. We thought that maybe the state would put in a regulatory storage dam. They would bring water from the delta in the wintertime and store it there, and then it could be released in the summer here.
But for some reason, their geology indicated that it wasn't a suitable site for a dam and they decided not to make it a part of the state plan. But, since the district had applied for the unappropriated water, we had an interest in seeing the dam built there, and he did the calculations and all that and represented us in Sacramento with the Department of Water Resources.
When you apply for unappropriated water, you have to keep making reports every so many years on what your progress is. That keeps your application alive. So we just decided to push it a little harder and go up to talk to the Department of Water
59
Whitfield: Resources with Harvey Banks and others. Harvey decided. "Well, since you guys are interested, why don't we go back and take another look at it?" They went back and did some more geology and found that it was a suitable site.
Lage: So they have built the dam. Do they use it to store the South
Bay Aqueduct water?
Whitfield: Yes. **
Lage: What about Thad Binkley? He was a long-time engineer with you.
How did he fit in with Harding?
Whitfield: Well. Binkley helped us negotiate the contract, and he did a let of our actual design work for physical facilities of transmission, reservoirs, and that kind of thing. In the early days, we had a limited engineering staff.
Lage: When did you start developing more of an engineering staff?
Whitfield: Before '58 we only had about three engineers. We gradually just kept adding.
Lage: As you expanded?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: In fact, one of the things Harding mentions is that he broke off
his contract because it wasn't enough engineering help for him. This is in his oral history.
Whitfield: You mean, with us?
Lage: With you. That he contracted for a certain amount of time but
he got out of it earlier because the district hadn't provided the proper engineering support for him.
Whitfield: I don't think Sid had a staff. I think Sid did all his own work.
Lage: Well, that's why he was complaining about it. [laughs]
Whitfield: That doesn't stand out in my mind. My recollection is that the work that he had done had been accomplished.
Lage: Well, he did make it sound as if he completed his basic goals.
He worked with San Francisco he said, and then on Del Valle and then also in negotiating with the state.
60
Lage: Another thing he mentioned was that he seemed to find that he
had less to do with the board of directors and more to do with the staff, you. I assume. That surprised him that the board didn't deal with him more. Do you recall?
Whitfield: They didn't deal with him. He'd been to a couple of meetings, explained things and stuff like that.
Lage: It didn't seem strange to me. It would seem —
Whitfield: Unless Sid had been used to working with bigger organizations.
Lage: With boards that were more active in day-to-day management.
Whitfield: The board in general was net active. The only one that was
really active in the day-to-day business was Mr. Patterson — not in a pushy way or anything, just as a businessman interested. He used to stop and see me a couple times a week. He'd say, •Veil, Matt, how are things going? Anything new come up that I don't know about?" I'd tell him.
Lage: Did he have a pretty good grasp of the technical aspects of it
all?
Whitfield: Oh* yes. We had board members that just loved grilling
engineers, but he wasn't that way. His was always a very gentle approach, and you always respected him for that because you knew he was truly interested.
Lage: He didn't have a critical approach. It seems like mere of a
supportive —
Whitfield: It was always supportive, yes.
Lage: Would he ever ask questions that put you en the spot, do you
recall?
Whitfield: Sometimes things that he would bring up at the board meetings and ask me a question were things that we talked about in the office.
Lage: That he felt others needed to hear?
Whitfield: Yes.
61
Transporting Water over Altamont Pass
Lage:
Whitfield;
Lage:
Whitfield;
Lage:
Whitfield!
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield;
My notes show here that in '59 they began constructing the South Bay Aqueduct. You have told me that initially the water was going to be transported through a tunnel and that your district suggested a change from that plan.
Yes. Well, back in the planning stages of the South Bay Aqueduct, the plans called for boring a tunnel through Brushy Peak, which is in the Altamont Pass area. We were talking about some way of getting something to us faster than anticipated because of the lowering of the water table. We asked Harvey Banks if he would prepare a preliminary design of a pipeline coming up over the hill to bring water down into the Livermore Valley and let it run down the stream. So he said he would.
Then when they got into that, that's when the state Department of Water Resources concluded that it was more feasible, economical, from the power standpoint and all that, to run the thing over the hill than to build the tunnel.
So water would be pumped up the hill? natural steam bed near Altamont Pass?
