Interview with Glen Laub Gubler

Glen Laub Gubler was interviewed on July 6, 2017 in St. George, Washington County, Utah by Dr. Douglas D. Alder. He related his life experiences. Loya (Lyman) Gubler, his wife, and Heber Jones also participated.

DA:We are interviewing Glen and Loya Gubler. Glen, [did] you grow up [and go] to school here?

GG:I was born in Ivins [Washington County, Utah]. My dad and mother were one of the thirteen couples [who] were called to settle the little town of Ivins. They were called by Antone Ivins who was one of the Twelve Apostles at the time.

DA:Yes. I think that was about 1906 or 1907.

GG:[It was] 1924.

DA:Oh, that is when it was? There had been some [settlements] before that. You were born ─.

GG:In 1931.

DA:Did you grow up and go to school here?

GG:I went to [the] first grade in Santa Clara [Washington County, Utah]. They taught the first six grades in Santa Clara. When you were in the seventh grade, you had to come to St. George.

HJ:Before you get carried away on all your schooling, tell a little bit about your parents and your grandparents.

GG:My [parents] were Martin J. [Jacob] and Jennie LuEmma (Laub) Gubler. Both 00:02:00were immigrants from Switzerland [living] in Santa Clara and raised a family of nine children, six boys and three girls. Wonderful parents! Good parents.

DA:Loya, were you born here?

LG:No.

DA:Where?

LG:I was born in Boulder [Garfield County] Utah.

DA:A big urban place!

LG:Yes, a huge place!

DA:Were you born in 1934?

LG:[No,] 1935.

DA:Did you stay there and go to school?

LG:I [stayed] there until I was sixteen [years old]. The first eight grades in Boulder and when you [started] the ninth grade ─ before I [started] the eighth grade, [everyone] had to go to Escalante [Wayne County, Utah] or somewhere else 00:03:00to live with relatives while they went to high school. When I finished the eighth grade they had a school bus that took us to Escalante. So I rode the school bus. I was the first one picked up in the morning and the last one delivered at night. It was a long day.

DA:When did you professionally [become] involved with water?

GG:When I came home from [military] service, the Korean [Conflict], there wasn't any work here in St. George for quite awhile. I did odd jobs and a few jobs with the [St. George] Water Department. Bill Baker was the water superintendent and hired me to put in some of the water connections. I finally [secured] a job with 00:04:00Rocky Mountain [Produce Company] and drove a truck for ten years before they had an opening and asked me if I was interested. Bill Baker was going to be retiring and someone was needed to apprentice under him to take his job. It was quite a [decision] because a truck driver, in those days, made big money in comparison to what they [make] now-a-days. They were some of the best paid people in the [area]. We were making around $10,000.00 a year at the time.

DA:Wow!

GG:The average person around St. George was lucky to make $5,000.00. I was tired of driving trucks so I decided to make the leap. I went from $1,000.00 a month 00:05:00to $400.00 when I went to work for the city. Have you ever tried dropping sixty percent of your wages? That was how I started working for the city of St. George. It was a great experience. They had a utility commission of three [very] good businessmen [who] ran the utilities like a business. They were fabulous to work with. [They were] Shirl [Harry] Pitchforth, [Wesley] "Wes" Nelson and Brown Hail. Good men to work with and we got along great. I was glad to go to work for 00:06:00them. Where do you want me to start?

DA:About what year would this be?

GG:It would have been in 1966.

DA:[Did] you stay with the city water department until you retired?

GG:Yes, twenty-seven years.

DA:During that twenty-seven years, what were some of the major [projects] that the water department achieved?

HJ:When you took over, start with where we were getting our water from the Cottonwood [Spring on Pine Valley Mountain] and go to [the] Gunlock Wells. Follow those on through.

GG:I kind of wanted to outline the fact that when I first went to work for the city of St. George, they had basically two water sources. The one from Pine 00:07:00Valley Mountain had around twenty-one springs up on south side of the mountain. [In] a good year we could bring about seven-million gallons of water to St. George in the early spring. The main run-off was usually [gone] by the middle of June and we [would] be down to about four-million gallons a day. Towards the end [of the summer], we would get down to about three-million gallons a day. Sometimes even lower.

[At] that point, they had bought some springs over on Millcreek from a [group] of the farmers over there in Washington [City, Washington County, Utah]. We 00:08:00owned sixty percent of those springs over there. We could produce about two- million gallons a day from the Millcreek springs. The only problem was, every time we would turn on those pumps and take that water, the farmers would file a lawsuit against us. We spent most of our time in lawsuits because every time we turned [those] wells on they would take us to court. So we knew we had to do something different.

