TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Fay Sinkin (FS)
INTERVIEWERS: David Todd (DT)
DATE: August 15, 1997
LOCATION: San Antonio, Texas
TRANSCRIBERS: Judy Holloway
REEL: 1013

Time codes relate to 60-minute audio tape recordings of the interview. “Misc.” refers to various off-camera conversation or background noise, unrelated to the interview.

DT: Well, let’s begin. This is David Todd and I’m in San Antonio, Texas with Fay Sinkin, who’s been nice enough to put aside some time today on August 15, 1997 in the middle of a hot summer day to talk about conservation and her many contributions to it here in Texas, and in the Central Texas and San Antonio area. And I just wanted to use this chance to thank you.
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FS: You’re welcome.
DT: And to ask a few questions and I hope they may lead to some memories.
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FS: Okay.
DT: One of the places I wanted to start with was your childhood and the early days and perhaps if you could tell me a little bit about your parents and some of your childhood friends who might have encouraged your interests in conservation.
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FS: Well, I was born in New York City. My dad worked for William Randolph Hearst and he was the protégé of the man who wrote editorials for Mr. Hearst. And I suppose my first introduction to well, flora and fauna as we might say was through Herbert Kaufmann up in Tarrytown, New York. He owned ten and a half acres and had the same Japanese gardener as the Rockefellers. And that intrigued me because Japanese gardens was not within my purview as a young child. And I just loved wandering through the gardens and having them explained to me. So, subliminally, I would say, that was my introduction to saving the land and how it could be used, and so forth and so on.
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The—I think the next thing that happened, actually, was going off to Randolph-Macon in Lynchburg, Virginia and becoming aware that I was a Jew. And there were only four Jewish girls at the University or the college and no sororities. And so there was a great deal of isolation because of my religion. And at the very same time it was Lynchburg, Virginia. And on a horseback riding trip while at school, a truck turned over carrying Negro children and nobody would stop to right the truck. And it seemed to me incredible that anything like that could happen anywhere in the United States. I also became aware that when I walked on the sidewalk, a Negro could—had to walk in the gutter. This was in 1934 and I remember one incident in which I reached out to rescue this Negro and saw
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this utter fright in his eyes that I was about to touch him. So that also opened my eyes to the fact that I wasn’t alone in this area of prejudice and vowed at the very same time that I was going to do something about it. As I mentioned earlier, I think the thread through everything that I’ve done is—is really a matter of fairness. It wasn’t fair to be treated the
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way I was, having an English teacher tell me that I had to do very well in her course in order to pass because she didn’t like Jews and (laughter) right, and—and seeing nobody stopping to help children no matter what their color. Incredible. So, that’s my early days.
DT: What was there—was there any, uh, person—did you get to talk to the—the Japanese gardener, for example? Did he tell you about what was in this garden or did—did—did your father’s friend explain what was growing there?
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FS: No. There was a little difficulty about this because, first of all, the Japanese gardener didn’t speak any English. (Chuckles). And, secondly, Mr. Kaufmann turned ninety today, and so we would go up at 6:00 at night, have our main meal at midnight. That’s when he wrote and leave, go to bed of course, and then leave in the morning. But it was in the morning, after breakfast that his secretary, Mason, would take me through the gardens and that’s how I happened to walk through the gardens and become interested in them.
DT: Did it seem like a very exotic place or someplace quite familiar or…
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FS: Oh, no. It was very exotic. Very, very exotic. Very different. He also had—and I—I was told by him, that he was very proud of this. That he had made a tennis court that could be iced over in the wintertime for skating and they had used of materials that were conducive to icing. So, it was a fascinating place. He also had mined a whole mine in order to get pink marble so that he could display his sword collection. Incredible. And his son had a room devoted to himself in which he had toy soldiers and trains. A whole room.
DT: Gosh, it was full of exotica.
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FS: Yes, full of it. He also and I—I’m sure this has nothing with conservation, but it certainly had an effect upon me, had imported Italian masons to the house, had them live in the basement because he had some very exquisite furniture that he wanted duplicated. And once it was duplicated, his great joy was to ask you which one was the original. (Laughter). So, that part of my life was very exciting.
DT: Well, what—what, uh, I guess that your going to Randolph-Macon was a—a mixed experience. It sounds like it was a very hostile place in some ways, but did you have mentors there who encouraged your interest in conservation?
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FS: No. Not necessarily. I spent only a year there obviously. And would not have spent the year if my father hadn’t said, you know, a Bloom never gives up. You stay. So I stayed. But I was very happy to get out of there. No that wasn’t a—a happy experience though. It did encourage me to do well, but that English teacher.
DT: Sure.
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And also I had a math teacher who really interested me in math. So that was very helpful and helped me along the way.
DT: What brought you down to Texas, then?
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FS: Well, I had a young man who was born in San Antonio who wooed me in New York. I had never heard of Texas. It was like China. I guess I’d heard of it, it was one of the States, but you know, like China, a country. And he—my father actually was the one who promoted him. He said, you’re costing this young man a very heal—small fortune because he was calling me and coming to New York and so forth. And he said, if you’re interested in him, I’ll stake you a trip to Texas. And I said, oh, I love to travel. I’ll go. So I went and, you know, couldn’t believe this place. It was just so flat and barren and miserable looking and hot, but he was very persuasive and so we’ve been married fifty-five years now.
DT: So, but your first impression of Tex—Texas was not very promising.
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FS: No, it wasn’t very promising and I did a lot of driving when the children were little to Grand Canyon and places like that, with them. And, of course, going out West Texas was unbelievable. And then, you know, all of a sudden one day I began to like it. I thought that barrenness was something that had a lot of merit. And the tumble weed going across the road was very interesting and the isolation and the quiet and the few animals that I saw all were—began to intrigue me because I grew up in the canyons of New York. I lived on the seventeenth floor, for instance, and the only greenery that I ever saw was in Central Park. I never saw a cow till I went to camp when I was seven years old. (Laughter). So, all of this—Texas was just, you know, an eye opener, complete and became very much a part of me. I began to like it, even though my father said you must love that guy an awful lot to live in this cow pasture.
DT: Well, that was one of the things I wanted to explore with you is landscape here in San Antonio and in Texas. And I understood that you helped introduce the whole idea of Xeriscape to San Antonio and the idea of trying to promote something that was in keeping with the arid climate down here. And I was wondering if you could explain how that came to be and why you thought it was appropriate.
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FS: Well, I was serving on the Edwards Underground Water District at the time and we were very much involved in trying to save the Aquifer. It’s our sole source of water in San Antonio and we were beset by very wealthy developers who—who were encroaching upon the recharge zone. And so we were looking—or I was looking for any way in which we could help maintain the quality and quantity of the water in the Aquifer. And the—I was sent a clipping by a friend. And the clipping outlined what Denver was doing in the way of xeriscaping. They apparently were the first and it was the water board in Denver that developed this idea. They were the first in the nation to use the idea of
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indigenous plants around—for planting—for landscaping. And it wasn’t easy, but I convinced the board to try promoting xeriscaping. And we worked with, and I forget his name, he’s at A&M right now, but we worked with the botanical garden. And they actually planted a garden with all xeriscape plants. And then it caught hold and we did publicize it. we did allocate some money to public—to public it—I mean—to promoting it and it took off.
DT: How did you change peoples’ taste? I mean, it seems like it’s much easier to appreciate the lushness and the greenness of New York State than it is to see more thorny and dry and sorta’ barren landscape we’ve got around here.
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FS: Well it was primarily financial. You know, it’s cheaper to xeriscape. Initially, it’s more expensive but eventually it’s cheaper because you use less water and you don’t pay the high fees for it. And I would say that—that in the promotion, for instance, the Botanical Gardens would hold seminars and people would come. We talked to landscape architects about it. We talked to the people who sell the plants and asked them to promote plants that were indigenous and to show people how they could use them and it—it’s a process of education and—and we were able to do that.
DT: When did this start?
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FS: Well, I was elected in ‘83 and I guess this took place in ‘84 and ‘85. So, it’s about twelve to fourteen years old.
DT: Maybe we can stretch from landscape to habitat questions. I know that you were active in—in helping acquire this wonderful preserve, the four thousand acre Government Canyon tract in Northwest Bexar County. And I was wondering if you could explain how and why that preserve got acquired.
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FS: Well, just about that time, again, while serving on the Edwards and a little bit later than that we—we had the RTC advertising land that was undeveloped, that they had taken back, you know, the banks went bankrupt and they took back the land and so forth. And they were selling this land for practically nothing. And so a group of us, at that
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time I was president of the Aquifer Protection Association, a group of us went to the RTC, got a listing of the land that was available. I went to the board of the Edwards and thought that I really had them on my side, but it turned out that the director, the man who was in charge of the Edwards, I just don’t know how it came about, but at any rate, he reneged on the whole deal. So we never were able to use monies that were—had been set aside in the Edwards for acquisition of land. In the meantime, we found out that Government Canyon was not an RTC property, but a HUD property. And, uh, HUD—the executive director of HUD was very amenable to helping us to get that land. And so,
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after I left the Edwards, Daniele Milam and Mary Kennedy actually went ahead and got HUD to release the land to the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation—and the Trust for Public Lands and the wildlife people and the Edwards and—they funded the four thousand acres.
DT: Do you think that that sort of partnership is going to be more common in the future?
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FS: Oh, absolutely. It will be. And I understand, as a matter of fact, that the Nature Conservancy is now looking at trying to do exactly that. Buy up whatever land is left on the recharge zone in Bexar County and put it aside and save it from development. It’s a little late.
DT: Can—can you back up a little bit and explain what it is about the Edwards Aquifer and the recharge zone that so concerns you and other people?
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FS: (Laughing) How long do you have? We have about—the recharge zone extends about a hundred and seventy-five miles, all the way from Uvalde up to Buda. And it’s not very deep. It’s five to six miles deep. It’s bisected by 1604 in San Antonio. And the recharge has been about oh, six hundred thousand acre-feet every year. It varies, of course, depending upon our rain, but it’s San Antonio’s sole source of water. The water moves from West to East and we have about ninety pumping stations in San Antonio and
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the incredible situation is that if we pollute this water, we may have to build ninety treatment plants because you don’t get your water—I mean you get your water from these individual wells. They are not connected. The Aquifer is not connected. It’s segmented so that the water comes—the pumping stations come from different parts of the recharge zone. And therefore, it’s—it’s absolutely essential that we do two things. That we allow as much recharge as we possibly can and that we worry to death about the quality of the
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water, particularly from the development with all the pesticides and insecticides, the gasolines and the oils that leak from cars. So, that was the effort that we tried to do was simply to get as much recharge as we could and to prevent pollution. We have a big fight right now with the—with TENRAC which is the Texas Natural Resource Conservation
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Committee because what they are doing is cementing up sinkholes and caves which limits the amount of water that goes into the Aquifer. And they’re doing that on the basis of the fact that they’re preventing pollution. (Chuckle). But there are other ways to prevent pollution and we need all the recharge we can get. Otherwise, we’re all going to be paying a fortune for outside water.