Then did it go into a
Yes. In '62, when we first got the water, it came over the hill and into the channel alongside the Altamont Pass highway. That channel normally takes care of the runoff from those hills. It's about twenty miles from there down to Fremont. So the water meandered down this channel —
Just through a natural system.
It came down the Niles Canyon.
All the way here without stopping at Del Valle?
Yes, because the Del Valle wasn't finished yet.
Now is that still used or did they change that after Del Valle was built?
Yes. We were taking our water at the turnout at the base of the Altamont Pass. They just shut that off. Then, when the aqueduct came further south and came down — you know where the Vallecitos Pass road is? Well, it's up in the hills on the other side here. You know, the Vallecitos is the backroad that goes te Livermore from this area. You've heard of where PG&E built the nucleonics plant up there?
Lage:
No.
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Whitfield: Well, it's right in that general area up there. So we decided for percolation purposes rather than pay for more aqueduct to bring it down, to take our water at the Vallecitos turnout. That's where we've been getting the percolation water ever since. But that happened a couple of years after we first took water from the Altamont turnout. I think we ran it down through the Livermore Valley maybe three or four years.
Lage: It sounds like a very good emergency procedure, simple.
Whitfield: Yes. Well, it was the only way we could get it. Lage: When did you actually get the state water?
Whitfield: We got it in '62. We were the first ones to get water from the state plan.
Changing an Unreasonable State Contract
Lage: You mentioned to me that the district shaped the way contracts
with the Department of Water Resources were written. Tell me about that.
Whitfield: That was after Harvey was gone and Bill Warne was in charge. There are several contractors with the state for state water. Each contract with the various water districts was the same — they wanted them all uniform so they wouldn't have to interpret different things — and each contract had what is called a Table A in it. This specifies for the next so many years how much water you're going to take. So you start out with a lower amount, so many acre-feet for the first year, and you keep increasing it based upon what you think your needs are going to be over the next fifty years.
Since we were primarily going to be using ours for ground water recharge, and with the uncertainty of weather conditions, we were concerned about the inflexibility. You had to take as much water as you had in your Table A for that specific year. The way the contract was written, and everybody else had signed it except us, you had to pay for your water in that year. If you didn't take it. then you could have the opportunity of taking it just the next year, but not beyond that.
Lage: So if you had wet weather for a few years, as you usually do.
kind of in a cycle —
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Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield: Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield;
Lage: Whitfield;
We'd lose the money all the time. yes. So we held out. We wouldn't sign the contract until they changed it.
Now, how did those negotiations work out? Well, Mr. Warne didn't like it too well.
Did you deal with him directly or with an attorney for the district?
No, the attorney and I convinced him. all the state contracts have changed.
Now 1 understand that
That's interesting. Why do you suppose the other districts didn't try for the same thing that you did? Was it not as important to them?
Let's see, Santa CLara County uses ground water percolation and southern California does. I don't know why they didn't. Maybe they didn't see it as a critical item as we did because we weren't a very rich district down here. We just couldn't see ourselves having to pay for water for an illogical reason.
Now, would this have been something that you and the staff would have noticed and pushed, or someone on the board?
No, we did. We did all the negotiating on the contract. We kept the board apprised of where we were and what our problems were.
They were supportive of that, I'm sure. Oh, yes.
Fighting Saltwater Intrusion in the Ground Water Basin
Lage: This discussion of state water leads into a longer discussion of
the saltwater intrusion problem. You've given us some background on that problem over the years.
Whitfield: The saltwater intrusion, as I remember, started about in 1920. That was before centrifugal pumps came in. The water was primarily used for agriculture. As time went on, the water tables started to go down. You could only pump a certain height with the pumps they had. Then they developed the centrifugal pumps, so then they pumped down deeper.
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Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Lage:
I've also read that they changed to different crops that required mere water.
Yes. right. More irrigation, yes. I think in the early days
there was more dry farming, you know, wheat or barley and that
type of stuff. Then they went to row crops, like peas and corn and cauliflower.
And lettuce. That takes more water.
But then, as I say, the only things that were done to help alleviate the problem was to buy the Alvarado plant, which eliminated Oakland's prescriptive right to pump eight million gallons of water a day out of the ground water basin. Of course, that was 1930, way before my time.
Then the next thing was getting the advance releases in the thirties, getting it from San Francisco to put in the Western Pacific pit. I thought maybe you would be specifically interested in the fact that that pit was the first quarry dug out here, by Western Pacific for the roadbase for putting the railroad tracks through here.