Bill Baker, who was the water superintendent when I first went to work there, had drilled three wells up around Gunlock. [He] discovered that [there was] good 00:09:00water around Gunlock. [The] first thing we did was to try to put together a project [so] we could bring that water down from Gunlock. These wells had been drilled, but nothing had been done with them, except we knew they had water. About that time Terracor started developing Bloomington [in Washington County, Utah].

DA:This [would have been in] 1970, 1971 or 1972?

GG:No, a little earlier than that. It probably would have been about 1968. That was when Terracor came in [to the area]. We, Rudger McArthur and myself, went to 00:10:00the [city utility] commission and we came up with a contract to furnish water for this new [area] of Bloomington that was going to be developed. We were able to sell the two-million gallons [of water] a day at $1.00 a thousand- [gallons]. They contracted [to do this] and that made it feasible for us to put a project together to go up to Gunlock and bring those wells in. This project turned out 00:11:00to be a little over a one-million dollar project. That was to put fourteen miles of eighteen-inch line in to go to Gunlock plus the power lines because there wasn't any power up there. We had to take the power with us. [We had to] re-drill the wells, test them and equip them. That project was just a little over one- million dollars. It doesn't sound like much now, but that was a lot of money in those days. We didn't know [how] in the heck we would ever pay [for] it. By Bloomington coming in and contracting to take two-million gallons a day at $1.00 a thousand-[gallons] it made it feasible for us to be able to do that. 00:12:00We went up and drilled, equipped those wells and put the water line in.

DA:The water came from Gunlock?

GG:Yes, at that time. It was a new water source that we had. We had approximately four-million gallons a day that we could bring from Gunlock at that point. That four-million gallons a day plus what we had off of [Pine Valley] mountain, we were sitting pretty good for a little while ─ just a little while.

DA:What were you getting off the mountain?

GG:That ranged from up to seven-million gallons [of water] a day down to one or two-million, depending upon the runoff.

DA:Good.

GG:We thought we were in pretty good shape, but it was only a matter of about three or four years into it that we could see ─ Bloomington took off and started building and taking the water [under contract]. We built a one and three-quarter million [gallon water] tank up on the point of the Black Hill. That was part of the Gunlock project. Up until that time, all we had was a two-million gallon tank at the head of Main Street [in downtown St. George] and a one-million gallon tank on top of the hill at the head of 500 East [Street]. 00:14:00Three-million gallons of storage is all we had at that point. When we put the Gunlock [project] in, we [added] another two-million [gallons of water]. We almost doubled what we had.

We were only four or five years in to it and we had to go someplace else for water. [We] checked with [Spencer] "Spence" Reber and [Charles] "Charley" Goode and two or three others and determined that we figured that there was good water in Snow Canyon [Washington County, Utah]. One day Rudger and I [and another fellow] blazed a trail down over the side of the hill up there. The [National] Park Service wouldn't let us go up through [there] with an outfit to do [witch 00:15:00the area]. They didn't want us up in there. So we went down through with an old weapons carrier off into that west canyon and I [water] witched the whole area to see what we thought [was available]. I witched what I figured was three [very] good well spots.

DA:Was this after Orval Hafen's [involvement]?

GG:Yes.

DA:Okay.

GG:My recollection is that Orval was probably dead by then. We had a good friend in the state parks department, Marvin Jensen. Do any of you remember "Marv" 00:16:00Jensen? He was Gene Fullmer's [the boxer] manager. We knew him. I took him in the weapon's carrier and took him up through [the Snow Canyon area]. When he saw that [area] he said, "This is the prettiest part of the canyon. We are going to open this sucker up to the public." They never have [opened it]. He was just [very] impressed. He was over the state parks at the time and he determined that we were going to be able to get those wells. One of the big reasons was Snow Canyon didn't have very much of a water source [inaudible]. They had some springs up in Diamond Valley and they were always short of water. In that project we agreed to furnish some of the water and put the pumps in place to 00:17:00take care of the water [needed] for Snow Canyon Park. By doing that, they gave us the go ahead to build a road and drill the wells. This project ended up [with] us building two three-million gallon tanks. They are buried in the floor just above the sand dunes [in Snow Canyon Park].

