Ronald M. Anglin - Bureau of Reclamation...Ronald M. Anglin Oral History Interview: Ronald M....

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW

Ronald M. AnglinU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

October 14, 1994Fallon, Nevada

Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë

Interview Conducted by:Donald B. Seney

HistorianBureau of Reclamation

Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë

Oral History ProgramBureau of Reclamation

Anglin, Ronald M. ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW. Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of ReclamationOral History Interview conducted by Donald B.Seney, Historian, Bureau of Reclamation, October14, 1994, in the narrator's office in Fallon, Nevada. Transcription by Barbara Heginbottom Jardee. Edited by Donald B. Seney. Repository for therecord copy of the interview transcript is theNational Archives and Records Administration inCollege Park, Maryland.

Interview formatted, printed, and bound 2003.

i

Ronald M. Anglin

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

SEEKING A HIGHER EDUCATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

GOING TO WORK FOR THE FISH AND WILDLIFESERVICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

GOING INTO WILDLIFE REFUGE WORK . . . . . . . . . 15

GETTING MARRIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

WORKING AS THE SAN LUIS REFUGE INCALIFORNIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

DEFINING A REFUGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

THE IMPORTANCE OF HUNTERS TO THE FISH ANDWILDLIFE SERVICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

WORKING IN THE SAN LUIS REFUGE . . . . . . . . . . . 27

GOING TO WORK IN WASHINGTON STATE . . . . . . 29

COMING TO THE STILLWATER REFUGE IN 1986. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

DEFINING THE GREAT BASIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

ii

Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program

LEARNING ABOUT THE PROBLEMS IN THENEWLANDS PROJECT AREA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

THE SETTLEMENT II NEGOTIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . 42

PUBLIC LAW 101-618 AND THE OCAP . . . . . . . . . . . 43

THE STILLWATER WETLANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT AND ITS EFFECTON PYRAMID LAKE AND STILLWATERMARSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

THE HISTORY OF PROBLEMS ON THE TRUCKEERIVER AND PYRAMID LAKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT AND THE FIRSTOCAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

THE ALPINE DECREE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

DISPUTES BETWEEN PYRAMID LAKE ANDSTILLWATER REFUGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

THE NEGOTIATIONS SURROUNDING PUBLIC LAW101-618 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFESERVICE AND THE STILLWATER MARSH

iii

Ronald M. Anglin

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

TAKING THE STILLWATER MARSH ISSUE TO THEWHITE HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

THE ATTITUDE OF THE LEADERSHIP OF THE FISHAND WILDLIFE SERVICE TOWARD THESTILLWATER MARSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

THE 25,000 ACRE ALLOCATION FOR WETLANDS INPUBLIC LAW 101-618 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

THE ROLE OF THE STATE OF NEVADA INPROTECTING THE WETLANDS . . . . . . . . . . . 82

MERCURY CONTAMINATION ALONGTHE CARSON RIVER AND CARSON LAKE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

THE WETLANDS ON THE FALLON RESERVATIONAND RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBE . . . . . . . 85

THE PROBLEMS WITH THE TJ DRAIN ON THERESERVATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

RELATIONSHIP WITH TCID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

iv


1

* This manuscript was delivered to Mr. Anglin in September, 1995. The cover letter that accompanied the manuscript included thefollowing: ?We would like the enclosed back thirty days from the dayyou receive it, I hope that will not be inconvenient. If I do not receivethe edited manuscript back from you in sixty days I will assume thatyou wish to make no corrections, and we will proceed withpublication.” As of July,1996 no corrected manuscript had beenreceived from Mr. Anglin.

Unless otherwise indicated, material in brackets was insertedby editor.

Ronald M. Anglin

Oral History Interview:Ronald M. Anglin*

FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE

Seney: Today is October 14, 1994. My name isDonald Seney, and I'm with Mr. Ronald Anglinof the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in hisoffice in Fallon, Nevada. Good afternoon,Ron.

Anglin: Good afternoon.

Seney: Why don't we begin by your telling me about[yourself]. First, give me your birth date andwhere you were born and where you grew up.

Anglin: Okay, I was born September 30, 1947, inSibley Hospital in Washington, D.C. Mygrandfather had moved to Arlington, Virginia,during the Depression, from North Carolina,

2


and my mother ended up graduating highschool, Washington High School, in Arlington,Virginia. My father came up there, they hadboth been from a rural town in North Carolina. My father came up there, they were married. They both came from a rural town in NorthCarolina, Weldon, were married during theSecond World War, and I was born and raisedin the Arlington area. At the time I was raisedthere, Arlington was rapidly going from asemi-rural area to an urban area, and now it'sconverted into a metropolitan area, a city.

As I was growing up, I was alwaysinterested in the outdoors, I spent most of mytime following the creeks down to the PotomacRiver.

Seney: And these were the outdoors when you weregrowing up.

Anglin: These were the outdoors, playing along thePotomac River, up and down the PotomacRiver. I had one great uncle that had a realinterest in the outdoors and he was -- I don'twant to call him my mentor, but I was alwaysinterested in him. When I was in high school Iwent and took a bunch of aptitude tests to try todetermine which direction I should go, andthey told me I should be a forest ranger, agunsmith, or a clock repairman. And so I wentthrough an apprentice program as a gunsmith

3

Ronald M. Anglin

and worked as a gunsmith for ten years, paidmy way through college as a gunsmith.

Seney: Did you enjoy that?

Anglin: Oh yeah, I enjoyed it.

Seney: Still do it?

Anglin: I still, to a limited extent, do it, and I'm afirearms instructor for the Fish and WildlifeService now. I've always had an interest infirearms and I enjoy teaching people how touse firearms properly.

Seney: Let me go back for a minute and ask you whatyour dad did.

Anglin: My dad was a person that got married youngand he had a lot of opportunities that wereoffered to him. He had an opportunity to go tothe Naval Academy and he turned it downbecause he wanted to get married. He had anopportunity to play football at North CarolinaState, and he couldn't because he had threekids. And so he had a number of opportunities,it ended up he was -- in his early years,twenties and thirties, he was very frustrated, hewas a carpenter and had seven kids. And healways told me that if you have an opportunityor see an opportunity, grab it, because they

4


only come once or twice.

Seney: What did he end up doing?

Anglin: He was a carpenter.

Seney: All his life?

Anglin: All his life, until he died. And my mother washome up until most of my brothers and sisterswere grown.

Seney: Where do you come?

Anglin: I'm third. I've got a sister that's just fifty, and abrother that's forty-eight. I'm forty-seven. I'vegot a sister that's forty-five now, a brother thatwas born in '52 so that must make him forty-two. I've got a brother that was born in '56 anda sister that was born in '62. So I came from arelatively large family. I grew up in a Catholicneighborhood and I was Southern Baptist.

Seney: They must have all thought you were Catholic.

Anglin: Well, yeah, they probably did. But I ended up,it's interesting, two of my three brothers haveended up marrying Catholic women. I'mmarried to a Catholic woman. My two otherbrothers are married to Catholic women.

5

Ronald M. Anglin

Seney: Do you have a large family?

SEEKING A HIGHER EDUCATION

Anglin: Two. I have two boys. I have a boy that'sgoing to the University of Arizona right now,majoring in architecture. And I've got a boythat's in ninth grade here in the schools inFallon.

And my interest, working in the gunshop in Falls Church, Virginia, there was a manwho became kind of a mentor, kind of like mygrandfather -- even asked my father to adoptme. He was the Head of the EnglishDepartment at George Washington University,a man by the name of Ernest Shepherd[phonetic spelling], went by the name of"Shep." He spent a lot of time in WestVirginia. His wife was from West Virginia,and she was in charge of the libraries forWashington, D.C. So anyway, we becamegood friends over the years and they convincedme to go on to school and pursue -- betweenthem and my father -- pursue a degree inwildlife and forestry.

Seney: So once you got out of high school you wenton to college?

Anglin: I started in junior college and I worked at it,and I was drafted and turned down by the

6


military, because I'd worked in Montana andpicked up some parasites, and so they made ahole in my stomach and the military turned medown. This was during the height of theVietnam War. I ended up going to theUniversity of West Virginia and majored inforestry. I met my wife at the same time. Shewas going to the University of West Virginiamajoring in biology.

Seney: What were you doing in Montana, by the way?

Anglin: I was working for BLM [Bureau of LandManagement], I was surveying for BLM.

Seney: Was this a summer kind of job?

Anglin: It was a summer job.

Seney: A college kind of job?

Anglin: Well, yeah, it was kind of in between trying tofigure out what I wanted to do. And so Iapplied for a summer job, BLM was hiring, Iwas on a survey crew there outside of Helena,and enjoyed it.

Seney: Learn anything valuable there?

Anglin: Well, I spent a lot of time dealing with topo[topographical] maps and locating, surveying

7

Ronald M. Anglin

corners that had to do with mining claims ofthe 1860s, and we'll get to it in just a second,but when I was living in Washington state, Iended up writing the history and it was dealingwith some of these mining claims I wassurveying in the 1960s, I was researching themin the 1980s when I was in Washington state.

So I went to the University of WestVirginia. I first got a degree in business at ajunior college, and then I got a degree inforestry and wildlife with the University ofWest Virginia.

Seney: Is that a well-known forestry and wildlifeplace?

GOING TO WORK FOR THE FISH AND WILDLIFESERVICE

Anglin: It's a well-respected, East Coast, undergraduateschool in forestry and wildlife. The graduateprogram has progressed, from myunderstanding, substantially since I was goingto the University, and now it's recognized as apretty good graduate program also. I left there,went back and was working at the gun shopand applied for a job with Fish and WildlifeService and was able to get hired at thePatuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel,Maryland. (aside about noise) I was hired atthe Patuxent Wildlife Research Center as a

8


wildlife biologist, a GS-5, worked at Patuxentdealing with canvasback ducks, and they hadme working on Chesapeake Bay, and I workedeverything on Chesapeake Bay that was titledfrom Cape Henry to Cape Charles -- all therivers. (move to quieter location) I was hiredby Patuxent Wildlife Research Center inLaurel, Maryland, to work with canvasbackducks, and I was working for the MigratoryBird Habitat and Research Lab.

Seney: Now this was with the U.S. Fish and WildlifeService?

Anglin: This was U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Thiswas my first job with them, and I was hired inNovember 197[2?]?

Seney: Hard to get hired? Or were they looking forpeople?

Anglin: Well, they were looking for some bodies, and Ihad a couple of contacts living in theWashington, D.C. area, they were able to helpme get my first job, get my foot in the door.

Seney: By "contacts" you mean?

Anglin: People inside the Service.

Seney: That you'd met through University of West

9

Ronald M. Anglin

Virginia?

Anglin: I met through the University, I met through thegun shop, had met through the church that Iwas brought up in, and they were able to open adoor for me and help me get my first job.

Seney: Is that unusual in the Fish and Wildlife? Is thatpretty much the way it works?

Anglin: That's pretty common in natural resources. Ithink it's pretty common for anybody for theirfirst job. You have to have a break. And Idon't hold it against anybody that gets a breakon their first job. After their first job, theyshould be on their own and they should beworking for themselves. But it's kind of goingto work in a university, you go through schooland get your degrees and then you're trying toget a job as an associate professor or whateverit is -- you get a break, somebody opens thedoor for you and you get your foot in it andyou're able to sell yourself and you get a job. And that's what I had. I had a door opened forme and I was able to step in and sell myselfafter that.

Seney: What was your first reaction? Did you say,"Gee, this is what I've been looking for"?

Anglin: Well, it was a little strange, because when I

10


first went to work for them they didn't tell mewhat I was going to do, they just said that I wasgoing to be working with canvasbacks. So Icame to work the first day in, I guess you mustsay "street clothes." I wasn't well-dressed, butI was in nice slacks and loafers and a shirt andsweater, and I spent that day on a boat outrunning around Chesapeake Bay, shootingducks in the middle of November, and it wasquite cold and nasty that particular day. (laughter)

Seney: Shooting ducks, because you were . . . .

Anglin: Collecting them for food habits.

Seney: So you wanted to open them up and see whatthey were eating.

Anglin: Right. We did food habit work on thesecanvasbacks.

Seney: What did you find, by the way?