DT: What are some of the other ways of trying to purify the water?
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FS: Well you can build berms which keep the water aw—away from the sinkholes. You can build holding ponds and treat the holding pond and then allow the water to go into—into the sinkholes. But preservation of the sinkholes and caves is almost an absolute.
DT: And I guess some of these sinkholes and caves have their own roles as habitat.
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FS: Well sure they do. They have bats.
DT: Cave creatures.
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FS: Yeah, we have that big bat cave up on the recharge zone.
DT: Uh-huh. Um…
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FS: I think they’ve said there are about two thousand sinkholes and caves in the four thousand acres. I can’t—isn’t that something? Government Canyon.
DT: Wow, just honeycombed.
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FS: Yes, just honeycombed. Exactly.
DT: Well, lets talk a little bit more about, uh, the acquisition of Government Canyon. I know that over the last four or five years, I guess, there has been a lot of concern about erosion of private property rights and the threat of people coming in and buying up land for public interest purposes, whether it’s for recreation or for habitat protection. And I was curious, after being involved with the Government Canyon issue and HUD and the RTC, do you have any views about how that plays out?
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FS: Well, I think if we—what you have to do is think generations ahead. And if you’re thinking in terms of preserving land for—and habitat for generations ahead, you have to think about how this can be done effectively. And I think the most effective way is to keep it wild and natural. And I think everybody is coming to that conclusion. In other words, campers and campsites actually pollute the land. And if you’re talking about the recharge zone, you don’t want that to happen. Because that water, obviously, will have its runoff effect into the Aquifer. So I’m all for leaving the land as untouched as is
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possible. Now, there are lots of people who want hiking trails and I see nothing wrong with that. Or even bike trails. But—and it probably is a good idea because they can bring their children and they can look at all the plant life that’s there and all the animals that are there and so forth. It’s a good learning experience for them. But civilization really should be kept away from them. Did that answer your question?
DT: It does. And I guess there are two issues at play here and one would be the tension between those who like public lands for what it does for habitat and wildlife can depend on that and other people see it as well, like Central Park when you grew up. That there was this wonderful outlet for people to enjoy themselves and that you need open space for people to enjoy and understand nature.
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FS: Well, that’s fine.
DT: Sometimes there’s a conflict.
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FS: If there isn’t a specific reason, now, there wasn’t any reason not to do what they did in Central Park. There is a specific reason not to do what they did in Central Park in Government Canyon and that is the quality of the water. I mean, if you’re trying to protect the water, then you have to utilize whatever means you have at hand in order to do that.
DT: Oh, there’s something else I wanted to ask you about Government Canyon. Again, through looking down the generations of—many tracts, I guess throughout Central Texas and I guess across the country, have changed really dramatically from when people first settled here and they brought in cows and they brought in new species of plants and so what we look at as wildlife, sometimes, and as wilderness, may actually be exotic animals and exotic plants. And so what do you do about—I don’t know how pristine Government Canyon is, but I imagine it has some privet out there and, you know, some nandina that’s wandered out there. What do you do about those things? Do you intervene? Or do you say “Hands Off! This is a pristine spot”.
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FS: I—I can’t answer that. That’s not within my purview, depends on much more knowledgeable people than I am.
DT: You’re very modest.
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FS: No, I’m (chuckle) not.
DT: Well I guess more generally then for a long time there’s been that kind of schism between people like Gifford Pinchot, who…
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FS: Yes, I read that.
DT: …and John Muir and, you know, the folks who want to preserve things and those who want to conserve them but develop some facilities for people to enjoy them, which camp do you fall in?
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FS: Well, probably the preserve things as they are more than the people aspect of it but again, it depends on what the use of—I mean, what the reason you’re preserving it for. It depends on that. The—the only—I don’t know about Pinchow but I do know about Muir because of Muir Woods. And that’s a perfectly gorgeous place, you know, with the redwoods and so forth and so on in California. But again that’s not something I’m knowledgeable about (chuckle).
DT: Well I guess the reason the Government Canyon is so special and that you—you’d argue for trying to preserve it in it’s original state it—it has this wonderful contribution to groundwater.
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FS: Exactly.
DT: I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the Aquifer Protection Association, which I think you helped organize to make sure that Aquifer is there through means like Government Canyon, but other ways as well.
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FS: Well, we were primarily organized because of politics (chuckle). We knew—it was sort of interesting and that came about because of the League of Women Voters. The League was disturbed that the University of Texas was going up on the recharge zone and they wanted to do something about it. And so they asked me if I would see if I could organize some kind of organization to protect the land up there.
DT: What was the University doing? Was this their new campus?
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FS: Yes. The University of Texas—it was a—actually it was a John Connelly land deal. And he allowed his friends, John Peece and others to buy up the land and he presented the University to them to build up there. (Laughter). So the League was disturbed and asked me if I would organize somebody to help protect this property up there. And I called about twenty organizations from the Junior League all the way to the Council of Jewish Women and asked them if they’d send a representative to hear about the recharge zone. And I was absolutely amazed. Twenty people came and so we formed the Aquifer Protection Association [APA] right at that moment.
DT: And these were delegates?
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FS: They were representatives of these organizations.
DT: So, is the APA an association of associations or is it something…?
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FS: It—it was called an association and it was—it operated as that during its life. It no longer exists.
DT: I see.
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FS: And, the first thing we tackled because of the—the University was going full blast ahead, was a zoning case. We thought we could make—we could sort of alert people to the fact that they didn’t get their water from the tap, they got it from an Aquifer. And so we took a zoning case, a 281 and 1604, which had been zoned by our city council for the largest mall in the Southwest and we decided to go the petition route and hold an election. And so we got twenty-five thousand signatures and the city had to call an
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election, and we won the election with a seventy-eight percent plurality which was fantastic. With a very high incidence of voting and we lost because the—it wasn’t the Supreme Court, it was the—another court, a lower court, said that we derived our zoning ability—the city of San Antonio did through the constit…
[End of Side 1]
[Beginning of Side 2]
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FS: And he allowed his friends, John Peece and others to buy up the land and he presented the University to them to build up there. So the League was disturbed and asked me if I would organize somebody to help protect this property up there and I called about twenty organizations from the Junior League all the way to the Council of Jewish Women and asked them if they’d send a representative to hear about the recharge zone. And I was absolutely amazed. Twenty people came and so we formed the Aquifer Protection Association right at that moment
DT: And these were delegates?
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FS: They were representatives of these organizations.
DT: So is the APA a association of associations or is it something…
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FS: It was—it was called an association and it was. It operated as that during its life. It no longer exists.
DT: I see.
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FS: And, the first thing we tackled because of the—the University was going full blast ahead, was a zoning case. We thought we could make—we could sort of alert people to the fact that they didn’t get their water from the tap. They got it from an Aquifer. And, so we took a zoning case, a 281 in 1604, which had been zoned by our city council for the largest mall in the Southwest and we decided to go the petition route and hold an election. And so we got twenty-five thousand signatures and the city had to call an
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election and we won the election with a seventy-eight percent plurality, which was fantastic with a very high incidence of voting. And we lost because the—it wasn’t the Supreme Court, it was another court—a lower court said, that we derived our zoning ability, the City of San Antonio did, through the Constitution of the State of Texas. And the Constitution did not allow initiative and referendum and we were a referendum. So they reversed a lower court that had given us the right to reverse this zoning. But, the mall was never built and because so many people voted in the election, we now had a nice constituency to—who knew that they got their water from the Aquifer and who were
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willing to follow us in trying to preserve the recharge zone. Now, that’s only half the story because the other half’s not so positive. We had lots of money against us by developers who had a lot of clout and pretty much had the city councils in their pockets. Now that sounds like I’m saying there was bribery, I don’t think so, but nevertheless, these developers were—dominated every agency in the government and were able to pretty much get any kind of zoning that they wished up on the recharge zone. So, it’s still a battle, but I think we’ve lost most of it.
DT: Let’s talk a little bit about the League. It seems like they have been a springboard to some of your interests and to the formation of groups like the Aquifer Protection Association and I know you were a former president of the League…
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FS: Right.
DT: And I was curious what sort of interests and experiences you brought to the League and that you enjoyed working with the League.
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FS: Well, I was elected to the League fifty years ago and elected president fifty years ago when I was quite young. And having led a very sheltered kind of life, I was—I just knew that there—there were many things that I wasn’t—not aware of that I would quickly, probably, hopefully learn about. And we had some marvelous experiences. Wanna’ hear one of them?
DT: Please, yes
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FS: Okay. We were anxious to develop a juvenile court in San Antonio. And so we donned out hats and our gloves and we went up to the state legislature and asked to see our state legislators. And they told us they were in room, I don’t know, 506, at the Driscoll Hotel. And so we walked over to 506 with our hats and our gloves and we knocked on the door and the door was opened by a hardly dressed young lady. And we could see our legislators with their ties all open and so forth, and the door was slammed. So we just were horrified and left (laughing). And we were all in the same boat. Very naïve and very unsophisticated and though we knew what was going on, we didn’t do
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anything about it. But the League progressed and it was a wonderful organization and everybody, I think, had the same experience I did. We learned to discipline our thinking. We learned to speak publicly. We learned to push the right buttons in the right places to get things done and it was just, for me, a very fine learning experience. And I think most of the people who worked with me, in—at that time, those years ago, had the same result. Now, today, it’s a totally different organization. You have women who are not free to belong in the numbers that we had because most of them need to work. And so volunteerism has paid the penalty for these working women. And then the League never
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took a—it took a stand on issues but not on candidates. And for today’s woman, that’s not quite enough. She needs more action and needs to promote candidates and so forth and so on. So, it is—it’s been changing for them and I think they’re feeling the pinch. Though they are still very well regarded in—in San Antonio.
DT: Well, what is the—the League seems to represent, to me at least, the best tradition of public participation…
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FS: It does.
DT: …in government and I am wondering how that plays out in environmental protection of both the role public life have and then the role government would have in view of the League. Do they talk much about that?
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FS: Not that I am aware of. And I am no longer a member of it so I—I can’t tell you. But I’ve—I have not been aware in their bulletins of conservation is a big issue for them. At the time that we worked on our petition drive, they were very much involved because the president, at that time, of the League, was very much involved. So it really depends on the leadership as to whether the League would be involved in conservation or preservation or whatever.