Originally, we had started out with three wells up there that would deliver 00:18:00three- million gallons a day. Since that time, we have added another couple of wells so they can deliver about five or six-million gallons a day. I might add, that since then we have added three or four more wells in the Gunlock area. We could, at that time, deliver twenty-one second feet [of water] which is about seven-million gallons a day. This was added on later. This gave us a little breathing time and this was a three-million dollar project. We built six-million gallons of storage and about twelve miles of sixteen-inch line coming into St. George.

DA:Sixteen-inch lines?

GG:Yes.

DA:Wow!

GG:We added an eighteen [inch line] coming from Gunlock and it wasn't big enough. It should have been a twenty-four [inch line]. But hindsight is a lot better than front sight.

HJ:So you actually have two lines? One out of Snow Canyon and one out of Gunlock.

GG:Yes. So now we are feeding from two different directions. That gave us a little breathing room. I think it was along about 1975 [that] we started running short [of water] again. [In] 1977 we got to the point where we never did [issue] mandatory [restrictions] to cut back on water for anybody, but we asked everybody to cut back. That was the first time we ever asked them to cut back and limit their water [usage] and to conserve what they could. So now we have to 00:20:00go get some more water. We went up north of St. George and drilled a well. We had some property up at Tawhat, called the Hernia Dam [near Black Knolls on the Red Hill. Also known as the Black Rock Dam.]

DA:Yes.

GG:[It was] up along the road to the Blake and Gubler [ranch]. Off to the side, we owned about eighty-acres down in there. We went down, witched it and determined that we could get good water there. The only problem was, we figured 00:21:00if we got water there it would affect the Watercress Spring [at the Dixie Red Hills Golf Course] because it was straight up stream from the Watercress Spring. We had to make sure that we were not going to affect the Watercress Spring. We had to go down and put weirs in [the] Watercress Spring to make sure we could measure the water flow. We did that. First, we drilled the wells. I hit a well there that would produce thirty-five-hundred gallons a minute. That is by far the biggest well we had ever hit.

Let me back up just a little. We drilled the first hole into a [inaudible]. We had missed. We didn't survey it and we [were] twelve feet over on to the state's ground. This is a true story. We drilled the well on the states property [and] 00:22:00the state wouldn't let us have the water unless we gave them half of it. I don't know what they were going to do with their half, but that was the stipulation. If we pumped that well the state owned half of [the water]. So we decided the heck with [the state and] we moved back on our property and drilled another [well]. That was the one [that] came in with thirty-five-hundred gallons a minute. We hadn't tested the other one yet.

We tested that well for thirty days, pumping it at thirty-five-hundred gallons a minute, to make sure we weren't affecting the Watercress Spring. Actually, the 00:23:00Spring came up while we were pumping it, if you can believe it. Instead of going down, the Spring came up, not very much but it [did] increase a little. We knew we were not going to affect it. Now all we had to do was equip it. About that time ─.

DA:What year are we talking about?

GG:I think this was 1977. The [United States] Government had a deal where they were giving pipe away from some big project they had down [in] [California]. The pipe was stacked down at Oxnard, California. They gave us that pipe if we would 00:24:00go get it. We didn't have any money to buy it, so we decided we could get that pipe for nothing by going after it. I leased a truck and took you with me. Do you remember?

LG:No. [Laughter]

GG:I did! I leased a truck from Ence Brothers and drove to Oxnard [where] they loaded the pipe. [I] brought it up here and it cost us $300.00 for the lease on the truck. That is what it cost for that load of pipe that would pipe the water from that well and put it in the Pine Valley Mountain line. We only had to put in about 1,400 feet of line and we were able to deliver the water into the Pine Valley Mountain line. Along about that same time, we decided we needed a tank up 00:25:00there so that we could take care of the influx of water. We built two one-and-half-million gallon tanks at what we called T-Bone Mesa [north of St. George]. We took all the water that came off the mountain and out of the wells through those tanks so that we had the tanks full all the time. We took the overflow out and back to St. George. Those tanks took care of the high altitude.

I missed [this]. In the meantime, I don't remember exactly when it was, but I 00:26:00should say something about it. [The city] decided to build an industrial park on the east end of town. Up until that time, basically, there wasn't anything in that area. They went in and built a big industrial park, [but] they didn't have any water that would feed it. It was built high enough that the water wouldn't give them the pressure they needed for fire protection. So we had to build a tank up on top of the hill there. We built a two-million gallon tank up above Rocky Mountain [Produce] Company. That was about the only [company] there at the time.