Anglin: They were shifting their diet from vegetation,which they had predominantly eaten in theBay, wild celery. But over the years the celeryand the vegetation of the bay was beingdestroyed because of pollutants coming into it,and the huge increase in populations aroundChesapeake Bay, and so it shifted to clams, and

11

Ronald M. Anglin

they wanted to know if that was affecting theirreproduction. I don't think they eversubstantiated one way or the other. And thenover the course of the three years I workedthere, we banded canvasbacks on half-a-dozenlocations on the Bay. We color marked and wepainted them three or four different colors.

Seney: The purpose being?

Anglin: To locate their migration, see where they weremoving around in the Bay, how the populationswere being affected at different times of theyear.

Seney: Is that interesting work?

Anglin: I found it fascinating. I really found itfascinating, really enjoyed working on the Bay. I spent probably seventy percent of my timeworking on the Bay. Every month of the yearthat it wasn't frozen, I was out on the Bay doingsomething, working with the watermen ordoing benthic sampling, checking the bottomfor organisms.

Seney: Benthic?

Anglin: Benthic sampling is where you put a dredgedown, you grab a collection of mud off thebottom and you look at the bottom organisms,

12


or you look at the plants, and you try todetermine what's available for the birds to feedon. Then you correlate that with what you mayfind in the bird after you shoot the bird for foodhabits work.

And I was lucky at the time to workwith a man by the name of Fran Euler[phonetic spelling]. Fran Euler was an old, oldnaturalist with the Service. He had beenoriginally hired in the 20s and then he hadretired and they brought him back, and this wasin '72. And he recently died here -- I guess hewas ninety-five or something like that. But hewas an old naturalist, something that theService is lacking now is naturalists. He was aperson that looked at all of the flora and faunaout there and could tell you more about it thana lot of the biologists or specialists today. Imean, that's just part of the way the world isnow -- we're more and more specialized in ouroutlook.

Seney: He gave you a different point of view, did he?

Anglin: He gave me quite a different point of view. Iused to take him out on the Bay, and I guessmy whole life I have tried to learn from olderpeople, because I feel that they have a lot ofknowledge, and it's so easy for us to think thatknowledge starts with us -- we walk throughthe door and everything is starting with us,

13

Ronald M. Anglin

when in fact there's a whole history of eventsthat have occurred prior to you that affect thatyou're doing today. And so as I said earlier, theuniversity professor, Ernest Shepherd, I spent alot of time with him. He had grown up on thePotomac River in the early 1900s. I went to alot of the places he went to. He gave me a riflethat he'd bought in Washington, D.C., in 1914that he shot turtles on the Potomac River. Andso I learned a lot from this old man. And thenFran Euler is another time. When I met FranEuler I learned a lot from Fran Euler, becauseEuler had spent most of his life working onChesapeake Bay, and he had regular transectswhere he would go around and he'd look atdifferent plants and animals every year on theBay, and his records went back fifty years.

Seney: "Transects" -- by that you mean regular points?

Anglin: Regular points that he would go and he wouldobserve what was there at that time, be itplants, animals, or whatever, and he wouldrecord it and write it down. And he had thesevast collections of data over a long period oftime. And that's one of the reasons that theService hired him back, is because he had thisknowledge that very few people had had. Andso I tried to get as much knowledge as I couldout of him, and I would be out and I'd findsomething that would be unusual to me. Like I

14


found some prehistoric oysters that I'd founddown on one of the rivers on the Bay, and theywere real big oysters. I brought them back andhe wrote me a long dissertation about wherethe oysters came from and why this bed ofoysters was here and how it developedgeologically and so on and so forth. So he hada world of knowledge that I was able to gleanbits and pieces of. Did I learn as much as hedid? Of course not, but I picked up pieces ofhis understanding of the natural resources.

Seney: Did he teach you how to be curious and how toask questions? Was that part of it too?

Anglin: Well, I don't know if he did that, because Ialways ask questions -- I'm a real curiousperson, I like to determine that. So I thinkthat's part of my nature, and that's probably partof the reason I've looked for older people overmy life that had knowledge that I could gainfrom it. And during the course of my workthere, they sent me to the Mississippi River andI worked collecting canvasbacks and doing thesame basic types of work with canvasbacks onthe Mississippi River. They had me bring aboat from the Georgia line to Delaware onetime, looking for osprey up the IntercoastalWaterway. So it was a real good foundation inbasic biology. But I realized at Patuxent that Idid not have the credentials to be in research.

15

Ronald M. Anglin

The Fish and Wildlife Service and in mostscientific communities, if you don't have aPh.D., you're beating your head against thewall. And it's nothing against you, that's thenature of the beast. If you're in the university,if you don't have a Ph.D., you're really limited. I didn't have a Ph.D., I had a bachelor's ofscience, and so I could see the writing on thewall: I could either go back to school and get adoctorate, or I could go into refuges. So Ilooked around and a lot of the people atPatuxent at the time wanted me to stay.

GOING INTO WILDLIFE REFUGE WORK

Seney: That would have been part of the research arm,then, of the bureau?

Anglin: It was the research arm of the Fish and WildlifeService.

Seney: I'm sorry, Service, right.

Anglin: It had switched from the Bureau of SportsFisheries and Wildlife about the time that Iwent to work for them. It went from the Officeof Biological Surveys in the 1940s to the U.S.Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife. Theycombined fisheries and wildlife together andtook them out of the Department of Agricultureand made the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in

16


1942 or '43. It was the Bureau of SportsFisheries and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and WildlifeService, and then it became in '72 or '73, U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service.

Seney: Which is part of the Department of . . . .

Anglin: Department of the Interior. The Fish andWildlife Service has always been the biologicalarm of the Federal government.

When I realized I didn't have a future inresearch, I worked to try to get out of, look foranother job. And I found another job withRefuges in California, and my wife and Imoved to the Central Valley of California inSeptember 1975.

GETTING MARRIED

Seney: When were you married, by the way?

Anglin: I was married December 16, 1972.

Seney: Tell me a little bit about meeting your wife andwho she is.

Anglin: Okay, my wife's name was Kathleen Perparnik[phonetic spelling]. Her parents were bothfrom Wisconsin. Her father moved to theWashington, D.C. area just prior to the SecondWorld War and was actually drafted in

17

Ronald M. Anglin

Arlington, Virginia. He ended up marrying hiswife. Her name was Eileen Piper. Thatmarriage had four kids. My wife is theyoungest. She has a twin brother, but she wasthe last one that came out, so she claims thatshe's the youngest. We actually grew up abouttwo blocks apart, but didn't know each other. Iknew her sister. Her sister is deaf and I used toride a school bus with her sister. And so Iknew her sister, and then I met her at theUniversity of West Virginia. I took her nameoff a bulletin board, she was looking for a rideback to the Washington, D.C. area. I gave hera ride home and we became friends and endedup marrying each other. Now she's my bestfriend and I'm her best friend.

Seney: When were you married? What was the date?

Anglin: December 16, 1972. I'd started work for theFish and Wildlife Service on November 13,1972, then we got married a month later. Weweren't going to get married until I had a job. We had dated for two or three years, but I waslooking for a job. So I guess I was twenty-fiveand she was twenty-four when we got married. We got married in Arlington, Virginia.

Seney: Why don't you mention your two children andtheir names and when they were born.

18


Anglin: Our first son is Seth McCray [phoneticspelling]. He was born June 19, 1976, in LosBanos, California. And then my other son isChad Piper, and he was born in Moses Lake,Washington, November 21, 1979.

WORKING AS THE SAN LUIS REFUGE INCALIFORNIA

Seney: So you must have gone out to Kesterson, then,Wildlife Refuge, when you came to California.

Anglin: I was stationed at the San Luis Refuge and Iwas in charge of Merced and Kesterson Refugeat the time. At the time, it was the first time I'dgone into Refuges and Refuges felt that peoplethat came out of research were not trusted. And so I had a lot of trouble with the firstsupervisor I worked for. He was an old Refugeperson that felt that anybody that was inresearch was -- I don't know if he felt you werea Communist or what, but he had some reallyhard feelings about it.

Seney: So there's antagonism within the Service.

Anglin: There was at the time. He actually met me atthe front door of his house. My wife and I flewout from Virginia, we'd never been toCalifornia, Central Valley, California, fromArlington is cultural shock to begin with. I'd

19

Ronald M. Anglin

never been on a refuge, didn't know anything,really, about refuges. He invited my wife and Iover to his house for Sunday dinner. We wentto the front door, rang the doorbell and thisman came to the front door, I'd never met himbefore and I said, "Hello, I'm Ron Anglin, thisis my wife Kathleen," and he looked at me andhe said, "I want to get something perfectlyclear from you right now, son: You don't knowa fuckin' thing about nothin'." And I looked atmy wife and she looked at me and we shookour heads, "Are we at the right house? Where'dthis guy come from?" This man was a legendin his own mind and from there we had adownhill relationship. I spent about two-and-a-half years, three years with that man.

Seney: Wondering, probably, if you'd made the rightchoice, huh?

Anglin: Oh, a lot of times I wondered if I'd made theright choice. That was one of the things Idisliked about the Service at the time: Whenthey had a problem they wouldn't address theproblem. And they knew they had a problem,they wouldn't address the problem with thisindividual. They addressed it after I left, but Ispent two-and-a-half years with this man. When I first went into the office, there was asign on my desk in Latin, and you had to askhim what it meant if you didn't know Latin, and

20


you had to go into him, "Okay, now what doesthis mean?" He said, "I've got you by the balls,your heart and mind is going to follow." Andso that's kind of the relationship that we had. The only thing I learned from that man that Ican say I honestly learned from him, that Iknow how, if I wanted to walk in and make anemployee cry. I have told my own employeesthat, I think that we can get along a lot easier,and I've worked with people that can walk rightin here every day and make you miserable. And if that's what we want to do, I've workedwith him, I know how to do it. I don't believein dealing with people that way.

Seney: What is a refuge?

Anglin: Well, there are a lot of different types ofrefuges. The ones in the Central Valley ofCalifornia, there was a Lee Act refuge -- theMerced was a Lee Act refuge. A Lee Actrefuge was a mitigation for agriculturaldepredation There was an overland refugethere, Kesterson Refuge . . . .

Seney: Let me stop you just to say that for those of uswho don't really understand what that means,that means agricultural usage had taken up birdhabitat. So you were making up for that loss ofbird habitat by creating a new bird habitat.

21

Ronald M. Anglin

Anglin: And then also planting crops to lure the birdsinto the refuge.

Seney: What were you planting to lure them in?

Anglin: We planted corn, we also planted millet, andwe planted alfalfa, we planted grains --anything to attract the geese and birds.

Seney: To feed on.

DEFINING A REFUGE

Anglin: To feed on, to keep them off of the privatelands. One of the real problems that the Fishand Wildlife Service has, and we call ourselvesthe refuge system, but it's actually a collectionof lands that vary tremendously from one partof the country to the other. They could be frommigratory birds to endangered species to biggame. I can't say that we have any culturalrefuges, but that might be something thatcomes in the future. We have lizard refuges,we have butterfly refuges, we have, like I said,big game, waterfowl, shore birds -- it runs thewhole gauntlet [gamut] of habitat. It's thelargest collection of habitat in the world setaside for wildlife.

Seney: What's the total acreage of all the refuges, doyou know offhand?

22


Anglin: It's larger than the Park Service. When theyrecently, under the Native Claims Act, theytransferred most of the lands in Alaska wentinto the refuge system, and that had to do withhunting and the type of public use that could beallowed on a refuge that couldn't be allowed ona National Park. And so they went into therefuge system.

Seney: So you can hunt on a refuge?

