Thomas J. Graff, an Expert on West Coast Water Use, Is Dead at 65
SAN FRANCISCO — Thomas J. Graff, a leading environmentalist who championed the idea of offering financial incentives for environmentally friendly behavior, an approach that had far-reaching impact on state and federal policies, especially on water use in the drought-prone West, died Nov. 12 in Oakland, Calif., where he lived. He was 65.
The cause was thyroid cancer, his family said.
Mr. Graff, who founded the first California office of the Environmental Defense Fund and led it for 37 years, dealt with a host of environmental issues, including AB 32, the first-of-its-kind legislation, adopted in 2006, that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions in California. But he made his biggest impact in the realm of water use, a constant source of vexation in the West.
Mr. Graff’s early support for using market forces to encourage environmentally friendly behavior was a somewhat radical idea at the time. But it has since become increasingly common in environmental negotiations nationwide and has echoes in “cap and trade” policies around the world involving things like airborne pollutants and carbon emissions.
“If a resource is scarce, we ought to put a price on it that reflects its value,” Mr. Graff said in an interview in 2008. “Otherwise there’s an incentive to over-consume.”
Mr. Graff’s theory was put to wide use in 1992, when he cajoled federal lawmakers into passing the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, a landmark bill that established a new accounting system to assure that diversions of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, whose waters help irrigate millions of acres of farmland to the south, would not outstrip the delta’s own ecological needs...
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The cause was thyroid cancer, his family said.
Mr. Graff, who founded the first California office of the Environmental Defense Fund and led it for 37 years, dealt with a host of environmental issues, including AB 32, the first-of-its-kind legislation, adopted in 2006, that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions in California. But he made his biggest impact in the realm of water use, a constant source of vexation in the West.
Mr. Graff’s early support for using market forces to encourage environmentally friendly behavior was a somewhat radical idea at the time. But it has since become increasingly common in environmental negotiations nationwide and has echoes in “cap and trade” policies around the world involving things like airborne pollutants and carbon emissions.
“If a resource is scarce, we ought to put a price on it that reflects its value,” Mr. Graff said in an interview in 2008. “Otherwise there’s an incentive to over-consume.”
Mr. Graff’s theory was put to wide use in 1992, when he cajoled federal lawmakers into passing the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, a landmark bill that established a new accounting system to assure that diversions of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, whose waters help irrigate millions of acres of farmland to the south, would not outstrip the delta’s own ecological needs...