DT: Something else that the League seems to premise a lot of their work on is that—it’s a well-informed citizenry that will vote the right way, vote the rascals out and the good people in and let—I notice in the papers that a lot of folks seem to worry that votes nowadays don’t count as much as dollars do. And that, you know, campaign funding is a real problem. and I was curious if the League or if you personally had any views about that.
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FS: Well, I think you stated it very well. I think it’s the money that counts. And candidates know they answer the League’s questionnaire and the newspapers continue to print their candidate’s questionnaires. I think everybody pretty well knows that it’s the money that counts on who’s going to get elected. And I don’t know what role—the—the League’s role is that they really do their homework. If they speak publicly, and they taught us that, if you speak publicly you cannot get before a mic until you know what you’re talking about. And I think that role still plays a major part in the League’s presentation to its members. Do your homework. Know what you’re saying when you say it. Get your facts straight.
DT: One way I guess to sort of short circuit the election process that you were involved in was this petition drive for the Aquifer Protection Association. And it seems like there were advantages that you were able to put issues before the public that maybe the elected officials weren’t really sympathetic to. And I’m curious if, on balance, if you think it’s a good process or has problems that don’t make it really very productive or what do you think?
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FS: Well, I’m not sure. I’m going to find out though and I’ll tell you why. I have a thing about TENRAC and I’ve been making inquiries about when they can be sunsetted. And I found out they can be sunsetted at 2001. And I’m not sure I’m going to be here that long. So what I’ve decided to do is to ask our legislators and that’s Jeff—Jeff Wentworth, Senator Wentworth and Robert Puente if they would help draft legislation to get the Edwards Aquifer out of the hands of TENRAC. Only ten percent of the recharge zone is in the City of San Antonio. And though we have some wonderful rules written by the city, TENRAC refuses to adopt them for the rest of the recharge zone. So if we can
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remove TENRAC’s authority from the recharge zone, we might have a chance to save whatever is left of the recharge zone. TENRAC is an amalgamation of water agencies and that was good to consolidate all of the water agencies into one organization, but they have so many things to deal with and so little money to deal with them, that they can neglect something like monitoring the recharge zone to see that water pollution abatement plans actually are taking place the way they’ve been submitted to them.
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And so, if I can’t get that legislation written, I was thinking that it might be fun to try a petition (chuckle). And so we will see if a petition actually could work again like it did in the 1970’s. That’s a very long explanation of what…
DT: Well, that’s interesting though. I mean, what happens when you have an agency that has so many mandates and only so many people and you know, a legislature that’s always looking at their budget very tightly and closely. And then you have this city which is sort of hostage to its water, to its Aquifer which is controlled by this other agency…
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FS: Exactly. Exactly. And that’s very, very bad. Really bad. You have no control—have no control. Plus the fact—you’ve got and I’m not sure that this will go over very big but I think it’s a fact. You’ve got an agency—you’ve got a company like Freeport McNamara that wanted to develop in Austin, Barton Springs. And the city turned them down. So they went to the state legislature and got what they wanted there. And what they got was an amalgamation of the Austin Aquifer with the San Antonio Aquifer. So whatever rules in Austin rules down here too. And that’s part of what we want to do is separate that out. Let Austin do what they want with Freeport McNamara and let us alone down here.
DT: I see, so you think the issues in Austin are very different from in San Antonio.
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FS: Yes. And the control is different.
DT: Can you explain that, how it works. Why San Antonio has a different sort of problem?
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FS: Well, we don’t have Freeport McMoran wanting to develop, like they do in Austin.
DT: I see. But the—does development have pretty much the same impact on the South Edwards as it does on the North Edwards?
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FS: Yes, sure it does. I mean, development is what’s either going to pollute our water or, I mean, it’ll do two things. It’ll diminish the amount of recharge and it also will pollute.
DT: Oh, I think I follow you. So, in a sense, San Antonio is being punished for Freeport McMoran’s fight with Austin.
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FS: Exactly.
DT: Ahhhh, I get it.
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FS: I’m sorry. I didn’t explain….
DT: No, no. I hadn’t thought of that but you’re right. I mean, you’re being pulled into somebody else’s battle.
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FS: So we want to get ours separated out.
DT: Let’s talk a little bit more about Aquifer battles.
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FS: Endless.
DT: Um, I gosh, I know it’s been an ongoing fight over ownership of the groundwater that underlies all of this, Edwards Aquifer in particular.
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FS: Right, we have the right of capture.
DT: Can you explain a little bit about, you know, the—that whole issue of ownership and how that’s been played out?
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FS: Well, that’s typically Texas. You know, very independent and anybody who owns the land has the right of capture under that land and it particularly applies to water. So you can sink a well, and I guess I can demonstrate it best of all by saying that Corpus Christi could come up to our recharge zone, sink a well and pipe it all the way to Corpus Christi because they have the right of capture if they own the land. So we have very little
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control. And we now have something that’s called 1477 which the state legislature passed, some of it good, some of it bad, but it is limiting pumping on the Aquifer. And you have to license your wells now, which was never done before, under 1477, and the Edwards Aquifer Authority, which is a newly created agency, which took the place of the Edwards Underground Water District, has—is now in the process of licensing wells and of limiting pumping so that we can maintain the Aquifer for all of us. We are five counties on the Edwards, here, and we’ve got to allocate the water fairly to each of the
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competing interests. We have the farmers; we have the municipalities; we have the Springs and we have the downstream people who need it for their businesses, such as Victoria and its carpet-making factory (laughter). It’s a whole lot more than you wanted to know, I’m sure.
DT: No, I think its fascinating. Water politics in Texas are complicated and I’m really just starting to find out how complicated.
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FS: Well plus the fact that whoever controls the water will control Texas. So it’s vital that we get a handle on—on preserving what we’ve got.
DT: What do you think is going to happen with the question of who owns the groundwater. I mean, it seems like they’re making inroads into regulating it, licensing it, monitoring it…..
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FS: Yes, well, and I think everybody’s coming to the conclusion that something has to be done and that they can no longer be stubborn even though we still have Mr. Rimcas out West. But, everybody seems to understand that something has to be done. It was the very fight over this right of capture that removed two of the counties from the Edwards Underground Water District. When Medina and Uvalde counties said “uh-uh”. If that’s what you’re gonna’ do, count us out. And they just got out. So now I think everybody understands that they’ve got to enter the table, sit down, work out a deal and make it fair for everybody.
DT: Speaking of water and now surface water, I read that among your many hats you had served on the advisory board to the Trans-Texas…
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FS: Right.
DT: …program which I guess is more about surface water.
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FS: Yes.
DT: Can your tell about how you got on that position and what that’s meant.
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FS: Well, you know, I—I’ve been known to be associated with water so when they formed this Trans-Texas Advisory Board, they asked me if I would serve and I said I would; mostly to hear what they had to say. And—but they’re very much handicapped now because the legislation that was created in the last legislature prohibits inter-basin transfers. So, we have no idea how that’s gonna’ work. If we can’t inter-basin transfer, how do we get surface water? We can build a dam at Cibolo, which I think is probably in the works and far better than the one that they—was proposed at Applewhite, if we can
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build a dam at Cibolo, that’s within our water se—area. But how about getting water from Clampton’s Crossing or the lakes up above Ink—Ink Dam and so forth and so on. I’m not sure whether we’ll ever be able to get those inter-basin transfers. I think something probably will happen in the ‘99 legislature to rectify that.
DT: Were you involved with the earlier Texas water plans?
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FS: No.
DT: Well, I guess from the earlier water plans through today’s Trans-Texas Program, there’s always been this sort of tension between East Texas that has all the water, but very few of the people and industries, and Central Texas where water is short but people and money are big. And I am curious, you mentioned how fairness has been a stream going through all your work. How do you resolve those kind of differences in your mind?
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FS: Well, I think it can be done. It depends on the personalities. I was thinking about—we almost had a deal with the West during my tenure with the Edwards Underground Water District. But we had a personality who was young, impatient and rubbed—was not empathetic with the farmers. And I’m talking about Henry Cisneros, our mayor. And though we had a number of meetings that I thought were going to resolve in some real give and take between what they called the Gobbler, San Antonio, and the farmers. And
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Henry just didn’t give it enough time. He had too many other things on his mind. And so the whole thing broke down. So, what my point is, that it depends on the personality. If we can sort of dredge up someone who is patient, who is empathetic with the needs of others, who shows some interest in listening to what they have to say, I think we could—we would be able to work out a deal with East Texas to sell us, not to give us, but to sell us water where the water is needed. And I think it’s absolutely essential that the whole state get involved in this. And that’s probably what they had in mind with Trans-Texas. Of course, they have these divisions, you know. South, southwest, northeast, and so forth.
DT: Can we talk a little bit more about fairness? I thought it was interesting that at one point you worked for the State Department as a minority recruiter in the ‘60’s and I was—from that experience I was thinking of—you might have some interesting views about a whole flock of things that are going on now. And one is San Antonio and many towns are struggling with this environmental justice issue, you know, where people of color or—don’t have much money, feel that they’ve been unfairly targeted for all sorts of facilities that had got…
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FS: Without any question. We have very good examples right here.
DT: Well, what is going on here in San Antonio that is sort of a good example of those problems.
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FS: Well, let me see. I guess it’s the Southeast side, and I—I really don’t know a whole bunch about that. It’s—it’s been—but we have, gosh, what is the name of the big waste disposal company?
DT: BFI?
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FS: Yeah, BFI. BFI dumping and, of course, all the dumping is taking place on the Southeast side of San Antonio. And we don’t know how much of it is toxic. But the South has had a bad deal all the way along. The water treatment plants, the sewage treatment plants are in the South. The development is all taking—the—the expensive, good development is all taking place on the North. And we have now elected to our city council some very young, very articulate minority people. And I have a feeling that in the next few years we’re going to see a change in the demographics of this city. And
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that—that more attention is going to be paid to the East side, the South side and the West side. And that’ll be good for San Antonio because of—we’ve been very, very lucky. We had some wonderful people who kept the peace here even during the 60’s when there was rioting after Martin Luther King and rioting after Robert Kennedy’s death—assassination. We had ministers in this town that kept the peace here and we never had a riot of that nature here. And—but we’re bursting with antagonisms and I think it’ll be up to this city council to kind of dampen that antagonism and to see that there is a fair shake given to these other communities.
DT: I guess a related question is—looking at it from within the environmental community—many people look around at meetings of environmental groups and don’t see a brown face in the crowd….
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FS: Exactly.
DT: …and I am wondering if you think this environmental justice issue is going to become a separate problem and if separate groups or if it’ll get pulled into the environmental mainstream and help sort of make some of these environmental groups more diverse or what do you think will happen?
