Conversation 497-001

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Always have the fire services.

They should be there.

Yeah.

And that came back that way.

This president makes the Parks for the People program.

Yeah, that came back.

Yeah.

That came back on TV.

And it said, if you call them, they call the Parks for the People.

Yeah.

That's correct.

We've got to make it.

If he goes in the next part to the high gate, there's an awful lot of the sun flying.

He's probably got a pretty good story.

I don't see how that'll work.

So I say, hey, you ever been to a park?

Yeah, I've never been to a park.

The beach and so forth.

Bring the kids out.

There's a lot of parks in the west that I grew up with.

There's a lot of people in New York that have cars even.

and less than a million ever go to the National Park.

So here we've got a stray hare, and it will come and rebuild it.

So I don't think it'll get as serious as it's already done that time.

And the potential for 20 million people to use that instead of the camps.

Well, I've already hit a car now.

If we can get the same thing that you've been hit with, it'll be very, very important.

No, this is water, and I think we've got something to go.

I think we're going to take some off.

My God, it's going to cost a lot of money, but I've only spent $27 million on this since 1952.

$27 million.

Since 1952.

I think that's what we're doing this year, I don't know.

Whatever it is.

It's not.

This is the only important single thing to do.

Now it is a good question.

It's a good question.

And at the present time, if I was holding it back, why is the United States falling behind in our science?

I know all of our science is bad, but we require 50% contribution of...

I just told Cole that I thought that this is one where I'm just thinking of issues.

But it's not quite like going to the moon.

I mean, people can see the moon and understand it.

The desalination of water really doesn't understand.

I 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.

I told you to build the biggest prototype plant in the class of the good, and change whatever they had and do it immediately.

And I also said that

Now, and then to take the appropriation of 27 million for this year, make it 100.

Let's move it up to $100 billion.

But to put the scientific effort, to have it done, have it done in places like Texas,

NASA and so forth.

Now, John, you know the interior department.

It isn't worth a shit for the most part.

I must say, I would rather repress that guy trying to see solidization.

At least he had a little political sense.

But my point is, over there in that bureaucracy, you know, can you imagine what the Bureau of Water Solidification is doing?

That's a big way to... That friend there.

What?

What do you mean?

You know him?

Oh, God.

Didn't we have that friend in California?

He was

The head of the Office of Saline Water.

Is that what this is?

Is he a China man?

Is he one of the Chinese?

No, no, not the guy that was here.

They wouldn't let him in here.

Well, he walks in for water, maybe that's your name?

Well, 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,

But is cancer here?

Hell, they probably aren't going to find it here for cancer, not in my time.

But at least we're trying.

We identify with it.

Now, on this water thing, I think we should say the president has initiated a new program with water.

Then tie it in with breeder reactor.

Breeder reactor, in 10 years, we're going to have this.

That's a cheap source of energy.

Here, we're going to go ahead with a prototype plant.

Let's pour it right into California.

And goose that thing up to $100 million.

What do you think?

Now, call it desalting the water instead of desalting.

Nobody has pronounced desalting.

There may be a better way of putting that.

Find a better way to call it.

Fresh water.

Fresh water program.

The new water program.

In describing, it's a program for desalting the water rather than for desalting the water.

Fresh water.

You 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.

After Christ's days, this water, this thing, has the enormous escape of the problem of possibility.

It's enormous.

Well, you know, you can talk about how they're mining their water in Texas.

The same thing in Phoenix.

The water table in Phoenix is going down every year, and they're not putting it back.

There's no way of putting it back.

John Thompson wanted out five seconds of all the irrigated land in Texas.

will 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

And so it's very serious.

It's an export policy problem.

Now, it's about as far as cost.

You realize the future of our committees, that cost of 50 cents.

Out there, for Christ's sake, that's a dollar for an account.

Sure.

Let alone $100,000 a gallon.

I 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.

I couldn't believe that.

Could you not?

Well, it's the other way around.

I think that should be, I should say, 90-10.

Why not 90-10?

We do everything else 90-10.

We build these guns and get them to schools.

You know, we have a Bureau of Reclamation.

And we have a whole Bureau of Reclamation that's supposed to be reclaiming land.

And what they do is they go out and build a dam.

And then they send that water out to irrigate.

And you can't own more than 160 acres.

But it's all done at federal expense.

What I want you to do is go back there and think big.

Think big.

Let's have something that we can announce first over a period of time that is big.

In other words, we have a billion-dollar program for desalination, or pure water, fresh water, a billion-dollar program.

But 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.

We do that.

And don't let it get tied up in the bureaucracy.

I like to part with, you know, sit right here.

I don't want to end it off there.

And I must say, the problem is quite clear.

The goddamn program was set up by Truman, 1952, 1953.

And nobody has paid a damn bit of attention to it since then.

You know that.

It happened.

That's right.

Nobody has paid attention.

