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Deposition from SWIM Challenges Case No. 92-3038, 92-3039, and 92-3040 |
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Deposition from SWIM Challenges Case No. 92-3038, 92-3039, and 92-3040 |
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INDEX
PAGE
EXHIBITS
PAGE
JOHNS' EXHIBIT No. 1......................77
2......................81
3......................90
4......................96
5.....................105
6.....................108
7.....................112
8.....................118
9.....................119
10...................119
11...................121
12...................123
13...................127
14...................128
15...................130
o0o
4
GRACE JOHNS, Ph.D.
the Deponent herein, having been first duly sworn, was
examined and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Would you please state your name and business
address.
A. Grace Johns, Hazen and Sawyer, 4000 Hollywood
Boulevard, Seventh Floor, North Tower, Hollywood, Florida,
33021.
Q. Ms. Johns, what is your occupation?
A. Principal economist.
Q. Have you ever had your deposition taken before?
A. Yes.
Q. If there's anything I ask that you don't
understand, please feel free to tell me you don't
understand and ask me to ask a different question, or you
can say "I don't know" or "I don't understand" and that's
fine. I'm just here to try to get information.
Tell me what Hazen and Sawyer is.
A.They are an environmental engineering consulting
firm. They have engineers, scientists and economists.
Q. Where are they based?
A. Their corporate headquarters are in New York City.
Q. And how long have you been with Hazen and Sawyer?
5
A. Since June of 1990.
Q. Tell me, if you would, your educational background
starting with college.
A. I attended the University of Florida and got my --
received my bachelor's degree there in agriculture with an
emphasis in food and resource economics. I graduated in
'81.
I then attended the University of California at
Berkeley in the Ph.D. program of the College of Natural
Resources, Department of Agricultural and Natural Resource
Economics. I received my Ph.D. there in 1987.
Q. You didn't have an intervening master's?
A. No.
Q. And subsequent to 1987, what has been your
professional -- well, let me back up.
Did you work as an economist or in related fields
while you were working on your degree?
A. Yes.
Q. Tell me what you did.
A. I worked at a consulting firm, economic consulting
firm called Minimax Research Corporation where I did,
performed consulting services for primarily EPRI and
Pacific Gas and Electric looking at energy use in
agriculture.
Q. And where was that?
6
A. Berkeley, California.
Q. In Berkeley.
How long did you work for Minimax Research?
A. Hum. I have to guess. Two years. I mean I could
tell you if you gave me a minute to think about it, but I
think it was about two years.
Q. And that was sometime between --
A. '84, February of '84 to the end of '87.
Is that right?
No, no, I'm sorry. '86. End of '86. Something in
that area.
Q. Did you work anywhere else prior to receiving your
Ph.D.?
A. Yes. I worked as an independent consultant in
Berkeley and we completed a project for PG&E at that time
and we also began working on the economics of fisheries of
sport fishing in the San Francisco Bay area.
Q. Who was that for?
A. That was, we subcontracted with a company called
QED Research and that was a project for the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California.
Q. You said you were a private consultant but
indicated that "we" worked on this project. Who was the
"we"?
A. Oh, Doug Winter. We shared an office. We worked
7
together in an office in Berkeley.
Q. And did the two of you work together on that
project?
A. On the fisheries one or the PG&E one? The PG&E
one, we worked together on.
Q. And the fisheries?
A. I worked on that on my own.
Q. What was the project for PG&E?
A. That was completing the use of energy by
agriculture in the Pacific Gas & Electric company service
area and we evaluated the energy savings from PG&E's energy
management program.
Q. Anywhere else prior to receiving your Ph.D., any
other jobs?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. And after receiving your Ph.D., what have you done?
A. Well, then I began working for QED Research.
Q. Okay. And where is that, is that in Berkeley?
A. That was in Palo Alto, California.
QED split into two companies and I began working
for Spectrum Economics, which is the same people as were
with QED Research, except one or two of the owners left
QED -- actually, they left and they kept the name QED, and
everybody else, which was the bulk of QED, became Spectrum
Economics.
8
Q. And you remained in Palo Alto?
A. Yes.
Q. And how long did you work there?
A. From 198 -- end of '87 to 19 -- to June of 1990.
Q. What projects did you work on when you were with
Spectrum?
A. Numerous projects.
Where do I begin?
Q.Tell me some of the significant projects.
A. Okay. There was work that we did for the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California looking
at the value of recreation at the reservoirs in California.
Q. Okay.
A. We worked on some litigation -- consulting work for
a couple of farmers, one was the Siller Brothers
Corporation.
Q. What kind of work for the farmers?
A. Well, that was a divorce case where they were
trying to split up the assets of Siller company, the
corporation.
It was a very large agricultural corporation and it
was a divorce settlement that had turned into a lawsuit and
we were on the side of the husband. He was one of the
co-owners.
And we were trying to show what the firm, how the
9
firm would operate if its assets were split up; in other
words, if his wife received a portion of those assets, how
would that change the value of his corporation.
Q. Any other significant, projects you recall?
A. Yes. There was the --
Well, we did quite a bit of recreation research.
We did quite a bit of agriculturalresearch.
Now, I could go through each and every project.
Q. Well, let me, maybe I can short-circuit it
somewhat.
Can you just tell me what you mean by "recreation
research"?
A. Okay. There's an issue regarding, as you change
the water levels in reservoirs and the river flows in the
rivers, how does that affect all the different types of
recreation. There's a lot of recreation activities that go
on at the rivers and reservoirs in California.
So we did quite a bit of looking at how recreation
changes when you change water flows and reservoir water
levels.
Q. And what do you mean by agriculture research?
A. Looking at how farm operations change when there is
a shock to that farm operation.
Like one of the projects we did was for a winery.
It was a vineyard and winery and the insurance, their
10
insurance company did something to them that interrupted
their operations, and so I looked at how that interruption
affected their business, and that was for a litigation
support.
Q. And you were working for the grower of, the winery?
A. Yes, the winery.
We did quite a few projects. Another one was
looking at water use in industry.
You know, there was a drought going on at that
time, so there was quite a bit of concern in all the
different economies within California and there was quite a
bit of concern about how water is used in California. So
our company was in quite a big demand and we looked at how
the economies change as water supplies change; agriculture,
recreation and tourism and sport fishing. So we did quite
a number of different projects in those areas.
Q. In those projects, did you do, what, valuation of
non-market resources, did you perform those?
A. Yes.
Q. In doing the valuation of recreation of reservoirs,
would you consider that a valuation of a non-market
resource?
A. In recreation, yes, you could call it that.
Q. What was the methodology you used in doing that
study?
11
A. That was using a travel cost model.
Q. Did you do surveys in the area?
A. No. We --
Q. What did you do?
A. That project was a long time ago. I'm going to
have to go back in the depths of my memory and remember
exactly how we did that. But it had to do with -- I don't
recall exactly what data we used in that project, that was
back in 1987, '86, and I'd have to go back over it again.
Now, that's a non-market good in the sense that
it's not exactly a non-market good because you do pay to
get into a recreation area, you do buy goods and services,
you buy gasoline to get there. So, it's not a well-defined
market, like if you go and buy a house and/or if you go and
buy groceries.
Q. In your work in California, did you do any
valuations of, I guess, pure non-market resources?
A. No, we --
I use -- I say we. It really means I. I'm a
company person, I work for a company and whenever we refer
to what we do -- what I do, we always say we. It's one of
those corporate cultures. So I don't want you to think
that we -- we means I but I'm supported by a staff and I'm
supported by a company, so that that's why I often say we,
but you can use the two interchangeably, I and we, okay.
12
Just wanted to make that clear.
Could you repeat.
Q. It's a royal plural.
A. Could you repeat the question.
Oh, non-market goods you asked me.
Q. Yes.
A. Could you ask your question again so I know how to
answer.
Q. Did you do any analyses of what you call pure
non-market?
