Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on Desalinization and Department of the Interior

0:24Always have the fire services.
0:29They should be there.
0:30Yeah.
0:32And that came back that way.
0:34This president makes the Parks for the People program.
0:37Yeah, that came back.
0:38Yeah.
0:38That came back on TV.
0:40And it said, if you call them, they call the Parks for the People.
0:44Yeah.
0:44Yeah.
0:46That's correct.
0:48We've got to make it.
0:50If he goes in the next part to the high gate, there's an awful lot of the sun flying.
0:54He's probably got a pretty good story.
0:57I don't see how that'll work.
1:02So I say, hey, you ever been to a park?
1:05Yeah, I've never been to a park.
1:08The beach and so forth.
1:09Bring the kids out.
1:11There's a lot of parks in the west that I grew up with.
1:14There's a lot of people in New York that have cars even.
1:20and less than a million ever go to the National Park.
1:22So here we've got a stray hare, and it will come and rebuild it.
1:26So I don't think it'll get as serious as it's already done that time.
1:29And the potential for 20 million people to use that instead of the camps.
1:35Well, I've already hit a car now.
1:37If we can get the same thing that you've been hit with, it'll be very, very important.
1:42No, this is water, and I think we've got something to go.
1:50I think we're going to take some off.
1:54My God, it's going to cost a lot of money, but I've only spent $27 million on this since 1952.
2:02$27 million.
2:03Since 1952.
2:03Since 1952.
2:03I think that's what we're doing this year, I don't know.
2:10Whatever it is.
2:12It's not.
2:13This is the only important single thing to do.
2:16Now it is a good question.
2:18It's a good question.
2:19And at the present time, if I was holding it back, why is the United States falling behind in our science?
2:25I know all of our science is bad, but we require 50% contribution of...
2:39I just told Cole that I thought that this is one where I'm just thinking of issues.
2:53But it's not quite like going to the moon.
3:00I mean, people can see the moon and understand it.
3:10The desalination of water really doesn't understand.
3:12I think, John, and I told David, because I knew where to go, I'd like you to get the boys together, a task force together, and maybe get, on this one, a sapphire or something, PR.
3:30I told you to build the biggest prototype plant in the class of the good, and change whatever they had and do it immediately.
3:38And I also said that
3:39Now, and then to take the appropriation of 27 million for this year, make it 100.
3:50Let's move it up to $100 billion.
3:54But to put the scientific effort, to have it done, have it done in places like Texas,
4:01NASA and so forth.
4:02Now, John, you know the interior department.
4:05It isn't worth a shit for the most part.
4:08I must say, I would rather repress that guy trying to see solidization.
4:11At least he had a little political sense.
4:14But my point is, over there in that bureaucracy, you know, can you imagine what the Bureau of Water Solidification is doing?
4:20That's a big way to... That friend there.
4:23What?
4:24What do you mean?
4:26You know him?
4:27Oh, God.
4:27Didn't we have that friend in California?
4:29He was
4:30The head of the Office of Saline Water.
4:32Is that what this is?
4:33Is he a China man?
4:36Is he one of the Chinese?
4:36No, no, not the guy that was here.
4:38They wouldn't let him in here.
4:39Well, he walks in for water, maybe that's your name?
4:42Well, John, in the standpoint of American foreign policy, in the standpoint of American situation at home, and also from the immediate, you know, gutsy things that people think of,
4:53But is cancer here?
4:55Hell, they probably aren't going to find it here for cancer, not in my time.
4:57But at least we're trying.
4:59We identify with it.
5:00Now, on this water thing, I think we should say the president has initiated a new program with water.
5:06Then tie it in with breeder reactor.
5:09Breeder reactor, in 10 years, we're going to have this.
5:11That's a cheap source of energy.
5:13Here, we're going to go ahead with a prototype plant.
5:16Let's pour it right into California.
5:18And goose that thing up to $100 million.
5:20What do you think?
5:28Now, call it desalting the water instead of desalting.
5:32Nobody has pronounced desalting.
5:34There may be a better way of putting that.
5:37Find a better way to call it.
5:39Fresh water.
5:40Fresh water.
5:41Fresh water program.
5:42The new water program.
5:43In describing, it's a program for desalting the water rather than for desalting the water.
5:50Fresh water.
5:51Fresh water.
5:51Fresh water.
