MARCUS FAUST - usbr.gov · Faust: Certainly. I remember at the age of fourteen, on my birthday, going to a political fund-raiser where Senator Ted [Edward M.] Kennedy was in attendance

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW

MARCUS FAUST

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STATUS OF INTERVIEW:OPEN FOR RESEARCH

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Interview Conducted and Edited by:Donald B. Seney in 1995

California State University-SacramentoFor the Bureau of Reclamation’sNewlands Project Oral History Series

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Interview desktop published–2019By Brit Allan Storey, Senior Historian

Oral History ProgramBureau of ReclamationDenver, Colorado

SUGGESTED CITATION:

FAUST, MARCUS. ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW. Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of Reclamation OralHistory Interview conducted by Donald B. Seney. Editedby Donald B. Seney and desktop published by Brit AllanStorey, senior historian, Bureau of Reclamation. Repository for the record copy of the interview transcript isthe National Archives and Records Administration inCollege Park, Maryland.

Record copies of this transcript are printed on 20 lb., 100%cotton, archival quality paper. All other copies are printedon normal duplicating paper.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Statement of Donation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Editorial Convention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Oral History Interview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Family, Early Life and Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1D.C.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Becoming a Lobbyist for Sierra Pacific Power

Company. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Working on the Truckee River Agreement and

Other Matters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7The Role of Senator Laxalt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Truckee River Legislation Killed by Tribe. . . . . . 12Tribal Politics and the Success of Bob Pelcyger

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Trying to Pass the Interstate Compact. . . . . . . . . . 16After the Attempt to Pass the Compact Failed.. . . 24What Sierra Pacific Power Wanted and Needed

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Senator Harry Reid Becomes Active in Settlement

Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32TCID and the Settlement Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . 36The Importance of Stampede Reservoir.. . . . . . . . 41

Newlands Project Series– Oral History of Marcus Faust

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Public Law 101-618. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Conflicts Within the Federal Government Over

Truckee River Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Passing Public Law 101-618 Through Congress

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Attempts to Hold Up Public Law 101-618 in the

House of Representatives.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Trying to Include TCID in Public Law 101-618

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66The Bureau of Reclamation and TCID. . . . . . . . . 69Sierra Pacific Power and Public Law 101-618. . . 70Getting President Bush to Sign Public Law 101-618

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71How Bills Can Be Killed in the Senate. . . . . . . . . 72President Signs Public Law 101-618. . . . . . . . . . . 74The Settlement II Negotiations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78Working for Sierra Pacific Power. . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Tribe's Second Thoughts about the Negotiated

Settlement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Recent Actions by the House Interior Subcommittee

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Bureau of Reclamation History Program

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Statement of Donation


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Editorial Convention

A note on editorial conventions. In the text of theseinterviews, information in parentheses, ( ), is actually on thetape. Information in brackets, [ ], has been added to thetape either by the editor to clarify meaning or at the requestof the interviewee in order to correct, enlarge, or clarify theinterview as it was originally spoken. Words havesometimes been struck out by editor or interviewee in orderto clarify meaning or eliminate repetition. In the case ofstrikeouts, that material has been printed at 50% density toaid in reading the interviews but assuring that the struckoutmaterial is readable.

The transcriber and editor also have removed someextraneous words such as false starts and repetitionswithout indicating their removal. The meaning of theinterview has not been changed by this editing.

While we attempt to conform to most standardacademic rules of usage (see The Chicago Manual of Style),we do not conform to those standards in this interview forindividual’s titles which then would only be capitalized inthe text when they are specifically used as a title connectedto a name, e.g., “Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton” asopposed to “Gale Norton, the secretary of the interior;” or“Commissioner John Keys” as opposed to “thecommissioner, who was John Keys at the time.” Theconvention in the Federal government is to capitalize titles


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always. Likewise formal titles of acts and offices arecapitalized but abbreviated usages are not, e.g., Division ofPlanning as opposed to “planning;” the ReclamationProjects Authorization and Adjustment Act of 1992, asopposed to “the 1992 act.”

The convention with acronyms is that if they arepronounced as a word then they are treated as if they are aword. If they are spelled out by the speaker then they havea hyphen between each letter. An example is the Agencyfor International Development’s acronym: said as a word, itappears as AID but spelled out it appears as A-I-D; anotherexample is the acronym for State Historic PreservationOfficer: SHPO when said as a word, but S-H-P-O whenspelled out.


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Introduction

In 1988, Reclamation created a history program. While headquartered in Denver, the History Program wasdeveloped as a bureau-wide program.

One component of Reclamation's history program isits oral history activity. The primary objectives ofReclamation's oral history activities are: preservation ofhistorical data not normally available through Reclamationrecords (supplementing already available data on the wholerange of Reclamation's history); making the preserved dataavailable to researchers inside and outside Reclamation.

In the case of the Newlands Project, the seniorhistorian consulted the regional director to design a specialresearch project to take an all around look at oneReclamation project. The regional director suggested theNewlands Project, and the research program occurredbetween 1994 and signing of the Truckee River OperatingAgreement in 2008. Professor Donald B. Seney of theGovernment Department at California State University-Sacramento (now emeritus and living in South Lake Tahoe,California) undertook this work. The Newlands Project,while a small- to medium-sized Reclamation project,represents a microcosm of issues found throughoutReclamation: water transportation over great distances;three Native American groups with sometimes conflictinginterests; private entities with competitive and sometimes


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misunderstood water rights; many local governments withgrowing water needs; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serviceprograms competing for water for endangered species inPyramid Lake and for viability of the Stillwater NationalWildlife Refuge to the east of Fallon, Nevada; andReclamation’s original water user, the Truckee-CarsonIrrigation District, having to deal with modern competitionfor some of the water supply that originally flowed to farmsand ranches in its community.

Questions, comments, and suggestions may beaddressed to:

Andrew H. GahanHistorianEnvironmental Compliance Division (84-53000)Policy and AdministrationBureau of ReclamationP. O. Box 25007Denver, Colorado 80225-0007FAX: (303) 455-6690

For additional information about Reclamation’shistory program see:

www.usbr.gov/history


http://www.usbr.gov/history

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Oral History InterviewMarcus Faust

Seney: Today is November 9, 1995. My name isDonald Seney. I'm with Mr. Marcus Faustin his office in Washington, D.C.

Good morning, Mr. Faust.

Faust: Good morning.

Family, Early Life and Education

Seney: Why don't we just start by you giving us abrief biography and telling us how you gotto be the lobbyist for Sierra Pacific Power[Company].

Faust: I was born and raised in Salt Lake City,Utah, and always had a significant interest inbeing an attorney. My grandfather andfather are both attorneys, and I've also had asignificant interest in politics, even as ayoung man.

When I was in law school, I had theopportunity to go to work as a staffrepresentative for a United States Senatorfrom Utah, Senator Frank [E.] Moss. And I


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worked for him for about a year and a half,with the open expectation that upon mygraduation, which would have been inDecember of 1976, that I could move toWashington D.C., and work on hislegislative staff here. He was defeated,however, in November of that year. (laughter)

Seney: How thoughtless of him. (laughter)

Faust: However, I was fortunate enough to havemade several other acquaintances, one ofwhom was the congressman from the FirstDistrict of Utah, Congressman GunnMcKay.

Seney: Could I just interrupt? I understand you'refrom a very prominent Mormon family.

Faust: Yes.

Seney: Your father is a very important personwithin the Mormon Church, one of themembers of the presidency?

Faust: Yes.

Seney: And so probably your family has beeninvolved in politics for some time, I wouldthink.


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Faust: My father and my grandfather both had aninterest in politics and both had beeninvolved in political campaigns. My father,at an early age in his law practice, waselected to serve in the Utah state legislature,and I think a part of that rubbed off on me.

Seney: Sure. So it's part of the family history, too.

Faust: Certainly. I remember at the age of fourteen,on my birthday, going to a political fund-raiser where Senator Ted [Edward M.]Kennedy was in attendance in Salt LakeCity. It was kind of a bizarre thing. I wasthe only eighth-grader in my class that couldname every member of the cabinet back inwhenever that was. (Laughter)

Coming to Work in Washington, D.C.

And so I was very pleased to be able tocome to Washington and work forCongressman McKay, who was aconservative Democrat who represented avery large portion of the state. I worked forhim as a legislative assistant from 1977 until1980, and Congressman McKay himself wasdefeated in the [Ronald] Reagan landslide of1980.


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And the day after the election–thecongressman's best friend in the House ofRepresentatives was a neighboringcongressman from the state of Nevada. Hewas an at-large congressman, which meanthe represented the entire state, named JimSantini. And Jim Santini was the Chairmanof the House Interior Subcommittee onMines and Mining, and he was looking for alegislative counsel to work for him, and Ihad worked for him on other issues. Theday after the election, he called and offeredme a position with him, which I was verygrateful for at the time. And so for a coupleof years, I served as counsel to the HouseInterior Committee, and in the course ofworking with Congressman Santini. Ofcourse, I became acquainted with the peoplewho were on his personal staff, includingthose who were in the Las Vegas and Renooffices.

The woman who was responsible for theReno office for the congressman was awoman named Lynn Atchison [phonetic],and after Congressman Santini sought in1980–I actually parted his employment in1981 and opened up my own law practice,which is what I've been doing since then. He ran for the Senate in 1982 and wasdefeated. Lynn Atchison then made


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application to go to work for Sierra PacificPower Company, and she was given theposition of federal affairs representative andlocal government affairs representative forSierra Pacific.

Becoming a Lobbyist for Sierra Pacific Power Company

I had done quite a bit of work for theinvestor-owned electric utility from the stateof Utah when I was in the employ of thecongressman from Utah. And when I leftCapitol Hill and opened up my practice, Iwas immediately retained by Utah Powerand Light Company. There was a nationalconvention for governmental affairsrepresentatives in New Orleans, and I wasthere in attendance on behalf of myrepresentation of Utah Power and LightCompany, and I ran into Lynn Atchison, andso we reacquainted our friendship there.

Right during that period of time, '83, '84,there were some very serious negotiationsthat Sierra Pacific had been engaged inrelative to the negotiated settlement and thecompact. In 1985, Utah Power and Lighthad a change in administration. Theydecided that they did not want to justify the


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expenditure of a Washington office, andsimultaneously, Sierra Pacific PowerCompany had concluded an agreement withthe tribe, Pyramid Lake Tribe, and also withT-C-I-D [Truckee-Carson Irrigation District]and with others to support ratification of acompact and what I would refer to then as anagreement to agree. It wasn't an actualsettlement. It did not address many of thesubstantive issues that ultimately werepassed by Congress in the final settlementapproval. It was more of a kind of aarmistice.

Everybody agreed that there would be aperiod of time when they would come outfrom behind the legal walls that they hadbuilt up, and they would sit down and tryand negotiate an agreement within a periodof time, and if it didn't happen, theneverything was void. They [Sierra PacificPower] needed to have a Washingtonattorney to represent their interests in tryingto get this first agreement passed. LynnAtchison called me and asked me if I wasinterested. [She] was aware of myrepresentation of another investor-ownelectric utility. And so I entered into arelationship with them then in 1985, reallyfor the principal purpose of trying to securecongressional enactment of this preliminary


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first agreement.

Working on the Truckee River Agreement and OtherMatters

The representational arrangement wasbroader than just the Truckee Riversettlement. And went, as well, to providinggeneral representation on electric issues andgas issues and interfacing with members ofthe Nevada congressional delegation on theirbehalf, representing their interests at theNational Trade Association, Edison ElectricInstitute, which I have done continuouslysince 1985. And have very much enjoyedmy relationship with Sierra Pacific in thatregard, through numerous different chairmenand presidents.