A. We used the results of other people's contingent
valuation studies, I've never conducted a contingent
valuation study, but they tend to be very useful when you
are doing analyses, so I've used them in my studies, in my
evaluations, used other people's.
I also participated as a support staff person in
reviewing a non-market valuation study conducted by a
non-economist during the San Francisco Bay Delta Hearings.
Q. What are the San Francisco Bay Delta Hearings?
A. That's where there's water that flows from the San
Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers flow into the San Francisco
Bay and delta, that's, to make a long story short, it was
allocating water in California.
Q. Okay. And you provided input into those hearings?
A. I just would -- yes. Yes.
13
Q.By reviewing contingent valuation studies done by a
non-economist?
A. Yes, for the California Department of Fish and
Game, I believe was the...
That was what the non-economist was working for,
was that entity.
Q. Now, then, in June of 1990 you left California and
moved to Florida; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And you've been with Hazen and Sawyer since that
time?
A. Yes.
Q. Other than the project which we're here on today
involving the Everglades, tell me what other projects you
have worked on, if any, at Hazen and Sawyer.
A. Well, there was the Broward County re-use
feasibility study. I was a key team member on that study.
Q. What is that study?
A. That was looking at the feasibility of re-using all
of the waste water in Broward County as a water supply for
irrigation and industrial uses.
And so I provided the, sort of the economics and
financial information, looking at how much do these systems
cost and what are the issues that you want to look at to
evaluate economic feasibility and how much -- you know, the
14
relative costs of the different types of water re-use.
Q. Anything else?
A. No -- you mean in projects?
Q. Yes.
A. Three solid waste financial studies for three
different city -- well, two counties and a city.
I did a full cost accounting. Looked at all their
costs, capital operating, and looked at user fees, variable
rate and fixed rate user fees to charge to cover the costs
of solid waste management.
I was a member of the team that designed the water
re-use system for south Broward County, costed it out,
looked at cost efficient transmission lines, where to put
them, who to be -- who should be served by the re-use
system.
Q. I asked you when we began if you had ever given a
deposition before and you said yes. Tell me what
depositions you have given and in what matters.
A. One deposition.
Q. Okay.
A. Siller versus Siller.
Q. That was the divorce in California?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you testify at trial or hearing in that matter?
A. Yes.
15
Q. Do you know whether you were qualified as an expert
witness in that proceeding?
A. Yes.
Q. What were you qualified as an expert in, if you
recall?
A. Agricultural economics, agricultural policy.
Q. You were qualified both in agricultural economics
and agricultural policy?
A. Yes.
Q. Tell me what your experience is in terms of
agricultural policy.
A. During the trial I testified on the likely course
of U.S. government policy specifically related to the rice
program, if I recall correctly. That was many years ago,
what is it, '87, I believe, or '88, so I'm trying to
remember back that far.
And I don't remember my exact testimony in that
case regarding U.S. policy but it was a part of being able
to talk about the profitability of agriculture for this
particular grower.
Q. Have you ever worked on any matters involving bond
feasibility studies?
A. Could you be more specific.
Q. Has any of your work involved whether issuance of
bonds was feasible?
16
A. Not directly, no.
Q. Indirectly?
A. Well, indirectly, in terms of doing the financing
and the full cost accounting and estimating the costs and
looking at who pays what, but the ultimate decision on
hether to issue bonds, I have never made a recommendation.
Q. Essentially, the work that you would have done
that's indirectly related is just to determine whether a
project is feasible?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you, other than in the Siller case, have you
ever given testimony in a judicial proceeding?
A. No, not me, no. Not in person.
Q. The work that you did on financial feasibility, did
any of those projects culminate in issuance of bonds, to
your knowledge, for example for the Broward County water
re-use system or the solid waste proposals?
A. One of them did, the south Broward County job.
Q. The water re-use?
A. Yes. Our cost analysis ultimately led -- the
information was used when the bonds were written up and
issued.
Q. Have you worked on any other projects where your
analysis was used in a bond issuance?
A. I'm -- there might have been. I don't know.
17
Q. What about in developing a bond prospectus, has any
of the work you've done been used in issuing bond
prospectuses?
A. I don't know.
Q. In this proceeding today, if I refer to the
Everglades litigation, I will be referring to this
proceeding or more generically perhaps to the federal
lawsuit.
Are you familiar with the federal lawsuit and this
proceeding that you've been noticed for today?
A. I have enough familiarity to be deposed and show up
for trial.
Q. When did you first become involved or were you
first contacted with respect to the Everglades litigation
or any aspect of it?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. You know, I don't really remember.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Do you remember how you first became involved or
how you were contacted?
A. I suppose when I was given a contract from the
District for litigation support, but I --
Q. Perhaps you misunderstood.
When were you first contacted by or did you become
18
involved with the South Florida Water Management District
with respect to this Everglades SWIM Plan?
A. I don't really understand the question.
Q. It's real simple. I'm just trying to find out when
you and how you first became involved in doing an economic
impact assessment.
A. Okay, I can answer that.
Q. All right.
A. We received a RFP -- actually we found the ad of
the RFP in the newspaper and we answered the ad.
Q. "You" being Hazen and Sawyer?
A. Hazen and Sawyer. And we were selected by the
District and we began the study, the economic impact study.
Q. Do you recall when the ad was in the newspaper?
A. It might have -- late November.
Q. Of?
A. (Continuing) About.
Q. '91?
A. Of '91. That's an approximate time, date.
Q. Were you personally involved in responding to the
RFP; did you develop the proposal?
A. Yes. Yes. We developed the proposal and submitted
it.
I wrote the proposal, submitted it, put our
qualifications in a package and sent it off to the
19
District.
Q. You were the lead person in doing that?
A. Yes.
Q. After you submitted your proposal, what happened,
just procedurally? Were you contacted by the District?
Did you have an interview? Did you provide additional
information? What happened?
A. We were contacted by the District and told that we
were selected to do the project, to perform the project.
Q. Was there no contact between the time you submitted
the proposal and you received notice that you had been
selected?
A. There was no verbal or written contact that I
recall.
Q. How were you told that you received the contract?
A. I was not in the office at the time. Pat Davis at
Hazen and Sawyer, who's a vice president, received a phone
call from the District saying that we were selected to
perform the study.
Q. And then what?
A. Then we received -- if I recall correctly, we
received a letter, formal letter from the District and then
we went into contract negotiations.
Q. Were you involved in the contract negotiations?
A. Yes.
20
Q. You, personally?
A. Yes.
Q. With whom did you negotiate at the District, who
all was involved?
A. Rhonda Haag, Dick Rogers, Carl Woehelke.
Q. Are all these people with the District?
A. Yes.
I believe Paul Muncy was there.
It was in a room with a bunch of people around the
table, that's what I remember the most.
Q. And all your negotiation was done at this one
meeting?
A. Yes.
Q. Was anyone from Hazen and Sawyer there in addition
to yourself?
A. Soddie Shaboney (phonetic).
Q. And who is that?
A. An associate with Hazen and Sawyer.
Q. You called yourself a principal economist with
Hazen and Sawyer; what does that mean, are you a
shareholder, a partner?
A. I'm part of the bonus pool, from a financial
aspect.
Q. Do you recall when the negotiation meeting was?
A. It was probably in January.
21
Q. And what were the issues at that meeting, what did
you negotiate?
A. We went through the scope of work, each task in the
scope of work, and I gave them an explanation how we would
perform each task. Then we talked about how much it would
cost to perform each task.
Q. And did you negotiate on the cost?
A. Yes.
Q. And the result of that meeting, then, was a written
contract, I presume?
A. Yes.
Q. Who do you report to at the Water Management
District for this contract, the contract to do the economic
impact assessment, or who did you?
A. Currently I'm reporting to Sally Kennedy.
Q. And previously?
A. Peter Rhoades, and then before that Paul Muncy.
Q. Since when have you reported to Sally Kennedy?
A. About September of '92.
Q. And prior to that time it was Pete Rhoades?
A. Yes.
Q. From when to when did you report to him?
A. About March through September, and then Sally would
have started October to the present.