Did that mean the pit was dug down into the water level.
Yes. Well, if the water level was down it may have been below the pit. It wasn't a deep pit; it must have been about two- or three- thousand feet long and about seven hundred feet wide or something like that. It was just a V dug down. All that Western Pacific did was just dig enough gravel for their own purposes. Then the Shinn Pit was dug. The Shinn Pit was the first commercial gravel pit operator. Then the Ford and Bunting pits on this side were done about the same time.
Also for a commercial purpose?
Whitfield: Yes.
Were the quarries out of business when you took over the pits?
Whitfield: Well, the Shinn Pit belonged to the Shinn family. Mr. Shinn had been on the board.
Lage: He was the first president, I think?
Whitfield: Yes. They had signed an agreement that the district could use that pit. It was a fifteen-year agreement for, I think it was, seven hundred dollars a year or something like that. Then we had an agreement about the Western Pacific and that expired, but they let us use it for several years afterwards.
65
Lage: Now, was there a feeling among some people that you couldn't
really control where that water was going to go, that some of it would waste to the bay? When you recharged the ground water, how did you know it was going to stay in the aquifers?
Whitfield: That was quite a question in a lot of peoples' minds.
Lage: Was it among the engineers? Were knowledgeable people
questioning that or just — ?
Whitfield: No.
Lage: How did you know it wouldn't just drift out to the bay?
Whitfield: Well, by studying the ground water geology, the ground water basin geology. We had a couple of studies made there. There may be — in fact, there was some contention that one of the aquifers went clear across to the peninsula. But there was nobody pumping over there at the time.
Lage: It's an interesting geological feature.
Whitfield: Yes. One of the problems with the ground water issue was that there were not too many people, even engineers, that understood much about it. Engineers understand surface distribution systems, reservoirs and all that, but you have to have some knowledge of geology too. I learned all I knew about it from coming with the water district.
Lage: The geologist may be the one who can tell you what you need to
know.
Whitfield: Yes. The only time I knew anything different was when my father drilled a well about two thousand feet up here in the prune orchard, dug down and got water. You know the interesting part of that? My father believed in the old weegie stick. The well driller wanted to drill it down by the creek. I think they did drill, and they got nothing, so my father told him, "You go up in the corner." And he got water.
Lage: And did your father use the weegie stick?
Whitfield: Yes.
1
Lage: Do you know anyone else who's done that?
Whitfield: I've tried it.
Lage: Does it work?
Whitfield: I don't know. I never drilled a well to see. [laughing]
66
Lage: Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage:
Whitfield: Lage:
Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
But have you ever felt the tug of it or had an experience with it?
Oh. yes. The interesting thing about this well that my dad drilled was that they hit a pocket of natural gas down there. Every irrigating season when they first started the pump up. you could put a match — you know, the bottom part would be water and the top part would be natural gas — and it would burn for three or four days.
Goodness! It sounds like it could be dangerous. Well, it wasn't that high an explosive.
It seems that with ground water recharging you had a public relations problem in explaining te people how you can let water seep into the ground and be sure that you're going to have it to pump out.
Yes.
I want to ask you about the California State Department of Water Resources Bulletin 81 issued in 1960. How did that come about, and did it have an influence?
This area is one of the classic examples in the state of salt water intrusion and depletion of the water basin. The state was interested in it, and they were studying this area for a long time, the geology and all that. Their studies were one reason we knew that we wouldn't lose much water through the percolation pits. They culminated their study with Bulletin 81. which covered all the ground water problems, how much water was available and that type of thing.
So was that a useful thing for decision making? Oh. sure.
The Aquifer Reclamation Program, 1974
Lage: I have a date of 1974 — is that accurate? — when you started the
aquifer reclamation program?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Why don't we talk about that?
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Whitfield: Well, subsequent to getting state water in and bringing the
water table up to sea level, we started the aquifer reclamation project.
We went down along the extremities of the district towards the bay and drilled wells to start pumping out the salt water that was in the upper strata where it had to be pumped out and discharged back into the bay.
Lage:
Through channels, surface channels, or pipes?
Whitfield: Through channels, flood control channels. I don't think they had to lay much pipe, but there were drainage ditches.