5:54You know, the point that was made, that Connelly maybe said, or someone like that, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year, more than that, hundreds of millions of dollars in business over years, building these big dams for the purpose of irrigation and also for power.
6:16After Christ's days, this water, this thing, has the enormous escape of the problem of possibility.
6:22It's enormous.
6:24Well, you know, you can talk about how they're mining their water in Texas.
6:28The same thing in Phoenix.
6:29The water table in Phoenix is going down every year, and they're not putting it back.
6:34There's no way of putting it back.
6:37John Thompson wanted out five seconds of all the irrigated land in Texas.
6:42will be without water within within a period of time because they are mining their water that's why the column as a colorado is becoming salty it's because the drawings
7:13And so it's very serious.
7:15It's an export policy problem.
7:17Now, it's about as far as cost.
7:20You realize the future of our committees, that cost of 50 cents.
7:25Out there, for Christ's sake, that's a dollar for an account.
7:28Sure.
7:29Let alone $100,000 a gallon.
7:30I mean, we're talking here about, we're talking about the possibility of the British Armistice, but the thing too, oh, the 50-50 thing.
7:39I couldn't believe that.
7:40Could you not?
7:41Well, it's the other way around.
7:43I think that should be, I should say, 90-10.
7:47Why not 90-10?
7:48We do everything else 90-10.
7:49We build these guns and get them to schools.
7:51You know, we have a Bureau of Reclamation.
7:56And we have a whole Bureau of Reclamation that's supposed to be reclaiming land.
8:08And what they do is they go out and build a dam.
8:11And then they send that water out to irrigate.
8:13And you can't own more than 160 acres.
8:16But it's all done at federal expense.
8:22What I want you to do is go back there and think big.
8:25Think big.
8:26Let's have something that we can announce first over a period of time that is big.
8:31In other words, we have a billion-dollar program for desalination, or pure water, fresh water, a billion-dollar program.
8:49But something that we can immediately orient, in other words, start building it in California and in Cleveland, where we will take 90% of it, or whatever the case is, and let's build it and test the water to see whether it will work.
9:03We do that.
9:04And don't let it get tied up in the bureaucracy.
9:06I like to part with, you know, sit right here.
9:08I don't want to end it off there.
9:11And I must say, the problem is quite clear.
9:16The goddamn program was set up by Truman, 1952, 1953.
9:19And nobody has paid a damn bit of attention to it since then.
9:23You know that.
9:24It happened.
9:25That's right.
9:26Nobody has paid attention.
9:28I think the proof of it, that is the fact that the gentleman got the job.
9:33He's a part of a...
9:34This guy has been to a radium...
9:41He's been to Israel.
9:42He's been all over the Middle East.
9:44He got a terrible problem in Saudi Arabia because he accepted a gift from the prince and all that.
9:50You know, it's so scandalous.
9:53He kept giving Bob chop suey all the time, and that all of a sudden got him a job.
9:57An incredible guy.
9:59Is he all right?
10:00The gentleman who lives up in Bel Air, every time we arrived at the Century Plaza during the campaign, this guy and his wife would appear in the hall of the hotel with a huge amount of job percentage.
10:10And he's a job changer right now.
10:12John, I think there's such suiting functionality.
10:16It's very exciting about me.
10:18Everybody gives, Tom, Lisa, where they all go.
10:20Now, and we see it, there isn't going to be any magnitude breakthrough.
10:24I understand that.
10:25You know, we used to think, well, they'd find a way to press them with your little chemical deal and all of a sudden, maybe they'll find that.
10:30But you never know in the development of these big plants, sometimes they spin off.
10:37There's a trick in this, too.
10:38Seaboard tells me that at Oak Ridge, they have a full exhibit on the atomic applications.
10:47atomic-powered and desalting water.
10:50And if you want to go into Tennessee for any reason, this is one of Howard Baker's very prime projects, and it would all tie together directly.
10:58I'd rather really go to Texas than to California.
11:00Well, I've been to Oak Ridge.
11:02I've been to Oak Ridge.
11:04Not me.
11:04That was PDA.
11:13Brownsville, I think we could go into Texas to Brownsville or something like that.
11:18But I think we need a new program.
11:20I think we need it fast.
11:22We can do that.
11:24And it all fits your national growth policy thing, too.
11:30It fits the farmer's price problem because irrigation is a very heavy cost in some areas.
11:37And it's historically a cost down.
11:39This will sound heretical, but I'm going to move it to this.