Q. And Paul Muncy, from the beginning until March?
22
A. Yes.
Q. Who do you report to internally at Hazen and
Sawyer, what are the lines of authority there?
A. Peter Robinson.
Q. Is he locally based?
A. He's in Hollywood. He's the senior vice president.
Q. What role has he played in this project?
A. I report to him on the progress of the project.
Q. Does he review your work?
A. Yes.
Q. Has he taken an active role in terms of
recommending changes or approaches?
A. No.
Q. And who at Hazen and Sawyer works with you on the
project, are there some other economists?
A. That have worked with me on this project?
Q. Yes.
A. There's Chris Meline, Norman Pearson.
Q. Are both of those people still working on the
project?
A. No.
Q. Is either of them?
A. No.
Q. For what period of time did Chris Meline work on
it?
23
A. From January through October -- through September,
and he provides some input and advice from time to time
since then.
Q. Okay. And Norman Pearson?
A. About June. From about --
I'm sorry, I believe it was from like February
through July.
Q. Is he still with Hazen and Sawyer?
A. No, he was never with Hazen and Sawyer. We
subcontracted with him.
Q. Who was he with?
A. He was an independent consultant.
Q. An economist?
A. Yes, an agricultural economist.
Q. Did he have his own firm or --
A. No. I don't know.
Q. How did you come to use Mr. Pearson?
A. I wanted a team member with direct experience in
implementing best management practices in agriculture and
he was referred to us.
I had actually met him before and had had some
verbal contact with him from time to time, and he had some
very good experience with working with BMPs and citrus and
drainage type issues, so I felt that he would be a good
team member.
24
Q. Who recommended him to you, was it someone at the
District, do you recall?
A. Somebody at the University of Florida recommended
him to me. I don't remember which professor did.
They were impressed with him. They had seen his
presentation on his thesis and they recommended him, which
was a coincidence because I also knew of him and knew
that -- of his background.
Q. Mr. Meline is with Hazen and Sawyer; is that
correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Is he still?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you use any other subcontractors on the
project?
A. We did hire a woman named Lisa Meday. We needed
some quick GIS work.
Q. GIS being?
A. Geographic information system work. And she
provided some limited consulting work in terms of making
pictures of the EAA in terms of where the production is in
the EAA from the computerized records of the Dade County --
I'm sorry, the Palm Beach County property appraiser's
office.
Q. Was that essentially a data collection activity?
25
1 A. No, it was a data management activity. It was very
2 limited, but we did hire her as a subcontractor for a few
3 hours. I think it was 40 hours.
4 Q. What kind of quality review system is there at
5 Hazen and Sawyer that your work has been subject to?
6 A. We have a quality control system whereby one senior
7 officer reviews not just the end product, but is constantly
8 being updated about the progress, and that person in this
9 case was Peter Robinson.
10 Q. What is his background?
11 A. He is a civil engineer and has an MBA. He has 30
12 years of experience, most of it in south Florida in terms
13 of civil and environmental engineering and finance.
14 Q. What is his experience in finance?
15 A. He evaluates the cost of, for example, building
16 waste water treatment plants or closing landfills, opening
17 landfills, and has done a bit of work related to issuing
18 bonds and, I'm not familiar with every financial study that
19 he's done but he is a real world guy. I mean, this is how
20 much it costs, let's figure out who's going to pay for it
21 and how it's going to get paid for in looking at the
22 benefits and the costs.
23 He's a results kind of person. Let's figure out
24 how much it's going to cost and who's going to pay for it
25 and make sure it's equitable to everyone so everyone's
26
happy.
Q. Am I correct in assuming that Mr. Pearson was
retained to work on the cost and effect of BMPs?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he do anything outside of that area?
A. He did a little bit of work, just a very little bit
regarding the mills, raw sugar mills, very little, couple
hours of work, but all of it was related to BMPs, the vast
majority of it.
Q. Do you have any experience in the use of BMPs in
agriculture?
A. Yes.
Well, what do you mean by "BMPs" specifically? You
mean in general or specific BMPs?
Q. In general.
A. In general, yes.
Q. What is your experience?
A. Well, the experience is mostly related to
California agriculture. How to reduce the amount of
electricity used in agriculture and how to conserve water
in agriculture.
Q. The contract that you entered into subsequent to
your negotiation, your RFP and the response and the
negotiations that we've been talking about was a contract
to perform an economic impact assessment; is that correct?
27
A. It was to evaluate the economic impacts of the
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Act and the Settlement Agreement
between the United States and the South Florida Water
Management District.
Q. At some point you were also retained, were you not,
to do a benefits study?
A. Yes.
Q. The benefits of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Act
or what, what was it a benefits study of?
A. It was the benefits of preventing injuries to the
Everglades. We looked at three levels of injuries.
Q. That's low, medium and high basically?
A. Yes.
Q. How did you come to be retained to do that study,
the process again?
A. Paul Muncy called me up, this was during the
project, I guess it was in February, mid-February perhaps
of '92.
Q. Okay.
A. (Continuing) He called me up and asked me about
evaluating the benefits. At that time he wanted -- was
asking me about evaluating the benefits of the act and
settlement agreement. And he asked me how much -- how long
it would take and how much it would cost to do something
like that.
28
Q. Did he say why it was he was checking, what
prompted him to find out?
A. No.
Not that I recall.
Q. I'm sorry, go on with your description.
A. Well, I answered him. I said it would take two
years and $2 million.
Q. And his response?
A. He says: Well, what can you do for $50,000 in four
months?
Q. And your response?
A. I told him about how, what is often done or what is
done frequently is you do an initial assessment of what the
value of the benefits are for a particular non-market
situation, you know, a situation where you have a problem
and you want to figure out, well, this is an environmental
problem, we want to save -- we want to fix the problem,
what are the benefits of fixing this problem.
You can do a full-blown study to estimate the
benefits and/or you can begin, at least begin with looking
at what other studies of other resources, other economic
values of other non-market goods.
So it's a matter of saying let's take a look at the
values that have been estimated for other similar, and I
use that loosely, natural resources, in terms of preventing
29
damages to those resources.
And so I told him that that is a possibility. If
they wanted to get started thinking about valuing the
benefits of restoring the Everglades, then an initial study
of the nature that we conducted would provide some insight
into the value of protecting the Everglades and also, in my
mind, start to educate the people of Florida regarding how
to provide a method of comparing the value of a natural
resource, a non-market natural resource to the value of
goods and services that we take for granted that we buy and
sell in marketplaces all the time.
Q. Tell me, after this conversation you had with
Mr. Muncy in approximately February, what happened
procedurally, did you enter into a contract, what occurred?
A. He asked me -- I was going to be giving a
presentation to the Everglades Funding Council in early
March, if I recall correctly. The date would have been in
about early March. I was to give a presentation to the
Everglades Funding Council regarding the progress of the
economic impact evaluation, which we already had a contract
for.
And he asked me, Paul asked me during that phone
conversation, it might have been that phone conversation or
subsequent one, to put together at the end, after I talk
about the progress of the economic evaluation, to talk
30
about valuing the Everglades. In other words, talk about
the process by which one would try to value the prevention
of injuries to the Everglades.
So I did that. And we did a flip chart
presentation. And I came to that part of the presentation
where we talked about looking at the benefits. And we went
through the whole thing, well, as much as we could in, I
don't know, 15 minutes or however long I took up there.
And at the end of the presentation --
And I talked about doing the $2 million two-year
study, and I talked about doing the $50,000 four-month
study and they seemed to be very interested, they were
very, very interested.
Q. This is the Funding Council?
A. The Funding Council.
And so from that Funding Council, the Funding
Council decided to do the $50,000 four-month study.
Q. Was an RFP done for that study? Did they
advertise?