The chairman then was Joe Gremban. Joe had invested a lot of his own personaltime and attention on this agreement, as hadSue Oldham, who is the attorney, and BobPelcyger for the tribe, and T-C-I-D and a1

1. Robert (Bob) Pelcyger participated in Reclamation's NewlandsSeries oral history project. See, Robert (Bob) S. Pelcyger, Oral HistoryInterviews, Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of Reclamation OralHistory Interviews conducted by Professor Donald B. Seney for theBureau of Reclamation, in 1995 and 2006, in Reno, Nevada, and

(continued...)


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number of others, and the then tribalchairman. They invited me to come out toNevada and become a little bit oriented towhat it was that they were doing. And Ihave to say, then, that while I was not in aposition to really be telling them one way orthe other what it was that they were going todo, I immediately saw, based upon theexperience that I had had in Washington,that they were, I really believe, somewhatnaive with respect to what it takes to securecongressional ratification and enactment.

They had actually been so thorough as togo ahead and draft a piece of implementinglegislation. And it was done by attorneyswho really are excellent attorneys when itcomes to drafting contracts and writingbusiness agreements and those types ofthings, but did not have experience withlegislative drafting. I think ultimately thatwas a part of the problem as to why thatoriginal agreement really didn't go forward. [It] was that they were not in a position toreally understand what the legislativeprocess was going to do to them. They'dnever had a Washington representative to

1. (...continued)Boulder, Colorado, 1995 interviews edited by Donald B. Seney and allinterviews further edited by Brit Allan Storey, senior historian of theBureau of Reclamation, 2013, www.usbr.gov/history/oralhist.html.


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tell them. They had not been in contact onan ongoing basis with anyone in thecongressional delegation to tell themwhether certain things would fly or wouldn'tfly. I think they wholly underestimated thedifficulty that it would take, and this is notunusual. This is not in any way disparagingtowards them, because I find this is the casewith many of my other clients in the West. You know, they're 2,000, 3,000 miles awayfrom Washington.

Nevadans themselves have kind of anattitude of, "You stay away fromWashington, and Washington will stay awayfrom us." You know, they're used to workingwith their legislature, which is very smalland very–Nevada is a small state, you knoweverybody. And they just thought you couldjust come back to Washington and getCongress to do this the same way you wouldpass something through the legislature.

The Role of Senator Laxalt

Senator [Paul] Laxalt was the seniormember of the delegation and, I should say,was very, very influential within the Reagan


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administration. He had been the governor2

when the original compact had beennegotiated, and he was also, as you know,the president's best friend.

Seney: Could I just stop you to say that often when Italk to people out in the project, when theybring up Senator Laxalt, they stress hiscloseness to President Reagan, and theysometimes will say he was the second orthird most powerful man in the country andstill couldn't get this passed. Are theyexaggerating things a little?

Faust: Let me pause for a minute. I just received afax from Brazil. I need to look at it.

Seney: Please, go right ahead. [Tape recorderturned off.]

Faust: Senator Laxalt was extremely judicious inhow he used his relationship to thepresident. Senator Laxalt, who remains tothis day a very close friend.

Seney: A close friend of yours, you mean.

Faust: A close friend of mine, and I have ongoing

2. Paul Laxalt served as Governor for the State of Nevada from1967 to 1971, and went on to have a distinguished career in the U.S.Senate from 1974 to 1987.


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relationships with him, [he] is an extremelygracious person. I don't know if he's on yourinterview list, but he should be.

Seney: Should he be? All right.

Faust: And I can make the introduction if you want.

Seney: That would be great.

Faust: The senator sought to, and I thinkappropriately so, insulate his relationshipwith the President of the United States fromthe legislative and political agenda. Hisrelationship was one of a counselor and asan advisor with respect to politics and thedirection of the Reagan presidency, and hewas very reluctant to use that relationship,trade upon that relationship for his ownpersonal agenda, except in very rarecircumstances I'm aware of. I'm aware oftwo. I'm presuming there were more, but I'monly aware of two where he used hispersonal relationship with the president totry and affect administration policy that hedid not want.

The first was on the deployment of theM-X missile in Utah and in Nevada, which


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he successfully defeated over the objectionsof the Department of Defense, and that wasa very, very significant battle. The secondwas this ratification of this compact. I'mgetting a little ahead of the story, however.

Seney: Okay, excuse me. Go back to where youthink we need to be.

Truckee River Legislation Killed by Tribe

Faust: What happened is that I went to Reno, gotall of the papers, including the draftlegislation, those folks came to Washington,Joe Gremban, Sue Oldham. We sat downwith the congressional delegation and wetold them that we had an agreement, thatagreement had been ratified by the TribalBusiness Committee, it was supported by T-C-I-D, that we outlined for them what was inthe agreement as ratification of the compactand basically a disarmament of legalpositions during a negotiating period. Thedelegation introduced the bill andimmediately sought to schedule hearings.

Some short period of time thereafter,dissidents within the tribe who wereopposed to the agreement where extremelyproactive in seeking to overturn the TribalBusiness Committee's ratification of the


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agreement. And they were successful atgetting a tribal referendum called and, at thetribal referendum, disapproved theagreement. That effort was led by anextremely able fellow who I have since hadother dealings with, and that was Joe Ely .3

Tribal Politics and the Success of Bob Pelcyger

During the course of that very stressfulperiod in intertribal politics, the thenchairman had a heart attack and died. Andso the principal supporter on the businesscommittee was gone. A very young andcharismatic and well-spoken dissident leaderwas fighting against it and ultimately ran forthe vacant position of chairman and waselected. That changed the dynamicssignificantly. Bob Pelcyger had successfullymanaged to–and Bob has a keen and innatesense of how to go with the various changesin the business committee.

3. Joseph (Joe) Ely participated in Reclamation's NewlandsSeries oral history project. See, Joseph (Joe) H. Ely, Oral HistoryInterview, Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of Reclamation oralhistory interview conducted by Donald B. Seney, edited by Donald B.Seney and further edited and desktop published by Brit Allan Storey,senior historian, Bureau of Reclamation, 2011,www.usbr.gov/history/oralhist.html.


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Seney: You're smiling when you say that.

Faust: Yeah. Bob has survived a number ofchanges on the business committee, up anddown. One of the things that I have found inthe context of doing this and other Indiansettlements–and I've done some in Montanaand in Utah, including the Ute Indiansettlement, which is by comparison muchlarger than this settlement–is that thesebusiness committees, and I don't knowwhether this is just a fact of reservation lifeor what it is, but there is always internalturmoil within the tribe. There is always agroup, and they're usually family oriented, ofloyal opponents or loyal opposition ordissidents for whatever happens, and theyseem to have different periods of time whenthey'll come in and take over a businesscommittee, and then the dissidents will beout. Then after a while, people will growdissatisfied with that, and then they'll putthese other people back in. It goes back andforth, and it's very cyclical.

I have known a lot of Indian attorneyswho have been retained by one group or afaction and had the client relationship forone or two years and then get tossed out bynew group that comes in. Bob has managedto survive through several of those types of


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things, and I've worked with him on hisrepresentation of other Indian tribes,including the Crow Indians in Montana,which is also a very political, tumultuoustribe. And he manages to survive all ofthose, because he's very canny at reading thepolitics of the business committee, and he'llpush an agenda of that business committeeuntil he sees that it's shifting. And then he'sable to adapt and change to reflect the newprospective of his clients. There were otherattorneys who were involved in the originalagreement who were not as fortunate as Bobwas.

There were also times when I viewedBob in this process as a problem,particularly after Joe Ely was elected. Andthe then tribal attorney that had negotiatedthe settlement was let go. And Bob Pelcygercame in, because Bob was then principally alitigator, and there was a tremendous beliefthat he wasn't interested in pursuing asettlement. Because he was the one who hadfiled the lawsuits and had his owninvolvement in perpetuating those lawsuitsand thought he had a good case and wantedto win them. And as a result, why settlesomething that you think you can win in


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court?

As a result, there were times when Idon't think Bob was completely committedto the settlement process. And there weretimes in our own negotiations when Joe Elywould have to sit on him, because I thinkJoe was committed. He would say, "Look,I'm committed to a settlement, but I don'tlike this one. What we need is a betterdeal." He was committed to a settlement,and there were many times in thenegotiations when we were seeking to get anagreement, when he sat on his lawyer andsaid, "No, we're going do this." So it was aninteresting thing to watch.

Trying to Pass the Interstate Compact

I also believe, this is my personalopinion, that one of the reasons whyultimately the settlement that was approvedby Congress did survive was because at leastone piece of litigation also survived, and thatwas litigation that Bob was involved withrelative to T-C-I-D. And so there was stillthat element that was still left for those whowanted to litigate in court. That was stillsomething that they were in a position ofdoing. Notwithstanding the fact that therewas a new tribal business chairman and


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notwithstanding the fact that they were nowopposed to the existing settlement, we stillfelt as though we wanted to pursue it. Thiswas in the final months of Senator Laxalt'sterm as a United States senator. He hadannounced his intention not to seekreelection, and he very much wanted to getthis done.

The tribe, and this is on Bob's advice,was very smart, went out and hired a very,very able Washington lobbyist named DaleSnape, who was with Anne Wexler group atthe time, very well connected. She was, Ithink, in the [Jimmy] Carter administration,and they were very well connected to a lot ofthe Hill leadership and to the public opinionleaders and, for that matter, to theWashington Post. And, of course, all ofthose with whom they were well connectedhad a sympathetic ear for Indian causes.

There was also an internal struggle downwithin the Department of the Interior; whilethe Bureau of Reclamation, thecommissioner, Bob Broadbent, who is a4

good friend of mine and now a present client

4. Robert Broadbent served as Commissioner of the Bureau ofReclamation under the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1984.


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as the head of Las Vegas Airport, was aprotégé of Senator Laxalt's and worked hardto push the Interior Department into aposition of supporting the legislation. Equally working as hard on the other sidewas Bob Pelcyger and Dale Snape with theB-I-A [Bureau of Indian Affairs], trying toinfluence the Department of the Interior tobe opposed to the settlement.

This is where Senator Laxalt'srelationship with the president was helpful,because he then went to the president andsaid, "President, you remember thatagreement that we reached ourselves withrespect to how to divide the waters of theTruckee River? We need to go ahead withthat and ratify it while you're president andwhile I'm a senator. It's been years whilethis has been pending. It's never beenratified because of opposition from the tribe. We had support of the tribe. We had a voteof the Tribal Business Committee and thatwas supportive. They've changed theirminds, but we're still going to press ahead."

Senator Laxalt was a member of theSelect Committee on Indian Affairs, held ahearing, was extremely gracious, heard thosemembers of the Business Committee whohad supported the agreement, heard Joe Ely,


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who at the time had not been electedchairman, and was extremely gracious to allconcerned, but his desire was to move thisthing forward. We worked very hard withSenator Laxalt and with the administrationto try and move the bill.

Seney: Can I stop you and ask you about somethingI've been told about? That is that there weresome private meetings that were heldwith–Senator Laxalt was there and Joe Elywas there and Bob Pelcyger, and I don'tknow if you were there.

Faust: Yes, I was.

Seney: And in one of those meetings, at least,Senator Laxalt was very vigorous,apparently, in his representations to Joe Elythat, "You should support this and notoppose this."