DA:There was another one, the tent [manufacturing] company [Kellwood Manufacturing Company].

GG:No, [they] came [in] after this.

DA:Oh, did they?

GG:They didn't build that until [later]. Anyway, we put a two-million gallon 00:27:00tank there to take care of the industrial park. So [add] that in there.

I was trying to think how the sequence went. That gave us three sources of water besides Pine Valley Mountain. It wasn't long until we were starting to run low [on water] again. Rudger and I determined that the best place to go now was over above Millcreek, above Washington [City]. I started witching wells across there, 00:28:00all across top of what is now the Turtle Habitat. Every time we punched hole, we got hot water. The water would come out at about 85° temperature. We drilled three or four [wells] in that valley until we crossed Millcreek. When we once [were] on the east side of Millcreek the water was good. We drilled three wells up there. None of them were big wells. Each well gave us about a million gallons apiece, [but] we had another three-million gallons. This required another five miles of water line from the mountain line, where those two one-and-half- million gallon tanks were, over to those wells was a five mile run. We put in a 00:29:00twelve-inch line across there. Now we spread ourselves out to five miles on the east side of town to fourteen or fifteen miles on the west side, besides the mountain lines. We spread ourselves out that far.

The town was growing so fast. When I went to work for the city [of St. George] the town [population] was about 6,000. It doubled in size about every five years. So we were having to scramble that fast to get water. The next thing was 00:30:00[that] we were going to build the Warner Valley Project [near Sand Hollow State Park]. Do you remember that, Heber?

HJ:[I] sure do.

GG:We picked a site for the dam and were going to build a twenty-thousand acre foot dam in Warner Valley and a power plant that would take care of St. George. The unique part of that was, Las Vegas [Nevada] [power department] was going to pay for the whole [project] and all we were going to do was take stand-by power until we grew into it. As we grew into it, it was going to be turned over to us and it would cost us, basically, nothing. We [were] shot down on that by the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], we were too close to Zion [National Park] 00:31:00Canyon. We determined that we were not going to get it and about that time the [Washington County Water Conservancy] District decided to build the Quail Creek Reservoir.

The district [were] determined they were going to build Quail Creek. Rudger, I and the commission tried to get them to build it down in Warner Valley because we figured it was a lot better place to build a dam. But they determined they were going to build it at Quail Creek. They figured it would be easier to get 00:32:00the water to Quail Creek, plus they could catch the natural flow off of Quail Creek to feed the dam. So they went with the Quail Creek Project. In my memory, the Quail Creek Project was around twenty-five-million dollars.

DA:This would have been about 1984?

GG:Yes, about that [time]. We were against them building it there. We wanted it built in Warner Valley, because the water would have always stayed [very] good, plus the boating would have been [good]. [There were] nice sand beaches. Warner Valley would have been a lot better recreation area and the water would have 00:33:00stayed better because it didn't have the gypsum formation that is in Quail Creek. So we were a little bit against the Quail Creek Project, but it [was completed] anyway. When it was determined they were going to build it, we decided we had better build our treatment plant underneath it. We put together a commission and the powers-that-be determined we were going to build a treatment plant there. We went to Phoenix [Arizona] and two or three other places and looked at different treatment plants to determine what kind we wanted.

We contracted to build the treatment plant project for twenty-five-million 00:34:00dollars. About nine-million dollars of that was [for a] water line and the rest was [for the] treatment plant. We built a thirty-six-inch line from the treatment plant to [St. George]. At that time, we figured it would carry around thirty or forty- million gallons [of water] a day.

HJ:Did the city [of St. George] finance that [project]?

GG:Yes, the city financed it. Not the pond.

HJ:All you were doing is contracting with the district for the water and you 00:35:00transferred it to the city?

GG:We were buying water from the district out of the pond ─

HJ:Yes.

GG:─ but we were treating it and bringing it to St. George. [As] you all remember the dam failed [in 1988]

HJ:Yes.

LG:Did it fail before or after you built the treatment plant?

GG:The treatment plant was built [before it failed].

LG:Okay.

DA:The dam didn't fail, but the dike did.