I think the proof of it, that is the fact that the gentleman got the job.

He's a part of a...

This guy has been to a radium...

He's been to Israel.

He's been all over the Middle East.

He got a terrible problem in Saudi Arabia because he accepted a gift from the prince and all that.

You know, it's so scandalous.

He kept giving Bob chop suey all the time, and that all of a sudden got him a job.

An incredible guy.

Is he all right?

The 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.

And he's a job changer right now.

John, I think there's such suiting functionality.

It's very exciting about me.

Everybody gives, Tom, Lisa, where they all go.

Now, and we see it, there isn't going to be any magnitude breakthrough.

I understand that.

You 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.

But you never know in the development of these big plants, sometimes they spin off.

There's a trick in this, too.

Seaboard tells me that at Oak Ridge, they have a full exhibit on the atomic applications.

atomic-powered and desalting water.

And 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.

I'd rather really go to Texas than to California.

Well, I've been to Oak Ridge.

I've been to Oak Ridge.

Not me.

That was PDA.

I've been to Oak Ridge.

Brownsville, I think we could go into Texas to Brownsville or something like that.

But I think we need a new program.

I think we need it fast.

We can do that.

And it all fits your national growth policy thing, too.

It fits the farmer's price problem because irrigation is a very heavy cost in some areas.

And it's historically a cost down.

This will sound heretical, but I'm going to move it to this.

There's an interesting poll.

I sent you down a Texas Congressman poll yesterday.

It's very interesting.

You would expect every man in Texas to be in favor of the space program.

This guy's poll shows about 60-40 against, which I think is big medicine.

There's a lot of other interesting stuff.

Everybody's against the space program.

Yeah, they're against it.

Well,

We'll... We will... We can crack up something very good on that.

I don't know whether we can do that or not.

It seems to me that what we can do...

is to save the water authority outside the office.

That's the point.

You've got the atomic energy here, you've got the state department here, you've got all these other people.

Inter-departmental activity and let NASA take the coordinating responsibility for it.

Let NASA let the contracts matter to the people.

We've got to get Martin right over the head.

We've got to get the president of the state to stop this thing out of here.

That is, boy, that is a lot of people appeal.

If you start turning NASA to have water on there, everybody's, yeah, people understand water.

I don't think we can do it.

I don't think we can integrate that in our world.

Why, of course, you can integrate it in our world.

But why not, why not put the, now, realize the other thing is put an imagining guy on this.

I mean, I don't want you to think little.

I don't want you to be air-trapped.

I don't want you to worry about multiple students.

I don't want to worry about the Chinese.

God damn it, let's get it done.

And the greater issue is some scientists think the plan's in law.

So, the great reactive thing is half the answer here.

You can see that, isn't there?

You bet.

It's just that greater reactive reduced the cost of power enormously.

Take two things, finance got to move forward, and I'm not satisfied it's going to take ten years either.

Well, ten years ain't a little bit.

I think that the situation there is nobody wants to give you any other number than to go out on a landmine.

All right.

Let's just go with it.

I think we want to put him on his water thing.

It can't be done by the science advisor, I say.

He's a fine guy.

He is obviously an advisor.

It's got to be the hard-nosed guy.

No, this guy that managed our SST program.

Because he is tied into NASA.

He knows the NASA picture.

He's from private industry.

He's an alpha politician.

Great.

Great crusader.

Crusader.

And also, he may have the sense of public relations that we need.

We have public relations on this.

He has that.

Now, our problem is that the aerospace industry has offered him $100,000 a year to become their lobbyist.

They give him $200,000 after he does his job.

That's the point.

After they do this for a year, they're going, well, he ends up being a guy that's rough.

Well, they've got to come back and sell him to the world.

But John, this thing can move.

You know, if we start building these big plants immediately, that's the real problem that they've got.

They may have.

Some 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%.

Build it.

That's what I know.

And build it in southern California and one in Texas.

Now let's go.

You know, we could build it upland in Camp Elk behind the Santa Madre power plant site where we want to put the reactor.

You can make a lot of sense of rainwater in Orange County.

You've got an enormous amount of land and sea ready up there.

Is Perry coming with you?

He's supposed to have seen this fall.

Did he, uh, worry about it?

I'll let you know.

That's all right.

Watch out.

We'll crack down this.

If David can be ready by tomorrow, I'll get the rest of the group together tomorrow morning.

This has to go, this has to relocate the president to an entity.

I want a program that's called, and it's got to be taken out of the interior.

It's like a bus.

That's it.

That's our emergency NASA from what a lot of people think is a waste of life.

And it's not a good thing.

That's the realist.

That's the narcissist.

That's what the whole thing is.

I don't know.

I haven't built up a calendar.

I want the new NASA water thing to be in California.

But I'm not asking for that installation.

I'm building an office.

I'm building an office for water.

I think you said names.