Anglin: Well, that's an interesting position too that mostpeople have a problem with, because the term"refuge," people assume the word "refuge" islike "sanctuary," and the two of them, to mostpeople they think of a sanctuary and a refuge asa refuge, it's a place where you seek sanctuary,and you can get away from problems. If it's abird, you get away from hunters. Well, most ofthe land that the Fish and Wildlife Serviceacquired in the 30s and 40s was the primewaterfowl habitat that hunters had protectedand kept into these private hunting preserves. And then when the Service came along andwanted to create refuges, they went to wherethe prime waterfowl habitat was where thesehunt clubs were and they acquired those lands. And some say that they made a pact with thedevil in the 30s and opened refuges up tohunting to sell migratory bird stamps so thatthey could get more money to acquire more

23

Ronald M. Anglin

lands. You can get into the philosophicalargument back and forth: you should hunt on arefuge, you should not hunt on a refuge. I'm ofthe philosophy that hunting, per se, as long asit's controlled, does not hurt anything. Thereare others now in the Fish and Wildlife Servicethat believe very strongly that there should beno hunting on national wildlife refuges. I don'tknow where the argument is going to go overthe next twenty or thirty years in our society,but ultimately I think that hunting will bestopped on national wildlife refuges. I thinkthat when we lose migratory bird hunting inthis country we're going to lose a part of ourheritage that I hate to see go, because I thinkhunting has been a very large part of theconservation movement, since the verybeginning of it. Most of the early people in thenatural resources were hunters and fishermen. Hunters and fishermen have been the onestraditionally that have coughed up the dollarsto protect these things. I don't know if you'vedealt with very many environmental groups,but a lot of environmental groups have greatideas, but they have no money. Hunterstraditionally will raise money, and lots ofmoney, to protect what they believe in. Youcan look at Ducks Unlimited, you can look atthe Isaac Walton League, you can look at anyof these early conservation movements -- theywere predominantly hunters. Audubon -- the

24


Audubon Society -- [John James] Audubon wasa hunter. I'm also on the Heritage Committeefor the Fish and Wildlife Service, looking at thehistory of the Fish and Wildlife Service, andone of the things that I recently learned aboutthe Heritage of the Fish and Wildlife Service --and it kind of parallels me and it parallels otherpeople -- is that Fish and Wildlife Service hastraditionally been a mentor organization. Andif you go back and you look at the early historyof the conservation movement, and you look ofthe early history of people that got intoconservation, they got into it more as a mentor. When you go back, there was a man, I believehis name was Blair [phonetic spelling]. Blairbecame the first President of the SmithsonianInstitute -- and I may be wrong if he was thePresident or not, I really don't remember -- buthe was interested in birds, and he found aparticular bird that he thought was rare, and hewrote Audubon a letter. Audubon had lookedfor the early explorers, he went and spoke toDaniel Boone. When he was young, he wentand spoke to these people. So these earlyexplorers were his mentors. Blair came alongand he found this bird that he thought he wasrare, he wrote Audubon a letter, Audubon saidyes, indeed, it was a rare bird, and Audubontook him under his wing and used him and washis mentor and moved him along. Blair movedalong through the organization and became, I

25

Ronald M. Anglin

believe, like I said, the first President of theSmithsonian Institute. There was another manthat came along that was Merriman [phoneticspelling]. Merriman came along and he alsowas interested in the outdoors, and he spoke toBlair and Blair took him on as a mentor, andmoved his career along. As we go along, I'llget into a little bit more, but there was a manby the name of Vernon Mills. Merrimanbecame a mentor to Mills. Mills came to theLahontan Valley, explored in Lahontan Valleyfor migratory birds in the 1800s. Hisdescendants now still live in the LahontanValley and farm in the Lahontan Valley, andthey came here because of the mentor programthat kind of had developed in the conservationmovement. There's another early oldfellow . . . .

END OF SIDE 1, TAPE 1.BEGINNING OF SIDE 2, TAPE 1.

Anglin: Mills was a mentor to Ray Alcorn.

Seney: So there's kind of a direct line here.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HUNTERS TO THE FISH ANDWILDLIFE SERVICE

Anglin: It's kind of a direct line. And I've had mentors,seeking out older people as mentors as my

26


career has developed, and they have helped mealong through my career. So I feel verystrongly that that's how the Fish and WildlifeService is, and that's how the organization hasmoved along, and I come from a backgroundthat -- I grew up in Arlington, but I've alwayshad this deep desire to be outside hunting andfishing and shooting and so on and so forth. Sothese people moved me in that direction. Andso that's why I feel, because of my background,I feel that hunting has a place on NationalWildlife Refuges. There's an awful strongbody on the other side of the equation that'santi-hunting, and anti-exploitation of NationalWildlife Refuges, but I feel hunters have reallypaid a high price to protect these lands over theyears, and there's a lot of people who've comealong lately that don't have this deepcommitment.

Seney: Politically, the hunters are important to the Fishand Wildlife Service, are they not, in terms ofproviding you support and so forth?

Anglin: They have been, but as we become more andmore of an urban country, hunters andtraditional outdoors people that you wouldthink of -- and I'm not saying that a person thatbackpacks or rides a mountain bike is not anoutdoors person -- but what I have alwaystraditionally thought of as an outdoors person

27

Ronald M. Anglin

is a person that's hunting and fishing and livingoutdoors. Our society is getting to have fewerand fewer of these type of people in it. And itgets into the philosophy of why people huntand why people don't hunt, and how. I've spenta lot of time thinking about it, and I think that aperson inherently, genetically, or something,has a predisposition to be a hunter. I thinkthat's where I come from. Somewhere in mygenes I have this hunter desire. I have onegreat-uncle that had that, out of all of myrelatives he was the only one that had thisburning desire, I'm the only one in mygeneration that has this same desire. My twoboys, I brought them up hunting and fishing,but they don't have the same desire that I have. And so I have always felt that it's somethingthat you're born with and you can't get awayfrom it. But our society, as we become moreand more urban, we have less and less time forthese people to develop that, I guess, instinct orwhatever it is that makes us a hunter.

WORKING IN THE SAN LUIS REFUGE

Seney: Let me go back to Los Banos and the refuge. How long were you there?

Anglin: I was there about three years, and I worked atKesterson, and this was prior to whenKesterson blew up and became the toxic

28


problem area that it turned into.

Seney: Any hint at the time you were there that it wasgoing to such a problem?

Anglin: When I was there, the National Park Serviceused it as wintering area for all the livestockout of Yosemite, and the area was absolutelyhammered. There was not even a blade ofgrass growing out there in the area. Betweenthe Park Service and the private landowner outthere, that area was hammered. There washardly a blade of grass out there. There werethese settling ponds that the Bureau had put in.

Seney: Bureau of Reclamation?

Anglin: The Bureau of Reclamation. It was a Bureau ofReclamation overlay. Originally they had . . . .

Seney: When you say "overlay," what does that mean?

Anglin: The Bureau of Reclamation had primejurisdiction, they either acquired it or had takenthe land out of public domain so they hadwithdrawn the land, they had first withdrawalon the land. They turned around, and sinceBureau of Reclamation is not a land-managingagency, the Fish and Wildlife Service is, theyturned around and transferred the managementauthority to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

29

Ronald M. Anglin

They still had primary jurisdiction over thearea for what it was originally set aside for,which was at Kesterson, which was theevaporation of drainwater, and we hadsecondary jurisdiction for everything else. They [had] done the same thing with the ParkService. You go down on the Colorado River,there is a number of Park Service areas, Bureauof Reclamation created the dams, the ParkService has come in, they're an overlay over thetop of the Bureau of Reclamation.

Seney: Did you deal much with the Bureau downthere?

Anglin: Very little. Very, very little.

Seney: I mean, once they do this, they really turn itover.

Anglin: They just basically get out of it altogether. And so you have very little input with theBureau of Reclamation, except on that part ofthe management that they deal with. When Ileft California, I moved to Washington state.

GOING TO WORK IN WASHINGTON STATE

Seney: How does that work, by the way? Do you bid ajob?

30


Anglin: You put in for it. We have something we call"green sheet" -- it's a list of jobs around thecountry. And you go down the ranking factorsand you see if you have the qualifications forthat job. If you have the qualification for thejob, then you apply for it, and then they gothrough a selection process and it's kind of likea crap shoot. You put your name in and youmay or may not get drawn, and you can get ona rollercoaster getting way high, thinkingyou're going to get the job, and get way lowwhen you don't get it. You really have nocontrol over it, once you put your name into ahat. I put my name in the hat for the one inOthello, Washington. As I said earlier, I washaving a lot of trouble with the project leader atthe time. He had some shenanigans going onwith migratory birds that I didn't particularlycare for.

Seney: What does that mean?

Anglin: He would chase birds out of a closed area. Hewanted his hunting average to go up, so he hadme go into a closed area. He really got introuble. That was what finally got him introuble.

Seney: He wanted his kills to go up, is that what thatmeans?

31

Ronald M. Anglin

Anglin: He wanted his hunting average to go up at thetime.

Seney: So the fewer birds there are and the more thatare killed, the better it looked for him?

Anglin: He thought so. He's dead now. He died anumber of years ago. Like I said, he was fromthe old school and I don't care what professionyou get into, you have some that are realstinkers in it, and I considered him one of thereal stinkers. But he finally got himself introuble over that one -- trouble enough thatthey finally got rid of him.

So anyway, I moved up to Othello,Washington, I worked for a man up there who Ireally respect, John Taylor. At the time Imoved there I was the Assistant Manager ofthat refuge there. Out of that office wemanaged the Columbia Refuge, which wasanother Bureau of Reclamation overlay, partlyowned by the Fish and Wildlife Service, partlyowned by the Bureau of Reclamation. It waskind of a hodgepodge, and then we had thelands that had been transferred to us formanagement from the Department of Energyalong the Columbia River at Hanford,Washington, where they created the plutoniumfor the first [atomic] bombs. And so we hadmanagement responsibility for those, and Iworked up there for a number of years. John

32


Taylor left, another manager came in who wehad disagreements on a number of times.

But anyway, to make a long story short,I got very interested in the history of the centralpart of the state of Washington. Over thecourse of seven or eight years that I was there, Iworked very closely with Bureau ofReclamation and put together a history of theColumbia Basin prior to the development of theColumbia Basin Project by the Bureau ofReclamation. This is being published,supposed to come out the spring of '95 by theWashington State University at Pullman. Icollected all this information, put it togetherinto a manuscript, and when I left the state ofWashington, I felt very strongly that thisbelonged to the people in the state ofWashington, and so I gave it to the historicalsociety there with no strings attached. I said,"If you all can make any money on it, you canturn around and use it for other historicresearch." I probably had $5,000-$10,000 ofmy own money tied up into it, because I wentall over the country collecting material. But Ifelt very strongly, I still do, that when youmove to an area, you owe something to thecommunity in which you live in. You shouldgive something back to wherever you live. Soanyway, when I left the state, I felt that I owedthem something. I gave this back to the state,gave it to the Grant County Historical Society.

33

Ronald M. Anglin

Nat Washington, who was the former statesenator up there, he drew up the legaldocuments, I transferred it to them, it kickedaround for a number of years, and then theUniversity saw it, read the manuscript, and feltthat it was the best history dealing with thecentral part of the state, and so they wanted topublish it, and so the historical societytransferred it to them. I don't know how anymoney will exchange hands in the future. Theonly thing I said is if it ever was published Iwanted my name on it, and so that's what I getout of it. But it really deals with the history ofthe state of Washington, and how the Indiansuse the resources there, and how the white manand the Europeans came in and traveled acrossthe country. And I became convinced that ifearly man in fact did come across the BeringStraights and into the country, that one of theprimary migration routes was this trail that Iresearched. And a lot of people that looked atthe manuscript came to that same conclusion. They found some extremely early remainsalong these trails, and I felt very strongly, and Iargued with the Fish and Wildlife Service thatthis was part of their responsibility. TheManager at the time said, "No, it's migratorybirds." I said, "No, it's all of the resources thatyou have under your jurisdiction to protect. These trails and the artifacts that are foundalong and associated with these trails, that's

34


your responsibility too. You need to protectthose resources. Your job is the caretaker of allof the resources out there, not just one part ofit, not just migratory birds, or not justmammals and whatever. It's all the resourcesthat you have on that land." And so I feltstrongly, one of the reasons I was collectingthat information at the beginning was that I feltthat to manage a parcel of land you need tounderstand the history of the land. If you don'tunderstand the history of the land, andunderstand what has taken place prior to yourcoming there, then you're going to make all thesame mistakes that everybody else did, and youwon't know why you can't grow anything here,because somebody has dumped thousands ofpounds of pesticides or fuels or whatever elsehere and covered it up with something else. Soyou need to understand the history of theresources that you're managing. And so when Imove into a new area, I try to learn as much asI can about the history of the resources that I'vebeen asked to protect.

After I was at Othello for about eightyears they asked me if I would go down andmanage the Umatilla Refuge in Umatilla,Oregon which is down on the Columbia River. I went down there and managed that for aboutfour or five months and tried to get themstraightened out. They'd had some problemsthere, and I then went back to Othello when

35

Ronald M. Anglin

they asked me afterwards would I come downto Stillwater. I transferred down here toStillwater in August of 1986.