GG:Yes, the dike failed. We had a contract for fifty years [for] ten-thousand acre feet of water. The district was obliged to sell us [that amount of water] every year for fifty years. [When] the dike broke we couldn't get any water out 00:36:00of the reservoir, but luckily I was able to convince them that they should put a split system in [and] they did. One pipe line came around underneath, directly out of the [Virgin] River. It came from up just below Virgin [Washington County, Utah] so it was clear water where they had the diversion [dam]. The pipe came 00:37:00down through some generating stations and right at the base of the dam it split. Half of it [the water] went around and up to the treatment plant and the other half went into the pond. Of course, we had the [ability] to take whatever [water] we wanted.

When the dam washed out we were able to still keep the treatment plant [operating] because we had the by-pass line going around it. [This] was able to keep us in water. As bad as it [was], I ended up having to go to Hurricane [Washington County, Utah] to re-equip a well just the other side of where Walmart is now. I drilled a well there and produced twelve-hundred gallons [of water] a minute and took it to Hurricane's line. We tapped Hurricane's line that they had put in up to Ash Creek [east side of Pine Valley] so we could take the water because we couldn't produce enough off of the treatment plant. That 00:38:00twelve-hundred gallons a minute that we got out of that well and what we got [from] that by-pass was able to keep us in water through the year.

DA:You haven't said anything about Central or Ivins dams [in Washington County, Utah].

GG:The Gunlock Reservoir didn't have anything to do with the culinary [water] system, except that we built it figuring that it would recharge our wells that were south of it. If you remember, a Dixie Project came in here and were going to build a big dam south of Virgin and back the water up there. That was going 00:39:00to [provide] all the water for this area. They core drilled all of that and determined it wouldn't hold the water. In the meantime, they had [prepared] the plans for the Gunlock Project. What we did was have Jay Bingham take those plans that were put together for the Dixie Project, revamp them a little bit to meet what we wanted and we built the dam on the Gunlock Reservoir. It was a million-dollar project. The Dixie Project had it pegged at ten-million 00:40:00[dollars]. By us lowering the dam ten feet, not having to buy all the ground that would have been [required] and all the rest of the costs, we lowered the price from ten-million to one-million [dollars]. All Ivins had was a high water right [so] we put their high water right into the Gunlock Reservoir in exchange for the Ivins Reservoir [and] we could use it for whatever we wanted, secondary irrigation or whatever.

DA:What about Central?

GG:Central?

DA:Isn't there a little dam up at Central?

GG:We don't have any water at Central. [Inaudible] I have some other statistics 00:41:00that I would like to [mention]. Paul Gillette and Brice Montgomery were the state water board engineers. It was interesting because Brice Montgomery was the head geologist and when I would witch a well, he would just go crazy. He thought this had to be the stupidest [idea] ever. Paul Gillette was a little different. He followed me around and he tried [the witching] stick and he would watch me. First thing you know, I kind of sold him on it.

Just a little story here: Paul Gillette was over a [group of fellows] up in Salt Lake [City, Salt Lake County, Utah] and they hired me to come up. I witched all the west desert for [them]. They had me water witch all their wells. I witched all the water wells that are out in the west desert. [Laughter]

I do have some statistics that I want to [tell you about]. I mentioned this to you the other day, Brother Alder. When I took over the city [water department in 1966] we had fifty fire hydrants in St. George. When I left [in 1993] we had 00:43:001,300. In that same period of time, we had put seventeen production wells down. We had water wells fourteen miles to the west, eight miles to the north west, five miles north of St. George, five miles east of St. George plus a treatment plant at Quail Creek which was fourteen miles away. We had a far-flung water system that spanned many miles.

HJ:During all of this, what was your relationship to the [Washington County 00:44:00Water Conservancy] District with Ron Thompson and those people?

GG:Ron Thompson and the district had been created, but they really hadn't done much up to that time. They really didn't own any water. [The] city had bought all of the water on the St. George bench, everything that became available. We bought every bit of water that became available [in] the Washington Fields. By annexing Bloomington we had all the [their] water from Washington Fields. We had two wells down in Bloomington. These were irrigation [water] wells. We bought 00:45:00all the water on the Santa Clara [River], everything that hadn't been sold off for developments. St. George owned all of that water. After I retired, I think the city of St. George gave the whole thing to the district.

HJ:Does the [water] district run it now?

GG:As far as I know, the district owns it now.

HJ:So, actually, your job is obsolete?

GG:Basically, what I was doing is obsolete. They don't have anybody doing [what I did]. All they do now is the maintenance in town.

DA:We have about ten more minutes. Tell what you would do, if you could, in the next ten years.