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FS: Well, it depends on—so much on our educational system. When I did recruiting, it was so obvious going to the University of Texas, there were no blacks to recruit. I had to go to Prairieview [A&M] to recruit blacks. And when I tried to recruit Mexican-Americans for overseas assignments with AID, I found all the Mexican-Americans at the University of Texas in one department. That was pharmacy. And that was very understandable for me because they could open a store and become a pharmacist and have complete control of what they were doing instead of working for somebody else, you see. Now, I feel like,
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with education and with a feeling that they are no longer an isolated group, but are accepted within the general community, that they’ll become interested in this things of conservation and preservation and will see the merits of it, and will therefore volunteer almost or be allowed to be recruited into environmental organizations where—where they can really feel comfortable about what they have to say.
DT: You mentioned that some of this recruiting was being done for AID.
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FS: Yes.
DT: Can you give me some sense about what you think about AID and other foreign aid efforts and how you can influence environmental work in other countries.
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FS: I’m not sure I can answer that question. But I can tell you some wonderful stories.
DT: Please.
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FS: Part of our training was education. And they gave us examples of how important it is to know what you’re doing. One example that I remember very clearly was that when, in Mexico, they were trying to get the Mexicans to screen and were putting money into this, screen their houses, they used videos…
[End of Tape 2]
[Beginning of Side 3]
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FS: …of it and will therefore volunteer almost or be allowed to be recruited into environmental organizations where—where they can really feel comfortable about what they have to say.
DT: You mentioned that some of this recruiting was being done for AID.
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FS: Yes.
DT: Can you give me some sense about what you think about AID and other foreign aid efforts and how you can influence environmental work in other countries?
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FS: I’m not sure I can answer that question. But I can tell you some wonderful stories.
DT: Please.
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FS: Part of our training was education. And they gave us examples of how important it is to know what you’re doing. One example that I remember very clearly was that when, in Mexico, they were trying to get the Mexicans to screen and were putting money into this—screen their houses, they used videos to demonstrate what they were talking about. And they were talking about flies. And they found absolutely nobody responding and they were wondering what in the world was wrong with what they were doing. And they asked and the people shrugged and said, “well, we don’t have flies that big”. They had blown up the flies. So, (laughing) I mean, that’s a perfect example of a wasted—
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complete waste of a idea, you know, in that area. One other thing that we also learned was that in the Far East they had distributed grain and had demonstrated how an acre would produce with their grain, more than their grain. In other words, AID’s grain would produce more within an acre than their own grain. And so they planted it and they did; they produced much more with AID’s grain. But they wouldn’t do it the next year. And they said, well why wouldn’t you do that? And they said because the residue, after they harvested the grain, could be used to thatch their roofs, but the AID grain had no residue.
DT: That’s very practical.
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FS: Very practical. Very practical. So you see, the homework has to be done before you go in to try to teach environment, you have to find out what it is that they actually think about the environment before you produce any program to interest them in it.
DT: You know, I’m curious about your interest as a woman in a lot of these public interest issues, whether it’s AID or the Aquifer Protection Association or the League or the Edwards Underground Water District. I see many women in public interest and in conservation in particular, and I’m wondering if you can sort of speculate about why it is that women have gotten tapped in that way?
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FS: Well, I think—I don’t know the answer to that but my guess is that a woman’s position in life is very different from a man’s. A woman is responsible for bringing up children so her—her whole orientation is much more flexible, I think, than a man’s orientation. I found this out when I was the first woman to serve on the jury—Grand Jury. Women were not allowed to serve on Grand Juries until 1957 (laughing). And then they passed a law saying we could serve. And it was so—it was so traumatic for the men on that Grand Jury because they couldn’t tell their dirty jokes, they couldn’t ask their sex questions. I mean, there was just so much that they couldn’t do and we, I mean, we were two, actually, women on that Grand Jury, we, as women, were so much able to get to the heart of the crime that was being told us because we had such a different orientation.
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And I think that applies to why women are much more interested in conservation, because they see the importance of it for their children, for their grandchildren and a man is more, I—I don’t know, I guess this is gonna’ sound rather sexist, but he’s much more interested in making money, in keeping his family in food and clothing and so forth and so on than in the subtleties that go into preserving life and ground and water and air and so forth, and I think I have to stop.
DT: We were talking just a moment ago about your service on the Grand Jury and I wanted to ask you a question about crimes that are now being seen in the environmental field and wondering if you think that that’s a productive way of treating environmental regulations to try and bring it into the realm of jail terms and very serious punishment?
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FS: Oh, I wish they’d do it. I particularly am interested in—with the proliferation of all the chemicals in our environment, of really taking out after chemical companies and also, you know, we truck coal into San Antonio by the carloads every single day from Montana, for our city public service and our air conditioning and our heating. And though I think Corpus Christi has more to do with our air pollution than we do, nevertheless we contribute to it with our coal-fired burners. And I think there again, bringing it into court creates an environment, shall we say, of where people become aware of what’s going on. And that, again, is education and that’s very important.
DT: Something else I wanted to touch on. I noticed that you served on the Board of Health in San Antonio—one of the first woman on that as well as on the Grand Jury and I was curious if you could point out some of the overlaps between the environmental concerns and public health problems that—that you’ve seen.
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FS: Well I’m not sure that environment, although I guess you can sort of squeeze it in, I served on the Board of Health because the League of Women Voters, when I was president, counted twenty-five thousand pit privies in San Antonio (chuckle).
DT: Now, can you explain a little bit about how that happened?
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FS: How what happened?
DT: The privy count and why…
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FS: Oh. Well we were number one in diarrhea deaths—infant diarrhea deaths and number two in tuberculosis deaths in the nation. And so the League—when I was president, decided we have to do something about this awful health problems.
DT: This was in the ‘40’s?
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FS: This is in the—yes, I was president in ’47. So this took place about ‘48 or ‘49. And one of the things that we did in order to find out about what was causing the infant diarrhea and the tuberculosis was to count the pit privies. So we counted twenty-five thousand pit privies in San Antonio on the West Side. We also saw that we lacked water mains. They were selling water off trucks on the West Side. And there were no screens on the windows. And I thought, well now, what we need is nurses to get out there and to educate these people as to their needs, plus the fact we need the city to do sewer plants and lay lines—sewer lines and water lines and so forth. And I remember going to see
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Mayor Callaghan, again with our hats and our gloves and a group of women. And we said, you know, Mayor Callaghan, what we need is a sanitary engineer. We didn’t have one in the city. And he looked at me and he said “Mrs. Sinkin, we don’t need a sanitary engineer. The man is super-fluous.” And I’ve had trouble saying superfluous ever since. So that was a perfect way of putting it, I might add. But that was the attitude, you see. So, that’s why I served on the Board of Health.
DT: Gosh. Well, it sounds like they had some real environmental problems then…
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FS: Big.
DT: …there were these waterborne diseases.
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FS: Right. There was—on the East Side there was a—a place Zip’s Alley. And there you had—this was a black area and all these houses were extremely tired. They were leaning left and right. And there were people hanging off the windows—out of the windows there. They were obviously on dope and in the middle of their courtyard was an open sewer. Children playing in it. I saw that.
DT: Well, I guess this sort of environmental problem you don’t see very often any more…
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FS: No.
DT: …not as dramatic.
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FS: No. I think the West Side had C.O.P.S. I don’t know if you are familiar with C.O.P.S. But C.O.P.S. did a wonderful job of getting the sewer lines laid and water lines laid to the areas that had been neglected, you know.
DT: What is C.O.P.S.?
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FS: C.O.P.S. is—okay—I’ve forgotten what they are, but they—they were organized at the same time that the Aquifer Protection Association was organized. Community Organized Public Service—Community Organized for Public Service, that’s what C.O.P.S. is. And they—their leader, Er—Ernie Cortez, got his training in Chicago. And he came down here and boy, he really whipped the West Side together through the churches, and organized C.O.P.S. And they went to the city council and made lots of
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noise; threatened, threatening is a very good tool I might add. And they got it done. Plus the fact that what they did was even more important. They trained Mexican-Americans how to speak out, how to threaten (laughing), how to get things done.
DT: This was in the mid-70’s, maybe?
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FS: Yes. Right. Exactly. Gee, it’s kinda’ fun to have lived so long.
DT: You’ve seen a lot.
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FS: Yeah, right (laughing).
DT: I was curious how a lot of these things get covered in the media. I notice that you were one of the first people to organize fund drives for Public TV and I wonder if through that involvement if you’ve sort of tracked how the media covers local news and environmental news in particular?
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FS: It’s a tough go. Environmental news doesn’t make news. And news has become much more geared to entertainment and to celebrity involvement, I guess. Unless it’s something that you want to hype, you don’t get much coverage. If we picketed a developer that would get coverage.
DT: But subtle things that are happening over many years…
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FS: No.
DT: …doesn’t get much coverage. Just a one or two more questions, if you don’t mind? They are more open-ended. In a sense, this is like a message in a bottle, you know, it’s gonna’ go to the archives at the University of Texas and who knows what people will think of it. I think they will value it, but I’m wondering what would be a lesson you think that they need to learn? Is there some sort of a message that you would want to put in that little bottle for somebody to open up later on? Particularly about conservation.
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FS: No, not particularly about conservation.
(misc.)
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Well, I guess the message would be that if you’re at all interested in what happens in the future, particularly in the new millennium, expose yourself to the environment and endeavor to learn tremendously about it and its effect upon the lives of you and your children, and grandchildren and the people around you. And, if you can, articulate it to other groups besides the group that you’re in, and try to get them to respond in the same fashion. Sort of spread the word, as it were.
DT: Well put.
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FS: Really?
DT: I have one last thing I want to ask you. Do you have a favorite spot that you like to go to because it’s special in some way to you?
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FS: Yes.
DT: An outdoor spot.
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FS: I do, actually. There is a spot behind Olmos Dam that I lived across the street from when my children were growing up—when our children were growing up. It’s off of Crescent Avenue. And it’s called the Nature Trail. And there were several things about it that were interesting. Number one; after a two-inch rain, you saw the bubbling up of springs that had probably been dry for at least ten years. And secondly, our boys would come back from school and would rush down to The Nature Trail to hunt for frogs. And we just had a menagerie of all kinds of little insects and animals in our backyard.
DT: That they would bring back, right?
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FS: Yes. Right. So the Nature Trail is very dear to my heart and I was horrified when it was closed because it was being used by homosexuals. But I think now it’s open again and I hope so because our—our children had a fabulous education in all kinds of things as a result of it. And I did too.
DT: Well, this has been a great education for me and I’m sure for many other people who get to see this. So thank you very much.
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FS: Well, you very welcome David. I hope I haven’t bored you.
DT: Not at all, not at all. Thank you very much.
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FS: Okay.