A. I don't know.
Q. You didn't respond with a proposal to an RFP; is
that correct?
A. Correct. If I recall correctly, yes.
Q. And ultimately you entered, by "you entered," Hazen
and Sawyer entered into a contract with the Water
31
Management District to do the benefits valuation; correct?
A. Yes.
Q. The $50,000 four-month version of the benefit
study?
A. Yes.
Q. Who was the principal author of that study?
A. I don't understand the question.
Q. The benefit study, were you the principal author of
the benefits study?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I don't understand the question.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. On the impact assessment, were you the principal
author of that document, the economic impact assessment
report?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Define author.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Okay, maybe that's the problem.
Did you actually write, either on a computer or
otherwise, the text that is in the impact assessment
report?
A. Yes. I wrote the vast majority, probably 99
32
percent -- well, let's say 95 percent of the economic --
valuation of the economic impacts.
Q. And on the benefits side, who performed that
function; did you?
A. I performed editing but the text was written by the
sub -- our subconsultant, NRDA.
Q. What person with NRDA, do you know?
A. Richard Carson.
Q. And where is NRDA?
A. La Jolla, California.
Q. And what is it?
A. It's called Natural Resource Damage Assessment,
Inc. My understanding, I'm going to tell you what my
understanding is, because I haven't seen, you know, legal
proof of any of this, but my understanding is it's a
consortium of professors in the area of natural resource
economics and one of their, or maybe it's their main line
of business is estimating the value of natural resource
damages.
Q. Is Richard Carson a professor?
A. Yes.
Q. Where?
A. University of California, at La Jolla -- no,
San Diego, I'm sorry, UC, San Diego.
Q. How did you come to subcontract the work to this
33
organization or this person?
A. We were very -- our staff was very busy at that
time with many different projects and the District had
asked if they could have the report completed by, I don't
know, end of June or whenever it was, so I wanted to put a
team member on our team that was uniquely qualified to do
that type of an analysis and Richard Carson was by far the
best choice of anyone in the country to do this.
Q. Did you know him from California?
A. Yes.
Q. What dealings had you had with him previously?
A. He was a graduate student at Cal Berkeley in the
same department that I was in, agricultural and natural
resource economics.
Q. So he got his Ph.D. in the same thing you got yours
in; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Was it your own personal experience with Richard
Carson that caused you to call him and see if they would do
this work?
A. He wrote a book, him and the other author's name
escapes me at the moment, but, on valuing non-market goods.
Q. What book is that?
A. What's the title?
The exact title escapes me at this time of the
34
morning but it had to do with valuing non-market goods,
specifically using the contingent valuation method.
Q. You mentioned a minute ago that you felt he was
uniquely qualified to do this kind of study. Why did you
believe that?
A. Because he's done quite a bit of work in contingent
valuation in valuing non-market goods. I was familiar with
his work, I've read his work and I was impressed with it.
Q. Are there other people in the country who also do
that kind of work?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there anything that set him apart from other
people?
A. Well, I could have hired -- we could have asked
Michael Hanneman to help us or other people, other -- a few
other natural resource economists.
Q. Who is Michael Hanneman?
A. Actually my understanding is Michael Hanneman might
be one of the co-associates with NRDA but I don't know that
for a fact.
Actually he is. The NRDA is actually a consortium
of professors who do this kind of thing so we basically
hired NRDA, but I contacted Richard Carson because I knew
him.
Q. Why did you mention Michael Hanneman's name?
35
A. Well, he's also someone who's very experienced and
is also qualified to do such a study.
Q. Did you mention his name because he's a known
person in the field or just somebody you know?
A. He's a known person in the field and he's someone I
know.
Q. Other than the benefits study, the $50,000
four-month job, to your knowledge, has the South Florida
Water Management District done any additional work on the
benefits side?
A. Not to my knowledge.
Q. Do you know whether there's any agreement or
understanding to do additional work on the benefits side?
A. Not that I know of.
Q. Who, in addition to Mr. Carson, Professor Carson
and yourself as editor worked on the benefits report?
A. Nick Flores.
Q. And who is he?
A. He is with NRDA.
Q. Is he also a professor?
A. Not that I know of.
Q. Do you know what his background is?
A. I knew it at one time.
I don't recall it right now.
Q. What role did he play?
36
A. I spoke with him from time to time over the phone
regarding the study. His role -- well, he obviously must
have worked on the job because he knew so much about it.
You know, we talked a lot and we talked about what they
were doing and what I thought they ought to be doing, in
editing of the report.
Those are the two people I spoke with the most,
Richard Carson and Nick Flores over at NRDA, and I imagine
Nick did participate in working on the job, in this
particular job.
Q. Was it your understanding that he reported to
Richard Carson?
A. Yes.
Q. Was Richard Carson the person in charge of the
project for NRDA, to your knowledge?
A. Yes. Yes, he was.
Q. Do you recall approximately when you contracted
with the District to do the benefits side?
A. Do I remember when?
Q. Yes, approximately.
A. March maybe. I don't recall the exact date.
Q. After you entered into the contract for the impact
assessment, tell me what you first did in terms of
beginning to work on the project, what information you
gathered or people you talked to.
37
A. We began to compile a list of information sources,
potential information sources. We began to talk about our
relationship -- what type of relationship, if we should go
forward and communicate with the Florida Sugar Cane League
and the Florida Sugar Cane Cooperative.
Q. When you say "we began to talk," is that you and
the people at the District or you folks internally at Hazen
and Sawyer?
A. Internally at Hazen and Sawyer. How to move
forward on the project.
And so we then began to make contact with the
Florida Sugar Cane League and the cooperative and any other
grower in the EAA who was interested in talking to us.
Q. Did you speak with anyone else, any other possible
sources of information, experts in the field?
A. We talked to people at IFAS. We talked to people at
USDA. We talked to the Palm Beach County property
appraiser's office, the Hendry County property appraiser's
office. We talked to people at the Palm Beach County
Planning Department. We talked to someone at Donnelley
Marketing Information Services.
Q. Why did you talk to people at Donnelley Marketing?
A. At the beginning of a project you don't know -- you
have an idea of the quality of the data but what you do is
you try to get data from every possible information source
38
that you can, and that was one of the potential information
sources that we could use.
Actually it did turn out that we did get that
information, but Donnelley Marketing Information Service
collects information on businesses that they sell to
private people for marketing purposes primarily, and they
happen to have a pretty extensive data base of information
on individual businesses all over the country. In addition
to that they will provide summary statistics by zip code on
businesses and demographics.
Q. Who did you talk to at IFAS?
A. Jose Alvarez, Bill Boggess, Bob Emerson.
Q. Where is Mr. Emerson?
A. He's in Gainesville.
Q. Is he with the University of Florida?
A. Yes.
Q. Anyone else?
A. Oh, yes. I'm trying to remember them all. Tom
Scheuneman, David Mulkey, Del Botcher, John Holt, Leo
Polopolus, John Reynolds.
Q. Are these all people with IFAS or University of
Florida?
A. They're with both.
Q. Both. They're all with both?
A. Um hum. My understanding is if you work for IFAS you
39
work for UF.
Mr. Coale, C o a l e.
If I leave anybody out, they're in the report. In
the report we list everybody we talk to.
Q. Did you talk to all these people in the preliminary
stages just as source of information?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you talk to them individually or did you have
meetings with some or all of them?
A. We spoke with them individually.
We did give a presentation toward the end of the
project in about June to a group of the professors and a
couple of the graduate students in the Ag Econ department
at University of Florida.
Q. And you also spoke with people at USDA?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you recall who?
A. Ron Lord, Annette Clausen. That's all I remember at
this time.
Q. Then after you did this preliminary I guess contact of
potential sources, what was your next step in conducting
your analysis?
A. We started zeroing in on where the information was and
we began to collect the information.
Q. What types of information?
40
A. The USDA publication, "Sugar and Sweetener
Situation Outlook," I believe we relied on the March 1992
report. We received the statistical, is it called U.S.