Lage: So they'd actually pump out the upper —
Whitfield: They pump salt water out and dump it back into the bay. The
point is, then, to bring the water level up in the forebay area. The forebay is the main part of the gravel where most of the gravels are contiguous. By bringing south bay aqueduct water in, we brought the level up, but to keep the salt water from coming back in again, you've got to keep pumping, and you've get to keep recharging what you pump out. [See diagram, page 82.]
Lage: Because otherwise water would be sucked in from the bay?
Whitfield: It would suck it back in from the bay, yes.
Lage: Was there any construction done?
Whitfield: No, no barriers, no.
Lage: Was that ever a plan, to build some barriers?
Whitfield: No. It was thought of but just disregarded as being impractical.
Lage: Salt water was pumped out, and then was the south bay aqueduct
just allowed to percolate in, or did you have to force it into these wells?
Whitfield: Well, they put in injection wells now. That's another stage. That's what they're doing now.
Lage: I see. Has that been successful?
Whitfield: Yes, I think it has. Of course, I've been out of it for eight years. It's doing its job. Incidentally, I saw in that local paper that comes out from the San Jose Mercury — did you see that article about Ardenwood Park?
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Lage:
No.
Whitfield: They're having a problem with salt water in the ground down there. Some of the trees are dying and they're wondering whether they can keep the farm going because the salt water and boron is getting down in there.
Lage: I thought that this salt water plan was working.
Whitfield: Well, it isn't absolutely perfect. There are certain spots where there are problems.
Lage: It sounds like it's a difficult problem to solve.
69
VI THE PUMP TAX: CONTROVERSY WITH DISTRICT FARMERS
Enabl ing Legi si atien and Rationale for the Pump Tax
Lage: The other issue that came up with the state water that sounded
like a very interesting controversy was the issue of who pays for the state water — the pump tax or replenishment assessment.
Whitfield: That was very controversial.
Lage: First of all, it seems, there was enabling legislation at the
state level in 1961.
Whitfield: That's what gave us the ability to even impose a pump tax. Lage: Was that particularly designed for this district?
Whitfield: Well, it's applicable to the Alameda County Water District. But for southern California there is the same kind of legislation. They have the ability to do that. I think when our attorney drafted the thing he used that as a guide. So there are others, but it has to be passed by the legislature for specific areas.
Lage :
Who was your attorney at that time?
Whitfield: Morris Hyman.
Lage: So you developed the idea that this was going to be a necessary
way to pay for the water?
Whitfield: Because there were predominantly farmers on the board, they weren't very enthusiastic about a pump charge. You see, the claim as the area grew was that it was the municipal water users that were causing the problem: they're using all the water. In reality, the farmers back in the beginning, they were the only ones who pumped it out. They pumped for years and years, and it lowered the water table.
70
Lage: And the city also pumps?
Whitf ield: Yes, the city pumps now but net very much. They've only got a well over at the lagoon and the lake over there. But. in the early days, the farmers were pumping up predominantly the largest quantities of water.
Lage: And not paying anything, except the price of their wells?
Whitf ield: No, the only thing they're paying was the ad valorem tax because there's an ad valorem tax for the conservation aspect of the water district. But everybody in the district pays that.
if
Lage: So you had the ad valorem tax, which everybody paid, and that
was for conservation?
Whitf ield: It went way back when, yes.
Lage: Then you had the charge for water used by surface distribution.
Whitf ield: Yes, but that's — see. the water district has really three
divisions: water importation; water conservation, percolation, recharge; and water distribution. Now the predominant pumper is the water district because as we have grown we are pumping more water from the ground water basin for municipal distribution. So the water district is the predominant pumper of water.
Lage: For surface distribution?
Whitf ield: Yes. Well, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Lage: Yes, let's start at the beginning.
Whitf ield: The only reason that there were attempts to convince the board that the pump tax is a logical thing is that there's no relationship between an ad valorem tax on assessed valuation and water consumption. In ether words, if the farmers had relatively cheap land, they're paying relatively cheap ad valorem taxes yet they're pumping most of the water.
Lage: Whereas industry might have a — 7
Whitf ield: Well, it's still not just because, you know, it's just like a
service station, what you pay for is what the pump says you pay for. You've used that water. Then there was a condition in there where a lot of a given size with a well on it paid a flat ten dollars, or something like that.
71
Lage: Now was this after you passed the pump tax?