Faust: Oh, very much so. He was most determinedto do this as kind of the capstone of hiscareer. Senator Laxalt, for a variety ofreasons, some of which was the fact that hewas on the Appropriations Committee,others of which was that he was generalchairman of the Republican party, was not a


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prolific legislator. By that I mean he did notintroduce, write, sponsor, [do the] insidejockeying [on legislation]. He's not a RobertBird. He's not a Bennett Johnston type oflegislator. His long suit was his ownpersonal graciousness in his relationshipwith Democrats and Republicans. TheAppropriations Committee itself was not apartisan committee, and it principally was acommittee that just funded different aspectsand agencies of the government. So he waschairman of a subcommittee there, and that'swhere he focused his time and effort. Andas a result, he had not, himself, engaged in alot of political battles. He had a lot of verypositive relationships, and he went aboutcalling upon those relationships.

The Congress was controlled byDemocrats, and he was a Republican. Nevertheless, he called upon thoserelationships, and they responded favorablybecause of who he was and because of hisown personal style. I really think you shouldmeet him, because I think you will beimpressed by his own demeanor.

As a result, we were moving this bill. We were trying to attach it to another billthat was going to be a "must pass" piece oflegislation in the Senate, and we had the


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support of the administration.

Seney: That was the appropriations bill, wasn't it?

Faust: Yes. The tribe was successful at actuallygetting the Washington Post to editorializeagainst Senator Laxalt's efforts in thisregard, claiming that Laxalt was pushing thisas a capstone to his career, but it was anunworthy capstone, something to that effect,and it criticized him for taking advantage ofthese poor tribal members. And I have tosay, at the time, given the advocacy that Iwas pursuing–and we very much wanted tohave this agreement ratified–that we thoughtthat–

Seney: "We" meaning Sierra Pacific Power.

Faust: "We" meaning Sierra Pacific, still stronglywanted to make this work. Now, we weren'tnecessarily just trying to run over them. Wewere certainly meeting with them, we werediscussing with them. Frankly, my opinionwas that T-C-I-D was kind of disgusted withthem. They were involved in litigation andspent hundreds of thousands of dollars onlawyers. And when the politics changed inthe Tribal Business Committee and Joe Ely


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was elected chairman, I think T-C-I-D justkind of threw up their hands and said,"Okay, that's it. We're pursuing thelitigation course."

Sierra Pacific always played themediator role between T-C-I-D and the tribe. We tried to maintain a relationship withthem through Bob Pelcyger and with JoeEly. And we had numerous private meetingswith these individuals in Senator Laxalt'soffice, trying to figure out if there were littlechanges that could be made here and there. You could change the agreement in littleways. You could appropriate money. Youcould do certain things that could help thetribe in other ways, and that's what we weretrying to pursue. You could not change theessence of the compact. You could notchange, really, materially the essence of theway in which everyone had agreed to disarmlegally during this negotiation period, and,ultimately, we ran out of time.

I think had we had more time, we wouldhave probably succeeded, but finally SenatorLaxalt saw that we weren't going to be ableto get it done, based upon opposition fromsome of the more liberal Democrats. Thetribe had gone to them and gotten their ear,so we abandoned that process.


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Seney: Let me tell you some of the things I've beentold about this, just to see if I've got it right. In the Indian Affairs Committee, it didn'tpass the Indian Affairs Committee, thecompact.

Faust: It was never called for a vote. That's correct.

Seney: Right. And I guess it was because thejudgment was made, it wouldn't have hadthe votes.

Faust: Senator [Daniel K.] Inouye was the thenchairman of the committee, very, verystrongly pro-Native American on just aboutevery issue, and they had done a very goodjob with him. What had happened is thatbecause that committee wasn't going tomove the bill, Laxalt said, "Well, then I'mgoing to stick it on the appropriations bill,then it won't go through that committee." Soyou are correct, and the reason why isbecause there weren't the votes there for it.

Seney: My understanding, then, is that Joe Ely wentwith Bob Pelcyger to Senator [Mark]Hatfield and raised objections, and SenatorHatfield then said, as I think is usually thecase, "Work this out amongst yourselves."


24

Faust: "You go work it out with Paul." Right.

Seney: And that's what couldn't be worked out inthe end.

After the Attempt to Pass the Compact Failed

Faust: We tried to work it out. We offered them anumber of different incentives to try and moveforward, and each one was rejected for onereason or another, and ultimately the wholeprocess fell apart, and it was a very bitter time. At that point in time, T-C-I-D just totallywalked away from the process. There had beenan agreement, the original agreement . . .

Seney: Let me turn this tape.

END SIDE A, TAPE 1. NOVEMBER 9, 1995.BEGIN SIDE B, TAPE 1. NOVEMBER 9, 1995.

Faust: The original agreement was one whereby allthe parties had pledged to one another that theywould not make any changes to the agreementunless everyone else had agreed. When thewhole thing died, T-C-I-D got up an walkedaway from the process. And at that point intime, you know, Ely was taking big-time hits inthe media in Reno, and the tribe was getting alot of bad press, because they had pulled theplug.


25

[Congresswoman] Barbara Vucanovich5

was furious with them. It was kind of like,"See, you can't work with the Indians. They'renot reliable. You get an agreement with them. You think you've got something, and then allof a sudden, it's worthless." And this justfueled those who wanted to litigate everythingand say that, "Fine, we'll go back to the court,because the only thing that we can find that isenforceable against these people is a courtdecision. You cannot reach an agreement withthem that will have any staying power." Thatwas their experience and their perspective, andin some respects, I think, had some validity atthat time, and that's the attitude that T-C-I-Daccepted.

Sierra Pacific, though, we had differentproblem. We had an urban area that wasexpanding. We had very, very limited storagerights. We had participated in the construction

5. Barbara Vuncanovich was the first woman and Hispanicwoman to serve the State of Nevada in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives. Ms. Vucanovich also participated in Reclamation'sNewlands Series oral history project. See, Barbara Vucanovich, OralHistory Interview, Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of ReclamationOral History Interview conducted by Donald B. Seney, edited byDonald B. Seney and desktop published by Brit Allan Storey, seniorhistorian, Bureau of Reclamation, 2013,www.usbr.gov/history/oralhist.html.


26

of the dam [Stampede Reservoir] that was6

now, because of a court decision of the NinthCircuit, been totally dedicated to theEndangered Species Act.

Seney: Could I stop you just to ask, this wholecompact controversy here, how would youcharacterize that in terms of a legislativestruggle? Was that a big one, a little one, areally tough one, in your experience? Howwas that?

Faust: It was a tough one. It was a difficult one. There's no question about that. I'm a firmbeliever that you couldn't go back in andrenegotiate the compact, which is what someof the tribal members wanted to do.

Seney: The legislatures [of California and Nevada]had approved it.

Faust: The legislatures had approved it, and it had

6. Stampede Reservoir is the body of water that stands behindStampede Dam, the primary facility of the Washoe Project innorthwestern Nevada. The water storage capacity is 226,500 acre feet,which is reserved by court decree for fishery enhancement, primarilyfor the spawning of the endangered cui-ui, along the Truckee Riverdownstream from Derby Dam and facilities operation of the PyramidLake Fishway. For more information on the Washoe Project, seeCarolyn Hartl, "Washoe Project," Denver: Bureau of ReclamationHistory Program, 2001, www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=208.


27

been approved in the sixties–I think it was inthe sixties–I was of the opinion, that if youwent back in, Nevada wasn't going to get 90percent of the water, which is what basicallythe split was then, and Nevada stood to lose.

What Sierra Pacific Power Wanted and Needed

It was not just the compact, though, thatwas driving us. Sure, that was important tohave a final division of the water between thestates. Ultimately and finally, though, thatwater flows downhill. It's going to end up inNevada. (laughter) You know, the snow meltsand it goes. And it had been during the entiretime since the compact had been negotiated. Itwas kind of like that scene from "Out ofAfrica" where–I don't know if you rememberit–she builds the dam on her land, and she'strying to divert the water for irrigation into herfields, and the rains come and they're washingaway the dams, and she and her people are outthere fighting. He looks are her and says,"This water belongs in Mombasa anyway." That's the attitude. That's were it goes andthat's were it's supposed to go. You shouldn'tstop Mother Nature.

That's kind of what was happening. The


28

water was coming down. The problem was,we couldn't store it. We [Sierra Pacific PowerCompany] had a lot of water rights, but theywere paper water rights, without storage waterrights. And as a result, they were limited intheir ability to deliver storage. We had reallysome very expensive alternatives that we weregoing to be forced to pursue if we couldn'tfigure out a way to change the way in whichthe river was managed to allow for anopportunity to store M&I water in StampedeReservoir.

We were absolutely persuaded andconvinced that you could figure out a way tooperate the reservoir so that you would not beposing a detriment to the recovery of the cui-ui. And at the same time you could provide anadequate drought supply, which is what wewere seeking to obtain, and the reason why isbecause those cui-ui don't spawn every year. They only spawn when there's a lot of water,and when there's a lot of water, you're not at adrought. You've got a lot of water in themountains. The water comes down. We don'tneed the storage as much. When we need tostorage is in the drought years. And if it's adrought year, you're not going to have a lot ofwater in the Truckee in the springtime.


29

And as a result, we could workcooperatively with the [U.S.] Fish and WildlifeService and with the tribe to determine when,in which years, there was going to be goodsnowpack and a good runoff, so that you couldgenerate sufficient water in the lower Truckee[River] to generate a spawning run.

And so there was really a win/win scenariothere. We saw that. We knew that. Joe Burns,our fellow in Sacramento who's ourhydrologist, had modeled it. And really that7

formed, I think, the key basis of what it wasthat we wanted to accomplish, and we had nochoice but to try and continue negotiations. And, frankly, and I think politically Joe Elyhad no choice. He was the bad guy. He hadkilled this thing. He was the guy that haddefeated Laxalt. I mean, everybody was angrywith him. He wanted to get back to thenegotiating table. T-C-I-D didn't want to haveanything to do with it. As a result, the initialdiscussions were really just held one on one

7. Joseph I. Burns participated in Reclamation's Newlands Seriesoral history project. See, Joseph I. Burns, Oral History Interview,Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of Reclamation Oral HistoryInterview conducted by Donald B. Seney, edited by Donald B. Seneyand desktop published by Brit Allan Storey, senior historian, Bureau ofReclamation, 2010, www.usbr.gov/history/oralhist.html.


30

between the tribe and Sierra Pacific, and weproceeded to talk about their objections, andwe talked about things that we might be able todo together to move forward.

I do believe that one of the problems, thefundamental problems, of the original deal thatwe were trying to put forward was that it wasnot a real settlement. It did not address thesubstantive issues and provide solutions tothem.

Seney: This was the compact, you mean.

Faust: Right. Well, no. No. I want to separate thecompact. The compact is one thing. Thecompact itself divides the waters of theTruckee River. Then there is a settlementagreement between the parties in Nevada as tohow that water is to be divided up. That wasthe negotiated settlement agreement. Okay?

Seney: Okay.

Faust: They were married together in the context ofthe legislation. In fact, at one point SenatorLaxalt wanted to take the compact, rip theagreement off that the tribe was objecting to,and run the compact approval ratification byitself.


31

We did not support that, because thatreally didn't do a lot for us. It didn't give us thestorage that we needed in Stampede Reservoirwhich was storage that had really been won bythe tribe relative to their Endangered SpeciesAct case. As a result, we resisted theperforation of the Truckee River settlementwith the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Tribe andthe compact, itself. Okay? What I was reallyreferring to was the settlement itself not thecompact. The compact was an ancillary part,an important part, but, in my opinion, asecondary part ultimately to what was passedand enacted.