Statistical Sugar Abstract.
So basically we began collecting data. Published
data.
We began asking people questions, mainly to make
sure that the data was what we thought it was representing,
you know. We talked to people who either compiled the data
themselves and to make sure we understood, you know, what
each of the costs represented, what the prices represented,
you know, what everything meant that was published and so
that's what we did there.
Q. At some point I presume you also had to decide what
methodology you would use to do this assessment; is that a
fair statement?
A. The methodology was already spelled out in the
statement of work.
Q. And that was something you put together to submit
20 the proposal?
A. Yes.
If you look at the RFP, the RFP was pretty well
written, the scope of work there, so we went by that. It
was a pretty good scope of work that was already written by
the District, so we went by that.
41
Q. Well, at the time you wrote the proposal did you
know or had you decided that you would use the FLIPSIM
model?
A. No. We only knew we were going to use model farms.
The statement of work that's in the contract,
that's a compilation of what the District had already
written in their RFP and then Hazen and Sawyer, expounding
on that and becoming more specific with how the study would
be done.
Now, exactly, you know, what kind of computer
spreadsheets or models would be used had not been
determined until after we -- as far as I can remember, it
was not until we began working on the project.
Q. But at the time you did the proposal you had
determined to do it by means of model farms; is that
correct?
A. We had in, yes, in our contract we had already
talked about model farms, if I recall correctly.
Q. When in the process did you decide then what
computer model to use to determine the effects?
A. Proposal early on in the project. I don't recall
whether we decided to use FLIPSIM but there was some
discussion between Chris and myself over what would be the
best thing to do, whether we should do our own spreadsheet
model or should we use a model that's already been
42
developed to -- and we had decided -- we ultimately
decided, or I ultimately decided to use the FLIPSIM model.
Q. How did you make that decision?
A. Well, it was based on, we didn't want to re-invent
the wheel. In other words, we wanted to spend a lot of
time talking to the growers, and we wanted to spend a lot
of time developing the baseline economic projections and we
wanted to spend time looking at the BMPs and we didn't want
to spend a lot of time making models.
So we decided, or at least I decided to go ahead and
use the FLIPSIM because it was already there, we wouldn't
have to do any programming, we would just use that.
Q. How did you even hear about it, I guess, and did
you discuss that particular model with anybody?
A. Yes. I was talking to Bill Boggess, he was one of
the people that we initially contacted, and I was talking
to him about my decision that I had to make, whether or not
we go ahead and just do the spreadsheet model and develop
that and spend time on that or if there was any models out
that, already out there that we could use, and he had
mentioned he has used the FLIPSIM model in his evaluation
of the impacts, the financial impacts to dairy farmers
north of Lake Okeechobee.
Q. Had you heard of FLIPSIM before he mentioned it?
A. No.
43
Q. Had you known Professor Boggess from the University
of Florida?
A. Yes.
Q. The contract that you originally entered into
called for a 20-year study; did it not?
A. Yes.
Q. And at some point that was modified to be a 10-year
study?
A. Yes.
Q. Why was that decision made, what led up to the
decision to change it from 20 to 10?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. You can answer.
MR. NETTLETON: You can answer, if you know.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. If you understand the question, you can go ahead
and answer.
A. You want to know why it went from a 20-year to a
10-year?
Q. Right. You got it.
A. All right, during the project, I wanted to spend a
lot of time on the first 10 years and from an economist's
perspective, economists feel comfortable forecasting out
five years and 10 years. You know, after 10 years it's
44
like well, you know, you don't feel as confident because
there's a lot of things that can happen. There's a lot of
things that can happen in the first 10 years but there's
also a lot of things that can happen in the second 10
years. So I wanted to put something together that we felt
very, very comfortable about in terms of the economic facts
and I wanted to get it down from 20 to 10 years, I didn't
want to spend a lot of time on the second 10 years.
So I called Paul Muncy and I ran it by him. I
believe I spoke to him, and he said it was okay, he didn't
have a problem with that, so then they amended the contract
to go from 20 years to 10 years.
Q. Do you know whether he discussed that decision with
anybody else at the District or whether that was just his
decision?
A. I don't know. I don't recall.
Q. Were you aware at the time you discussed that that
potential financing plans for the project would last 20
years?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Now that's a potential financing plan borrowing the
money and paying it back over 20 years, but it's not the
only one, it's one of many different financing plans, so,
no, it really wasn't a consideration to me.
45
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. What was the original contract completion date for
the impact assessment?
A. I don't remember. I don't recall. It was four
months -- supposedly -- I think it was like four months
from January. Maybe it was due in May, May 31.
Q. And do you recall what the original --
A. (Continuing) Or maybe it was April 31, I don't
remember.
Q. Do you remember what the original completion date
was for the benefits side?
A. No. I can only give you a guess, ballpark. Maybe
it was due June 31st -- 30th, rather. There is no 31st.
Q. Did you at some point seek and receive an extension
on the impact assessment?
A. The economic impact, yes.
Q. What led up to your decision to request an
extension?
A. We were trying to get information from the growers
and we were talking to them and that was taking up some
time, so that took up a lot more time than I wanted it to
but, you know, what can you do.
So I asked if we could have an extension so that we
could have time to incorporate the responses of the growers
in the EAA.
46
Q. And how many times was it extended, once or more,
do you recall?
A. It was more than once. Maybe it was twice. I
don't remember exactly.
Q. And when was the work under that contract
completed?
A. The entire contract was completed at the end of
September.
Q. Does that include for the benefits side as well?
A. That one was -- okay, we finished the bulk of our
contract by the time we had the governing board meeting in
August. The economic evaluation was completed. It was
completely finished. And so what we reported was the final
conclusions.
But then what happened was the District went
through each and every item in our contract to make sure
that we fulfilled everything in our contract and there were
some things that were not fulfilled and so we spent a
couple months finishing up what they thought we needed to
do to completely fulfill the agreement in the contract. So
you'll see a couple more chapters in the report from the
original, I think it was -- or the final report, there's
now a contract completion report and that has everything in
it. It represents, you know, the totality of the work that
was done from January through September.
47
Q. Is that true for both the benefits and the impact
portions?
A. Yes. Yes.
Q. What role did, if any, did Professor Lonnie Jones
play in your impact assessment?
A. About the -- I don't know when it was in this
project, but he began -- we met with him in a meeting, we
had a meeting with the Justice Department economists, the
Justice Department hired some economists.
Q. Who did you meet with?
A. Lonnie Jones and Ron Lacewell and someone else who
I don't recall at the moment his name, but I didn't
really -- I only met him once at one of the meetings.
Q. Was he someone from Texas A&M also?
A. No, he was from another university.
Q. Was it Dr. Bromley?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you recall when you met with those folks?
A. It was during the project. I don't know exactly
what month it was, to be honest with you.
Q. Why did that meeting happen?
A. The, I think it was Paul Muncy or Pete Rhoades, I
don't recall which one, I think it was Paul. See, he
wanted me to be open with all sides, you know. Like the
Justice Department and the growers, you know, we were
48
supposed to be very open and anybody who wanted to see what
we were doing was welcome to come and see what we were
doing.
And so the Justice Department, the economists hired
by the Justice Department came and met with us at our
office and we showed them what we were doing.
Q. Was that before you had a draft of the report?
A. I don't remember. It was when we had something
down on paper -- or maybe it wasn't --
I don't remember exactly. I can only tell you that
we met with them on about two occasions.
Q. Did you also talk with some of them by telephone
throughout the process?
A. Lonnie would call me from time to time
Q. A couple times a month or every week, do you
recall?
A. No, it wasn't that often. It was from time to
time. Not very frequently.
MS. STINSON: Why don't we have lunch and switch
gears.
(Whereupon, at 12:00 noon a luncheon recess was
taken.)
(Afternoon session continued on following page.)