Whitfield: No. that was in the act itself.
Lage: Oh, I see, in the enabling legislation.
Whitfield: Yes. The only reason they finally acquiesced to push for the legislation was that — let's see. Yes, they had — I'm trying to remember the sequence. I think the minimum charge was ten dollars, and for some time we went along without any meters. They had to fill out forms estimating what they used and that didn't work out so well. Then they had the act amended again so that — by that time the cities were incorporated — they would limit the agricultural cost for water to eight dollars per acre foot.
Lage: Oh? Now who amended that or who made the move to amend it?
Whitfield: The board did. The only way to get agreement on the board to
impose the pump tax was by limiting the amount the farmers would pay. Otherwise the farmers were fighting.
Pump Tax Hearings : Outraged Reaction from Farmers
Lage: That's what it sounds like from the minutes of these two
hearings. You had a tremendous amount of public reaction.
Whitfield: Oh, yes. All of the farmers, "We've owned this land all our
lives, that's our water, it's under our property," and all that. Well, they are entitled to a certain amount of that water, but you know, different farmers pump for different crops. As an example, somebody has two hundred acres and maybe they farm one crop a year, and somebody has two hundred acres and maybe they farm six or seven crops a year. Well, you're going to have six or seven times the amount of water used.
I got accused of being on both sides. Somebody would yell at me because I was for the pump tax. and some would yell, "You're holding it back."
Lage: In this first hearing, several people called you on the report
you'd written and seemed very unhappy with your report.
Whitfield: Oh, I'm sure there was disagreement on the quantities of water that different operations use — agricultural, industrial, municipal and all that. I wasn't very popular.
Lage:
But both sides were after you?
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Whitfield: Yes. I was accused of being on both sides. Lage: Which side were you really on?
Whitfield: I was on the pump tax side. yes. And. you know. I'd been born
and raised in this community, and my mother and father were, and they didn't think it was too nice for a local boy to impose a pump tax on all these old friendly farmers. But farming has always been subsidized to some extent by the federal government or something like that.
Lage: What does this say about the strength of the farmers in the
community that they were able to fend off the pump tax for quite a while? In the sixties. I'm surprised they still had that much strength. How do you explain that?
Whitfield: Well, there was still a lot of farming going on. Lage: Were they people with a let of political ties?
Whitfield: They're just farmers. Oh, I'm sure they had political ties with local politicians, yes.
Lage: Now what about your board members? Let's see who I have here at
that time?
Whitfield: You've got Amaral —
Lage: But the president was Humpert — this is in '64.
Whitfield: Bill Humpert. He was an insurance agent. He used to be a game warden and then an insurance agent. He was from Irvingtoru
Lage: Did he have sympathies with the farmers?
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Then we have Tony Alameda. Tell me about Alameda.
Whitfield: Of course, he worked for L.S. Williams, who was the second
largest farmer and he had a packing shed here in Centerville. Tony ran his operations, hiring the Mexicans to pick and harvest the crops and all that kind of stuff. Of course, he was against the pump tax.
Lage: Yes. I could see that. Then there was Bernardo.
Whitfield: Bernardo. Well, you know, most of the farmers around here were old-time friends of his. He used to be the constable of our area for years. He had twelve-acre orchard of apricots down on Baine Avenue.
73
Lage:
Whitfield: Lage :
Whitfield:
Lage: Whitfield:
It's hard for me to remember exactly who took the strongest position, but I know Alameda was against it.
Then also at that time Borghi and Redeker were on the board. They voted for the pump tax, it seems. My notes show that on May 12th, 1964, Alameda and Hum pert opposed the tax — this was after the two hearings — Borghi and Redeker favored the tax, and Bernardo was absent.
Yes, [laughs] that was convenient. So they couldn't impose it.
Right, because they didn't have enough votes to impose it. was the pump tax finally imposed? Net until '70?
When
Yes. We had a number of public hearings. For a while we didn't even have public hearings, I don't think, but the way the legislation was written, every year by a given date the board had to order that a survey, a report, be prepared shewing the water sources, water levels, etc., if the board wanted to consider imposing a pump tax for that year.
Then you'd have a public hearing en the report. Half of the people that spoke at the hearing probably had not read the report. They just wanted to holler and convince the board that it's unjust and all that stuff. Then when the community grew and more people kept moving in, there was considerable change. The farmers all alleged that they didn't cause the problem: it was the industry and pumping water for all the new houses. But, in those earlier days, that wasn't true.