COMING TO THE STILLWATER REFUGE IN 1986

Seney: Did you know anything about Stillwater beforeyou came down here?

Anglin: Not a thing. I didn't know anything at all aboutit, I had no preconceived notions at all. When Ifirst came down here, I had a couple ofmanagers call me up and said that you willprobably perish down there within six months.

Seney: Why would they say that?

Anglin: Because they felt that it was a political hotpotato down here that I would get myself introuble right off the bat.

Seney: What makes it a political hot potato?

Anglin: Well, if you look at all the issues that you'redealing with here, every issue that we'redealing with in the western United States,besides mining, the issue here -- and as we talknow I'll switch back and forth to the Truckee-Carson River Systems, Truckee-CarsonIrrigation District [TCID], and the LahontanValley, and the Newlands Project. The

36


Newlands Project encompasses all theproblems the Department of Interior is dealingwith except one, which is mining. Andsomebody'll say, "No, there's not," and I said,"Well, you stand back and you look at it, yougot endangered species, you got grazing, yougot water problems, you got urbanization, yougot conflicts internally between the Bureau ofReclamation, the Fish and Wildlife Service, theBureau of Land Management and the BIA[Bureau of Indian Affairs] -- all sisters of theone agency, the Department of Interior. Andit's all sitting in the bastard child of all of theagencies, which is the Great Basin. The GreatBasin has always been the bastard child of allthe other land management agencies in thiscountry. None of them want to deal with theGreat Basin because it is always on the fringesof their regions. The Great Basin is on thefringe of the Fish and Wildlife ServiceRegion 1, Region 2, and Region 6, and so eachone of them have a piece of the Great Basinand none of them really want to deal with it.

DEFINING THE GREAT BASIN

Seney: Define the Great Basin for me, describe it.

Anglin: The Great Basin is about 400,000 square milesand it encompasses most of Nevada, a part ofCalifornia, the southern part of Oregon,

37

Ronald M. Anglin

southern part of Idaho, about half of Utah, anddepending on who wants to look at it, takes in alittle bit of Arizona also. And it's a big area,and you would think that when you say "GreatBasin" most people would understand somebasic things about the Great Basin, but a lot ofpeople that I've dealt with over time in Interiorand even in the Fish and Wildlife Service,they'll call me up on the telephone fromWashington, D.C., and say, "Tell me about theproblem." And I say, "You answer onequestion for me first." And they say, "What'sthat?" And I say, "Where does the CarsonRiver flow?" And invariably I will get answerslike, "To the Pacific Ocean." And soautomatically I knew that their level ofknowledge of the issue that they wanted tounderstand was zero, and I would have to startfrom zero and try to build them up to somelevel so they would have at least a rudimentaryunderstanding of the issue they were trying todeal with. It became very frustrating to me tocontinually go over these same basic things.

Seney: So you had a lot to learn when you got here.

Anglin: Yes.

Seney: Obeying your rule of wanting to learn as muchas you can about the area under your authority.

38


LEARNING ABOUT THE PROBLEMS IN THENEWLANDS PROJECT AREA

Anglin: Absolutely. And I spent a lot of timeresearching on my own the history of theNewlands Project and the history of theStillwater Marsh and the history of the conflicthere that's been going on for, you know, the"Middle East" of water wars in the West. AndI've tried to understand and tried to not blameany of the issues on any one group. I mean, it'shard for some people to look at the people inChurchill County and say that they're anythingbut a bunch of damned farmers, or a bunch ofbastard farmers or whatever term you want tohear from people about them. And I said,"Well, you have to understand that these aremy neighbors, these are the people that my kidsassociate with, these are people my wife goesto church with, these are people I've had in myBoy Scout groups, these are people that I care agreat deal about. These are not bad people." They are doing exactly what the Federalgovernment told them to do. The Federalgovernment in 1902, as one of these signs says,and I'm sure somebody else has spoken aboutit, "Come settle the land. We'll give you landof milk and honey. We'll have water, you cangrow crops, you can grow kids. Come do this." Well, the people did! And over time, when thegovernment built the Project they failed to look

39

Ronald M. Anglin

at the big picture, they failed to take in all ofthe resources and look at all the resources here. We allocated the resources then. I firmlybelieve that to understand or to build anunderstanding of a relationship or amanagement philosophy or your life oranything, you should have a good foundationunder it. The foundation is the key toeverything. The foundation is the key to thehouse you live in today. The foundation is thekey to our democracy we have today -- that'sour Constitution, our Bill of Rights, that's thefoundation of our society. The foundation ofyour marriage is -- you know, sex is only asmall part of it as your relationships developover time, but it's a big part, and that's part ofthe foundation of your relationship. And so thefoundation is the key to everything, and thisProject was built on a crummy foundation. They came here and they -- I'll say "they" anawful lot -- but they, the government, camehere, the scientists came here, and they lookedat "How do we develop an irrigation project outhere?" And they based their knowledge on thetwenty wettest years in the last, if I recall right,300 or 400 years, wettest years in the GreatBasin. So they based all of their Project onthese twenty extremely wet years, and theybuilt and designed a Project on these wet years. And I think originally they designed the Projectfor like 250,000 acres. And they had to scale it

40


back and scale it back and scale it back andscale it back, and now they're down to about77,000 acres, of which they really irrigateabout 57,000 acres. And it was a badfoundation. They allocated all of the resourcesof these two river systems, the Truckee Riverand the Carson River, to create agriculture inthe desert. They took it away from the Indians. They didn't ask the Indians if they wanted togive it up, they basically took it from theIndians. They had created the Dolz [phoneticspelling] Act in the 1880s. The Dolz Act was asettlement act, much like our HomesteadingAct. In the Lahontan Valley they took all thesebands of Indians that were running aroundhere, and they said, "Alright, we're going tosettle you on these little plots of land," andthat's what the Dolz Act did and we came alongin 1902 and said, "Ah, well, we made a mistakewith the Dolz Act. Let's turn around, we'll giveyou ten acres of water-righted land for all thisland, and we'll turn around and do you somegreat things here," and they didn't do that. Andit went along for a long period of time with notreally caring about the original inhabitants, ifwe're going to say in water rights in the West,which is "first in time, first in right," which iswhoever came first. Well, the wildlife camefirst. That didn't count in 1902. The Indians,we had just finally had the last fight with theIndians about 1890 or something like that at

41

Ronald M. Anglin

Wounded Knee up in North or South Dakota. We had the last fight with them, so the Indianswere not part of the equation, and we createdan irrigation project, based on bad data. Andwe went along and we built this irrigationproject, we built the infrastructure, and we builtthe populations -- we built everything, one ontop of the other as we've gone along over thelast ninety years, on a bad piece of foundation.

As I told you earlier, I was told by, Ithink it was one of the Regional Directors forthe Bureau of Reclamation, that they spent$4 million creating this Project out here in thedesert. And I'm not being critical of the Bureauof Reclamation, I'm not saying the Bureau ofReclamation is the bad person. They weredoing what the government told them to do,"Go out and build an irrigation project." Theywent out and built an irrigation project --they're engineers! They think linear. Biologists think circular, they [engineers] thinklinear. You give me a job, I'm going to get itdone. So they got it done, but they spent$4 million building this Project. We spent$4 million building it, the irrigation district hasspent $8-10 million fighting in a court, theIndians have spent millions of dollars fightingin a court. The government has spent probably$50 million fighting in court over the years,and now to straighten it out, it's going to cost aquarter of a billion dollars, $250 million to

42


straighten out a $4 million project, andsomebody needs to stand back and say, "Why?" There's got to be a better way to resolve theseissues, but we've built all this infrastructure ontop of this really poor foundation, and nowwe're constantly dealing with this crumblingfoundation underneath of us, and there's noway to resolve it. We're now locked in a seriesof negotiations and I hope the negotiationsdevelop something positive.

THE SETTLEMENT II NEGOTIATIONS

Seney: These are the Settlement II negotiations?

Anglin: The Settlement II negotiations. I hope theydevelop something positive, because we needto reach some solutions, we need to come upwith How are we going to allocate theseresources? We have to go back now and say,"We made a mistake in 1902. We didn't thinkabout the wildlife, we didn't think about theIndians." And they have legitimate rights tousing some of these waters. How do we goback and allocate water to the Indians and tothe wildlife, also provide water to the rapidurbanization of this area, and also providewater to these legitimate farmers, the ones thatreally want to farm? The ones that are hobbyfarming and the ones that are on extremelymarginal ground, we must ask ourselves Is this

43

Ronald M. Anglin

the best way to use these limited resources wehave in the West, to put it out on very marginallands because this individual has a right to thiswater, because from 1902 somebody gave thatperson that right? I mean, they're toughquestions.

PUBLIC LAW 101-618 AND THE OCAP

Seney: Let me ask you, some people I've interviewedhave commented to me that they think theseSettlement II negotiations aren't reallynecessary, that the framework to settle all thesequestions is really in Public Law 101-618. Doyou agree with that, or have you thought aboutthat?

Anglin: No, I don't agree with that at all. I don't agreewith that because I believe parts of it are inthere.

Seney: What isn't in there, you think?

Anglin: Churchill County. Churchill County is not in618. When 618 was going through, I workedextensively on 618, and I felt I did the best Icould. I spoke to some of the communityleaders at the time and I said, "You're on amerry-go-round, start grabbing brass rings. The merry-go-round is only going to go aroundonce, you'd better get some brass rings."

44


"What do you mean, 'brass rings'?" And I said,"You know what you need, and I know whatyou need. You need a water delivery systemfor the community, you need roads, you needschools, you need to get the community set upto go into the twenty-first century. I knowyou're working hard to come into the twentiethcentury, but the rest of the world's gettingready to go into the twenty-first century. Youneed these things to get going." And I hadpeople in the community [who] said, "Well,TCID's representing us in these negotiations." I said, "They are not representing me. I'm ataxpayer in this community and TCID does notrepresent me. I do not own water, I do not payany money to TCID. TCID represents a part ofthe community, only a portion of thecommunity. You as the Commissioners andthe County Planners, you are the ones that aresupposed to represent me, and you're not doingyour job. You're letting TCID represent you,and TCID is not representing the wholecommunity. And when TCID walked, thecommunity was dropped out of 618. Thereason that piece of legislation went through,now it was easy. You had the wetlands, whichis apple pie and motherhood; you had thePyramid Lake Indians and the Fallon Indians,which is a guilt trip by the anglos in thecountry now, we feel guilty about what we didto the Indians. So you have that part of that

45

Ronald M. Anglin

equation. So you have two very positive partsof the equation to go through. Part of it, theurbanization in Reno, so out of the four pieces,you had three pieces that were positive weregoing through. Churchill County was left outbecause Churchill County [TCID] walked. You can argue, and I know that you'veprobably heard that there's arguments bothways that these people walked; they didn'twalk, they got thrown out; or whatever thereason, but they weren't in the final conclusionof the piece of legislation. So ChurchillCounty didn't get anything. And the people ofChurchill County have sat and argued many,many times that 618 destroyed the county. And I had a discussion with them over here atthe Community Center a couple of weeks ago. I said, "618 did not affect the community,really. It has almost nothing to do with thecommunity except for recoupment. OCAPaffects the community. OCAP changed thecommunity. OCAP affected the wetlands. OCAP is the operating criteria and proceduresof the Newlands Irrigation Project. That iswhat affected the community." When thatdocument went through, it changed the wayChurchill County could now use agriculturalwater in the community -- changed itdrastically. Changed the amount of drainwaterthat was now reaching the wetlands, so thatinstead of having 43,000 acres of wetlands on

46


the average, we were now down to almost zero. It just destroyed the wetlands. And right orwrong, and we can argue the equation that theFish and Wildlife Service was heavily involvedin OCAP to protect the cui-ui, to get morewater into Pyramid Lake. OCAP tried to dothree things: reach a non-jeopardy position forthe cui-ui, maximize the use of Carson Riverwater and satisfy the legitimate water rightusers in Lahontan Valley. The wetlandsweren't part of it.

THE STILLWATER WETLANDS

Seney: The Stillwater Wetlands?