[End of reel 1013]
[End of interview with Fay Sinkin]

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Fay Sinkin (FS)
INTERVIEWERS: David Todd (DT)
DATE: August 15, 1997
LOCATION: San Antonio, Texas
TRANSCRIBERS: Judy Holloway
REEL: 1013

Please see the full Real Media video record,
of our interview with Mrs. Sinkin.
Note: boldfaced numbers refer to time codes for 60-minute audio tape recordings of the interview. “Misc.” refers to various off-camera conversation or background noise, unrelated to the interview.
DT: Well, let’s begin. This is David Todd and I’m in San Antonio, Texas with Fay Sinkin, who’s been nice enough to put aside some time today on August 15, 1997 in the middle of a hot summer day to talk about conservation and her many contributions to it here in Texas, and in the Central Texas and San Antonio area. And I just wanted to use this chance to thank you.
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FS: You’re welcome.
DT: And to ask a few questions and I hope they may lead to some memories.
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FS: Okay.
DT: One of the places I wanted to start with was your childhood and the early days and perhaps if you could tell me a little bit about your parents and some of your childhood friends who might have encouraged your interests in conservation.
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FS: Well, I was born in New York City. My dad worked for William Randolph Hearst and he was the protégé of the man who wrote editorials for Mr. Hearst. And I suppose my first introduction to well, flora and fauna as we might say was through Herbert Kaufmann up in Tarrytown, New York. He owned ten and a half acres and had the same Japanese gardener as the Rockefellers. And that intrigued me because Japanese gardens was not within my purview as a young child. And I just loved wandering through the gardens and having them explained to me. So, subliminally, I would say, that was my introduction to saving the land and how it could be used, and so forth and so on.
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The—I think the next thing that happened, actually, was going off to Randolph-Macon in Lynchburg, Virginia and becoming aware that I was a Jew. And there were only four Jewish girls at the University or the college and no sororities. And so there was a great deal of isolation because of my religion. And at the very same time it was Lynchburg, Virginia. And on a horseback riding trip while at school, a truck turned over carrying Negro children and nobody would stop to right the truck. And it seemed to me incredible that anything like that could happen anywhere in the United States. I also became aware that when I walked on the sidewalk, a Negro could—had to walk in the gutter. This was in 1934 and I remember one incident in which I reached out to rescue this Negro and saw
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this utter fright in his eyes that I was about to touch him. So that also opened my eyes to the fact that I wasn’t alone in this area of prejudice and vowed at the very same time that I was going to do something about it. As I mentioned earlier, I think the thread through everything that I’ve done is—is really a matter of fairness. It wasn’t fair to be treated the
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way I was, having an English teacher tell me that I had to do very well in her course in order to pass because she didn’t like Jews and (laughter) right, and—and seeing nobody stopping to help children no matter what their color. Incredible. So, that’s my early days.
DT: What was there—was there any, uh, person—did you get to talk to the—the Japanese gardener, for example? Did he tell you about what was in this garden or did—did—did your father’s friend explain what was growing there?
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FS: No. There was a little difficulty about this because, first of all, the Japanese gardener didn’t speak any English. (Chuckles). And, secondly, Mr. Kaufmann turned ninety today, and so we would go up at 6:00 at night, have our main meal at midnight. That’s when he wrote and leave, go to bed of course, and then leave in the morning. But it was in the morning, after breakfast that his secretary, Mason, would take me through the gardens and that’s how I happened to walk through the gardens and become interested in them.
DT: Did it seem like a very exotic place or someplace quite familiar or…
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FS: Oh, no. It was very exotic. Very, very exotic. Very different. He also had—and I—I was told by him, that he was very proud of this. That he had made a tennis court that could be iced over in the wintertime for skating and they had used of materials that were conducive to icing. So, it was a fascinating place. He also had mined a whole mine in order to get pink marble so that he could display his sword collection. Incredible. And his son had a room devoted to himself in which he had toy soldiers and trains. A whole room.
DT: Gosh, it was full of exotica.
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FS: Yes, full of it. He also and I—I’m sure this has nothing with conservation, but it certainly had an effect upon me, had imported Italian masons to the house, had them live in the basement because he had some very exquisite furniture that he wanted duplicated. And once it was duplicated, his great joy was to ask you which one was the original. (Laughter). So, that part of my life was very exciting.
DT: Well, what—what, uh, I guess that your going to Randolph-Macon was a—a mixed experience. It sounds like it was a very hostile place in some ways, but did you have mentors there who encouraged your interest in conservation?
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FS: No. Not necessarily. I spent only a year there obviously. And would not have spent the year if my father hadn’t said, you know, a Bloom never gives up. You stay. So I stayed. But I was very happy to get out of there. No that wasn’t a—a happy experience though. It did encourage me to do well, but that English teacher.
DT: Sure.
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And also I had a math teacher who really interested me in math. So that was very helpful and helped me along the way.
DT: What brought you down to Texas, then?
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FS: Well, I had a young man who was born in San Antonio who wooed me in New York. I had never heard of Texas. It was like China. I guess I’d heard of it, it was one of the States, but you know, like China, a country. And he—my father actually was the one who promoted him. He said, you’re costing this young man a very heal—small fortune because he was calling me and coming to New York and so forth. And he said, if you’re interested in him, I’ll stake you a trip to Texas. And I said, oh, I love to travel. I’ll go. So I went and, you know, couldn’t believe this place. It was just so flat and barren and miserable looking and hot, but he was very persuasive and so we’ve been married fifty-five years now.
DT: So, but your first impression of Tex—Texas was not very promising.
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FS: No, it wasn’t very promising and I did a lot of driving when the children were little to Grand Canyon and places like that, with them. And, of course, going out West Texas was unbelievable. And then, you know, all of a sudden one day I began to like it. I thought that barrenness was something that had a lot of merit. And the tumble weed going across the road was very interesting and the isolation and the quiet and the few animals that I saw all were—began to intrigue me because I grew up in the canyons of New York. I lived on the seventeenth floor, for instance, and the only greenery that I ever saw was in Central Park. I never saw a cow till I went to camp when I was seven years old. (Laughter). So, all of this—Texas was just, you know, an eye opener, complete and became very much a part of me. I began to like it, even though my father said you must love that guy an awful lot to live in this cow pasture.
DT: Well, that was one of the things I wanted to explore with you is landscape here in San Antonio and in Texas. And I understood that you helped introduce the whole idea of Xeriscape to San Antonio and the idea of trying to promote something that was in keeping with the arid climate down here. And I was wondering if you could explain how that came to be and why you thought it was appropriate.
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FS: Well, I was serving on the Edwards Underground Water District at the time and we were very much involved in trying to save the Aquifer. It’s our sole source of water in San Antonio and we were beset by very wealthy developers who—who were encroaching upon the recharge zone. And so we were looking—or I was looking for any way in which we could help maintain the quality and quantity of the water in the Aquifer. And the—I was sent a clipping by a friend. And the clipping outlined what Denver was doing in the way of xeriscaping. They apparently were the first and it was the water board in Denver that developed this idea. They were the first in the nation to use the idea of
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indigenous plants around—for planting—for landscaping. And it wasn’t easy, but I convinced the board to try promoting xeriscaping. And we worked with, and I forget his name, he’s at A&M right now, but we worked with the botanical garden. And they actually planted a garden with all xeriscape plants. And then it caught hold and we did publicize it. we did allocate some money to public—to public it—I mean—to promoting it and it took off.
DT: How did you change peoples’ taste? I mean, it seems like it’s much easier to appreciate the lushness and the greenness of New York State than it is to see more thorny and dry and sorta’ barren landscape we’ve got around here.
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FS: Well it was primarily financial. You know, it’s cheaper to xeriscape. Initially, it’s more expensive but eventually it’s cheaper because you use less water and you don’t pay the high fees for it. And I would say that—that in the promotion, for instance, the Botanical Gardens would hold seminars and people would come. We talked to landscape architects about it. We talked to the people who sell the plants and asked them to promote plants that were indigenous and to show people how they could use them and it—it’s a process of education and—and we were able to do that.
DT: When did this start?
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FS: Well, I was elected in ‘83 and I guess this took place in ‘84 and ‘85. So, it’s about twelve to fourteen years old.
DT: Maybe we can stretch from landscape to habitat questions. I know that you were active in—in helping acquire this wonderful preserve, the four thousand acre Government Canyon tract in Northwest Bexar County. And I was wondering if you could explain how and why that preserve got acquired.
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FS: Well, just about that time, again, while serving on the Edwards and a little bit later than that we—we had the RTC advertising land that was undeveloped, that they had taken back, you know, the banks went bankrupt and they took back the land and so forth. And they were selling this land for practically nothing. And so a group of us, at that
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time I was president of the Aquifer Protection Association, a group of us went to the RTC, got a listing of the land that was available. I went to the board of the Edwards and thought that I really had them on my side, but it turned out that the director, the man who was in charge of the Edwards, I just don’t know how it came about, but at any rate, he reneged on the whole deal. So we never were able to use monies that were—had been set aside in the Edwards for acquisition of land. In the meantime, we found out that Government Canyon was not an RTC property, but a HUD property. And, uh, HUD—the executive director of HUD was very amenable to helping us to get that land. And so,
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after I left the Edwards, Daniele Milam and Mary Kennedy actually went ahead and got HUD to release the land to the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation—and the Trust for Public Lands and the wildlife people and the Edwards and—they funded the four thousand acres.
DT: Do you think that that sort of partnership is going to be more common in the future?
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FS: Oh, absolutely. It will be. And I understand, as a matter of fact, that the Nature Conservancy is now looking at trying to do exactly that. Buy up whatever land is left on the recharge zone in Bexar County and put it aside and save it from development. It’s a little late.
DT: Can—can you back up a little bit and explain what it is about the Edwards Aquifer and the recharge zone that so concerns you and other people?
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FS: (Laughing) How long do you have? We have about—the recharge zone extends about a hundred and seventy-five miles, all the way from Uvalde up to Buda. And it’s not very deep. It’s five to six miles deep. It’s bisected by 1604 in San Antonio. And the recharge has been about oh, six hundred thousand acre-feet every year. It varies, of course, depending upon our rain, but it’s San Antonio’s sole source of water. The water moves from West to East and we have about ninety pumping stations in San Antonio and
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the incredible situation is that if we pollute this water, we may have to build ninety treatment plants because you don’t get your water—I mean you get your water from these individual wells. They are not connected. The Aquifer is not connected. It’s segmented so that the water comes—the pumping stations come from different parts of the recharge zone. And therefore, it’s—it’s absolutely essential that we do two things. That we allow as much recharge as we possibly can and that we worry to death about the quality of the
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water, particularly from the development with all the pesticides and insecticides, the gasolines and the oils that leak from cars. So, that was the effort that we tried to do was simply to get as much recharge as we could and to prevent pollution. We have a big fight right now with the—with TENRAC which is the Texas Natural Resource Conservation
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Committee because what they are doing is cementing up sinkholes and caves which limits the amount of water that goes into the Aquifer. And they’re doing that on the basis of the fact that they’re preventing pollution. (Chuckle). But there are other ways to prevent pollution and we need all the recharge we can get. Otherwise, we’re all going to be paying a fortune for outside water.