The pumping wasn't really for the new houses?
The farmers were still pumping a substantial amount of water, yes. But the proportions changed over the years. Now, I'd probably guess about seventy-five percent of the water is pumped by the water district for municipal distribution.
A Shifting Balance of Community Power; Pump Tax Passed, 1970
Lage: So. by 1970, you think the change in the community, the balance
of power, say, made the difference?
Whitfield: Right.
Lage: It would seem that the 1964 vote against the pump tax was the
most controversial decision, wasn't it?
74
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage : Was there any move electorally to replace the board with those
more sympathetic to the pump tax?
Whitfield: I don't think so.
Lage: Just kind of a natural evolution?
Whitfield: This board that's in there now, they've been in since, oh, sometime in the sixties.
Lage: Oh, really? You mean, there's that much continuity on the
board?
Whitfield: Yes. Oh, except the one that's relatively new en there now is Carl Strandberg. He's an ecologist. He got on as a water conservationist and ecologist.
Lage: Does he have training in ecology?
Whitfield: He's taken some courses, and he says that he writes some of these books. He knows many people in that field.
Lage: Again, we're a little off the subject, but I think it's
interesting because I wanted to talk about environmentalists and how they related to the district, which happens probably more in the seventies. Does he have a particular point of view about the water conservation program here?
Whitfield: Oh. yes. he's all for it and supports it very much.
Lage: Does he have any policy ideas that you would object to?
Whitfield: No.
Lage: What types of things does he propose?
Whitfield: Well, just somewhat far-out things.
Lage: How does he get elected?
Whitfield: He's a conservationist, he's an ecologist and environmentalist, and he writes books.
Lage: I imagine incumbents tend to get elected in a district like
this. It's probably not a hot issue, who's running for the water board, would you say?
Whitfield: No.
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Lage: Has it ever been? Do you remember any controversial elections?
Whitf ield: It never — no. I think maybe when John Pihl ran for the board
everybody was concerned that he was going to raise hell because of the flood. I think I've mentioned to you before that I've seen people come on the board of directors who were against rehabilitation of the ground water basin, and they're not on the board very long before they're a staunch supporter of it.
Lage: [laughs] Once they become educated.
Whitf ield: So, you see, in the last ten years policy has been pretty well carved in granite. There's not much you can de about changing it. We've got so much invested in the ground water basin it would be crazy to try to abandon it now. It would be the wrong thing to do because we're saving — just from local runoff we get maybe about twenty-five thousand acre-feet a year on the average. One year will be less, another greater.
For the distribution system, we've still got Resolution 81 that sets forth how the developers pay for storage and all this stuff. There doesn't seem to be any criticism of that anymore, except — the only problem I used to have was the little developer. He'd say, "Oh, that's all right for the big developer, they can afford it," I'd say, "Well, that's the policy whether you're big or small."
Lage: Was it a lot harder for the small one to afford it, then?
Whitf ield: Well, sometimes, yes.
Lage:
Did you have dealings with Jack Brooks?
Whitf ield: Oh, yes. I had many dealings with him, yes. Lage: Did he understand your needs?
Whitf ield: Yes. He was one of the biggest developers around here. He'd come in and negotiate with me sometimes and then later on as they got bigger, he'd send other people. He was a very cooperative person. He just would come in and say, "Well, what are we stuck with now?" "Resolution 81." [laughter]
Lage: So maybe it was easier to deal with the larger developers.
Whitfield: Yes, excepting Conway and Culligan. They were large developers, but they just thought they were going to come over here to their country cousins and push them around.
76
Water Pump Meters
Lage : Interesting. Anything else about that pump tax that we should
talk about, any other — ?
Whitfield: One of the big flaps was over the flat charge the board had
imposed on small lots. The little guys would complain about it. so the beard just eliminated that charge.
Lage: And eventually they went to meters to actually measure the water
usage?
Whitfield: Oh, yes. Then they cried about having to supply their own
meters. That was another one of the stalls because, you know, they were not too cheap. The board finally decided, well, we'll pay for the meters and put them on. Yes, so that was another sticky wicket.
Lage: That was later, after '70?
Whitfield: Before they put in the meters. They first imposed the pump tax without meters. There were some weasel words in the legislation that they could see a way to avoid putting in the meters. Temporarily you could, for certain reasons, delay the time when they went on.