California's interest was in getting thecompact, so that there wouldn't be continuingNevada encroachment of their water rights. They wanted to preserve their water rights andentitlements, and their participation wasimportant. But that was the only thing theywere really getting out of this deal, wascertainty as a result of approval by Congress ofthis compact. We were afraid that if youdismissed that, passed it by itself, that thatwould really kind of release a lot of the steamthat was still pushing the parties to negotiate asettlement agreement as to how to divideNevada's water up.


32

The tribe itself had adopted what I reallythought were some pretty unreasonablepositions relative to claiming water over in thestate of California. And part of the Californiainterest was in getting those lawsuits dismissedwith prejudice so that the tribe's claims inCalifornia were exterminated. And so they hadto remain linked for the deal to work.

Ultimately and finally, after a number ofmonths of negotiation, they were able to puttogether something that I think was a goodprocess. I mean was kind of a good outline ofa process to proceed to address, really for thefirst time, the substance of the disagreements,not just an agreement to sit down andnegotiate, but actually sit down and negotiate.

Then the time was when my client cameand said, "Well, we need to get the new senatorfrom Nevada up to speed on this, and we needto get him to get involved and remain involved,and we need his support the same way we hadLaxalt's."

Senator Harry Reid Becomes Active in SettlementProcess

I was a good friend of Senator Harry [M.]


33

Reid, having met him, actually, when I was on8

Santini's staff when Senator Reid sought to runand was elected in the seat that CongressmanSantini was vacating in southern Nevada. Imet him before he was elected to Congress,and we had a good relationship and thatremains. Senator Reid–I'll never forget thismeeting–he had been positioned in histemporary office in the Senate, which was justa small office, maybe twelve by twelve. For asenator, that's a very small office. And myassignment was to go in and persuade him tojump into the middle of this issue. SenatorReid himself had not really been all that activein northern Nevada, plugged into northernNevada politics. He didn't need to be. He wasstrong in southern Nevada, which is more than65 percent of the electorate. You can loseWashoe County and the rest of the state, carryClark County, and still win, which he did.

8. Senator Harry Reid represented the State of Nevada in theU.S. Senate from 1987 to 2017. Senator Reid also participated inReclamation's Newlands Series oral history project. See, Harry Reid,Oral History Interview, Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau ofReclamation Oral History Interview conducted by Donald B. Seney,edited by Donald B. Seney and further edited and desktop published byBrit Allan Storey, senior historian, Bureau of Reclamation., 2013,www.usbr.gov/history/oralhist.html.


34

I went in and sat down and explained thissituation to him, which is very complex interms of how the river operates, etc., and helooked at me and he said, "Why on earth wouldI want to get involved in an issue where PaulLaxalt has failed?" Because Laxalt wasviewed as being one of the most powerful menin Washington. And I said to him, "Because,Senator Reid, when we succeed, you will havedone something that Senator Laxalt couldn't." And he thought about it for a minute, and hesaid, "Okay." (laughter)

And it helped that he was in the majorityparty. And it helped that he, too, was onAppropriations. And it helped that, I think, he,too, was viewed by the tribe as being more of afriend to them than Laxalt was. Senator Reid'srole was invaluable in cajoling and pressuringand sometimes giving Dutch blessings to thetribe and in moving the process along to thepoint where an agreement was reach.

Seney: What do you mean by Dutch blessing? I'm notfamiliar with that, and our readers may not beeither, what you're trying to convey when yousay that.

Faust: Whenever–and it went both ways–wheneverone party was becoming recalcitrant and it


35

looked as though they may break down,Senator Reid would call up and say, "Iunderstand you're having a problem. Get overit. Figure it out. Let's move. I don't care whatit is, but do it." And, you know, it's very hardto tell the United States Senator when he callsyou up, "Well, tough beans." So that did helpa lot when there were impasses to have himcall up the parties.

And he had two people who were workingon it. Wayne Mehl became the principal, and9

he was very involved, intimately familiar withthe details of the settlement and participated inmany, many of the meetings, did a tremendousjob for Senator Reid.

Ultimately and finally they reached theagreement that was acceptable to Sierra Pacificand to the tribe.

Seney: Along this negotiation process, which I guess

9. Wayne Mehl participated in Reclamation's Newlands Seriesoral history project. See, Wayne E. Mehl, Oral History Interview,Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of Reclamation oral historyinterview conducted by Donald B. Seney, edited by Donald B. Seneyand further edited and desktop published by Brit Allan Storey, seniorhistorian, Bureau of Reclamation, 2013,www.usbr.gov/history/oralhist.html.


36

begins in '87, the senator sends out a letter.

Faust: Right.

Seney: You must have been familiar with that.

Faust: We wrote the letter. We put the letter together,gave it to him, asked them to call the partiestogether to resume negotiations again.

Seney: Okay. Good.

Faust: It was our desire to move the negotiationsforward. We had sensed that the tribe felt asthough they needed to get back to the table,because they were getting the credit and theblame for killing the last deal. And that wasnot good for them and their standing out thereat all. So we knew they'd want to come back,and we thought that the senator couldencourage them to come back. Let me say this,T-C-I-D did return for a while.

TCID and the Settlement Process

Seney: That's what I wanted to ask you about, get yourtake on the T-C-I-D's withdrawal from thenegotiations and your understanding of that.

Faust: T-C-I-D, in my opinion, because of the way it


37

is organized as a district, does not have theability to come to a unified position withrespect to these water matters. They have notdelegated to their executive director asignificant amount of authority that isindependent from the board. Board membersthemselves retain almost exclusive jurisdictionover the different aspects of running theproject, and different parts of the districtthemselves have different interests that areserved.

So it's a very difficult process to get theboard of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation Districtto reach unanimous agreements, like thePolitburo. You have to have unanimousagreement, almost, to get anything done, andyou would seldom get unanimous agreement,and I think that has handicapped them. Theywould have had, I think, numerousopportunities. I know of at least three wherethey could have gotten a very good deal hadthey been able to overcome what I think hasbeen an unfortunate attitude that they can winmore in court than they can throughnegotiation and overcome, I think, bitternessand feelings of resentment towards the tribe,which were then ultimately, to some extent,translated to Sierra Pacific, because we decided


38

to go ahead and continue to negotiate withthem [the tribe] and reach an agreement withthem. They kept saying, "Well, we thoughtthat if it wasn't all for one and one for all thatthere wouldn't be anything." They reallybelieved that if they stayed away and walkedout on the process, that no agreement couldpass. And they worked very hard, ultimately,when an agreement was reached, to try andstop the process and delay the process, using attheir disposal their political contacts to try andderail the negotiated settlement from a linkthrough Congress. And they almost succeededon at least one occasion.

Seney: At this point the situation changes, and youallude to this; that is, T-C-I-D and SierraPacific Power had been allies and friends.

Faust: Yes.

Seney: Against the Indians, the Pyramid Lake Tribe.

Faust: The reason why that was the case is because ofthe litigation. We always had adopted thesame basic legal position as it related to the Orr


39

Ditch Decree, and as it related to the various10

court cases. And as a result, it was the tribe asthe plaintiff and us as the defendants, or us asthe plaintiffs and them as the defendants, andthat was the reason why we had been historicalpartners with T-C-I-D for all of these manyyears.

We did a lot of their legal work, becausewe had a deeper pocket than they did on somelitigation. We didn't have an interest, directlitigation between T-C-I-D and the tribe, andthat's the one piece of litigation that remained,you will remember that I alluded to earlier, that

10. The Orr Ditch decree was entered by the U.S. District Courtfor the District of Nevada in 1944 in United States v. Orr Water DitchCo., et al. The decree was the result of a legal action brought by theUnited States in 1913 to fully specify who owned water rights on theTruckee River and had rights to storage in Lake Tahoe. The Orr Ditchdecree adjudicated water rights of the Truckee River in Nevada andestablished amounts, places, types of use, and priorities of the variousrights, including the United States’ right to store water in Lake Tahoefor the Newlands Project. The decree also incorporated the 1935Truckee River Agreement among Sierra Pacific Power Company (nowTruckee Meadows Water Authority), TCID, Washoe County WaterConservation District, Department of the Interior, and certain otherTruckee River water users. See Truckee Carson Irrigation District,“What is the Orr Ditch Decree and why is it important?” http://www.tcid.org/support/faq-detail-view/what-is-the-orr-ditch-decree-and-why-is-it-important (Accessed 5/2016)


40

was not resolved in the context of thisnegotiated settlement.

Seney: And that addresses which issues, that piece oflitigation?

Faust: It addressed issues relating to the OCAP[Operating Criteria and Procedures]. It relatedto whether or not the T-C-I-D had taken morewater than they were entitled to, those kinds ofissues.

Seney: That wouldn't have been of interest to SierraPacific Power because that water had alreadygone by.

Faust: It was past us. That's why T-C-I-D wasinterested originally in a comprehensivesettlement, was to get rid of that litigation. Ultimately, we couldn't negotiate on theirbehalf, and they decided that they didn't wantto sit at the table and negotiate on their ownbehalf, and therefore we were in a position ofhaving to go forward only with settlement ofthe issues that were important to Sierra Pacific.

We certainly couldn't negotiate theirlawsuits, and so those are the one that remain. And, in my opinion, Pelcyger was just veryhappy to have those remain, because he's


41

continued to have some lawsuits that he couldcontinue to litigate.

The Importance of Stampede Reservoir

Seney: Is the key here the affirming by the NinthCircuit Court of the control of Stampede by thetribe for cui-ui recovery water?

Faust: As it relates to Sierra Pacific, yes.

Seney: Right. That changed everything, didn't it?

Faust: It changed everything from the context of ourability to store water. The problem was, is thatit really did very little for the tribe.

Seney: Because there's no water?

Faust: Well, the reason why is because the tribe didn'town the water. There was basically a Mexicanstandoff, and this was illustrated verygraphically when in the summer you could takea tour of the river system, which I did almostevery single year, at least once, usually two orthree times. When I would take congressionalstaff, congressional members of Congress, thenew assistant secretary [of the Interior], JohnSayre, people from the Department of the


42

Interior, we would take them out to Reno. Thebest way to tell the story is to get in a car anddrive up and start at Lake Tahoe at FannyBridge. And you would show them where therim is, and you would show them where thewater comes into the system. And then youwould go up to Donner [Lake], and you wouldthen go over Stampede [Reservoir], and youwould see where all the water was in thesystem.

And when you got to Stampede–thisbeautiful reservoir up in just the most gorgeouscountry–it was almost empty, and the reasonwhy it was empty is because the tribe haddecided to flush it for a cui-ui run. Well, underthe Supreme Court decision which we had wonwith respect to the priority of water rights andhow the river system fills its reservoirs,Stampede was last on the system. Stampededid not receive a priority filling. And as aresult of the way in which the river system ran,there were many years when Stampede couldnot refill, because we had the right to pass ourwater through Stampede from our upstreamreservoir to Boca [Reservoir], our lower11

11. Boca Reservoir is the body of water that sits behind BocaDam, a major facility of the Truckee Storage Project. The reservoir hasa storage capacity of 40,000 acre feet of water from the Little Truckee

(continued...)


43

stream reservoir.

So the tribe, while they had the ability tocontrol releases from Stampede Reservoir,those release where of absolutely no value tothem without any wet water, and they had noability to put wet water in Stampede Reservoir,because our Supreme Court decision kind oftrumped their Ninth Circuit Court decision. We couldn't store our water in Stampede anduse it when we needed it during the drought,but they couldn't either capture and use ourwater because of our Supreme Court decision. And so we would then take these people upand show them this in a very graphic and–thatwas my simplistic way was explaining it.