DT: What are some of the other ways of trying to purify the water?
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FS: Well you can build berms which keep the water aw—away from the sinkholes. You can build holding ponds and treat the holding pond and then allow the water to go into—into the sinkholes. But preservation of the sinkholes and caves is almost an absolute.
DT: And I guess some of these sinkholes and caves have their own roles as habitat.
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FS: Well sure they do. They have bats.
DT: Cave creatures.
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FS: Yeah, we have that big bat cave up on the recharge zone.
DT: Uh-huh. Um…
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FS: I think they’ve said there are about two thousand sinkholes and caves in the four thousand acres. I can’t—isn’t that something? Government Canyon.
DT: Wow, just honeycombed.
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FS: Yes, just honeycombed. Exactly.
DT: Well, lets talk a little bit more about, uh, the acquisition of Government Canyon. I know that over the last four or five years, I guess, there has been a lot of concern about erosion of private property rights and the threat of people coming in and buying up land for public interest purposes, whether it’s for recreation or for habitat protection. And I was curious, after being involved with the Government Canyon issue and HUD and the RTC, do you have any views about how that plays out?
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FS: Well, I think if we—what you have to do is think generations ahead. And if you’re thinking in terms of preserving land for—and habitat for generations ahead, you have to think about how this can be done effectively. And I think the most effective way is to keep it wild and natural. And I think everybody is coming to that conclusion. In other words, campers and campsites actually pollute the land. And if you’re talking about the recharge zone, you don’t want that to happen. Because that water, obviously, will have its runoff effect into the Aquifer. So I’m all for leaving the land as untouched as is
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possible. Now, there are lots of people who want hiking trails and I see nothing wrong with that. Or even bike trails. But—and it probably is a good idea because they can bring their children and they can look at all the plant life that’s there and all the animals that are there and so forth. It’s a good learning experience for them. But civilization really should be kept away from them. Did that answer your question?
DT: It does. And I guess there are two issues at play here and one would be the tension between those who like public lands for what it does for habitat and wildlife can depend on that and other people see it as well, like Central Park when you grew up. That there was this wonderful outlet for people to enjoy themselves and that you need open space for people to enjoy and understand nature.
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FS: Well, that’s fine.
DT: Sometimes there’s a conflict.
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FS: If there isn’t a specific reason, now, there wasn’t any reason not to do what they did in Central Park. There is a specific reason not to do what they did in Central Park in Government Canyon and that is the quality of the water. I mean, if you’re trying to protect the water, then you have to utilize whatever means you have at hand in order to do that.
DT: Oh, there’s something else I wanted to ask you about Government Canyon. Again, through looking down the generations of—many tracts, I guess throughout Central Texas and I guess across the country, have changed really dramatically from when people first settled here and they brought in cows and they brought in new species of plants and so what we look at as wildlife, sometimes, and as wilderness, may actually be exotic animals and exotic plants. And so what do you do about—I don’t know how pristine Government Canyon is, but I imagine it has some privet out there and, you know, some nandina that’s wandered out there. What do you do about those things? Do you intervene? Or do you say “Hands Off! This is a pristine spot”.
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FS: I—I can’t answer that. That’s not within my purview, depends on much more knowledgeable people than I am.
DT: You’re very modest.
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FS: No, I’m (chuckle) not.
DT: Well I guess more generally then for a long time there’s been that kind of schism between people like Gifford Pinchot, who…
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FS: Yes, I read that.
DT: …and John Muir and, you know, the folks who want to preserve things and those who want to conserve them but develop some facilities for people to enjoy them, which camp do you fall in?
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FS: Well, probably the preserve things as they are more than the people aspect of it but again, it depends on what the use of—I mean, what the reason you’re preserving it for. It depends on that. The—the only—I don’t know about Pinchow but I do know about Muir because of Muir Woods. And that’s a perfectly gorgeous place, you know, with the redwoods and so forth and so on in California. But again that’s not something I’m knowledgeable about (chuckle).
DT: Well I guess the reason the Government Canyon is so special and that you—you’d argue for trying to preserve it in it’s original state it—it has this wonderful contribution to groundwater.
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FS: Exactly.
DT: I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the Aquifer Protection Association, which I think you helped organize to make sure that Aquifer is there through means like Government Canyon, but other ways as well.
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FS: Well, we were primarily organized because of politics (chuckle). We knew—it was sort of interesting and that came about because of the League of Women Voters. The League was disturbed that the University of Texas was going up on the recharge zone and they wanted to do something about it. And so they asked me if I would see if I could organize some kind of organization to protect the land up there.
DT: What was the University doing? Was this their new campus?
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FS: Yes. The University of Texas—it was a—actually it was a John Connelly land deal. And he allowed his friends, John Peece and others to buy up the land and he presented the University to them to build up there. (Laughter). So the League was disturbed and asked me if I would organize somebody to help protect this property up there. And I called about twenty organizations from the Junior League all the way to the Council of Jewish Women and asked them if they’d send a representative to hear about the recharge zone. And I was absolutely amazed. Twenty people came and so we formed the Aquifer Protection Association [APA] right at that moment.
DT: And these were delegates?
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FS: They were representatives of these organizations.
DT: So, is the APA an association of associations or is it something…?
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FS: It—it was called an association and it was—it operated as that during its life. It no longer exists.
DT: I see.
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FS: And, the first thing we tackled because of the—the University was going full blast ahead, was a zoning case. We thought we could make—we could sort of alert people to the fact that they didn’t get their water from the tap, they got it from an Aquifer. And so we took a zoning case, a 281 and 1604, which had been zoned by our city council for the largest mall in the Southwest and we decided to go the petition route and hold an election. And so we got twenty-five thousand signatures and the city had to call an
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election, and we won the election with a seventy-eight percent plurality which was fantastic. With a very high incidence of voting and we lost because the—it wasn’t the Supreme Court, it was the—another court, a lower court, said that we derived our zoning ability—the city of San Antonio did through the constit…
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FS: And he allowed his friends, John Peece and others to buy up the land and he presented the University to them to build up there. So the League was disturbed and asked me if I would organize somebody to help protect this property up there and I called about twenty organizations from the Junior League all the way to the Council of Jewish Women and asked them if they’d send a representative to hear about the recharge zone. And I was absolutely amazed. Twenty people came and so we formed the Aquifer Protection Association right at that moment
DT: And these were delegates?
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FS: They were representatives of these organizations.
DT: So is the APA a association of associations or is it something…
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FS: It was—it was called an association and it was. It operated as that during its life. It no longer exists.
DT: I see.
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FS: And, the first thing we tackled because of the—the University was going full blast ahead, was a zoning case. We thought we could make—we could sort of alert people to the fact that they didn’t get their water from the tap. They got it from an Aquifer. And, so we took a zoning case, a 281 in 1604, which had been zoned by our city council for the largest mall in the Southwest and we decided to go the petition route and hold an election. And so we got twenty-five thousand signatures and the city had to call an
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election and we won the election with a seventy-eight percent plurality, which was fantastic with a very high incidence of voting. And we lost because the—it wasn’t the Supreme Court, it was another court—a lower court said, that we derived our zoning ability, the City of San Antonio did, through the Constitution of the State of Texas. And the Constitution did not allow initiative and referendum and we were a referendum. So they reversed a lower court that had given us the right to reverse this zoning. But, the mall was never built and because so many people voted in the election, we now had a nice constituency to—who knew that they got their water from the Aquifer and who were
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willing to follow us in trying to preserve the recharge zone. Now, that’s only half the story because the other half’s not so positive. We had lots of money against us by developers who had a lot of clout and pretty much had the city councils in their pockets. Now that sounds like I’m saying there was bribery, I don’t think so, but nevertheless, these developers were—dominated every agency in the government and were able to pretty much get any kind of zoning that they wished up on the recharge zone. So, it’s still a battle, but I think we’ve lost most of it.
DT: Let’s talk a little bit about the League. It seems like they have been a springboard to some of your interests and to the formation of groups like the Aquifer Protection Association and I know you were a former president of the League…
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FS: Right.
DT: And I was curious what sort of interests and experiences you brought to the League and that you enjoyed working with the League.
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FS: Well, I was elected to the League fifty years ago and elected president fifty years ago when I was quite young. And having led a very sheltered kind of life, I was—I just knew that there—there were many things that I wasn’t—not aware of that I would quickly, probably, hopefully learn about. And we had some marvelous experiences. Wanna’ hear one of them?
DT: Please, yes
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FS: Okay. We were anxious to develop a juvenile court in San Antonio. And so we donned out hats and our gloves and we went up to the state legislature and asked to see our state legislators. And they told us they were in room, I don’t know, 506, at the Driscoll Hotel. And so we walked over to 506 with our hats and our gloves and we knocked on the door and the door was opened by a hardly dressed young lady. And we could see our legislators with their ties all open and so forth, and the door was slammed. So we just were horrified and left (laughing). And we were all in the same boat. Very naïve and very unsophisticated and though we knew what was going on, we didn’t do
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anything about it. But the League progressed and it was a wonderful organization and everybody, I think, had the same experience I did. We learned to discipline our thinking. We learned to speak publicly. We learned to push the right buttons in the right places to get things done and it was just, for me, a very fine learning experience. And I think most of the people who worked with me, in—at that time, those years ago, had the same result. Now, today, it’s a totally different organization. You have women who are not free to belong in the numbers that we had because most of them need to work. And so volunteerism has paid the penalty for these working women. And then the League never
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took a—it took a stand on issues but not on candidates. And for today’s woman, that’s not quite enough. She needs more action and needs to promote candidates and so forth and so on. So, it is—it’s been changing for them and I think they’re feeling the pinch. Though they are still very well regarded in—in San Antonio.
DT: Well, what is the—the League seems to represent, to me at least, the best tradition of public participation…
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FS: It does.
DT: …in government and I am wondering how that plays out in environmental protection of both the role public life have and then the role government would have in view of the League. Do they talk much about that?
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FS: Not that I am aware of. And I am no longer a member of it so I—I can’t tell you. But I’ve—I have not been aware in their bulletins of conservation is a big issue for them. At the time that we worked on our petition drive, they were very much involved because the president, at that time, of the League, was very much involved. So it really depends on the leadership as to whether the League would be involved in conservation or preservation or whatever.