Lage: And then you went on the farmer's estimate of how much water he
used?
Whitfield: On the estimate, yes. We used to get into arguments with them because they had to give an estimate of what they were going to use and then a final ization of what they did use. And they didn1 t —
Lage: It was way off-base?
Whitfield: Yes. You know, we had charts showing how much water peas would take for an acre, corn would take, potatoes and all that stuff, and they argued over it. They very seldom would agree with the figures we used.
Lage: Did this cause you any trouble, personally, I mean, or trouble
between the board and the staff, since the staff seemed to be in favor of the pump tax and even had gone so far as to urge the board to get enabling legislation passed? It's kind of an interesting situation.
Whitfield: Well, let me say this. We knew that ultimately it had to go in. We knew it had to go in. It was just when it would be politically astute. So we never pushed it that hard. In fact.
77
Whitfield: in talking about it. I don't think we got in any arguments with the board. We'd just talk about it outside and that type of thing.
Lage: You just kind of waited for them to come around?
Whitfield: Yes.
78
VII PROTECTING THE GROUND WATER BASIN
Standards for Well Abandonment. Well Drilling, and Drainage Wells
Whitf ield: Another thing we did do to help stem off the salt water intrusion was to deal with abandoned wells. There were abandoned wells that could deteriorate and the casing could rot and let the salt water come down from one aquifer to the other. So we get together with the cities because they have the power to pass an ordinance for well abandonment and well-drilling standards and all that. We wrote the standards, and then we agreed to issue the permits and inspect them. There's a fee for that that the well driller has to pay. or the property owner that's filling the well.
Lage: So you would inspect well drilling?
Whitf ield: Yes. and well abandonment. But the city had the enforcement powers.
Lage: How did you deal with abandoned wells?
Whitf ield: We would find the log of the old well. The cities made it a
condition of their building permits that if there was a well on the piece of property they had to agree to abandon the well in accordance with the specifications. What they did was — see, here's the ground level here. We were fortunate in that we got copies of all the old well logs from one of the old well drillers that drilled most the wells around here.
They go down and clean the old well out if it's dirty. Then they go down and they know where the gravels are in the stratas. and they go down with a tool and slit the casings; then they pack the well with cement, so that salt water could not leak down around the cement plug and couldn't get into the lower aquifers.
Lage: That must have been an expensive process.
79
Whitfield: Yes. The developers had to do it. In the old days, when they had the Oakland wells down there in Alvarado, there were a lot of wells that we went in and plugged ourselves.
Lage: So that was a known technique to plug the wells so they wouldn't
pollute the aquifers.
Whitfield: Yes.
Lage: Something I wanted to ask you, going back to the fifties, was
about the problem of drain wells.
Whitfield: Oh, yes. We had no street drainage systems in our towns, so
when development started — we should have fought it more than we did, but I think it was a political thing because the develop ment couldn't start without drainage — the county let them put in drainage wells in certain locations to drain the water off the streets.
Lage: Down into the ground water?
Whitfield: Into the first aquifer of the ground water. The concern there was that the contamination from the streets could get into the ground water basin. Those wells have been all plugged up now.
Lage: That was something that you were against, but sort of allowed to
happen to a degree?
Whitfield: The beard should have taken a more firm position about it, but it was the beginning of development out here.
Lage: What was the alternative? Well, the flood control district
would have been the alternative.
Whitfield: Yes, but they didn't have it yet.
Lage: But is that how the drainage problem was solved, by getting
flood control here?
Whitfield: Yes, when they created zones for the different areas out here, for flood control only and drainage and that type of thing.
80
Addendum on Saltwater Intrusion and the Aquifer Reclamation
Program
[Begin Interview 3: June 26. 1987] ft
Lage: Today's June 26th, 1986, and it's our third and final interview
with Matt W bitfield. You had given me an article last week about saltwater intrusion at the Patterson Ranch, Before the tape came on today, you and I talked a little bit about what might be done to solve this problem. I want you to sort of clear up the process of how saltwater intrusion is prevented.
Whitfield: Yes. The water district first started getting releases of water in the Alameda Creek which is the main contributor recharging the ground water basin. That's all through the Miles, Centerville, and Alvarado areas. That's where originally nature recharged the ground water basin from the local watershed.