And then after you leave Stampede, we'ddrive down the Truckee and have lunch, andthat was kind of fun, or into Reno, and then wewould proceed off into the desert, and it wouldget hotter and hotter. You know, everybody inAugust recess loves to go out into the Alpineand here we went to [Lake] Tahoe. And by

11. (...continued)River. For more information, see Carolyn Hartl, "Truckee StorageProject," Denver: Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 2001,www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=200.


44

three o'clock in the afternoon we're down atPyramid Lake, and there's this huge body ofwater at in the middle of the desert, and wesaid, "Now you know all the water that'ssupposed to be up in Stampede? Here it is. This is where it is." "You're kidding me." Andthen we would throw in the evaporation-ratedifferences of storing water downstream asopposed to upstream and how it's flushed downfor a two-week period of time the recover theendangered species. You know, theEndangered Species Act is not that popular ofa statute out West, for a variety of reasons, andit didn't make a lot of sense. They could seewhere the water was, and it wasn't where theythought logically it should be.

Seney: What you're doing here, by the way, is kind ofthe essence of lobbying work, isn't it?

Faust: Where you tell your story, absolutely. Yeah,absolutely. It is very graphic. And that wasthe best way to tell a story.

And then along the way in the car, whilethey're drinking their coffee and eating theirdonuts, you tell them the history of the courtdecisions and you tell them that the variousbattles back and forth, and then you explain tothem how you're proposing to settle this with


45

an agreement. The settlement, I think,fundamentally, was a sound one, and theoutline, as I explained earlier, was that we weregoing to be able to store our water inStampede. When we didn't need our water, wewould sell it to the United States Departmentof the Interior. They would buy it and use it toflush it down for cui-ui. Now, in reality, theywere just giving us a credit towards otherobligations that we had for storage inStampede.

Seney: Storage costs.

Faust: Yeah, etc.

Seney: So no money changes hands.

Faust: You'll have to ask Sue Oldham on that one. I'm not exactly sure how that ultimately isgoing to work out, because some of theimplementing agreements are not yet done, asyou know.

Seney: Right.

Faust: And so we haven't actually negotiated apermanent storage agreement with a feearrangement yet. We did win, however–and


46

this was stuck in kind of by amendment duringthe legislative process–the right to immediatelystore at least 5,000 acre feet. Now, it took usthree or four years to get that agreement inplace, but we ultimately did, and we now havethe capability to store 5,000 acre feet fordrought supplies. When we don't need thewater, they use it. When we need the water,they usually don't want it anyway. And it hasworked out to be a pretty good situation to kindof re-time the river releases, etc.

The Truckee-Carson Irrigation District hadnatural allies. They had a longtimeDepartment of Natural Resources head, who–

Seney: Roland Westergard? You're nodding yourhead.

Faust: Yes, Roland Westergard, who was sympatheticto their issues. He worked for GovernorRichard Bryan. At the time, Governor Bryanhad, I think, sought to intervene with SenatorReid on T-C-I-D's behalf on numerousoccasions.


47

Public Law 101-61812

As far as Sierra Pacific was concerned, T-C-I-D was always welcome back at thenegotiating table, and, in our opinion, theyreally just decided to pursue a totally differentstrategy. It bothered us, ultimately and finally,when we came to Congress, and they had lost

12. Public Law 101-618 became law on November 16, 1990. TheLaw contains two acts: The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribal SettlementAct and the Truckee-Carson-Pyramid Lake Water Rights SettlementAct. The main topics of the legislation are:1. Fallon-Paiute Tribal Settlement Act2. Interstate Allocation of water of the Truckee and Carson

rivers.3. Negotiations of a new Truckee River Operating Agreement

(TROA).4. Water rights purchase program is authorized for the Lahontan

Valley wetlands, with the intent of sustaining an average ofabout 25,000 acres of wetlands.

5. Recovery program is to be developed for the Pyramid Lakecui-ui and Lahontan cutthroat trout.

6. The Newlands Project is re-authorized to serve additionalpurposes, including recreation, fish and wildlife, and municipalwater supply for Churchill and Lyon counties. A projectefficiency study is required.

7. Contingencies are placed on the effective date of thelegislation and various parties to the settlement are required todismiss specified litigation.

Source: http://www.usbr.gov/mp/lboa/public law 101-618.html(Accessed December 2011).


http://www.usbr.gov/mp/lboa/public%20law%20101-618.html

48

some lawsuits along the way, then they comeback and say, "We weren't consulted. Weweren't invited to participate. We were keptout of the process," which really is not a fairand accurate representation. They would reallytry and importune Barbara Vucanovich torepresent their interest. Now, Barbara isanother real superstar in terms of whatoccurred in getting this legislation passed.

Seney: Now we're talking about Public Law 101-618.

Faust: Yes, the ultimate bill that finally became law. We produced an agreement with the tribe. Wetook it back to the congressional delegation. They introduced it, Senator Reid on the Senateside, Congresswoman Vucanovich on theHouse side. And it moved forward to resolvethose issues that existed between ourselves, thetribe, the operation of the upstream reservoirson the Truckee system, and also to ratify thecompact itself between California and Nevada.

The state of Nevada liked it because it didratify the compact. Same thing with the stateof California; they were getting their cases vis-a-vis the Pyramid Lake Tribe dismissed. Andagain the issues that remain unresolved werehow much water TC-I-D could get out of theTruckee River diversion, and that remained to


49

be litigated and dealt with at a future date, notby our choosing, but by T-C-I-D's choosing.

The legislation itself had some difficulttimes. We had Senator [Bill] Bradley, who13

was very helpful and is very, very pro-NativeAmerican. You've already talked to TomJensen, and so you know all about all of theirperspective. We had many different obstaclesto overcome.

Seney: Could you tell me a little bit, kind of in detail,how you proceed with something like this onbehalf of Sierra Pacific Power, what you do?

Faust: The first thing that you have to do is to go tothe committee which has jurisdiction over yourbill and acquaint the staff of that committeewith what this thing is all about. And becauseof the twenty-five years of litigation and thecomplex relationships, both legal andotherwise, you just can't sit down and do thatover lunch, and that's why we invited them tocome out to tour the Truckee River system andto sit down with us and with everyone else andget a first-hand explanation of what it was.

13. Senator Bill Bradley represented the State of New Jersey in theU.S. Senate from 1979 to 1997.


50

We had Congressman [Norman D.]Shumway, who was the congressman from theCalifornia district. We took him on a similartour and an air tour. He didn't have theopportunity to drive down to Pyramid Lake, sowe flew him down and showed him where thewater was. (laughter) And, of course, theywere under a lot of pressure from the folks whorecreate up there in those mountains. Theydidn't understand any of this. They'd pull up toStampede, and it's two-thirds empty, and theycan't figure out why.

So it was of tremendous interest to try andmake something happen, and so we wouldarrange to take them out. We would explainwhat this is all about and why. And then, ofcourse, your first step is to schedule hearings,and at the hearings, the administration presentstheir testimony, and the administration thencan indicate what it is that they want to havehappen.

One of the first problems that weencountered was in the [George H. W.] Bushadministration. You know, we had Reaganpretty well okay, and we had Bob Broadbent asthe Commissioner of Reclamation, but whenBush came in, he appointed a whole newbunch of people. Then those people, John


51

Sayre who was Assistant Secretary for Waterand Science, but he was a lawyer fromDenver. He did not have a significant14

amount of background with respect to theTruckee River Water wars, and all he could dowas rely upon information that he receivedfrom the–

END SIDE B, TAPE 1 NOVEMBER 9, 1995.BEGIN SIDE A, TAPE 2. NOVEMBER 9, 1995.

Seney: Today is November 9, 1995. My name isDonald Seney. I'm with Marcus Faust in hisoffice in Washington D.C. This is our secondtape.

Go ahead, Mr. Faust. Resident expertmight not have got on the tape, because itstarted to make a little noise. It's on the run-offpart there. Mr. Sayre had to rely on theresident experts in the department.

Faust: Within the Department of the Interior, to helphim with this, and they were resident withinthe Bureau of Reclamation. The Bureau ofReclamation, being the sponsoring agency that

14. John M. Sayre served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior forWater and Science under the Bush administration from 1989 to 1993.


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created the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District,had a natural sympathy to their position withrespect to these issues.

Senator Bradley scheduled an immediatehearing on this whole question and invited Mr.Sayre to come up and testify. It was his firsthearing, first congressional hearing, right outof the box. He had relied upon testimony thathad been prepared by the Bureau ofReclamation. He walked up, and I had been into see him, introduced this issue to him. Hehadn't really, I think, understood what I wastrying to educate him about, and he went upand walked right into a buzz saw, because histestimony was in opposition to the settlement. It was in opposition to trying to get this issueresolved in the way in which we were trying tomove it. It totally reflected the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District perspective, which atthat point in time was simply not the politicallypopular thing to say in front of a DemocraticCongress and committee chaired by SenatorBradley.

Senator Bradley chewed him up and spithim out, and to my knowledge, John Sayrenever went back to the Hill to offer testimony. Whenever he was invited to return for theentire remaining time that he was assistant


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secretary, he would send someone else to go upand testify. Now, he may have gone up tosome appropriations hearing that I'm notfamiliar with, but I really don't think that heever went back up, because it was such a reallysad experience for him.

As soon as that experience happened, Ithen went in and said, "Listen, you've got tocome out and see what's going on here. Youcannot understand it based upon briefings thatyou're getting from the Bureau of Reclamationpeople." So in February–remember theadministration came in January–in February,we arranged for a trip for the assistant secretaryand his staff.

Originally the Bureau of Reclamation triedto work it out so that none of us got to be onthe bus with him, because they wanted to beable to be the ones who were exclusivelywhispering in his ear about what this was allabout. We exercised a little politicalinterference from Congresswoman Vucanovichand from Senator Reid, and that got turnedaround. And we took, in the middle ofwinter–the only time I've done this tour in thewinter–we took John Sayre and his people up,and he heard from everybody. We had a huge


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bus. We had the T-C-I-D people on it, we hadthe environmentalists on it, we had the tribemembers on it. We had everybody on it.

When he finally got an understanding ofthe big picture, what it was that we were tryingto accomplish for the community of Reno andSparks, how we were settling an issue, how wewere not adversely impacting, we were justleaving the status quo as it related to T-C-I-D. He then, I think, came around and came to anunderstanding of what was going on here. Andsince that trip, I think, just decided to let thisthing move its way through, without being amajor player.

Seney: I've been told about that testimony and I readit, and it was certainly embarrassing. I mean,not only did he have the wrong perspective, buthe wasn't well prepared.

Faust: At all.

Seney: I mean, that was clear, too. Apparently hedidn't understand from you what a complicatedsubject this was, and then his counterparts,assistant secretaries [Constance] Harriman and[Eddie F.] Brown, were not very well preparedeither. I mean, the whole Department of theInterior looked very bad.


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Conflicts Within the Federal Government OverTruckee River Operations

Faust: Part of the whole problem with the TruckeeRiver story, in my judgment, is the fact that theDepartment of the Interior has to representconflicting and different perspectives: theperspectives of Fish and Wildlife, theperspectives of Indians, the perspectives ofwater users, the perspectives of others. And asa result, they don't speak with one voice. There is no coordination. So you'd have Fishand Wildlife Service saying one thing, and thenBureau of Reclamation saying somethingdifferent, and B-I-A saying a third thing. Oneof the things that I credit Senator Reid andCongresswoman Vucanovich with doing isactually getting the attention of the secretary,forcing the identification of an individual, BillBettenberg, down at the department, who15

worked out of the office of the secretary, whohad the imprimatur of the secretary, who could

15. William (Bill) Bettenberg participated in Reclamation'sNewlands Series oral history project. See, William Bettenberg, OralHistory Interview, Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of ReclamationOral History Interview conducted by Donald B. Seney, edited byDonald B. Seney and desktop published by Brit Allan Storey, seniorhistorian, Bureau of Reclamation, 2009,www.usbr.gov/history/oralhist.html.