DT: Something else that the League seems to premise a lot of their work on is that—it’s a well-informed citizenry that will vote the right way, vote the rascals out and the good people in and let—I notice in the papers that a lot of folks seem to worry that votes nowadays don’t count as much as dollars do. And that, you know, campaign funding is a real problem. and I was curious if the League or if you personally had any views about that.
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FS: Well, I think you stated it very well. I think it’s the money that counts. And candidates know they answer the League’s questionnaire and the newspapers continue to print their candidate’s questionnaires. I think everybody pretty well knows that it’s the money that counts on who’s going to get elected. And I don’t know what role—the—the League’s role is that they really do their homework. If they speak publicly, and they taught us that, if you speak publicly you cannot get before a mic until you know what you’re talking about. And I think that role still plays a major part in the League’s presentation to its members. Do your homework. Know what you’re saying when you say it. Get your facts straight.
DT: One way I guess to sort of short circuit the election process that you were involved in was this petition drive for the Aquifer Protection Association. And it seems like there were advantages that you were able to put issues before the public that maybe the elected officials weren’t really sympathetic to. And I’m curious if, on balance, if you think it’s a good process or has problems that don’t make it really very productive or what do you think?
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FS: Well, I’m not sure. I’m going to find out though and I’ll tell you why. I have a thing about TENRAC and I’ve been making inquiries about when they can be sunsetted. And I found out they can be sunsetted at 2001. And I’m not sure I’m going to be here that long. So what I’ve decided to do is to ask our legislators and that’s Jeff—Jeff Wentworth, Senator Wentworth and Robert Puente if they would help draft legislation to get the Edwards Aquifer out of the hands of TENRAC. Only ten percent of the recharge zone is in the City of San Antonio. And though we have some wonderful rules written by the city, TENRAC refuses to adopt them for the rest of the recharge zone. So if we can
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remove TENRAC’s authority from the recharge zone, we might have a chance to save whatever is left of the recharge zone. TENRAC is an amalgamation of water agencies and that was good to consolidate all of the water agencies into one organization, but they have so many things to deal with and so little money to deal with them, that they can neglect something like monitoring the recharge zone to see that water pollution abatement plans actually are taking place the way they’ve been submitted to them.
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And so, if I can’t get that legislation written, I was thinking that it might be fun to try a petition (chuckle). And so we will see if a petition actually could work again like it did in the 1970’s. That’s a very long explanation of what…
DT: Well, that’s interesting though. I mean, what happens when you have an agency that has so many mandates and only so many people and you know, a legislature that’s always looking at their budget very tightly and closely. And then you have this city which is sort of hostage to its water, to its Aquifer which is controlled by this other agency…
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FS: Exactly. Exactly. And that’s very, very bad. Really bad. You have no control—have no control. Plus the fact—you’ve got and I’m not sure that this will go over very big but I think it’s a fact. You’ve got an agency—you’ve got a company like Freeport McNamara that wanted to develop in Austin, Barton Springs. And the city turned them down. So they went to the state legislature and got what they wanted there. And what they got was an amalgamation of the Austin Aquifer with the San Antonio Aquifer. So whatever rules in Austin rules down here too. And that’s part of what we want to do is separate that out. Let Austin do what they want with Freeport McNamara and let us alone down here.
DT: I see, so you think the issues in Austin are very different from in San Antonio.
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FS: Yes. And the control is different.
DT: Can you explain that, how it works. Why San Antonio has a different sort of problem?
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FS: Well, we don’t have Freeport McMoran wanting to develop, like they do in Austin.
DT: I see. But the—does development have pretty much the same impact on the South Edwards as it does on the North Edwards?
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FS: Yes, sure it does. I mean, development is what’s either going to pollute our water or, I mean, it’ll do two things. It’ll diminish the amount of recharge and it also will pollute.
DT: Oh, I think I follow you. So, in a sense, San Antonio is being punished for Freeport McMoran’s fight with Austin.
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FS: Exactly.
DT: Ahhhh, I get it.
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FS: I’m sorry. I didn’t explain….
DT: No, no. I hadn’t thought of that but you’re right. I mean, you’re being pulled into somebody else’s battle.
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FS: So we want to get ours separated out.
DT: Let’s talk a little bit more about Aquifer battles.
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FS: Endless.
DT: Um, I gosh, I know it’s been an ongoing fight over ownership of the groundwater that underlies all of this, Edwards Aquifer in particular.
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FS: Right, we have the right of capture.
DT: Can you explain a little bit about, you know, the—that whole issue of ownership and how that’s been played out?
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FS: Well, that’s typically Texas. You know, very independent and anybody who owns the land has the right of capture under that land and it particularly applies to water. So you can sink a well, and I guess I can demonstrate it best of all by saying that Corpus Christi could come up to our recharge zone, sink a well and pipe it all the way to Corpus Christi because they have the right of capture if they own the land. So we have very little
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control. And we now have something that’s called 1477 which the state legislature passed, some of it good, some of it bad, but it is limiting pumping on the Aquifer. And you have to license your wells now, which was never done before, under 1477, and the Edwards Aquifer Authority, which is a newly created agency, which took the place of the Edwards Underground Water District, has—is now in the process of licensing wells and of limiting pumping so that we can maintain the Aquifer for all of us. We are five counties on the Edwards, here, and we’ve got to allocate the water fairly to each of the
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competing interests. We have the farmers; we have the municipalities; we have the Springs and we have the downstream people who need it for their businesses, such as Victoria and its carpet-making factory (laughter). It’s a whole lot more than you wanted to know, I’m sure.
DT: No, I think its fascinating. Water politics in Texas are complicated and I’m really just starting to find out how complicated.
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FS: Well plus the fact that whoever controls the water will control Texas. So it’s vital that we get a handle on—on preserving what we’ve got.
DT: What do you think is going to happen with the question of who owns the groundwater. I mean, it seems like they’re making inroads into regulating it, licensing it, monitoring it…..
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FS: Yes, well, and I think everybody’s coming to the conclusion that something has to be done and that they can no longer be stubborn even though we still have Mr. Rimcas out West. But, everybody seems to understand that something has to be done. It was the very fight over this right of capture that removed two of the counties from the Edwards Underground Water District. When Medina and Uvalde counties said “uh-uh”. If that’s what you’re gonna’ do, count us out. And they just got out. So now I think everybody understands that they’ve got to enter the table, sit down, work out a deal and make it fair for everybody.
DT: Speaking of water and now surface water, I read that among your many hats you had served on the advisory board to the Trans-Texas…
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FS: Right.
DT: …program which I guess is more about surface water.
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FS: Yes.
DT: Can your tell about how you got on that position and what that’s meant.
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FS: Well, you know, I—I’ve been known to be associated with water so when they formed this Trans-Texas Advisory Board, they asked me if I would serve and I said I would; mostly to hear what they had to say. And—but they’re very much handicapped now because the legislation that was created in the last legislature prohibits inter-basin transfers. So, we have no idea how that’s gonna’ work. If we can’t inter-basin transfer, how do we get surface water? We can build a dam at Cibolo, which I think is probably in the works and far better than the one that they—was proposed at Applewhite, if we can
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build a dam at Cibolo, that’s within our water se—area. But how about getting water from Clampton’s Crossing or the lakes up above Ink—Ink Dam and so forth and so on. I’m not sure whether we’ll ever be able to get those inter-basin transfers. I think something probably will happen in the ‘99 legislature to rectify that.
DT: Were you involved with the earlier Texas water plans?
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FS: No.
DT: Well, I guess from the earlier water plans through today’s Trans-Texas Program, there’s always been this sort of tension between East Texas that has all the water, but very few of the people and industries, and Central Texas where water is short but people and money are big. And I am curious, you mentioned how fairness has been a stream going through all your work. How do you resolve those kind of differences in your mind?
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FS: Well, I think it can be done. It depends on the personalities. I was thinking about—we almost had a deal with the West during my tenure with the Edwards Underground Water District. But we had a personality who was young, impatient and rubbed—was not empathetic with the farmers. And I’m talking about Henry Cisneros, our mayor. And though we had a number of meetings that I thought were going to resolve in some real give and take between what they called the Gobbler, San Antonio, and the farmers. And
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Henry just didn’t give it enough time. He had too many other things on his mind. And so the whole thing broke down. So, what my point is, that it depends on the personality. If we can sort of dredge up someone who is patient, who is empathetic with the needs of others, who shows some interest in listening to what they have to say, I think we could—we would be able to work out a deal with East Texas to sell us, not to give us, but to sell us water where the water is needed. And I think it’s absolutely essential that the whole state get involved in this. And that’s probably what they had in mind with Trans-Texas. Of course, they have these divisions, you know. South, southwest, northeast, and so forth.
DT: Can we talk a little bit more about fairness? I thought it was interesting that at one point you worked for the State Department as a minority recruiter in the ‘60’s and I was—from that experience I was thinking of—you might have some interesting views about a whole flock of things that are going on now. And one is San Antonio and many towns are struggling with this environmental justice issue, you know, where people of color or—don’t have much money, feel that they’ve been unfairly targeted for all sorts of facilities that had got…
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FS: Without any question. We have very good examples right here.
DT: Well, what is going on here in San Antonio that is sort of a good example of those problems.
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FS: Well, let me see. I guess it’s the Southeast side, and I—I really don’t know a whole bunch about that. It’s—it’s been—but we have, gosh, what is the name of the big waste disposal company?
DT: BFI?
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FS: Yeah, BFI. BFI dumping and, of course, all the dumping is taking place on the Southeast side of San Antonio. And we don’t know how much of it is toxic. But the South has had a bad deal all the way along. The water treatment plants, the sewage treatment plants are in the South. The development is all taking—the—the expensive, good development is all taking place on the North. And we have now elected to our city council some very young, very articulate minority people. And I have a feeling that in the next few years we’re going to see a change in the demographics of this city. And
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that—that more attention is going to be paid to the East side, the South side and the West side. And that’ll be good for San Antonio because of—we’ve been very, very lucky. We had some wonderful people who kept the peace here even during the 60’s when there was rioting after Martin Luther King and rioting after Robert Kennedy’s death—assassination. We had ministers in this town that kept the peace here and we never had a riot of that nature here. And—but we’re bursting with antagonisms and I think it’ll be up to this city council to kind of dampen that antagonism and to see that there is a fair shake given to these other communities.
DT: I guess a related question is—looking at it from within the environmental community—many people look around at meetings of environmental groups and don’t see a brown face in the crowd….
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FS: Exactly.
DT: …and I am wondering if you think this environmental justice issue is going to become a separate problem and if separate groups or if it’ll get pulled into the environmental mainstream and help sort of make some of these environmental groups more diverse or what do you think will happen?