49
A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N
GRACE JOHNS, Ph.D.
the Deponent herein, having been previously duly sworn, was
examined and testified further as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MS. STINSON: (Continued)
Q. This is really switching gears for a little bit
here. You produced to us, you and your counsel, a number
of documents as well as 23 computer disks which contain
portions of your files, I presume. What I'm going to ask
you about right now are some questions regarding those
disks just for informational purposes so we can figure out
what's on there to look at them.
Do you know whether the files on those disks
contain only your latest version of the report or would
they also contain, you know, previous drafts of work?
A. To the best of my knowledge, those are every single
analysis we did from the beginning of the project. In
other words, it includes information that was -- it
includes spreadsheets and model runs that were done
throughout the project.
Q. Well, if something were revised, would you have
supplanted, would you have replaced the pre-existing
information or would there be a different version of it, do
you know?
50
A. There might be a little of both in there. I tried
to keep it as up -- I wanted it to reflect as much as
possible, you know, during the study, the final results.
So we tried to do that but I don't think we did -- we might
have old files in there that we started to use but we never
finished using or we didn't need them anymore and they
might still be in there.
Q. But if you had something that went through various
iterations, it would only be the last one that would be
contained on the disks?
A. The one with the most recent date on it, which
should be what's in the report.
Q. There are apparently four disks that are a backup
of files in one or more directories, in order to restore
those files we need to know the name of the directory.
A. Oh, really.
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form if that's a
question.
MS. STINSON: The question isn't out yet.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. The question is: What is the name of the directory
that these four are backup to or backup of files to; do you
know?
A. You'd have to show me the file names, the files.
Q. There are several files that have the same name
51
except for the extension, for example SOD11.FM3, SOD11.WK3,
et cetera. And SOD11.XLS. Does the XLS file contain the
same information as the Lotus 1-2-3 files?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I don't -- I don't know. It depends on the file.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Would it contain the same as the Excel file; do you
know?
A. Excel file was probably produced first and then it
was read into Lotus 1-2-3 and perhaps more things got done
to that file so it might be a little different than the XLS
file.
The WK3 file might be different than the XLS file
but it probably supersedes the XLS file.
The FMT file is the format file. If you want to
print it or anything, if you want to print it. My
understanding is it produces a FMT file, so that's just a
format file for the spreadsheet.
Q. What is the .ALL extension, do you know?
A. That sounds like it would -- we have a .ALL in
there. That's an extension for what, the alls subroutine,
.ALL? You'd have to show me the exact file name. Really,
from my knowledge of spreadsheets .ALL is an alls file
which is a format file. That's all I can tell you.
52
Q. I am going to show you what I believe contain
printouts of the directories of the four files that are the
backup files to see if that will help you tell me what
directory (handing).
A. Okay. So what I'm reading here is that there's a
file called BACKUP.004 and it's got about 343,000 bytes. I
do not recall a BACKUP.004. I do not recall a file that I
ever named or that Chris ever named called BACKUP.004. I
don't know where that came from.
Q. Okay.
A. Same with CONTROL.004. I've never seen it before.
I don't know what that is. I don't know what these two
files are, I've never seen them.
Q. There are four pages?
A. They're all the same. Never seen BACKUP.002 or
CONTROL.002.
Let me back up a minute. We provided you all with
models that we used or we didn't use, we just happen to
have had, collected during the project. Now those models
might have file names in them called BACKUP.002 or
CONTROL.002 and BACKUP.004 and CONTROL.004, in which case
may be relevant to what we had, but in which case I don't
know anything about them.
Q. Would there be any way for you to check?
A. Yes, all of these.
53
I could show them to Chris Meline, see if he knows
what they are.
Q. There are files of the same name such as
LETP1S1A.OUT and the same .XLS. Is the OUT file the
FLIPSIM output and is the XLS your summary in Excel?
A. That's close. The answer is no, not exactly.
The output file is probably from -- is the
FLIPSIM.OUT. The .OUT is from the FLIPSIM. The Excel file
probably read that output file into Excel.
Q. In the XLS?
A. Yes.
Q. What is the AGSYS budget generator disk one?
Here's another page (handing).
A. This looks like it's the budget generator. That's
what it is. The AGSYS budget generator. Yes, that's what
this is, these are the files from those.
Q. What is that?
A. That is the vegetable budget generator.
Q. How does it need to be loaded into a computer, do
you need some kind of user's manual?
A. Yes. To the best of my knowledge.
In other words, you are trying to get it to run;
right?
Q. Right.
A. I don't know if we gave you enough for you to run
54
it. I thought we did. But apparently you all are having
trouble and I don't know if I can help you in this
deposition, tell you how to run it.
Q. Oh, no, I'm not asking you to do that. Who in your
shop actually runs?
A. Chris Meline was the one that loaded it up. So I
didn't load it up myself.
Q. And that's the budget generator for fruits and
vegetables?
A. That's my understanding AGSYS is the one. We do
have a budget generator for vegetables and I imagine this
is what it's called, AGSYS budget generator.
Q. Do you know what the AUTO123.WKS worksheet is?
A. This looks like the mechanical harvesting model
where it evaluates the cost of mechanical harvesting versus
hand- cut harvesting of sugar cane.
Q. Did you use the results of those?
A. We used this model.
Q. Where does it show up in your report?
A. When we talk about the hand-cutting versus
mechanically harvesting cane, in one of the chapters,
probably the baseline economic projections for sugar cane
chapter.
Q. What type of output does this spreadsheet generate,
what's the product?
55
A. The cost of mechanically harvesting sugar cane
versus the cost of hand-cutting sugar cane.
Q. Per ton or?
A. It could be -- yeah, it could be per ton, per acre.
Q. Back on the vegetable, the AGSYS budget generator,
where in your report is that used?
A. Where we talk about the vegetables in the report,
the baseline economic projections is where we use it.
Q. Do you recall what tables that, the AGSYS
information, is found in?
A. The tables that display the costs of growing
vegetables are in this in the report under -- I don't
exactly recall what page number it's in.
Q. And that's straight out of the AGSYS budget
generator?
A. Pretty much. We do quality control, make sure
everything makes sense.
Q. And are there any tables that the AUTO123.WKS
output is put into, the mechanical versus hand harvesting?
A. We didn't specifically put that in our tables. We
just evaluated it and found that there wasn't much
difference in the costs.
Q. Let me give you (handing) this, the READ ME
document has to do with the RIMS II program; does it not?
A. I don't recall.
56
Q. Did you run the RIMS II program?
A. I didn't. Chris Meline ran it.
Q. Did you in large part rely on Chris Meline to do
the computer operation and running of the programs?
A. For the RIMS II, I asked him to extract the
multipliers, the multipliers that we needed for the study.
Q. Did you tell him which multipliers to extract?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know whether region one refers only to the
Palm Beach multipliers?
A. I don't recall.
Q. Did you obtain multipliers for any other regions or
counties other than Palm Beach?
A. For Florida. State of Florida multipliers.
Q. But no other individual counties?
A. No.
Q. How does the Modify program work, what does that
program do; is that --
A. Which model are you talking about?
Q. I'm not sure. Did you use a program called Modify?
A. There's a lot of sub -- there's a lot of sub --
Q. Let me show you?
A. -- files that are used automatically.
Is this in relation to RIMS? Yes, it looks like it
is. Is this, what you just have given me, in relation to
57
RIMS?
Q. It's my understanding it is.
A. I didn't specifically use Modify.
Q. Did somebody? Did Chris?
A. If it was necessary to use in order to extract the
multipliers for Palm Beach County, then he would have used
it.
Q. And you are not sure whether that was necessary or
not?
A. Correct.
Q. What software did you use to perform the RIMS
analysis?
A. I asked Chris to extract the multipliers and he
gave me those multipliers and then I put them into our
spreadsheet model.
Q. What computer files, whether output, Lotus or Excel
were created using RIMS data?