Anglin: The wetlands, all the wetlands in ChurchillCounty were not part of the OCAP, they didnot have a legitimate water right, because allthe water was allocated in 1902. And I arguedwith people in the Justice Department at thetime. They said this many times to me, "That ifthe Newlands Irrigation Project had beenoperated correctly and efficiently since 1902,that the wetlands [would have] ceased to existin 1902. So the government has noresponsibility." I said, "This is absurd! Thewetlands [have] been here for 10,000 years." "We don't care. [If] the Project was operatedcorrectly and efficiently from 1902, thewetlands cease to exist in 1902, so the Federal

47

Ronald M. Anglin

government has no responsibilities to thewetlands."

Seney: It was the inefficiencies that kept the wetlandsgoing.

Anglin: It was through the inefficiencies. That is thesame argument that Justice uses now for theground water, which is basically the watersupply for the community. So the Federalgovernment feels it has no responsibility tomitigate for the loss of the ground water,because if the Project had been operatedcorrectly and efficiently from 1902 forward,the water that filled up the difference, the sixtyfoot of elevation that the water table rose,wouldn't have happened. So they have noresponsibility. I think that's an absurd way tolook at something, from the Federalgovernment's point of view, but that's what theFederal government's position is. I argued asmuch as I could that the wetlands have beenhere. They said, "No, they haven't."

Seney: So your view is that the OCAP works againstthe interests of the wetlands.

Anglin: Oh absolutely! But it was supposed to. That'swhat it was supposed to do. If you recall whatI said, Maximize use of Carson River water,supply legitimate water right users, and reach a

48


non-jeopardy position for the cui-ui. Thewetlands were operating on the inefficienciesof the Project, and everybody told me, "If youwant water for those wetlands, go buy it. Ifyou want to protect those wetlands, get moneyand go buy the water for the wetlands."


THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT AND ITS EFFECTON PYRAMID LAKE AND STILLWATER MARSH

Seney: Today is October 14, 1994. My name isDonald Seney and I'm with Mr. Ronald M.Anglin, at his office in Fallon Nevada. Ron, letme kind of summarize and see if I can pointyou in a certain direction here. The Fish andWildlife Service is, kind of, of two minds inthis area, it's my understanding. You've gotsome of your people up at Pyramid Lake, andyou've got you and your operation down herein the Stillwater Marsh, and your interests don'tcoincide, do they?

Anglin: Well, they do and they don't.

Seney: Explain it me.

Anglin: Well, the Fish and Wildlife Service has anobligation to protect species and keep species

49

Ronald M. Anglin

from becoming endangered. That is one of ouroverriding concerns in this country. (tapeturned off and on) The Fish and WildlifeService has responsibility for the EndangeredSpecies Act. The Endangered Species Act is avery powerful Act in this country, extremelypowerful Act. If a species is becomingendangered and you can do anything at all toprotect that species from becomingendangered. The cui-ui in Pyramid Lake wasone of the first species listed on theEndangered Species Act. It had been athreatened species before the EndangeredSpecies Act even came in existence.

Seney: What moved it from being "threatened" to"endangered"?

Anglin: It has to do with the threshold level of where itcould cease to exist. If it's in a threatenedcategory, it's threatened, but it doesn't have alikelihood of becoming extinct. When it goesinto the endangered species category, it has ahigh likelihood it could become extinct. Andso they're trying to protect it from that, tryingto keep it in the other category and actually getit out of it.

THE HISTORY OF PROBLEMS ON THE TRUCKEERIVER AND PYRAMID LAKE

50


Pyramid Lake has a history ofproblems, all of them relating way back in thehistory of the state. When we first settled thestate, again we didn't give a damn about theIndians. And we turned around and we loggedthe Upper Truckee River, we logged the UpperCarson River too. We logged it for the timbersto put into the mines of Virginia City and soforth. And they had big sawmills on theTruckee River and big processing areas, andtremendous amounts of sawdust went down thesystem and plugged the whole system up,smothered out the fish fry and it smothered outthe trout and the cui-ui that were in it, went allthe way and flushed into Pyramid Lake. Tremendous degradation of the system. Andthey had laws in the 1870s to stop them fromdumping sawdust in the river because theywere destroying the fisheries.

Then you had the Truckee Meadows. Truckee Meadows was a huge agricultural arearight on the river, and it had all this agricultureand it was degrading the river too. It waspulling the water out, degrading it and hurtingthe Truckee River. Then in 1902 the Bureaucame along and they put a dam. There was alot of series of dams on the river prior to that. Irrigation diversion dams, and then there weresome small hydroelectric dams I was told thatwere built on the river. And then the Bureaucame along in 1902 and they started working

51

Ronald M. Anglin

on Derby Dam, and they started working onDerby Dam which is a diversion dam on theTruckee River where they diverted part of theTruckee River into the Lahontan Valley andultimately into Lahontan Reservoir. But thishistory of the degradation of the river prior tothe Newlands Irrigation Project was there. Creating the dam exacerbated the problem thatwas already there. And it diverted tremendousamounts of water out of the Truckee River overhere. At times people told me that over fifty orsixty percent of the Truckee River was beingdiverted into the Lahontan Valley. Thewetlands in the Lahontan Valley were doinggreat during this time. You had agriculture andyou had the wetlands. Everything was great inthe Lahontan Valley. It was the land of milkand honey because they were putting a lot ofwater into the system.

World War II came along, the Navyused Pyramid Lake as a testing area fortorpedoes. What they did to the bottom of thatlake, I haven't a clue, but they fired torpedoesand probably detonated torpedoes, did all kindsof further degradation of that system in the1940s. But we were in a time of war, we coulddo this kind of stuff, and nobody cared aboutthe Indians. Things went along like this untilthe 1960s, and then the Indians started to getsome clout. Or earlier than that, in the 1940s,the Lahontan cutthroat trout became extinct,

52


ceased to exist in Pyramid Lake -- there weresome other strains scattered around the state ofNevada, but that strain became extinct. Thecui-ui appeared to be on the road to extinction.

The Fish and Wildlife Service wasconcerned about the cui-ui but was also veryconcerned about Anaho Island, which is out inthe middle of Pyramid Lake, which is thelargest colony of white pelicans in NorthAmerica, and pelicans have to have an island ina lake that is predator-free, they can't deal withground predators, because they nest on theground. If they have to deal with coyotes orfoxes, they would destroy the colony real fast. So there is very limited areas where you canhave this. The Service was very concerned, ifyou read the files of the Stillwater Refuge, thatPyramid Lake was going to drop in elevation tothe point that there'd be a land bridge over toAnaho Island. And so we were very concernedabout this and all our documentation wasconcerned about this. And then we get into thecui-ui was coming along at the same time. Andduring the time that this lake was dropping,again as I said earlier, we had an extremely wetcycle in the 1880s to 1900. It had filled upPyramid Lake and overflowed it inWinnemucca Lake and created WinnemuccaLake. As the climate changed and the lakelevel started to drop and the diversion started toincrease, Winnemucca Lake progressively got

53

Ronald M. Anglin

lower and lower until it eventually went dry. We were concerned that Pyramid Lake wascontinuing to drop and we were going to have aland bridge and that was going to allow theland predators to get over there.

The Service was concerned about thecui-ui and the pelican. The EndangeredSpecies Act was moving its way throughCongress, and the Indians were flexing some oftheir might, and they were trying to stop thediversions that were occurring from theTruckee River during the winter months for thesole purpose of creating power out of LahontanReservoir as a revenue source for ChurchillCounty. So they were trying to reduce this, andthrough an agreement they came to theunderstanding that they would not be able --the Bureau and the Truckee-Carson IrrigationDistrict -- would not be allowed to divert waterduring the winter months to createhydroelectric power. Again, Fish and WildlifeService loved it [the winter diversions] fromthe standpoint of the wetlands. Water wascoming down in great quantities of prime watercoming down the system, and we were endingup with it in the wetlands. Wetlands weredoing great! Just absolutely fantastic, becauseyou had all this prime water -- best water it hadsince before the Project, before anydevelopment occurred on the river.

54


Seney: Because this was not wastewater, there was noirrigation -- this was running straight through.

Anglin: Prime water, absolutely straight Truckee Riverwater, going into the reservoir, creatinghydroelectric power, and coming right out tothe wetlands. Great water! Wetlands weredoing great!

THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT AND THE FIRSTOCAP

The Endangered Species Act camealong and they came up with the first OCAP. The OCAP is the operating criteria andprocedure for the Project. There's been a lot ofOCAPs since then. The OCAP we're dealingwith now is the 1988 OCAP. But basically,OCAP tightened up the irrigation project andsaid, "Guys, you've got to live within yourmeans. You cannot have all this extra water,we're going to tighten you up here and you'regoing to be able to have water, we're going tosupply water to legitimate water-right users,but we're going to tighten you up and there'snot going to be all this wastewater comingdown there," which was supplying thewetlands. So as they tighten it up, tighten theefficiencies up to protect the cui-ui, becausethey were very concerned about the cui-ui,we're also concerned about the pelicans -- try to

55

Ronald M. Anglin

raise that level [of Pyramid Lake] up. Wetightened the efficiency and the noose tighterand tighter on the Project. And the tighter wetighten it up on them, the more the Project hasscreamed, because it's like a junkie. If youlook at the Newlands Irrigation Project as ajunkie, they had all the heroin they wanted, andnow we're weaning them off of that heroin, andthe more we wean them off of that "drug," themore they're screaming, and they're going toscream more and more and more and more,because the noose is getting tighter and tighteron them.

THE ALPINE DECREE

And during this same period of time,the Alpine Decree was working its way. Alpine Decree is the law that adjudicated thewater on the Carson River. The Alpine Decreetook, I think, forty-three or fifty-three years towork its way through. If you go back in thehistory of this place, and I know you've heard itbefore, Mark Twain said 150 years ago, "InNevada whiskey is for drinkin' and water is forfightin' [over]." And they're still doing it. Butthe Alpine Decree took a long time to work it'sway through the courts, and it segmented theriver. And it said, "Alright, you can have waterdown there in the Lahontan Valley, you canhave the consumptive use of the agriculture

56


crops, 2.99. And the difference between the2.99 that you can put on the field and what ittakes to grow alfalfa, guess where they'regetting that from? They're getting it from theground water, it's being sucked up out of theground water, which is not there, as far as theFederal government is concerned, because it'sinefficiency of the Project. So I don't knowwhat they're going to do if they lower theground water table, they can't grow alfalfa. Ican see that.

Seney: Two point nine nine [2.99] is the acre-feet, youmean.

Anglin: Two point nine nine [2.99], the ground out herehas a water duty of 3.5, 4.5, I believe it's 2.5. Benchlands has 4.5, bottomlands has 3.5, andpasturelands I believe has 2.5 or 1.5 -- I can'tremember exactly which one it is. But theconsumptive use of the crop, alfalfa being themajor crop here, is 2.99. So whatever is usedabove that, certain people felt it was thenonconsumptive use and it went through thesystem and should end up in the pastoral lands,which are the wetlands.

DISPUTES BETWEEN PYRAMID LAKE ANDSTILLWATER REFUGE

Seney: I want to get back to the kind of quarrel

57

Ronald M. Anglin

between your people at Pyramid Lake and youall down here at Stillwater Refuge. Becauseyou say you really began to suffer down hereonce the OCAP comes into effect, and that wasthe OCAP that was intended to ameliorate thisland bridge problem and the cui-ui problem.

Anglin: That's right. And that's because the Service --part of the problem of this whole issue isyou've got all these "children" of Interior. You've got the Bureau of Reclamation, the BIA[Bureau of Indian Affairs], BLM, Fish andWildlife Service -- all of them in there, all ofthem fighting over the same thing. And theninternally inside those, the Fish and WildlifeService, you've got the refuge, which ismigratory birds; the other side of the equationyou've got ecological services which isprimarily dealing with the Endangered SpeciesAct of it. You have land managers like myself,resource people that are tied to the land, tryingto manage the land better, and you have peoplethat are regulatory branch. You have aregulatory branch of the Fish and WildlifeService, and you have a land managementbranch of the Fish and Wildlife Service. A lotof times they don't come together.

Seney: And you're in the land management part.

Anglin: I'm in the land management -- I'm not the

58


regulatory branch. This is the regulatorybranch over here. There are people in the Fishand Wildlife Service that would say that theregulatory branch ought to be with EPA[Environment Protection Agency] becausethat's a regulatory agency, where the Fish andWildlife Service has not been a regulatoryagency. And so Fish and Wildlife Service isconstantly fighting this battle internally: Arewe a regulatory agency or are we a landmanagement agency? Are we the biologicalarm of the Federal government, or are we aregulatory agency? What are we?! And that'spart of the problem here. Am I going tocriticize my counterparts in ecological service? No, they're doing exactly what they'resupposed to.

