Terry Goddard Interview -- Sam Goddard's CAP Testimony

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TG = Terry Goddard

PS (Interviewer): Yeah (laughs). And we're here at the Goddard home in Phoenix and interviewing Terry Goddard. Finishing up, I think this is tape number three with you. I was trying to see where we were last time. We got your Dad elected and, uh, back testifying before Congress about the Central Arizona Project. Uh, and I know you said afterwards that there were some things that you'd forgotten that you wanted to mention. You probably totally forgot now (laughs).

TG (T. Goddard): Let's talk about the CAP testimony? Well I probably should say a little about that if, if, stop me if I, if I, if I've covered all this. But the, uh, interesting thing about that was we were at the - near the culmination of the Project. There was forty years or more of work that had gone into getting to that point. There'd been all kinds of crazy schemes. There'd been the Inner Canyon, uh, Dams which were actually still part of the Project as of 19, uh, 65, '66 when Dad was testifying. Uh, those were soon to be removed.

That was sort of the last bit of, of holding down. Uh, but he was the only state, uh, representative that spoken in favor of the CAP. Up until then it had been all federal people and Morris Udall had primarily orchestrating what was happening.

The problem with that was there were some very strong opponents in the Congressional Subcommittee on Interior and Reclamation Affairs to the Central Arizona Project. Uh, the chairman, Wade Aspinall and a representative from Pennsylvania named Saylor. And they hadn't had anything to chew on. They hadn't had anybody to attack yet.

So my Dad got up there and read his statement which was relatively perfunctory basically saying Arizona was strongly in favor of this. He showed some extraordinary pictures of subsidence in Tucson which showed how much the land had cracked because of the pumping that had been going on there. How much the water table had fallen. Because at that point Tucson was being heralded as the largest city in the world that was entirely dependent upon ground water. So projections, if you can believe this now, were that Tucson would be out of water around the year 2000 unless they got relief from the Colorado River. And that was my father's testimony.

Uh, at that point, the, uh, Senator, Congressman Aspinall, uh, opened the floor to Representative Saylor, who proceeded to spend -if I remember correctly, about three hours cross examining Dad on where they were going to, when, when obviously the Colorado River ran out, where they were going to import water from other parts of the country. And what he wanted to do was to get the Governor of Arizona on record saying that they weren't planning any importation. Uh, so he took every - he took a map of the United States and took every river in the Western United States and asked him specifically what plans there were for the Snake, for the Willamette, for the, uh, the Columbia for each of the major rivers. And so the record did reflect that Arizona didn't want any particular importation

Uh, it was brutal. It was, uh, and, and fairly irrelevant. Uh, it, it was basically taking a governor who couldn't, who couldn't, uh, do any retaliation to the Congressman and, and hang him out to dry. And Stewart and Mo Udall were very upset about it, but there wasn't anything they could do.

PS (Interviewer): And you were there?

TG (T. Goddard): I was there. I was sitting in the background. I think I was, in the Congressional Hearing, I was one of three or four-there were a couple of hydrologist and a few other people that supported the CAP and me. And, uh, it, it was an extraordinary session.