A. I can tell you which ones they are. There are two
of them. Let's see if I can remember the exact file names
of them. They're pretty easy to find I thought in the
disks. It's called like SUM ECON.
Q. Would it help, I believe these are the printouts of
the directories, would it help?
A. Sure, if you give them to me to look at I can help
you.
58
These files like 9910.XLS, they probably have the
population files. They have information on specific
properties in the EAA or specific businesses in the EAA.
You'll note them by the fact that they're so big. Like
this one has got 1.3 million bytes.
Okay. The file that has the summary for the EAA
area is SUM2ECON.WK3, to the best of my knowledge, at this
time. Let me find you the one for Florida. The one for
Florida has -- it's kind of just like SUM2ECON but it's got
FL in it and I can't find it. In fact, the SUM2ECON.WK3,
to the best of my knowledge, that's the one but it might be
slightly -- have a slightly different name than that, but
look there first.
What you are going to find is if you showed me the
report I could tell you how to find -- there are files that
look just like those detailed tables in the report, so if
you find those, and they have names like SUM2ECON.FL or
things like that, those are the ones that are the exact
replicas of the tables in the report. And on here I cannot
find the one that has FL in it of the Florida one, from
what you've given me.
Q. That's okay.
Which industry codes from the STUBS.PRN file of IO
industry classifications on the RIMS II disks did you use
for your analysis?
59
A. Repeat the beginning of that again.
Q. Which industry codes from the STUBS.PRN file?
A. Okay. Now, whether or not they were taken for this
particular STUBS file I do not know but I can tell you that
the multipliers that we used are in the report. We tell
you exactly which ones we used in the report. So if you
look in the report --
Q. For example, RIMS code 11.0703, would that be --
A. What crop name does that correspond to, does it say
there?
Q. New conservation and development facilities
construction.
A. Yes. That came from the RIMS information.
Q. And you are telling me that the industry codes are
found somewhere in your report; are thry in a table?
A. The ones that we used. The industry codes should
be in there.
Q. Would they be listed in a table?
A. Yes.
Q. Or just sort of throughout --
A. Yes.
Q. In a table?
A. Yes, in a table.
Q. There are some survey files I guess on your
disks. Is SURVEY-S.HWD for sugar cane?
60
A. Say the name of the file again.
Q. SURVEY-S.HWD then there's a V.HWD, a SD.HWD and
then there's also a SURVEY3.HWD?
A. .HWD, that sounds like something that would be a
WordPerfect file or something like that. We have the
survey results in a spreadsheet but I don't recall those
names.
Q. While he's looking let me ask you another one.
Are any of the spreadsheets linked, in other words,
LINKSTR.WK1?
A. To the best of my knowledge, the spreadsheets are
not linked.
Q. What is LINKSTR.WK1?
A. How big is it? Do you have the size of the file?
Q. Here's the survey ones, go back to that (handing).
A. Okay, those particular files, I don't know what
they are without looking at them.
Q. Is this something, again, Chris Meline would have
run?
A. I don't know. I'd have to look at what's inside
the files.
Q. Here's some more survey files. Can you tell us
what's in these?
A. I can answer these questions better if you showed
me what the files looked like in terms of a printout of
61
them. I'll do the best I can.
SURVEY.WK3 could be the results of the survey of
businesses in the EAA, but without actually looking at the
file itself I can't tell you for sure. Chances are that's
what it is.
Q. And do you not recall what the LINKSTR file is?
A. Like I said, if you showed me the file I could tell
you exactly what it was but trying to go from there, I can
only give you my best guess.
I don't see the file that you are referring to on
this list --
Oh, I see it.
I would only be guessing. If you had even just a
printout of one page of it I could tell you what it was.
If you just printed out the first, you know, you know, A 1
through, you know, E 100, if you could just print that out
for me and you showed it to me, I could tell you exactly
what it is, but I can't for sure tell you what's in that
particular file.
Q. Maybe we'll try that for tomorrow.
Here's something I do have a printout of. What is
the origin of the file SUBSIDEN.WK3?
A. Oh, good, you gave me a printout. This is much
better now.
This is a model that tracks how thick the organic
62
soil is in certain areas of the EAA.
Q. Who developed the model?
A. I did.
Q. Based on?
A. The soil subsidence study, 1988 soil subsidence
study put out by the Palm Beach County Soil Conservation
Service and an IFAS publication authored by George Snyder,
soil scientist at IFAS in Belle Glade.
Q. I'll get into the substance of that after a bit.
Here, again, are printouts of two files,
SUCROSE.WK1 and SUGAR.WK1. Do those refer to sucrose and
sugar yields for sample parcels by yield belt that is
collected by the Palm Beach County appraiser?
A. This information is the sucrose content and yield
on fields in the EAA provided to me by the Florida Sugar
Cane League by yield belt.
Q. Not by the county property appraiser's office?
A. This was provided to us by the Sugar Cane League.
Q. What is the difference between the two files,
between the sugar file and the sucrose file?
A. The sucrose file is the percent of sugar -- sucrose
in the cane and the yield file is the tons per acre.
Q. So sucrose will tell us how much sucrose per ton of
cane, for example?
A. It will tell us the amount of sucrose in the
63
cane.
Q. Per ton or per acre or what's the measurement?
A. Oh, this measurement is, it's percent sucrose --
Q. So it would have --
A. -- in the cane. It's probably an average.
Q. Per amount of cane though, not per acre?
A. That was what was measured in the field -- not in
the field but --
My understanding of these numbers as they were
communicated to me is this is percent sucrose in the cane
grown on a specific field in a specific year.
Q. And the sugar is the net tons of cane per acre?
A. The net -- it's the -- tons or the net tons, I
don't remember which, of sugar cane per acre.
MS. STINSON: Short break.
(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)
(Discussion off the record.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Switching gears again.
Somewhere somebody found this old document of
yours. I believe it's of yours. Something called A
Handbook for Economic Analysis of Coastal Recreation
Projects. Is that you who worked on it, Grace Jones,
listed as author?
A. Yes.
64
Q. When was that done?
A. That was done at the University of Florida in
1980, '81.
Q. Were you still a student at the time, an
undergrad?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the project and how did you become
involved?
A. I was a research assistant with Dr. Milon and I
helped him work on the project.
Q. Other than that handbook, do you have any other
published documents, reports or articles?
A. Published, how do you mean?
Q. Well, let's cover all the bases here.
Have you given any professional papers at seminars
or symposia?
A. Yes.
Q. What have you given?
A. You want to know the papers that I've presented?
Q. Right.
A. Okay. Well, there's a number of them, I'm just
trying to go through them in my hand. You want to know all
of them, okay.
There was a -- I don't know where to begin.
I've given a number of presentations regarding
65
solid waste management.
Q. And are these at professional symposia or seminars?
A. Are you talking about at like at the American
Agricultural Economics Association?
Q. Right. That sort of thing.
A. I gave a paper there regarding my dissertation, a
paper that I wrote off my dissertation at one of the
meetings around '86, I'm guessing as an approximate year,
at the American Agricultural Economics Association annual
meetings in August.
Q. What was the topic --
A. It was --
Q. -- of your paper?
A. -- a fisheries management paper.
Q. Okay.
A. That was one of them.
The other one was also at the AJAE, I'm sorry, the
other one was at the AAEA meetings, it was a student paper
back in 1981.
Q. Did that relate to your handbook that you just --
A. No, that related to the spiney lobster industry
in the Florida Keys.
Q. Any other presentations, papers presented?
A. Presented at like the AAEA meetings.
Q. Right. Any kind of professional association.
66
A. There's the American Public Works Association
where I've given two presentations related to financing
solid waste management programs. Just recently one was last
June, the other one was the previous June.
Q. You say regarding financing solid waste?
A. Yes. It had to do with using variable rates,
having -- charging households by the can instead of by the
month for garbage pickup. And also looking at the varied
costs of different solid waste management programs.