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come in and take the bureaucrats within eachof those agencies and crack heads to get auniform position. John Sayre came to relyupon Bettenburg for his judgment and advice,and he knew that Bettenburg was a careeremployee, he had no political ax to grind.

Bettenburg went out and figured out whatwas going on and immediately came to theconclusion that there were certain things thatwere wrong with the operation of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District and the NewlandsProject. And that there were other things that16

could be done do improve the cooperation ofthe Interior Department with the water users inthe Truckee Meadows area and also with thetribe. Ultimately, they became also a verystrong, positive input and player and remainedso in terms of getting the operating agreement,the environmental impact statement of theoperating agreement process moving forward.

16. Authorized in 1903, the Newlands Project was one of the firstReclamation projects. It provides irrigation water from the Truckee andCarson Rivers for about 57,000 acres of cropland in the LahontanValley near Fallon and bench lands near Fernley in western Nevada. Inaddition, water from about 6,000 acres of project land has beentransferred to the Lahontan Valley Wetlands near Fallon. For moreinformation, see Wm. Joe Simonds, "The Newlands Project," Denver:Bureau of Reclamation History Program, 1996,www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=142.


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One of the things, it's been frustratinglylong in this process, and that's because it'sbeing run by the federal bureaucracy. Butanother thing that is a positive about having itbe run by the federal bureaucracy is that once itstarts, it's methodical and you just can't stop it. It just keeps moving. And, you know, they'vegot more meetings. It takes way too long, butit's also very hard to stop.

Seney: Do you think that it will be resolved at somepoint.

Faust: Yeah. And I think we're finally just about tothe point, within the next six to twelve months,we going to get a lot of these agreementshammered out now that the federal NEPA[National Environmental Policy Act] processhas been complied with and a variety of otherhoops have been jumped through.

Passing Public Law 101-618 Through Congress

Seney: Let me go back to the negotiations over 101-618 and how that got passed, because youmentioned that Joe Ely was in everybody'sdoghouse after the collapse of the compactlegislation. Then the meetings that SenatorReid called together through that letter that you


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all had him send out–that may not be putting itquite correctly, but we understand what I'm sayhere, I think.

Faust: I don't know if he would agree that we had himsend it out.

Seney: Well, that's why I'm quarreling with my ownlanguage. I doesn't sound right. Myunderstanding, too, if we could go back to thatfor a minute, because I meant to ask you, thenight that he was elected, he's up in Reno andthey said, "What are you going to do?" and hesaid, "I'm going to settle the northern Nevadawater wars." And he has said to me in aninterview, he didn't know what–

Faust: He didn't know what he was talking about.

Seney: That's right. He said he had no idea what hewas getting into.

Faust: He did not know what he was talking about. Well, it was the number-one hot issue up there. He knew it. And Senator Reid did not have asignificant basis support of Reno.

Seney: Well, he got 35 percent of the vote that firstelection in Washoe County.


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Faust: Right. And that has given him, I think,contacts. You see, we created–Sierra Pacificcreated a coalition of businessmen in Reno tosupport the negotiated settlement. We reachedout to a lot of the duck hunters that go out toStillwater [National Wildlife Refuge], who arethe residents up there, the hook and bulletcrowd, okay, and also the environmentalists. And they really represented the significantmovers and shakers, the chamber of commerceand others, and their interface with Harry overthe years really gave him a numbers of contactsthat he just did not have previously, because hehadn't represented that part of the state.

So the negotiated settlement really kind ofbecame his calling card, his fundamentalachievement for the Reno area in terms ofsettling the water war. And he did it withCongresswoman Vucanovich's help andsometimes over the opposition of GovernorBryan and later, when Bryan became senator. Senator Bryan, who, I still think, had greatersympathies with respect to the perspective ofT-C-I-D and wanted to slow the process downin order to enable–and I don't think thatSenator Bryan was seeking to kill the wholeprocess. I do think there were times when hewanted to stop the legislation in order to try


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and get T-C-I-D to come into the process, but,frankly, from my perspective–and I have heardthis on two or three occasions, even includingas recently as this year where T-C-I-D isinvolved in negotiations, they are invited, theywalk away, they say, "We can't come to anagreement," and then other people come to anagreement, they move forward, and then T-C-I-D comes in and says, "We weren't invited. Weweren't consulted. We weren't involved." They did that with Senator Bryan, and hebelieved them. And, therefore, he wanted tobring everybody back to the negotiating table,get T-C-I-D involved. We said, "Hey, they hadtheir chance. They had their opportunity."

The same thing happened on theseNewlands negotiations that occurred this yearwith Resolve, and they had been in withBarbara [Vucanovich], and Barbara had said,"Look, why don't you get involved? Why don'tyou negotiate?" This was last year and thisyear. And then the election [in November,1994] happened, and the Republicans tookover Congress, and all of a sudden theythought, "Hey, we don't have to do any of thisstuff." She was very disappointed, and thenshe went and told them that they should stay atthe table.


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I think that that was the third or fourthiteration, and she's now aware that when theycome back and say, "Well, gees, isn't thereanything we can do to be consulted? Can't weget into this process?" Because they are nowconcerned. They've come to her and they wantto stop the E-I-S [Environmental ImpactStatement] and they want to stop the settlementagreement from going forward, and they wantto stop the process. She's been through theprocess enough to know that they really havehad an opportunity to engage the process andhave been unwilling to do so.

Seney: My understanding is that she's told them thatthere won't be any rolling back of 101-618.

Faust: Exactly.

Seney: That there are too many happy people,including Sierra Pacific Power, the states ofNevada and California, the tribe.

Faust: While she represents Churchill County, shealso has a lot more voters in Washoe County,and she knows that the continued economicwell being of the Reno-Sparks area ispredicated upon the continuing ability to havea firm water supply during periods of drought.


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There have been more summers in the last fiveyears where they have had water rationing andodd/even watering days and other strict StageThree conservation measures implementedthan not. So she knows the hardship that thosepeople face, and she also knows that this is thebest and quickest and cheapest solution. Andthat's why she was such a hero.

Attempts to Hold Up Public Law 101-618 in the Houseof Representatives

Let me tell you a little vignette about that. We had moved this legislation on the Senateside because of Senator Reid's strength andSenator Bradley's interest, and he personallyhad been out to Nevada on at least twooccasions. He was moving it through, and itwas a part of a big omnibus bill, and we finallyseparated it out when it looked as though thatomnibus bill was going to die because ofcontroversies over the Central Valley Projectof California. It moved out, in just the finaldays, out of the Senate, and it came over to theHouse side. It was the very last night when itfinally came over on to the House floor.

Bobby Walker was then in the minority,congressman from Pennsylvania, who was thenone of the [Newt] Gingrich bomb-throwers,


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and he had decided–right then all of the rulesof the House were being suspended, and theywere kind of operating the way the Senatedoes, which is, "I request unanimous consent tocall up the following twenty-five bills and passthem as read." You know what I mean, insteadof considering them one at a time. And allthese members are trying to get things through. Walker had decided that he was not going toallow any bill to pass unless that bill had aHouse counterpart. Okay? The Senate bill thatcame over, unless there was an H-R bill. Andwhether or not that H-R bill had had a hearingin the committee of jurisdiction in the House,at least some element of a House process toacquiesce to what was going on.

We never had a hearing in the House onthis bill. We had taken the congressional staffout. A very close friend of mine who's now theadministrative assistant to Utah Senator RobertBennett, Jim Barker, was then counsel to theminority on the Interior Committee, had beenout, understood what was going on. The billcame over, and it ultimately was the second tothe last bill passed in that session of Congress,and Walker had stopped it. He and Barbarawent over to Walker and said, "Don't stop this. This is my bill."


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He said, "Well, has it held hearings?"

And he said, "Well, we didn't holdWashington hearings, but we went out on afield trip," which is the field trip that I'vereferred to. And that satisfied Walker. Theprocess had been satisfied, and he decided torelease the bill and let it go through, and itpassed the second to the last bill through, onthe floor.

Seney: I'm told that there was a hold put on it for anumber of hours.

Faust: By Walker.

Seney: That was by Walker?

Faust: That's how it was released. It went over on thefloor. Barbara did and Jim Barker did, whowas staff and was on the floor, staff for thecommittee on the minority side, and said,"Take this off. You're just hurting Barbara.” And then Barbara went over and pleaded withhim, and he released it.

Seney: And he did this out of kind of a generalapproach to legislation.

Faust: Yeah.


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Seney: Not on behalf of T-C-I-D, particularly.

Faust: Oh, no. Oh, no. He didn't have any idea whoT-C-I-D was. This was just the minorities, theloyal opposition, and their job is to make surethat the Democrats and the majority don't passthings they shouldn't. And he was seeing allthese bills run through, and they had no ideawhat was in them. So he says, "Hey, we're notgoing to pass anything that we haven't had ahearing on, or there isn't a bill on, over on ourside, 'til our people know what it is."

Seney: Very interesting.

Faust: So we got it through the very last day.

Seney: Because I've heard a number of stories aboutwhat happened there on the House side, thatthere was a hang-up, that T-C-I-D had gone to[Congressman] Gary Studds, for example, thesubcommittee chairman in Merchant Marineand Fisheries, because of the endangeredspecies aspect. Senator Reid had to go andexplain to–

Faust: That's true.

Seney: That was T-C-I-D's hand in that case. Do you


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know that?

Faust: I don't know that. I think that's probably whatWayne [Mehl] told you, but I don't know. Idon't know.

Seney: Right. Once the bill was passed–

Faust: That may have been the case. T-C-I-D hadretained, ironically, my old boss, Jim Santini,at that time to help.

Trying to Include TCID in Public Law 101-618

Seney: Actually, let me go back a minute to talk alittle more about the bill. Senator Bradley saidthat he wanted to include T-C-I-D, and he saidthat–

Faust: We all did.

Seney: Sure, I understand, but he said, "Let's takeanother ninety days here on this and see if wecan't bring them in." I sure you were all inagreement with that, and I guess an attemptwas made at that point to bring them in again.

Faust: Yeah. In fact, we were ready to move the billin July, and then when the August recess cameand they said, "Let's delay the bill and try and


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negotiate something over the August recess,"and we said, "Look, if we wait 'til September tocome back and take the first legislative step,you know, there are only like fifteen or sixteenlegislative steps you've got to make throughthis thing. We've got to make everyonecorrectly, or we're going to slip and fall."

And nevertheless–and this was somethingthat T-C-I-D did–they got Senator Bryan andGovernor [Bob] Miller to request SenatorBradley to postpone moving the bill so toallow T-C-I-D to come in try and figure out away to accommodate them. And so they did. They came to Washington and they sat downwith them. The state had picked up theirperspective to some extent and was negotiatingon their behalf, and there were some very, verytense discussions and meetings betweenSenator Reid and Senator Bryan and GovernorMiller.

Ultimately, neither of them felt as thoughthey wanted to be responsible for killing thebill and for handing Senator Reid a defeat andopposing our interests. They really did believethat they could force the tribe to sit down anddeal with T-C-I-D. Frankly, those were theopportunities–and I've alluded to several


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opportunities–in time throughout the yearswhen T-C-I-D could have cut a fat hog if theywanted to. They could have had the wholesystem totally renovated. They could have hadthe newest, shiniest, brightest, most water-efficient, sprinkled pivot irrigation waterproject in the Western United States, and theywouldn't have had to cost-share any of it. Andthey probably wouldn't have had to repay anyof it, because it would have been repaid withzero percent interest over fifty years frompower revenues, if they would have beenwilling to come on board with respect to anagreement as to how much water they couldget from the Truckee River system. And theyhad these ideas they were going to get 465,000acre feet.