Seney: These are the ones up at Pyramid Lake?

Anglin: These are the ones in Reno that deal with thecui-ui issue.

Seney: And the endangered species generally.

THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

Anglin: And endangered species. And endangeredspecies has precedence over all other acts ofthe Federal government that deal with naturalresources. The Endangered Species Act is an

59

Ronald M. Anglin

extremely powerful Act. If you had to weighbetween migratory birds and endangeredspecies, endangered species is going to win. The Endangered Species Act is so powerful;we think we have problems here -- we haven'teven begun to touch the iceberg on what'sgoing to happen on the Columbia River. Whenwe start dealing with an endangered species onthe Columbia River, and the hydroelectricplants on the Columbia River -- and there arepeople saying we need to blow up dams on theColumbia River to protect the fish runs. I don'tthink it's ever going to happen, but there arepeople that say we should do it. TheEndangered Species Act is an extremelypowerful act. And it's up for renewal this nextyear.

Seney: What do you think is going to happen with it?

Anglin: I don't know, I think it's going to be changed. Ithink that there are a lot of people that wouldlike to see it changed. It's done a lot of good. There have been a few examples where peoplelook at it and say, "They've gone too far." It'smade a lot of people stop and think before theygo off and do developing. If the EndangeredSpecies Act had been in place and some of theenvironmental acts we have today had been inplace in 1902, they'd have never built thisProject, because this is not a cost-efficient

60


project. I don't think that anybody that's dealtwith this Project will ever tell you that it's agreat project, but it's what we are stuck withtoday.

THE NEGOTIATIONS SURROUNDING PUBLIC LAW101-618

Seney: Let me change the subject slightly to ask you,What role did you play in the negotiationssurrounding Public Law 101-618?

Anglin: I was heavily involved in 101-618 from thestandpoint of dealing with the wetland aspectof it, writing the Section 206 portion of it thatdealt with the wetlands. I spent a lot of timedealing with the environmental groups behindthe scenes, trying to provide them withinformation on how best to deal with it,because I am the keeper of the information onthe wetlands -- the biological informationdealing with wetlands. The environmentalcommunities didn't have that information, so Iprovided it to them, provided it to thecongressional aides, I provided it to anybodythat had a need for it.

Seney: When you're talking about environmentalgroups in this case, you're talking about theNature Conservancy and the EnvironmentalDefense Fund primarily?

61

Ronald M. Anglin

Anglin: The Environmental Defense Fund, the NatureConservancy, Lahontan Valley WetlandCoalition, the Audubon Society, the SierraClub. I was instrumental in helping them formthe Lahontan Valley wetlands coalition, whichwas a coalition put together to protect and savethe Lahontan Valley wetlands. The coalitionwas made up of all the environmentalorganizations, because a coalition is strongerthan any one by itself. So the coalition wasmade up from hunters to nonhunters, from theTrappers' Association to the Defenders ofWildlife -- just about every aspect of theenvironmental organizations in between werethere, coming together and focusing on onething: to protect the Lahontan Valley wetlands. We never felt that we could ever get back towhat was here historically, which wasanywhere from 100,000-200,000 acres ofwetlands, prior to any development on theCarson River. What we decided to try to worktowards was to protect a portion of it, roughly25,000 acres of what was here originally. Theoriginal pieces of legislation, there were threeareas that were asked to be protected: theCarson Lake Pasture at 10,200 [acres],Stillwater at 14,000 [acres], and the FernleyWildlife Management Area at 2,600 acres. Iargued many, many times that it was gettingconfusing, just talking about Stillwater andtalking about the environmental, or talking

62


about the Lahontan Valley wetlands wasconfusing enough -- when you threw in CarsonLake -- and it wasn't really a lake it was apasture, and it wasn't really a pasture it was theGreenhead Hunting Club -- that was confusing. The people just didn't understand whatanybody was talking about. I said, "To make itsimple, let's call it Stillwater Marsh LahontanValley Wetlands and just talk about two areas: Stillwater and Carson Lake. Let's drop outFernley, because Fernley's not in the LahontanValley, and it's really always been an area thatwas receiving seep water off of the Project. And so let's just drop that." So in the sausage-making process they dropped Fernley and theythrew in 800 acres in the Fallon IndianReservation.

Seney: So these were the things you were consideringas you were (Anglin: Right.) working up to thenegotiations. (Anglin: Right.) Who did youdeal with as you were negotiating these things? Obviously you dealt with all the groups you'retalking about, but people in Senator [Harry]Reid's office?

Anglin: I dealt with people in Senator Reid's office, Idealt with people in Senator [Bill] Bradley'soffice extensively. There was a man inBradley's office named . . . . Gosh, I can't thinkof his name right now. (pause) Tom Jensen.

63

Ronald M. Anglin

Tom Jensen was in Senator Bradley's office,and he was instrumental in working through thepiece of legislation. [I] spent a lot of time outhere with Jensen, showing him the issues. Igave many, many -- literally hundreds -- oftours, ground tours, overflights of the area,slide presentations, talks, luncheons, dinners,anything I could to promote the LahontanValley Wetlands. I spent a lot of my ownmoney flying back to Washington, D.C.,talking to different environmental groupsdealing with the issue.

Seney: When you say your own money, you meanyour personal funds?

Anglin: My personal funds. I took time off, I tookannual leave and used my money to fly back toWashington, D.C. to talk to environmentalorganizations to try to protect these wetlands,because these are terminal wetlands, andterminal wetlands are, acre-for-acre, some ofthe most productive wetlands in the world. And they were being destroyed, and theyneeded a champion, they needed somebody outthere trying to protect them. But they alsoneeded somebody that had the knowledge ofthe area. So as I said before, the Service hasbeen the keeper of the knowledge. The Servicehas been interested in these wetlands since the1880s. As I said, Vernon Mills was here in the

64


1880s. Some of his ancestors are in this valleytoday because of him being here in the 1880s. The Service was here before the Bureau ofReclamation. We were concerned about thesewetlands 110-120 years ago. We wereconcerned about protecting these wetlands. And when they put me down here, when Ilooked at the issue, the issue here was water --we had to have water for the wetlands. And soI devoted all my energy to trying to securewater for these wetlands, because that was themost important thing that we had to do. And Ifelt so strongly about it -- there was anotherindividual working here at the time, a fellow bythe name of Steve Thompson who was thebiologist -- he felt strongly about it at the timetoo, and he still does, because his grandfatherused to take him duck hunting out on theStillwater Marsh. And to see the StillwaterMarsh being destroyed hurt him. Hisgrandfather had taken him out there, hisgrandfather had died, and to go out there andsee what was happening, it bothered him. Andso we fought and argued with people and wewould do it with the understanding that I wouldstand up and argue until they were reallyhammering on me, politically, and then I wouldstep down and he'd stand up, and he'd argueuntil they hammered on him, and then I'd stepback up. It was back and forth. We looked atit like building a house. And we used the

65

Ronald M. Anglin

analogy back of the foundation. We built agood foundation with the community first. Wetook these people from TCID Board out to themarsh. Some of them hadn't been out in themarsh in twenty-five years. As kids theirparents had taken them out on the marsh andshowed them the marsh and hunted the marsh. They hadn't been out there in twenty-five years,and they didn't know what was happening tothe marsh. We took them on "donut tours." We'd take them out there and provide themdonuts and coffee and sit around and kick thecow pies and talk ducks and talk agriculture. "What are you guys here for? You're growingcrops. That's what I'm doing. I'm growingsago palm weeds so the birds can eat it. I'mdoing the same thing you're doing. I got tohave water, I got to grow crops. I got to havequality water that I can grow crops with. So doyou." So we built our foundation with thecommunity that way. And I don't know, maybeyou've come across people that dislike me inthe community. And I recognize that I havebeen involved in fundamental changes to thiscommunity, major changes, I guess you couldsay, because I have worked in this so long now. Since I came here, this community is going tochange. There's nothing the community can doabout it, it's changing. But I do not feel anyhatred against me in the community. And I'mnot saying that everybody likes me, but I think

66


everybody recognizes that when they deal withme, they get the truth. You might not like it,but you're going to get the truth from me. Andso I think that I have the respect of the peoplein the community from that aspect. And soSteve and I looked at it as laying thegroundwork, "Let's build a foundation with thecommunity, and let's get the community toknow who we are, what we're doing, why we'rehere."

At the same time we had a fish die-off. We were able to bring national andinternational attention to the plight of thesewetlands. And we were able to build on that,and then come up with positive stories andsome negative stories and war stories. Over thecourse of the time I've been here, there'sprobably been almost 2,000 stories written onthis place, and either the newspapers,magazines, or whatever. I mean, it's incrediblethe number of stories that I've seen written onthis place. There's a full-length movie comingout on it this fall, or this winter. It's calledStillwater and it deals with this whole issue, theproblems that are here.

Seney: This is a documentary?

Anglin: Documentary, yeah. There was a group fromthe Discovery Channel that came out here thispast summer and filmed me and discussed the

67

Ronald M. Anglin

history of the Stillwater Marsh and how theIndians used the marsh, and "Why are youconcerned about the Indians? Why are youconcerned about how the Indians used themarsh today?" Because I believe that you haveto look back to move forward. And am I tryingto take all the recognition for this? No, I'm not. There were a tremendous number of peoplethat came before me, that I was able to build onwhat they did, and stand on their backs andmove forward. There'll be a lot of people thatcome after me that will be able to stand on meand build on and go forward from there.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFESERVICE AND THE STILLWATER MARSH

Seney: But let me ask you this: Who do you report toin the chain of command in the Fish andWildlife Service?

Anglin: My supervisor has changed over the period oftime, but my direct supervisor right now is BobFields. Maybe it's better if I explain how theFish and Wildlife Service works. The Fish andWildlife Service is like a lot of Federalagencies, a line organization. It goes from theDirector in Washington, D.C., in this casewho's Molly Beatty [phone]. Molly Beatty's inWashington, D.C.; Mike Spear is located inPortland, Oregon; to me, Ron Anglin. That's

68


the chain of command. I recognize, and I thinkanybody else does in the bureau, I perceive thatthere are many, many middle managers inbetween. From Mike Spear it goes to JohnDoebel who is the Assistant Regional Directorfor Refuges and Wildlife. From John Doebel,he has an assistant, but it goes to Bob Fieldswho is the Zone Supervisor for Refuges inCalifornia and Nevada. From Bob Fields itgoes to me.

Seney: Let me ask you, with that in mind, What havebeen the views of your superiors in terms ofyour actions here? Obviously you keep theminformed on what you do, and you don't dothings they don't want you to do -- I assumeyou don't. That's got to be a judgement call. You're smiling, and I know how these thingswork. But I assume that there's support forprotection of the wetlands up the chain ofcommand. Can you give me a sense of howthat's worked as you've negotiated over 101-618 and done these other things?

Anglin: The Fish and Wildlife Service has had a love-hate relationship with Stillwater since it wasestablished in 1948. The original plans weredrawn up on Stillwater in the 1930s, and it wasoriginally established in 1948. It's had a love-hate relationship. When this area has a lot ofwater, it is incredible. It is absolutely the most

69

Ronald M. Anglin

productive marsh that the Fish and WildlifeService has.

Seney: What do you mean when you say "productive"?

Anglin: It produces more birds, more plants, morewildlife, more everything, than any otherhabitat of it's size that the Fish and WildlifeService has. It's incredible, absolutelyincredible when it has water in it. It haseverything to make it work. It has goodgrowing seasons, it has good temperature, goodlight, good clean water, evaporation, thesalinities, everything is just incredible. It's justan absolute garden when everything is workingtogether. And when the Fish and WildlifeService and the people that have been involvedwith it have seen it like that, it's the greatestplace in the world. When the group of peoplethat get associated with it, when it's dry likeright now, it is the most God-forsaken piece oftrash that they've ever seen in their life andthey don't ever want to come down here. I'vehad people say that their understanding of whatStillwater is, their definition of Stillwater is asink in the desert we're pouring endlessamounts of money into.

Seney: Because they've never seen it good state.