11:44There's an interesting poll.
11:47I sent you down a Texas Congressman poll yesterday.
11:52It's very interesting.
11:54You would expect every man in Texas to be in favor of the space program.
11:58This guy's poll shows about 60-40 against, which I think is big medicine.
12:04There's a lot of other interesting stuff.
12:06Everybody's against the space program.
12:08Yeah, they're against it.
12:09Well,
12:15We'll... We will... We can crack up something very good on that.
12:23I don't know whether we can do that or not.
12:26It seems to me that what we can do...
12:34is to save the water authority outside the office.
12:37That's the point.
12:37You've got the atomic energy here, you've got the state department here, you've got all these other people.
12:44Inter-departmental activity and let NASA take the coordinating responsibility for it.
12:50Let NASA let the contracts matter to the people.
12:54We've got to get Martin right over the head.
12:56We've got to get the president of the state to stop this thing out of here.
13:01That is, boy, that is a lot of people appeal.
13:03If you start turning NASA to have water on there, everybody's, yeah, people understand water.
13:08I don't think we can do it.
13:10I don't think we can integrate that in our world.
13:14Why, of course, you can integrate it in our world.
13:16But why not, why not put the, now, realize the other thing is put an imagining guy on this.
13:20I mean, I don't want you to think little.
13:23I don't want you to be air-trapped.
13:24I don't want you to worry about multiple students.
13:26I don't want to worry about the Chinese.
13:28God damn it, let's get it done.
13:30And the greater issue is some scientists think the plan's in law.
13:33So, the great reactive thing is half the answer here.
13:37You can see that, isn't there?
13:38You bet.
13:39It's just that greater reactive reduced the cost of power enormously.
13:43Take two things, finance got to move forward, and I'm not satisfied it's going to take ten years either.
13:47Well, ten years ain't a little bit.
13:49I think that the situation there is nobody wants to give you any other number than to go out on a landmine.
13:55All right.
13:57Let's just go with it.
13:59I think we want to put him on his water thing.
14:06It can't be done by the science advisor, I say.
14:11He's a fine guy.
14:12He is obviously an advisor.
14:14It's got to be the hard-nosed guy.
14:16No, this guy that managed our SST program.
14:19Because he is tied into NASA.
14:27He knows the NASA picture.
14:29He's from private industry.
14:31He's an alpha politician.
14:32Great.
14:33Great crusader.
14:34Crusader.
14:35And also, he may have the sense of public relations that we need.
14:39We have public relations on this.
14:41He has that.
14:42Now, our problem is that the aerospace industry has offered him $100,000 a year to become their lobbyist.
14:49They give him $200,000 after he does his job.
14:53That's the point.
14:54After they do this for a year, they're going, well, he ends up being a guy that's rough.
14:59Well, they've got to come back and sell him to the world.
15:01But John, this thing can move.
15:02You know, if we start building these big plants immediately, that's the real problem that they've got.
15:10They may have.
15:11Some one of these scientists may have figured out a huge goddamn plant that nobody will pay because they don't want to put up 50%.
15:18Build it.
15:19That's what I know.
15:20And build it in southern California and one in Texas.
15:24Now let's go.
15:25You know, we could build it upland in Camp Elk behind the Santa Madre power plant site where we want to put the reactor.
15:39You can make a lot of sense of rainwater in Orange County.
15:42You've got an enormous amount of land and sea ready up there.
15:45Is Perry coming with you?
15:50He's supposed to have seen this fall.
15:52Did he, uh, worry about it?
15:55I'll let you know.
15:57That's all right.
15:58Watch out.
15:59We'll crack down this.
16:00If David can be ready by tomorrow, I'll get the rest of the group together tomorrow morning.
16:16This has to go, this has to relocate the president to an entity.
16:21I want a program that's called, and it's got to be taken out of the interior.
16:28It's like a bus.
16:40That's it.
16:40That's our emergency NASA from what a lot of people think is a waste of life.
16:45And it's not a good thing.
16:47That's the realist.
16:49That's the narcissist.
16:50That's what the whole thing is.
16:52I don't know.
16:53I haven't built up a calendar.
16:55I want the new NASA water thing to be in California.
16:59But I'm not asking for that installation.
17:02I'm building an office.
17:03I'm building an office for water.
17:06I think you said names.

Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on Desalinization and Department of the Interior

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 11, 1971

Cite this conversation