Seney: Like they always had in the past.

Faust: Like they always had in the past, and they werebeing led, I think inappropriately, by peoplewithin the Bureau of Reclamation who did notknow the big picture, who had blinders on andwho thought, "Well, we'll help you, and we'llget this water for you," blah, blah, blah. Andthey had a false sense of security and, I think,an inaccurate sense of where the reality waspolitically and the strength of their position. And, ultimately, they wouldn't bite on any of


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that.

Seney: You're describing the carrots that were held outto them.

Faust: Absolutely.

Seney: The municipal water system.

Faust: Municipal water system. You heard that fromTom Jensen. Absolutely. Absolutely. Gifts.

Seney: I wish the tape could picture your face whenyou said, "gifts," because you were implyinghere that they were very foolish not to acceptall this, you think.

Faust: I think so.

Seney: I understand that these inducements wereoffered. Did they think that the bill was notgoing to pass, still?

Faust: Yeah, they thought they could kill it.

The Bureau of Reclamation and TCID

Seney: What level in the Bureau was this comingfrom? The area, the region? Higher up, do


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you think?

Faust: It started at the district level, and there wassome support at the Sacramento level. Interestingly enough, what has happened is thatthrough time, particularly since the legislationhas been enacted, those folks have been theones that have kind of turned around, becausethey've had the lead now in implementing thenegotiated settlement. And they're the oneswho have been holding the scoping hearingsand doing the drafting of the settlementagreement. I think they've become converts.

Seney: The Bureau people.

Faust: Yeah, the Bureau people. And there have beensome good folks that have worked on in, bothat Sacramento and at the district level recently. But back then, back in the eighties, the lateeighties when we were working on this, theycertainly had the perspective of theirconstituency, which was the Truckee-CarsonIrrigation District folks.

Sierra Pacific Power and Public Law 101-618

Seney: You've mentioned that Governor Miller andSenator Bryan raised questions about the bill,and Sierra Pacific Power, no doubt, made clear


71

to them that you wanted this bill.

Faust: We did, and their response to us always was,"We understand that, and we're supportive ofthat. However, we think that it doesn't go farenough. If we're going to settle this, let's settleall of the issues. Let's embrace a settlementthat also includes a resolution of T-C-I-D'sconcerns."

Seney: The problem being you couldn't get T-C-I-D,then, to come to an agreement.

Faust: We didn't think so.

Getting President Bush to Sign Public Law 101-618

Seney: Once the bill was passed, did you play any roleat all in getting President Bush to sign it?

Faust: Yes, and that was an interesting process. In theSenate, when we were moving the bill out, theT-C-I-D folks had found an ear with [Senator]Malcolm Wallop from Wyoming, who hadrepresented agricultural interests in his state. The T-C-I-D farmers had been active in anorganization called the National WaterResources Association. They had gone to theirassociation, and Tom Donnelly had helped


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them get appointments with Senator Wallop.

Senator Wallop's staff, the minority staffon the Senate Energy Committee who didwater matters, really were opposed to gettingthis bill through, but they were undertremendous pressure from Senator Reid andSenator Bradley and Senator Wallop and othersto move this bill at the end of the session. What ended up happening was these minoritystaffers called down to the White House, [to]President Bush's people, and got what theythought was a commitment that the bill wasgoing to be vetoed. And based upon thecommitment, they then decided, "Well, whyshould we take the political heat? We'll let itgo, knowing that its not going to become law,and we'll get a veto, because we'll get theveto."

Seney: You're smiling big-time now. (laughter)

Faust: (laughter) I know. That's because he didn'tveto it.

Seney: Yeah, crucial misjudgment on their part.

Faust: That's because he didn't veto it.

How Bills Can Be Killed in the Senate


73

Seney: Could Senator Wallop have killed the bill?

Faust: Yes.

Seney: One senator can do that, can't he?

Faust: Oh, yes. And, in fact, they often do; I mean,they can do it now in a normal legislativeperiod of time just by threatening to filibusterany bill that comes up and therefore tie up theSenate's time. And, therefore you have to haveunanimous consent, which means 100 percentof all senators have to agree to allow a bill toeven come up to the floor for debate. And sowithout that unanimous consent, a bill can't bepresented for debate on the Senate floor. Allhe had to do is object to its consideration and itwouldn't have come, let alone get out of thecommittee that he was on.

It's even more so the case in the final hoursof a Congress, because there are so manypeople who have waited so long to move theirbills, there's only a limited amount of floortime. The only way that you can get on thecalendar is if there is an agreement that you canpass a bill they way I described earlier, wherethe majority leader stands up and says, "Thefollowing twenty-five bills are deemed read


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and passed." And then he reads out thenumbers and they go. In fact, they don't evenread the numbers sometimes. All they do isrefer to a slate of bills that are pending with thesecretary of the Senate, and it's all done byunanimous consent. So there's no question thatit could have been stopped, and they wereprepared to do it, but they had been promisedby the Bush administration that they wouldveto the bill.

President Signs Public Law 101-618

Seney: How did you work around that? Did you knowthis at the time, that they had gotten whatseemed to be a veto pledge out of the WhiteHouse?

Faust: Yeah, we thought they were going to get aveto. First, Barbara Vucanovich, and I wouldhave to say that she did more than anyone elseto make sure that the president signed thislegislation. It was interesting that it wasoccurring during the period of time when thepresident and she had a good relationship. Ithink she had the opportunity to fly with himsomewhere on Air Force One. She had metwith him personally on this subject and talkedto him about it.


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Frankly, we also enlisted the help ofSenator Laxalt, who was then retired, andasked him to see if he could help intervenewith James Baker, the chief of staff, which hedid as well. We had good information withrespect to who within the White House wasgoing to ultimately make recommendations. Of course, the Indians were working hardthrough their contacts. Senator Reid, eventhough it was more limited, had spoken to thecongressional liaison people who had workedfor President Bush.

We worked with the Department of theInterior to make sure that they didn't jump inand recommend a veto. Bill Bettenburg washelpful in that context, to prevent Interior fromrecommending a veto to the president.

Seney: By this time, Bill Bettenberg had a prettycritical role in Interior over this legislation.

Faust: Yes, he did. By then he was the czar of theTruckee River, and he was out of the Office ofthe Secretary, and so they weren'trecommending a veto either. They thoughtultimately that this is something that shouldhappen.


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So we just brought every tool that we hadto bear to make sure that they knew thingswere going on. I also have to say, I believe,even though I cannot recall that with anyspecificity, there were certain things thatPresident Bush and the administration wantedout of our congressional delegation, as well, interms of some close votes on some majorpieces of legislation that they had to getthrough at the end. There was some discussionabout those, even before the bill went down tothe White House–"Gees, we get this down toyou, we've got to get it passed," etc.

Seney: A little bit of the usual kind of trading backand forth?

Faust: Yeah, yeah. I don't think ultimately PresidentBush wanted to be the one to tell the Indiansno, and to tell the folks in northern Nevada no,and to be the bad guy, so to speak. SenatorWallup didn't want to be the bad guy, hewanted Bush to be the bad guy. Well, it gotdown there, and Bush decided he didn't want tobe the bad guy. (laughter)

Seney: Did former President Reagan get involved atall because of his interest in having beengovernor [at the time the interstate compactwas agreed upon by the two states]?


77

Faust: We asked Senator Laxalt to contact formerPresident Reagan and have him weigh in. Hesaid that he did communicate with him. I thinkthat what happened is that Senator Laxalt wasauthorized by President Reagan to speak on hisbehalf to Baker and to those folks about thatbill.

Seney: I understand Senator [Pete] Wilson, soon to beGovernor Wilson at that point, was alsoimportant.

Faust: Yeah, he was. They supported it. They wantenactment of this, and so he had himselfpushed for signing it.

Ultimately and finally, there were morereasons to sign it than there were reasons toveto it, and that's how all of these work out onthese political equations, is that there are morereasons to sign it than not to sign it.

Seney: Were you surprised the bill went through?

Faust: No, I wasn't. I really wasn't. I was alwaysconfident that we would get it through. Therewere times went I thought it looked prettydismal, but I still believed in our abilityto–maybe I'm an eternal optimist. I've had bills


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that were deader than this one, certainly deaderthan this one, that have been resuscitated.

At the end of a session, it's kind of an openseason, because all of the rules don't applyanymore. You can get done whatever you'vegot the political muscle to pull off, and that'swhat happens at the end of a session. I thoughtthat we had some pretty strong allies withSenator Bradley and Senator Reid andCongresswoman Vucanovich and some of theothers who were strongly supporting thislegislation.

The Settlement II Negotiations

Seney: What role did you play in the Settlement IInegotiations and the run-up to those. Do youget involved in anything like that, these mostrecent one?

Faust: Oh, the most recent ones with Resolve?

Seney: That fell apart.

Faust: Unfortunately. Let me say this.

END SIDE A, TAPE 2. NOVEMBER 9, 1995.BEGIN SIDE B, TAPE 2. NOVEMBER 9, 1995.


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Seney: Your very last words, you were saying SierraPacific was trying.

Faust: Sierra Pacific was always trying to figure out away to accommodate T-C-I-D's interests,because we believe that there is a benefit tohaving everyone on the river satisfied. It's notgood for any of us. We have an interest inwhat they do, and we share resources. Weshare the Donner Lake with them 50-50. Sothere is a connection there that remainsimportant for us. We, in fact, attempted to tryand bring them into some post-negotiatedsettlement negotiations in the context of thepreliminary settlement agreement, and T-C-I-Dwent out and hired an excellent, excellentcounselor, he was a consultant, then withBookman-Edmiston Engineering, whose nameis Mike Clinton. He is now the generalmanager of, I think, the largest irrigationdistrict in the country in California, theImperial Irrigation District. Mike was retainedby them to try and represent their interest; Ithink they were stunned that the bill passed. Ithink they were stunned that it didn't stop it,and I think that they temporarily thought,"Well, gees, maybe we better jump on the trainnow." They could have gotten a lot more ifthey had jumped on it earlier.


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So they sat down, and Mike tried to workwith them. There were some series ofnegotiations with everybody in the context ofreally initiating this process of the wholesettlement agreement. There were times whenhe was optimistic that he could bring them onboard, but true to form, ultimately and finallythe disagreement among the board membersand the inability of the executive director toreally take a strong position with backing ofthe majority of his board, caused them to breakoff those negotiations and again leave theprocess. So there was, even before thenegotiations, the recent negotiations that weredone by Resolve, an attempt to bring them in,and they had hired a consultant to try andrepresent their interests. That failed.

So this is like the third or fourth attemptthat I know of, in the ten years I've beeninvolved, where T-C-I-D had been brought intoa process with the expectation that we couldaccommodate some of their interests. I thinkfundamentally one of the reasons why theyhave been unsuccessful and unable to come toterms with it is because they do not have arealistic perspective with respect to where theyare, what kind of a position they're in, andwhere their strengths are and where their risksand exposures are. That's very unfortunate for


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them, because where there is no vision, thepeople perish.