Anglin: They've never seen it when it's hot. When it's

70


hot, it's hot -- and when it's not, it is nothingout there. And it's very hard. And that's thecycle of the Great Basin. It goes boom andbust, and boom and bust, and boom and bust. And so the Fish and Wildlife Servicerelationship with this place is boom and bust,boom and bust. And they've spent millions ofdollars out here in the 50s, and in the 1970sthey wanted to give it back to the Indians. They just wanted to walk away. They put amanager in here and said, "Close it down. We're tired of it, we don't want to deal [with it]. It's nothing but problems. We don't want todeal with the problems down here anymore." They've had a love-hate relationship with it. They recognized that it is a productive areawhen there's water, but when there isn't waterit's not worth dealing with.

Seney: So part of your job is to kind of keep themwarm toward the thing (Anglin: Right.)whether there's water or not.

Anglin: Right. When it comes back, it'll outproduceanything you got. If you put water in it, it'lloutproduce anything you got, right now -- acre-for-acre, it'll outproduce it. And it's very hardfor them to deal with it -- extremely hard forthem to deal with it.

You asked me what my relationshipwith my superiors has been. I feel very

71

Ronald M. Anglin

strongly in the Federal government or anybody,if you have a boss, unless you're a benevolentdictator, that you keep your boss informed. Ithink the absolute worst thing that a person cando is to hide things from their supervisor,because if you do, he or she cannot protect you,and it'll piss them off to no end if you're doingsomething and they get caught blindsided.


Anglin: I feel very strongly that you must keep yoursupervisors informed. You do not do what alot of us think that our supervisors do to us,like mushrooms, keep us in the dark and feedus shit all the time. I believe that you shouldkeep your supervisor informed. If yoursupervisor is informed, they can protect you, ifyour supervisor is not informed, they will getyou, they will come back to haunt you. And soI've always kept my supervisors informed. They've told me at times that I'm on very shakyground. I went to the White House one time onthis issue and . . .

TAKING THE STILLWATER MARSH ISSUE TO THEWHITE HOUSE

Seney: Tell me about that.

72


Anglin: Going to the White House? There was a fellowby the name of Sig Rogich who was one ofGeorge Bush's advisors -- I don't know exactly. He had hunted the Stillwater Marsh, had verystrong emotions about the Stillwater Marsh,was from Nevada.

Seney: How'd you know about him? How'd you findout he was there?

Anglin: Well, it goes back to, I have a good friend up inReno named Dr. [Kenneth D., D.D.S.] Taber And Dr. Taber, when he was going to medicalschool in Washington, D.C., the two of themshot on a pistol team together, and he used tocome into this gun shop that I worked at andwe hunted and shot on a pistol team together. And when I moved to Nevada, Nevada being a"good old boy" state, I was able to -- I hadn'tseen Ken in fifteen years and we struck up arelationship again, and he was able to opensome doors for me.

Seney: He's out here, obviously, by now?

Anglin: Well, he's up in Reno. He's a dentist in Reno. He's lived in Reno all his life. His father was ajudge in Reno, and he hunted the StillwaterMarshes and talked about it. But anyway, hewas able to open some doors. I don't rememberexactly how it came to [be] now. They knew

73

Ronald M. Anglin

that Sig Rogich was working in the WhiteHouse and thought that maybe I could help thispiece of legislation through, and would I gotalk to Sig Rogich, because I was the only onethat was fully informed on it. And so I said, "Ican't do this unless you get it cleared with mysupervisors." Because I told my supervisor Iwas going to go do this and he said, "Ron, don'tgo do it. You'll get fired over this." And Isaid, "I don't know why, I'm not doing anythingwrong. I've been in the White House before." "I don't care, a person at your level does not goto the White House and talk to the WhiteHouse." So anyway I flew back toWashington, D.C. I forget if it was on my ownmoney or on their nickel, but I flew back toWashington, D.C., and I went into Refuges andKen had called me the night before and he said,"It's all arranged, you're going to the WhiteHouse at nine o'clock in the morning." And Isaid, "Ken, I told you, they don't want me togo." And he said, "Well, we've talked to JohnTurner," who was the Director of the Fish andWildlife.

Seney: This is Rogich, or your friend Dr. Taber?

Anglin: Dr. Taber said that they had spoken to JohnTurner and John Turner was the Director of theFish and Wildlife Service said he thought itwas a good idea that I would go talk to Sig

74


Rogich. So I went into Refuges and I felt that Ishould touch base with Refuges in Washington,D.C., and I went in and I talked to a lady there,a good friend of mine, and I told her, "I'msupposed to be at the White House," and shesaid, "Ron, don't go over there, they'll fire yourass." And I said, "Well, I don't see why. I'mjust going to go over there and talk about whatI'm supposed to be protecting." And they said,"Don't do it." I said, "Well, I've been told to doit." So she got on the phone and she called theperson who's in charge of all the refugesdowntown, and he ran down the hall and talkedto John Turner. Turner said, "Tell him to beover there." So I went over to the WhiteHouse. I came back and they told me I used upa lot of chips. "Don't do that again. Don't dothat one again." (knock at door, tape turned offand on)

Seney: You used chips because somebody at yourlevel is not supposed to go? If anybody wassupposed to go, the big boys are supposed togo, and maybe you'd be lucky enough to standin the back of the room or something or other.

Anglin: Right. A person at my level shouldn't benegotiating at that level.

Seney: Tell me a little about the meeting. What canyou tell me about the meeting?

75

Ronald M. Anglin

Anglin: Well, at the meeting I had a video produced bya friend of mine, Doug Masters [phoneticspelling]. A woman had produced a full-lengthmovie on the area and I told her I needed two-and-a-half to three minutes of dynamite footageon the Stillwater Marsh and what washappening out there. So she put me together athree-minute video that was dynamite withsome music to go along with it. And it wasprofessionally done, and I took it over thereand I walked in there and he told me, "You'vegot just a few minutes. I'll talk to you, but justa few minutes." So I walked in there, and Isaid, "All I want to do is show you a video." Istuck the video in and he watched the threeminutes and he talked to me for two hours,because it opened up all of his emotions aboutthe area, which is what I was trying to do. AndI knew if I could get in there with somethingthat could grab him, then I could talk to him.

Seney: Do you feel this meeting did you some good?

Anglin: I think so. I don't know. You never know. You never know what occurred behind thescenes, what occurs behind the scenes on someof these issues. But I think that it helped. I'llalways think that it helped. He may havetalked to some people. He told me afterwards,"I don't care, call me up anytime you want. Ifit has to do with Stillwater Marshes, I'll talk to

76


you and I'll see what I can do."

Seney: But you didn't dare do that.

Anglin: No, I never called him again. I was smartenough to realize that I didn't have any chipsright then to play with. I had to get some morechips. As they say, you know, as you go alongin your career, if it's you at the university orwherever, you get chips to play poker with. And you don't want to retire with any chips, butyou don't want to run out of chips before youretire. And so I try to use my chips sparingly,and when I think that I have something that'sreally worthwhile, then I use my chips. Butuntil then I try to hoard chips.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE LEADERSHIP OF THE FISHAND WILDLIFE SERVICE TOWARD THE

STILLWATER MARSH

Seney: What was Turner, the then-head . . . .

Anglin: Turner was the head of the Fish and WildlifeService.

Seney: What was his attitude toward the StillwaterMarsh?

Anglin: He was very supportive of it. Before JohnTurner there was Frank Dunkel. Frank Dunkel

77

Ronald M. Anglin

was the Director, and his Deputy was SteveRobinson. Steve Robinson was from CarsonCity, and Steve Robinson was very concernedabout the Stillwater Marshes because herecreated down here. And so he wassupportive. He was able to pull some strings. Then when Turner came along, Turner was aRepublican from Wyoming and he was verysupportive. And I got John Turner out here, wedid a water rights celebration. We got theNevada Waterfowl Association to buy waterand we used that as a leverage [for] a mediacampaign with the Nature Conservancy to turnwater into the wetlands, the first legal waterthat the wetlands had ever had. And we usedthat as a precedent.

Seney: How many acre feet was that?

Anglin: Two hundred and fifty, it was nothing -- butthat wasn't the point. The point was to set aprecedent. We set a precedent, and it was a lotof hurdles to go through because every time wetried to figure out a way to get water to thewetlands, people in Interior threw uproadblocks and said, "You can't do this." Andit finally took a document -- it took fivelawyers and twenty-five pages to basically saythat the Federal government could buy wateron a Federal project and transport it throughFederal facilities to a Federal wildlife area.

78


Took twenty-five pages to write this, to say thatI could buy water on a Federal project,transport it through Federal facilities, toFederal land.

Seney: In other words, the Fish and Wildlife Servicecould buy it from the Bureau of Reclamation,and bring it through the Newlands Projectcanals out into the Stillwater Marsh.

Anglin: Right. It sounds absurd, but this is another oneof the children of the Department of Interior,and they don't talk. They're siblings that don'ttalk a lot of times.

Seney: Let me ask you about the Fish and WildlifeService. Is it the kind of organization whereyou can go to the top? Can you talk to Turner? And I'm sorry, I've forgotten the woman whowas his successor. Her name is?

Anglin: Oh, Steve Robinson.

Seney: Can you talk to [him], or do you have to gothrough the chain of command?

Anglin: We have a chain of command. There's alwaysgoing to be a chain of command. If youcircumvent the chain of command, you're usingchips. Not saying that you can't do it, but it's abureaucratic system. It's got some very rigid

79

Ronald M. Anglin

rules in there, and the rules are not writtenrules. You can go around them, but you maypay the price if you go around them. I feel thatyour responsibility as a land manager or aperson that protects the resources is to dowhatever it takes to protect the resources. That's what you, Don, put me here for, is toprotect your resources, which are the wetlandsand the migratory bird resources in LahontanValley.

Seney: So you do have to stick your neck out a littlebit.

Anglin: You have to stick your neck out quite a ways.

THE 25,000 ACRE ALLOCATION FOR WETLANDS INPUBLIC LAW 101-618

Seney: Was it hard to get the 25,000 acre allocation forStillwater that's in 101-618?

Anglin: It took a lot of negotiation, there was a lot ofsausage made and given.

Seney: Can you give me a sense of what was requiredthere?

Anglin: As I said before, we dropped the Fernley areaand they added 800 acres at the Fallon IndianReservation. At Stillwater we could have tried

80


for the whole pie. We can manage about27,000 acres of wetlands, we have controlstructures and stuff out there. We can move27,000 surface acres out there at any givenyear.

Seney: And make good use of it.

Anglin: And make good use of it. But there was noway that we could do that and protect the otherimportant wetlands which is Carson Lake downhere.

Seney: Carson Lake really being Carson Pasture? (Anglin: Carson Pasture.) Which is a birdhabitat.

Anglin: It's another marsh. And the difference betweenCarson Lake and Stillwater is Carson Lake islike a big saucer, it just fills up, and it's veryshallow, but it's a saucer. And it just fills up,almost like a contact lens or a saucer -- just fillsup. And as it fills up it spreads and it slowlygets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Seney: How many acres again?

Anglin: It could be 27,000.

Seney: That alone can be 27,000.

81

Ronald M. Anglin

Anglin: And Stillwater is a series of impoundments thatgoes from deep water impoundments to veryshallow impoundments. What you're alwaystrying to create in dealing with wildlife andhabitat is edge. The more edge you got, themore species that move back and forth acrossfrom one habitat to another habitat. An edge isin between these, and that's what you're tryingto create is edges. The more edges you have,the more different types of species.

Seney: So an edge would be the ground in betweenthese impoundments, when we're talking aboutStillwater Marsh.

Anglin: No, you're talking about going from maybewater to uplands. Or you may be going fromtules to open water. You may be going fromopen water to . . . .

Seney: Those transition points, is what you talk aboutas edges.

Anglin: The transition zone is habitat. That's whatyou're trying to create, more of these edges anddifferent types of habitat is what you're alwaystrying to create when you're managing land,because that's where you get most of theinteraction between different species. SoStillwater goes from deep water to shallowwater where Carson Lake is just a big playa

82


and it's great for shorebirds and has limited usefor other types of birds.

Seney: But let me say, if you had your choice, you'dwant the water out in Stillwater, rather thanCarson Lake.

Anglin: Yeah. Really, you want both of them, becauseyou want to have both types of habitats.

Seney: But if you had to choose?

Anglin: If you had to choose, put it in Stillwater,because Stillwater, I think, has been there a lotlonger.