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FS: Well, it depends on—so much on our educational system. When I did recruiting, it was so obvious going to the University of Texas, there were no blacks to recruit. I had to go to Prairieview [A&M] to recruit blacks. And when I tried to recruit Mexican-Americans for overseas assignments with AID, I found all the Mexican-Americans at the University of Texas in one department. That was pharmacy. And that was very understandable for me because they could open a store and become a pharmacist and have complete control of what they were doing instead of working for somebody else, you see. Now, I feel like,
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with education and with a feeling that they are no longer an isolated group, but are accepted within the general community, that they’ll become interested in this things of conservation and preservation and will see the merits of it, and will therefore volunteer almost or be allowed to be recruited into environmental organizations where—where they can really feel comfortable about what they have to say.
DT: You mentioned that some of this recruiting was being done for AID.
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FS: Yes.
DT: Can you give me some sense about what you think about AID and other foreign aid efforts and how you can influence environmental work in other countries.
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FS: I’m not sure I can answer that question. But I can tell you some wonderful stories.
DT: Please.
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FS: Part of our training was education. And they gave us examples of how important it is to know what you’re doing. One example that I remember very clearly was that when, in Mexico, they were trying to get the Mexicans to screen and were putting money into this, screen their houses, they used videos…
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FS: …of it and will therefore volunteer almost or be allowed to be recruited into environmental organizations where—where they can really feel comfortable about what they have to say.
DT: You mentioned that some of this recruiting was being done for AID.
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FS: Yes.
DT: Can you give me some sense about what you think about AID and other foreign aid efforts and how you can influence environmental work in other countries?
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FS: I’m not sure I can answer that question. But I can tell you some wonderful stories.
DT: Please.
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FS: Part of our training was education. And they gave us examples of how important it is to know what you’re doing. One example that I remember very clearly was that when, in Mexico, they were trying to get the Mexicans to screen and were putting money into this—screen their houses, they used videos to demonstrate what they were talking about. And they were talking about flies. And they found absolutely nobody responding and they were wondering what in the world was wrong with what they were doing. And they asked and the people shrugged and said, “well, we don’t have flies that big”. They had blown up the flies. So, (laughing) I mean, that’s a perfect example of a wasted—
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complete waste of a idea, you know, in that area. One other thing that we also learned was that in the Far East they had distributed grain and had demonstrated how an acre would produce with their grain, more than their grain. In other words, AID’s grain would produce more within an acre than their own grain. And so they planted it and they did; they produced much more with AID’s grain. But they wouldn’t do it the next year. And they said, well why wouldn’t you do that? And they said because the residue, after they harvested the grain, could be used to thatch their roofs, but the AID grain had no residue.
DT: That’s very practical.
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FS: Very practical. Very practical. So you see, the homework has to be done before you go in to try to teach environment, you have to find out what it is that they actually think about the environment before you produce any program to interest them in it.
DT: You know, I’m curious about your interest as a woman in a lot of these public interest issues, whether it’s AID or the Aquifer Protection Association or the League or the Edwards Underground Water District. I see many women in public interest and in conservation in particular, and I’m wondering if you can sort of speculate about why it is that women have gotten tapped in that way?
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FS: Well, I think—I don’t know the answer to that but my guess is that a woman’s position in life is very different from a man’s. A woman is responsible for bringing up children so her—her whole orientation is much more flexible, I think, than a man’s orientation. I found this out when I was the first woman to serve on the jury—Grand Jury. Women were not allowed to serve on Grand Juries until 1957 (laughing). And then they passed a law saying we could serve. And it was so—it was so traumatic for the men on that Grand Jury because they couldn’t tell their dirty jokes, they couldn’t ask their sex questions. I mean, there was just so much that they couldn’t do and we, I mean, we were two, actually, women on that Grand Jury, we, as women, were so much able to get to the heart of the crime that was being told us because we had such a different orientation.
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And I think that applies to why women are much more interested in conservation, because they see the importance of it for their children, for their grandchildren and a man is more, I—I don’t know, I guess this is gonna’ sound rather sexist, but he’s much more interested in making money, in keeping his family in food and clothing and so forth and so on than in the subtleties that go into preserving life and ground and water and air and so forth, and I think I have to stop.
DT: We were talking just a moment ago about your service on the Grand Jury and I wanted to ask you a question about crimes that are now being seen in the environmental field and wondering if you think that that’s a productive way of treating environmental regulations to try and bring it into the realm of jail terms and very serious punishment?
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FS: Oh, I wish they’d do it. I particularly am interested in—with the proliferation of all the chemicals in our environment, of really taking out after chemical companies and also, you know, we truck coal into San Antonio by the carloads every single day from Montana, for our city public service and our air conditioning and our heating. And though I think Corpus Christi has more to do with our air pollution than we do, nevertheless we contribute to it with our coal-fired burners. And I think there again, bringing it into court creates an environment, shall we say, of where people become aware of what’s going on. And that, again, is education and that’s very important.
DT: Something else I wanted to touch on. I noticed that you served on the Board of Health in San Antonio—one of the first woman on that as well as on the Grand Jury and I was curious if you could point out some of the overlaps between the environmental concerns and public health problems that—that you’ve seen.
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FS: Well I’m not sure that environment, although I guess you can sort of squeeze it in, I served on the Board of Health because the League of Women Voters, when I was president, counted twenty-five thousand pit privies in San Antonio (chuckle).
DT: Now, can you explain a little bit about how that happened?
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FS: How what happened?
DT: The privy count and why…
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FS: Oh. Well we were number one in diarrhea deaths—infant diarrhea deaths and number two in tuberculosis deaths in the nation. And so the League—when I was president, decided we have to do something about this awful health problems.
DT: This was in the ‘40’s?
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FS: This is in the—yes, I was president in ’47. So this took place about ‘48 or ‘49. And one of the things that we did in order to find out about what was causing the infant diarrhea and the tuberculosis was to count the pit privies. So we counted twenty-five thousand pit privies in San Antonio on the West Side. We also saw that we lacked water mains. They were selling water off trucks on the West Side. And there were no screens on the windows. And I thought, well now, what we need is nurses to get out there and to educate these people as to their needs, plus the fact we need the city to do sewer plants and lay lines—sewer lines and water lines and so forth. And I remember going to see
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Mayor Callaghan, again with our hats and our gloves and a group of women. And we said, you know, Mayor Callaghan, what we need is a sanitary engineer. We didn’t have one in the city. And he looked at me and he said “Mrs. Sinkin, we don’t need a sanitary engineer. The man is super-fluous.” And I’ve had trouble saying superfluous ever since. So that was a perfect way of putting it, I might add. But that was the attitude, you see. So, that’s why I served on the Board of Health.
DT: Gosh. Well, it sounds like they had some real environmental problems then…
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FS: Big.
DT: …there were these waterborne diseases.
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FS: Right. There was—on the East Side there was a—a place Zip’s Alley. And there you had—this was a black area and all these houses were extremely tired. They were leaning left and right. And there were people hanging off the windows—out of the windows there. They were obviously on dope and in the middle of their courtyard was an open sewer. Children playing in it. I saw that.
DT: Well, I guess this sort of environmental problem you don’t see very often any more…
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FS: No.
DT: …not as dramatic.
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FS: No. I think the West Side had C.O.P.S. I don’t know if you are familiar with C.O.P.S. But C.O.P.S. did a wonderful job of getting the sewer lines laid and water lines laid to the areas that had been neglected, you know.
DT: What is C.O.P.S.?
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FS: C.O.P.S. is—okay—I’ve forgotten what they are, but they—they were organized at the same time that the Aquifer Protection Association was organized. Community Organized Public Service—Community Organized for Public Service, that’s what C.O.P.S. is. And they—their leader, Er—Ernie Cortez, got his training in Chicago. And he came down here and boy, he really whipped the West Side together through the churches, and organized C.O.P.S. And they went to the city council and made lots of
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noise; threatened, threatening is a very good tool I might add. And they got it done. Plus the fact that what they did was even more important. They trained Mexican-Americans how to speak out, how to threaten (laughing), how to get things done.
DT: This was in the mid-70’s, maybe?
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FS: Yes. Right. Exactly. Gee, it’s kinda’ fun to have lived so long.
DT: You’ve seen a lot.
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FS: Yeah, right (laughing).
DT: I was curious how a lot of these things get covered in the media. I notice that you were one of the first people to organize fund drives for Public TV and I wonder if through that involvement if you’ve sort of tracked how the media covers local news and environmental news in particular?
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FS: It’s a tough go. Environmental news doesn’t make news. And news has become much more geared to entertainment and to celebrity involvement, I guess. Unless it’s something that you want to hype, you don’t get much coverage. If we picketed a developer that would get coverage.
DT: But subtle things that are happening over many years…
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FS: No.
DT: …doesn’t get much coverage. Just a one or two more questions, if you don’t mind? They are more open-ended. In a sense, this is like a message in a bottle, you know, it’s gonna’ go to the archives at the University of Texas and who knows what people will think of it. I think they will value it, but I’m wondering what would be a lesson you think that they need to learn? Is there some sort of a message that you would want to put in that little bottle for somebody to open up later on? Particularly about conservation.
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FS: No, not particularly about conservation.
(misc.)
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Well, I guess the message would be that if you’re at all interested in what happens in the future, particularly in the new millennium, expose yourself to the environment and endeavor to learn tremendously about it and its effect upon the lives of you and your children, and grandchildren and the people around you. And, if you can, articulate it to other groups besides the group that you’re in, and try to get them to respond in the same fashion. Sort of spread the word, as it were.
DT: Well put.
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FS: Really?
DT: I have one last thing I want to ask you. Do you have a favorite spot that you like to go to because it’s special in some way to you?
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FS: Yes.
DT: An outdoor spot.
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FS: I do, actually. There is a spot behind Olmos Dam that I lived across the street from when my children were growing up—when our children were growing up. It’s off of Crescent Avenue. And it’s called the Nature Trail. And there were several things about it that were interesting. Number one; after a two-inch rain, you saw the bubbling up of springs that had probably been dry for at least ten years. And secondly, our boys would come back from school and would rush down to The Nature Trail to hunt for frogs. And we just had a menagerie of all kinds of little insects and animals in our backyard.
DT: That they would bring back, right?
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FS: Yes. Right. So the Nature Trail is very dear to my heart and I was horrified when it was closed because it was being used by homosexuals. But I think now it’s open again and I hope so because our—our children had a fabulous education in all kinds of things as a result of it. And I did too.
DT: Well, this has been a great education for me and I’m sure for many other people who get to see this. So thank you very much.
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FS: Well, you very welcome David. I hope I haven’t bored you.
DT: Not at all, not at all. Thank you very much.
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FS: Okay.
[End of reel 1013]
[End of interview with Fay Sinkin]