Working for Sierra Pacific Power

Seney: Let me ask you a little bit about how you workwith Sierra Pacific and how they are to workwith. One of the problems that T-C-I-D has, ofcourse, is it has all these different water-rightholders and it's very difficult for them to cometo a decision and have a unified view of whatthey do. The Pyramid Lake Tribe has achievedthat. They still quarrel among themselves. Butcertainly as an entity, Sierra Pacific Power is ata great advantage here being a corporatestructure with clear lines of decision-makingand people who have real authority that canmake decisions.

Faust: There is no question that that's an advantage,and they also have financial resources thatthey've committed to this process, which isanother advantage. We couldn't have done thiswithout their willingness to pay to bring peopleout to be briefed and have field hearings andfield trips with respect to how the TruckeeRiver system operates.

The water part of Sierra Pacific's business,


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however, is not a revenue generator, it's arevenue loser, and it's only been recently thatthey've made money at the water business, andit's a small part of their business at that. It hasoccupied an inordinate amount of seniormanagement time. But, it is such an importantpolitical issue for the economic future of thearea that they recognize that they have almost apublic duty and responsibility to continue tocommit the kind of resources to a resolution ofthe water issues that they have, even though it'scertainly disproportionate to their basic mainbusiness functions. It will become even greaterafter they end up merging with WashingtonWater Power here within the next severalmonths.

Seney: If I'm looking out as president of Sierra PacificPower and I see this 10 percent that I thinkwater is of their revenue stream, if I'm notmistaken, but it's key to the 90 percent. Thatis, if we don't have enough water to havedevelopment, I'm not, as president of SierraPacific Power, going to be able to sell theelectricity. Is that how they see that?

Faust: That is a part of how they see it. They've hadseveral opportunities to sell the water business. They've refused to do so. One of which was,of course, to just cede everything over to the


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county. Frankly, the business community andthe Truckee Meadows didn't want to do itbecause of some of the problems. I don't knowwhether anybody's told you about the HoneyLake Project or any of that stuff.

Seney: A little bit, yes.

Faust: The county got involved with it. Butultimately those have been unmitigateddisasters and fiascos, and everyone, includingSenator Reid and others, have just kind ofbasically plead with Sierra Pacific to maintainthe water company and to maintain the watersystem and to stay the course with respect tothe full implementation of the negotiatedsettlement, and we remain committed to thatcourse.

Tribe's Second Thoughts about the NegotiatedSettlement

It's interesting that even after thenegotiated settlement passed, the tribe–you talkabout the difficulty of achieving some kind ofclear consensus and direction, even the tribehad second thoughts about it. And part of thatwas driven by the fact that they saw that overin Utah, on a bill that I worked for on behalf of


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the Central Utah Water Conservancy District,the Utah Utes got a $195 million settlement,and they said, "Well, we only got $45 million,they got $195 million. We got screwed." (laughter)

So they went to Bob Pelcyger, and Bobwas on the ropes. This was another one ofthose instances I referred to where the businesscommittee and others were saying, "Well, thisisn't as good a deal as we thought it was. Weshould have gotten more." And part of theproblem–and I see this in the Indian worldeverywhere–is that they don't know how totake yes for an answer, and it's always popularin the tribe and in tribal politics to run on theplatform of, "We've been disadvantaged. Wewere taken advantage of. We have not gotten asquare deal. People haven't been truthful andhonest with us. They've broken theiragreements." Those are the mantras ofpolitical campaigns in tribal politics, and evenafter they got what they wanted, which was anegotiated settlement. The next group thencame in and started to say, "We got screwed. We didn't get the deal we should have. Wewere taken advantage of," etc., etc.

It got so bad that Bob had to dismisshimself from the process. He recommended


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the tribe go hire another lawyer who was anexpert in evaluating and had done a lot ofIndian settlements, had him do an independentanalysis of (A) the tribe's claims and (B) whatthe settlement was and how they relate to oneanother. So the business committee went outand hired a lawyer here in Washington namedJoe Membrino, and Joe Membrino wasretained for several months to do an analysis. He came in and interviewed me and others. His fundamental conclusion was that the tribedidn't have $45 million worth of claims againstthe government, that, in fact, they got a betterdeal than they should have, and that they oughtto be very happy with what it is that they got. He went back and made that report to thebusiness committee, and I think ultimately thathas now quieted that aspect of this.

Senator Reid's continued attention to thetribe and its needs and school appropriationsand other things has continued to help, andeven Senator Bradley's continuing interest hashelped out there. They all went out for a cui-uirun, even after the settlement bill was passed,which was a positive thing. So it has been anadvantage to work for a client that has had aclear mission, clear vision, and has not beenconflicted with respect to internal politics the


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way both the tribe and T-C-I-D has been. Ithas one purpose, and that is to find the leastexpensive source of water supply for thegrowth of the Truckee Meadows, for thebenefit of the rate payers, and, as such, we'vebeen able, I think, to be brokers and tomaintain relationships with respect to bothgroups.

Recent Actions by the House Interior Subcommittee

Seney: Did you get involved at all just recently whenthe–I think it was the House InteriorAppropriations Subcommittee X'ed out the $8million, was it?

Faust: Yes, yes.

Seney: Did you get involved in that?

Faust: Very much so. In fact, it never occurred to usthat they would take out the $8 million thatwas in there for the tribe.

Seney: The final payment.

Faust: The final payment to the tribe trust fund. Wewere more focused on the $2 millionappropriation that was going for acquisition ofwater rights associated with the recovery


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program, because that was related to watersupply.

Seney: So that's more of interest to Sierra PacificPower?

Faust: Well, we thought the other was safe, but it wasthe $2 million that we thought was in jeopardy. So we had been working with Barbara and withSenator Reid, but since the appropriations billinitiated and began in the House, we startedwith Barbara to make sure that $2 million wassafe. Well, the Interior AppropriationsCommittee staff certainly heard Barbara say,"Yeah, we'll protect that $2 million," but theyjust never told her they were going to take outthe $8 [million].

Coincidentally, the day after this allhappened, and it was marked up insubcommittee and it became public, thechairman of the board of Sierra Pacific, WaltHiggins, was here with me visiting with ourcongressional delegation. And we had theopportunity to go over to the AppropriationsCommittee and we met with Barbara in thehallway, pulled her out of Interior Approps, wetalked to her about the issue. She was reallyupset that she had been let down by the


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committee staff, and that's just not done. Youdon't take a member of the subcommittee andcut money out of her program and not tell her. So she went to Ralph Regula, chairman of thecommittee, and said, "Look, when this billcomes to full committee, I want to offer anamendment to restore it," and they basicallysaid no. She said, "I've got to get this back in."

So then we decided to adopt a floorstrategy of seeing whether or not we couldn'tget her to get a commitment relative to acolloquy from Chairman Regula, that if themoney was restored on the Senate side, that hewould accede to the Senate position inconference. Well, coincidentally, there weresome freshmen Republicans who wanted to cutfunding for a $16 million program, andbecause of the pressure that Barbara had put onthem for messing with her project, the staffknew they were in trouble with her, and theyknew that this amendment that was going tocut $16 million from the bill was likely to pass.

They went to Barbara and they said,"Okay, Barbara, here's the deal. These guysare going to offer an amendment. We're goingto oppose it, but it's probably going to go,because there aren't a lot of supporters forthis." These men who manage these bills, men


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and women–and Barbara's one of them–have apretty good idea where the votes are whenpeople offer amendments, so they knew it waslost. They said, "We'll be $16 million underour budget allocation at that point. We wantyou to be standing in the well with youramendment ready to restore the $8 million,because we'll have room to put it back in thebill."

Seney: Now that the $16 million is gone.

Faust: Now that the $16 million is gone. So all thesemembers marched down to the House floor,cast this great vote to balance the budget andreduce appropriations by $16 million, and thenBarbara walked up to the mike, the very nextamendment, and that was a recorded vote. "The gentle lady from Nevada is recognized." She says, "I have an amendment at the desk." They read the amendment. Well, they don'treally read the amendment, because reading ofthe amendment is dispensed with byunanimous consent always, because it takes toolong. So they read the first three words of theamendment, and she says, "I ask unanimousconsent that the reading of the amendment bedispensed with," so they dispense with thereading of the amendment, and then Barbara


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says, "This is to restore money that wasrequested by the administration. It's for theimplementation of the settlement. It's veryimportant."

And Chairman Regula, on the other side,says, "We accept the amendment from thegentle lady, and we agree to it."

Then the Speaker says, "Question is on theamendment. All those in favor, say aye. Theayes have it. The amendment is agreed to,"and they move on. It takes a matter of twominutes and the money gets put back in, andmost of the members of the House don't evenhave any idea, they just thought they'd saved$16 million.

Seney: And they ended up saving $8 million, really.

Faust: Yeah, and actually what's happened is that thefreshmen have finally figured out now whathappens. So now they've got a new procedurethat they're trying to get approved that requiresthat any savings that occurs on anyappropriations bill as a result of a vote to cutmoney stays cut. (laughter) You can't put itback in. Which then puts the burden onanyone who wants to offer an amendment toput money into the bill, to go find somewhere


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else in the bill where they have to come upwith an offset.

Seney: So the net cut stays.

Faust: Precisely.

Seney: That's interesting. So this is something youhave to keep your eye on.

Faust: No question about it. No question about it.

Seney: I would think that the settlement fund is kindof tangential to you.

Faust: It's very important.

Seney: If that doesn't go, it unravels the whole thing.

Faust: That's right.

Seney: I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

Faust: Absolutely. We worked very hard to try andget that tribal money restored.

Seney: And even though the settlement act was passedwhen Joe Gremban was president, now Mr.Higgins is president, and there was someone in


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between.

Faust: There were two in between, Austin Steadhamand Bill Kuipers.

Seney: But do you have a consistency of policy hereon this?

Faust: Yes.

Seney: And you don't expect Mr. Higgins to changeany of that?

Faust: No.

Seney: Is there anything I haven't asked you that youcan tell me that's important?

Faust: Gosh, I don't think so. You've been verythorough.

Seney: Well, you know a lot and you know a lot morethan I've asked you about. Everyone has apiece of the puzzle, and all these fit together, very nicely, but your perspective is certainly avaluable one here in terms of what someonedoes on behalf of a client like Sierra PacificPower and what a lobbyist has to know andwhat a lobbyist has to do. In the future, aspeople read this, I think they'll get a flavor for


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what your responsibilities are. I take it youexpect to be working for Sierra Pacific Powerfor a long time.

Faust: Gosh, I hope so.

Seney: Is that how it works with a lobbyist? Do youtend to keep clients over a long period of time?

Faust: Not usually. Many clients and many of the biglaw firms actually go out and look forparticular projects and then they pile on thework and run up huge gigantic bills and reallymakes the client glad when he gets the problemsolved. Then he goes away and tries not tocome back again. That's the way a lot of themwork.

I adopted a strategy for a variety of reasonsmany years ago to try and be a long-distancerunner, thinking that it would be much better tohave a smaller stable of very secure long-termmulti-year relationship clients. As a result, Ireally have kind of become, even though I'mnot an employee of Sierra Pacific, I'm viewedas their Washington office in every sense of theword.

Seney: And you strategize with them over these kinds


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of things?

Faust: Continually. I'm going out there, in fact, thisweekend, to meet with Walt, just for a quicktrip.

Seney: Great. On behalf of the Bureau, I reallyappreciate you giving us this time.

Faust: You're very welcome.

Seney: Thank you.

END SIDE B, TAPE 2. NOVEMBER 9, 1995.END OF INTERVIEW.


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Documents

MARCUS FAUST - usbr.gov · Faust: Certainly. I remember at the age of fourteen, on my birthday, going to a political fund-raiser where Senator Ted [Edward M.] Kennedy was in attendance