Seney: And has more edges.

THE ROLE OF THE STATE OF NEVADA INPROTECTING THE WETLANDS

Anglin: Has more edges. But I felt very strongly, and Istill feel very strongly, that the only way youcan protect the wetlands in Lahontan Valleywas to make people of the state of Nevada partof protecting these wetlands. If you couldn'tconvince the people in the state of Nevada thatthey were worth saving, then why do you thinkthe Federal government should come in hereand save it? I don't believe that the Federalgovernment should save everything for

83

Ronald M. Anglin

everybody. You can't. The Federalgovernment doesn't have enough money orresources to protect everything. The people inthe states have to protect some of theirresource. So not being a good bureaucrat, Iturned around and said, "Carson Lake, I feelvery strongly, should go to the State ofNevada." If I'd have been a good bureaucrat, [Iwould have said], "Carson Lake ought tobecome part of Stillwater National WildlifeRefuge" and get more land, get bigger.

Seney: Get more people working for you.

Anglin: You build an empire, just bigger and biggerand bigger and bigger. I said, "No, that's notwhat we need. We need to have Stateinvolvement in this issue." So at the same timewe were working through that part of it, wewere also promoting a bond issue, and theNature Conservancy went overboard trying topromote a bond issue called Proposition V. Wehad a state senator who at the time was VirgilGhetto who has been very supportive of thewetlands, spent his youth out in the wetlands. Also, he's a politician and lives in thecommunity and he's concerned aboutagriculture too. Some of his best friends havebeen Fish and Wildlife Service people that he'sknown over the years as he's grown up. And sowe got Proposition V, it was passed by the

84


voters, and the bond initiative, get $5 million togo out for the State to acquire water for thewetlands. And now we've been working to tryto get that land transferred to the State ofNevada as a big chunk of the land. And it goesback to what I believe about hunting. I believethat hunting on National Wildlife Refuges,because they're called Refuges and Sanctuaries,will become a thing of the past. And I thinkthat the people in the state of Nevada, if theywant to hunt migratory birds, they ought to beallowed to hunt migratory birds in wetlandsthat are in their state, as long as you can huntmigratory birds. And so I felt that the peoplein the state of Nevada should have an area thatthey can hunt if they want to hunt. And that'sthe reason I argued that Carson Lake shouldbecome a state wildlife management area.

Seney: Has that happened?

Anglin: It has not happened. It's close to happeningnow, but it's been, like most everything you getinvolved with them, this issue is just, everything you open up is another can of worms. And that's a can of worms.

Seney: How have your superiors felt about that?

Anglin: They've been supportive of that.

85

Ronald M. Anglin

Seney: The real problems are here, rather than up thechain of command.

MERCURY CONTAMINATION ALONGTHE CARSON RIVER AND CARSON LAKE

Anglin: Yeah, the reason it hasn't occurred is becauseduring the Comstock days, they lost so muchmercury in the system, they lost 7,500 tons ofmercury that came down the Carson River,spread out across it, there's mercury out atCarson Lake. There was talk about making itpart of a Superfund cleanup site. Nobody'sever going to clean up the mercury in thisvalley. There's not enough money in theTreasury of the United States to clean up themercury. It never will happen. The state isconcerned that if they were ever forced by theFederal government or by some group to cleanit up, that they don't have enough money toclean it up. And so they want anindemnification clause in any kind of a contractthat was transferring it to them to relieve themof the burden. And so that's part of theproblem. We're about worked through thatright now.

THE WETLANDS ON THE FALLON RESERVATIONAND RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBE

The Indian wetlands, on the other hand,

86

* Catherine S. Fowler, In the Shadow of Fox Peak: An Ethnography ofthe Cattail-Eater Northern Paiute People of the Stillwater Marsh. Cultural Resources Series Number 5. U.S. Department of the Interior,Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 1, Stillwater National WildlifeRefuge. 1992


the Service has been asked to manage thosewetlands.

Seney: These are the ones on the Fallon Reservation.

Anglin: On the reservation. We've been asked tomanage those wetlands for them and help themidentify their water source and do that.

Seney: How many acres of wetlands on thereservation?

Anglin: Eight hundred acres. If somebody will saywell, we're screwing the Indians again, you'reonly giving them 800 acres. They only have800 acres of wetlands, that's all they've got,that's all we can physically manage out there onthat parcel of ground for them is about 800acres. And so that's the reason they've got the800 acres.

Another thing that I'm trying to do withthe Indians to help the Indians here in thevalley is I had an ethnography produced.

Seney: I have a copy, it's excellent.

87

Ronald M. Anglin

Anglin: Thank you. Again, it goes back to my beliefthat you have to understand the resource thatyou're managing. And I was collecting all thismaterial on how the Indians used the marsh andwhat the resource values were, and I talked to anumber of people and was able to direct fundsthat way and have Dr. Fowler* at theUniversity, who's probably the foremostethnographer in the country, produce anethnography on these native people and howthe native people used the Stillwater Marsh andall the resources in the Stillwater Marsh.

To give you an example of how theIndians feel about this, last spring they had apowwow, it was a powwow at the reservation. It was one clan or one band -- I don't knowwhat it exactly it was -- but they called me upand they said, "Would you come down to ourpowwow?" And I said, "No, I won't comedown to your powwow, because powwows areIndian celebrations and they're not normally forwhite men." And they called me back up andthey said, "No, we really want you to comedown. You've done a lot for us and we wantyou to come down." So I went down there. Tomake a long story short, I only stayed at thepowwow for a while, and then a couple ofpeople, the grandson of the lady who's spokenof in the book, Wuzzie George, and his wife --his wife is just a beautiful lady. She's from a

88


tribe down in New Mexico or Arizona. Just areally striking, beautiful woman. But anyway,he asked me, and she did, would I take themout to the marsh and show them how hisgrandmother and grandfather lived out in themarsh. And so I felt honored. These Indiansasked me to go out, so I went out in the marshand I showed them where a bunch of different-- where their ancestors had camped and usedthe resources -- and took him out and showedhim where they'd gotten their drinking water,and he bathed in the drinking water. For somereason I had a metate, a grinding stone that I'dfound at this site. I don't know why I everpicked it up, because I just don't pick uparrowheads and stuff, I just don't have any needfor that stuff. But I'd picked it up a couple ofyears ago, and I'd had it. He said he didn't haveanything from his grandma, so I gave it to him. He went away and his family went away, andthey were just deeply touched that somebodywould have shown them the marsh. But I feltthat is my responsibility, is to try to work withthe native people and the resources out here.

THE PROBLEMS WITH THE TJ DRAIN ON THERESERVATION

So another thing I'm trying to do withthe tribe, that deals with the wetlands, is therewas a drain -- it's specifically mentioned in a

89

Ronald M. Anglin

piece of legislation -- the TJ Drain. The TJDrain is a drain that was built for the Indiansunder another piece of legislation to help theIndians that not a lot of it got accomplished. And it cut into glens of extremely saline water,toxic water, and it was dumping it into theStillwater Marsh and killing everything thatwas out there. So we wrote in a piece oflegislation to stop this drainwater from going inthere. To make a long story short, that'sanother can of worms that we haven't been ableto close because there are people that arefarming and they don't want to give up thefarm. So I'm in the process right now of, whenthe Service acquires a piece of land that isexcess to our needs that is high-qualityagricultural land and adjacent to thereservation, that I am striking up agreementswith the tribe to farm that land in exchange fornot farming their land that is draining into theTJ Drain, move them over to here andultimately I can save the government$15-20 million by not having to deal with theTJ Drain.

Seney: No one is quite sure what to do about that, arethey?

Anglin: They don't know what to do with it, no. Thisway, I can get them off the ground, get them onthe high productive ground, take their water

90


rights over there. Once we get the Indians offof the ground, and no additional cost to thegovernment, then we go back in and fill thedamned drain up. To me, it's a solution thathas promise for a long period of time, insteadof trying to come up with an engineeringsolution to an environmental problem. Engineering solutions to environmentalproblems generally, or at least the ones I'vebeen involved with, are not the way to gobecause they cost you too much money overtoo long a period of time. You come up withan engineering solution to the TJ Drain, you'llbe paying for it for the next hundred years. Imean, yeah, we got to pump the water up andwe're going to spray it out onto the ground. Alright, now what are you going to do with thesalt? And how are you going to pay for thepumps? And who's going to replace all thisstuff? And it's going to wear out. I mean,you're coming up with all these great solutions,engineering solutions, to spend millions ofdollars, but the maintenance is going to beincredible -- forever. And I haven't seenanything that's lasted my lifetime, hardly. Imean, you go down and buy something, it'sguaranteed for life, and most people lose thecontract before they're dead, and it's worn outand thrown away.

RELATIONSHIP WITH TCID

91

Ronald M. Anglin

Seney: How has your relationship with TCID been?

Anglin: I think it's been good, for the most part. TCIDhas a role in this community. When I camehere everybody told me TCID is a bunch ofbastards, and they've been a bunch of bastards,and they were not a benevolent dictator, theywere a bunch of bastards. They controlled thepower, power was water. "You want water,buddy? You play ball with me. I want my sonplaying quarterback on the football team if youwant water this next winter for your livestock." I mean, they played hardball with thecommunity, and you either played ball withTCID or you didn't get water. And they ranroughshod over the Fish and Wildlife Servicehere for a long time. We built literally millionsof dollars of stuff out at Stillwater for TCID,for no other reason than a revenue source forTCID. Pasturelands, canals, structures -- allput in to create and use the drainwater that wasgoing out there, because when Stillwater wasoriginally established, it was established underthe Tri-Party Agreement. The Tri-PartyAgreement was TCID, Fish and WildlifeService, and Nevada Department of Wildlife. Irun cattle out there. Thousands of cattle havebeen run out there for the sole purpose ofproviding revenue to TCID. Has nothing to dowith land management, has to do withgenerating revenue for TCID.

92


Seney: And keeping TCID happy.

Anglin: Keeping TCID happy. We had muskrattrapping out there. They trapped thousands ofmuskrats out there, for their furs -- literallythousands and thousands of rats out there. Weimported rats to create rats out there -- strictlyas a revenue source for TCID. We did lots ofthings for TCID. TCID was a bunch ofbastards for a long period of time before I camehere. I mean, the records are full of it in thiscommunity: you either played ball with themor you didn't get things.

Since I've been here, my relationshipwith TCID has been very open and cordial. We've had our disagreements, but I do notbelieve that TCID holds any -- I think hatred isthe wrong word for it -- but they don't dislikeme, they don't dislike the Fish and WildlifeService. They may dislike the ecologicalservice part of it, but they don't dislike therefuge portion of it.

I don't dislike TCID, I don't dislike thepeople in TCID. I think they make some dumbchoices when they have choices to make, but Idon't dislike TCID. I think that if TCID wasever completely pulled out of here there wouldbe a huge power vacuum that would have to befilled by something or somebody, where youwould end up like Russia where the powervacuum that's going on right now in Russia and

93

Ronald M. Anglin

the collapse of Russia. I think the same thingwould happen to this community for a period oftime, because they have been the power brokerin the community for the last seventy-fiveyears. Right or wrong, good or bad, that's thefacts of life. And you have to deal with TCID. And I think it's unfortunate that TCID, some ofthe decisions they make, but I think it's alsounfortunate that some of the decision-makers inthe Federal government feel so strongly againstTCID. TCID is a fact of life, you have to dealwith them. You can't say they're a bunch of -- Ihate to use it on your tape -- but a bunch ofGod damned farmers. They're doing what thegovernment told them to do. They're not myenemy, they're doing exactly what thegovernment has told them to do.

Seney: So they have to be dealt with.

Anglin: They have to be dealt with. I might not like thedecision they made. I mean, in my personalopinion, it was a dumb decision the other dayto not supply water to the Indians. I mean, Ican understand the principle they're standingon, I think it was dumb decision because it set aprecedent for the government to come in herenow and start taking the Project over. I think itwas a dumb decision. They made it, they'restuck with it. I don't know.

94


Seney: Why don't we end there.

END OF SIDE 2, TAPE 2.

Ronald M. Anglin - Bureau of Reclamation...Ronald M. Anglin Oral History Interview: Ronald M....

Documents

Transcript of Ronald M. Anglin - Bureau of Reclamation...Ronald M. Anglin Oral History Interview: Ronald M....