GG:I think it is too late to do it now. If I could have done it when I wanted to, we would have gone to the Beaver Dam Wash, where the DI [Desert Inn] Ranch bought. We spent in the neighborhood of two-hundred-thousand dollars out there checking all the wells. The Beaver Dam had not been apportioned yet. At that time, everything in the whole state had been appropriated. The Beaver Dam had never been appropriated. The state engineer told Rudger and me that if we get a 00:47:00geologist, go out on the Beaver Dam and do a geology [study that] whatever water was there, they would give us eighty percent of it.

We went out and ran a survey. [There] were two different geologists, "Spence" Reber and Dr. [Charles] Goode, both of them came up with almost exactly the same 00:48:00amount of available water to us, a continuous flow of one-hundred-twenty-second feet of water. That would have amounted to more than what we are going to get off of the [Colorado River]. We did all that work and then the state engineer went back on us and told us he wouldn't let us have it.

HJ:So how does it stand now?

GG:I don't know whether they ever appropriated any more water. Now the only problem is Mesquite [Nevada] has drilled [a number of] wells. All of them that are there now were not there when we [surveyed] [the Beaver Dam Wash].

HJ:True.

GG:Now if you do it and it affected those wells, they would shut you off.

DA:This chart shows that we [St. George and Washington County] are going to grow like wild in population.

GG:Yes.

DA:And your solution is to dig under Pine Valley Mountain?

GG:"Spence" Reber did the geology work on what is called the Iron Springs Formation, just north of Diamond Valley. He claims that there was a great amount of water underneath [that] area. I don't remember the [exact] amount. He figured that we could probably bring ten or fifteen-million gallons a day out of there, 00:50:00if we drilled the whole [area] and they let us have it [the water]. The biggest problem is, I don't really blame Ron Thompson, I blame the state engineer, because he wanted us to go over to the Colorado [River] and bring [that] water in [here]. They have let this [the Beaver Dam] go now, and I [doubt] if you could ever salvage it now because of the Mesquite wells.

It has been an interesting time. I will say that I worked for some of the best men in the world. As far as I was concerned Bruce Stucki, Brown Hail and Shirl Pitchforth [were] wonderful men.

HJ:How do they get water up to the Ledges now?

GG:That is kind of a story, too! [Laughter] I don't know whether you want to get into it.

HJ:Go for it!

GG:Years ago they had me go up and witch five or six wells in the Winchester Hill area. They got two or three pretty good wells, but they are all [very] deep wells, 800 feet to the water and they are sandy wells. They tear up pumps pretty bad. They have to change the pumps at least once a year. There isn't much they can do to change. They [used] big 600 horsepower motors to lift the water, [but] 00:52:00they made so much noise that all the neighbors complained. So they took those off and put a 600 horsepower submergible [pump] 800 feet down. Can you imagine the weight of that? Put a twelve-inch line down 800 feet with a 600 horsepower motor on the end of it? [It requires] a fifty-ton crane to even lift it.

HJ:Who is doing this?

GG:The city was dumb enough that they annexed it, so they had to do it.

DA:So that is how Winchester [Hills was] annexed.

GG:Yes.

HJ:Are they pumping water for the [Ledges] Golf Course up there, too?

GG:Yes. [Laughter] They are giving it to them. It is costing the city more money than you can [imagine]. Originally, they were going to pump the water from the 00:53:00sewer plant well. That would be just as expensive. They would have to raise the darn thing a thousand feet to get [the water] up there. [Laughter] I don't like to get into it [because] as far as I was concerned, it was a bad deal.

DA:Does your job exist anymore?

GG:They have somebody [who] is called the water superintendent, but he doesn't do any of the [work] that I used to do.

DA:You [received] all of your training on horseback?

GG:What?

DA:You [received] all of your training [outside of] school?

GG:Yes, that is true. I [received] it all ─

LG:On the job.

GG:─ on the job training. We drilled lots of wells. [Laughter]

DA:And they never paid you for being a PhD?

GG:[Laughter] No. I think back about it. To be certified to take care of a town 00:54:00this size, you have to have Class-4 Certification. In the water industry that certification is equivalent of at least a bachelor's degree.

DA:I want to know where you learned calculus.

GG:I never learned calculus.

LG:From H. Val Hafen, Sr.

GG:H. Val Hafen, yes.

DA:[Laughter]

GG:I will tell you one thing, at one time when it came to figuring water, they 00:55:00could throw numbers at me and I could throw them back faster than you give them out. But I can't do it [now]. What I did do, do you know what the national debt is?

DA:Big!

GG:Twenty-trillion [dollars], right? If you take Lake Mead [Nevada], Lake Powell [Arizona and] the Salt Lake, at capacity they hold the same amount of gallons as our national debt. [Laughter]

DA:That is simple! Just drain all of those, the debt will be gone and so will 00:56:00the crazy place in the desert!

GG:[Laughter] That is a fact! I figured it out on the acre footage. All three of those [lakes] hold twenty-nine-million acre feet [of water].

LG:Tell how much money was in the bank when you left the city water department.

GG:Yes, that could be interesting. When I left the city of St. George the only debt we had was we still owed payments on the Quail Creek Treatment Plant. We had five-million dollars in the bank and we had given the district five-million dollars to rebuild the [Quail Creek] Dam. Something that nobody even knows about 00:57:00now, is the fact that we paid for the water when we built that dam. Before we paid for it, Bruce Stucki made them give us ten-million gallons in perpetuity for [rebuilding the dam].

DA:I want to ask you [about] a little story. The Quail Creek Dam broke late at night.

GG:About midnight.

DA:Right. By 7:00 the next morning, Ron Thompson and the mayor had talked to the governor. The governor announced that Quail Creek Dam would be rebuilt.

GG:It wouldn't have been rebuilt unless we paid for it. [Laughter] It would have 00:58:00surely been rebuilt, but where they got the money was from the St. George Water Department. [They] paid for the rebuild. You probably knew that, didn't you?

HJ:No, I didn't.

GG:Well, we did. [Laughter]

LG:Glen didn't tell you that when they built that dam, he told them that it wouldn't hold.

GG:Yes, I wrote them [the Washington County Water Conservancy District] a letter. I told them: you are building it in a gypsum formation and the dam will never hold [and] you will lose the dam if you build it. And they did! [Laughter]

LG:They wrote a letter back to you.

GG:Yes, they wrote back: your letter is untimely and unwanted.

DA:[Laughter[

GG:I wish I had kept the two letters. [Laughter] But I didn't. Rudger did the same thing and they, basically, wrote back to him the same [words].

DA:What was Rudger's job? What was your job?

GG:[Rudger] was a utility manager and I was the water superintendent.

LG:[Rudger] did the book work in the office, wrote all the letters and kept track of all the [details].

GG:Robert Canfield was the power superintendent.

DA:And you were?

GG:The water superintendent.

DA:We are going to type this up, it won't take long ─.

GG:We forgot one thing. With all of this going on, we determined, at that time, that this little Dixie College used more water than both Santa Clara and Ivins. 01:00:00I sold water to you [folks at the college], Ivins and Santa Clara. Dixie College used more water than both towns put together.

DA:That is because we had so many flushes! [Laughter]

GG:Remember, I came to you and tried to get you to let me build a pond right down here [at the college]. You decided that we couldn't do that because something [else] was going to be built there. So we went over behind [Dixie] High School and built a desilting pond. We brought the water in from the Virgin River and put it in the desilting pond and pumped it on top of the hill to take care of all of [the college's need for water], irrigation for the parks and the [city] cemetery.

DA:[Inaudible] somebody, probably you, came to me and said, "President, you have a whole bunch of water underneath this campus. I want to propose a trade [with] you. You give us that water and we will provide the water for the campus." So all of those little potential wells [were] put into the city water system. The city water system took over the water system for [the college].

GG:You remember it, don't you?

DA:Yes. Was it you?

GG:It was me. [Laughter]

DA:[Laughter]

GG:You and me! [Laughter]

DA:Now, the story. We didn't solve the president house?

GG:What?

DA:The house where the president [of Dixie College] was living had water coming up in the basement.

GG:In the basement?

DA:They had a little [bucket] that captured the water. Then [the city] decided 01:02:00to re-apply the oil on that [street]. They tore the road up and had all the [storm drain covers] off and a huge rain came. The rain came down the street and went into the [storm drains] and [into] our house.

GG:Went up our street, too! [Laughter]

LG:It went up the north end of town, too.

GG:They did the same thing up on Diagonal [Street. They had all the manhole [covers] off and it rained for three days. I told, what was his name, the city engineer?

LG:The one across the street, Perry?

GG:No. He lived up on the hill. Anyway, I said to him ─.

[END OF TAPE -- SIDE TWO]