Q. When you say "financing," you are not talking
about some kind of public financing bond for capital works
project but --
A. We're talking about developing new methods of
financing solid waste management programs. In other words,
fees, what fees to charge. When you are costing out a
program, what costs should you include in order to make
management decisions.
Q. Any other papers that you can recall?
A. There was -- also gave a paper at the Department
of the Army recycling conference regarding financing solid
waste management programs.
Q. And when was that?
A. 1990. I think it was around September of 1990.
Then I gave another presentation at the -- Broward
County had a one-day recycling conference where I talked
67
about using the variable rates to finance solid waste
services.
Q. And again, date?
A. That was 1991, I think it was October '91.
That's all I can remember at the moment.
Q. Other than as compiled with the materials from
each of these seminars or meetings, were your papers
published in any other publication or distributed in any
other way?
A. One paper was published in the American Journal
of Agricultural Economics.
Q. Which paper was that?
A. It was, had to do with subsidizing water to
farmers in California.
Q. And when was that, do you recall?
A. Well, it was published in '86 and we worked on it
in '84.
Q. Any other publications?
A. A chapter in a book.
Q. What's that?
A. That was a chapter -- it was a condensation of my
dissertation thesis called Stochastic Models and Option
Prices.
Q. And what book, that's the name of the book?
A. That's the name of the book.
68
Q. What's the name of the publisher or editor?
A. I don't recall. It's on my resume that you have.
Q. Any other reports or monographs such as your
handbook that would have been presented or published for
distribution?
A. Yes. There's -- I need to get some clarity on
that. Every report that we -- that I have done has been
distributed in some form or another, whether it's been
distributed during the bay delta hearings or whether it was
presented to the Public Utilities Commission, so that type
of distribution, that pretty much applies to most of the
work that I've done.
Q. Let's say apart from that which was distributed
sort of as part of your work to your clients.
A. There was Cost of Industrial Water Shortages, I
believe that was circulated in many circles.
Q. Then was that done?
A. That was completed in '91.
Q. For whom?
A. For the California Urban Water Agencies.
Q. And they printed it and published it?
A. Yes.
Q. Any other similar?
A. There was the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Environmental Impact Study that was published in, it was
69
either '89 or '90 that it was published.
Q. On what?
A. Our specific role was looking at the impact of
reservoir water levels and stream flows on recreation.
Q. And how was that distributed?
A. That was distributed to -- you know, in a document
that was distributed throughout -- through interested
parties in California. This was when they were looking at
reallocating water supplies, so it was a pretty popular
publication, from my understanding.
Q. It was distributed but no movie yet?
A. What?
Q. I say but no movie yet?
A. No.
Q. It was distributed by the Bureau of Reclamation?
A. Yes.
Q. Any other similar?
A. Not that I recall at the moment.
Q. I show you a letter dated May 8 from you to
Professor Lonnie Jones in which you apparently transmit
some articles to him. Do you recall writing that letter?
A. Yes.
Q. You indicate in that letter, do you not, that you
would like him to review those and discuss them with you?
A. That's what it says.
70
MR. BURGESS: Is there a Bates number on that
document, excuse me?
MS. STINSON: No, these are not fed documents.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Did you discuss those articles with Dr. Jones after
you sent them to him?
A. Yes.
Q. First of all, tell me why you sent him these
articles and why you wanted to talk to him about them.
A. He called me up and he was trying to tell me
about the world sugar price was going to be some very low
number if there was no protected markets for sugar in the
world. And I was trying to explain to him that that wasn't
so.
So he asked me what I relied on to come up with
that opinion or why did I have that opinion. I said:
Well, look, take a look at these articles and if you want
to discuss it with me further, then fine.
And I don't recall the exact discussion that we had
after he received these nor if we discussed it at all, I
I just don't even remember that.
I do remember that he backed off on that number
after -- or at least he didn't bring it up any more after
that.
Q. Do you recall what number he was suggesting?
71
A No. I just remember it being very low.
Q. Did you have an opinion as to what that number, the
price of raw sugar, would be in the absence of price
supports?
A. To an extent. My opinion was that it wasn't ever
going to be that low.
Q. But you don't remember what number?
A. I don't remember the exact number at the time that
we were discussing.
Q. Did you develop any kind of document or calculation
which led you to a conclusion as to what the number would
be?
A. That is in the report. Yes, we do talk about that.
And we'd explained it very clearly, I believe, in the
report.
Q. And your opinion given in the report is based on
the documents listed there on that May 8 letter?
A. Yes. There may be more documents that we relied on
but these are some of them.
Q. Did Dr. Jones ever send you anything with his
analysis of what the price of raw sugar would be?
A. No, not that I remember.
Q. When you discussed with him or he discussed with
you what he thought the price would be, was there a
discussion of what difference that would make, why he
72
thought it was going to be low and how that would impact
your impact assessment?
MR. SAXE: Objection to form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. No.
MR. SAXE: Compound.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. You can answer.
A. He didn't -- we did not discuss the reason why,
that he --
We did not discuss what impact that would have as
far as I can remember.
Q. Did you make any changes in your opinion with
respect to what the price of raw sugar would be in the
absence of price supports based on information given to you
by Dr. Jones or discussion with him?
A. It had no influence whatsoever.
Q. I show you a document that says it's a 4/7/92
meeting with G. Wedgworth, Bill Kramer, and there's one
particular --
First of all, are those your notes, copies of your
notes, can you tell?
A. They look like my notes. Looks like my writing.
Q. On the second page there's a square with a couple
of stars by it, can you read that and tell me what it is
73
you are discussing, if you recall?
A. I don't recall exactly. I can give you my
impression but I don't recall exactly why I wrote that down
or what we were talking about on this particular issue.
Q. Give me your impression.
A. I asked them about the cost of expanding capacity.
Q. For? Their mills?
A. The mill. And this may have had to do with getting
a permit to expand the mill.
Q. Do you recall why you've got a couple of stars by
it, why you thought that was important?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I thought --
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Do you recall why you've got a couple of stars by
it?
A. No.
Q. Was that an important point to you at the time?
A. At that time I thought it was interesting, that's
all. And I thought just star it so I can find it next
time. If I'm going through the files again if I see it,
make sure I remember it, not necessarily for this project
but that it was an interesting concept about the
permitting.
74
Q. Did it bear any relationship to your study in any
way?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. Let me show you another set of handwritten notes
and ask you if those are your notes.
A. Yes.
Q. What was the event that they are notes of?
A. A meeting with Jack Malloy, A. Duda & Sons in
Melbourne, Florida.
Q. And when?
A. March 16, 1992.
Q. On the fourth page is a comment that says "Key
issue, what happens if growers don't pay assessment?"?
Can you look through those notes and tell me why,
what prompted that comment, if you can recall?
A. I don't remember. I don't remember why I wrote
this statement.
Q. Do you believe that the question of what happens if
growers don't pay the assessment is a key issue?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Say -- I don't understand the question.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Backing up, I guess one of the means to finance the
SWIM Plan is to place an assessment on the growers in the
75
EAA; correct?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
MR. SAXE: Object.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. (Indicating.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. You don't know whether that's correct or not?
A. Would you repeat the question one more time.
Q. Isn't it true that one of the means being looked at
for financing the projects in the Everglades SWIM Plan is
an assessment on the growers in the EAA?
A. I don't know.
Q. Well, isn't it true that your analysis looked at
the effect of such assessments?
A. Yes.
Q. And that the Water Management District asked you to
look at that?
A. Yes.
Q. So wouldn't you assume that that was one of the
possibilities under consideration for financing the
projects in the SWIM Plan?
MR. NETTLETON: That sounds objectionable, so. You
can answer it.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I -- I did what I was told. I didn't ask why they
76
wanted it done.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. In determining the effect of the imposition of
those assessments, wouldn't you agree that a key issue is
what happens if the growers don't or cannot pay those
assessments?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. That's not a question, if I understand your
question correctly, that's not something we were asked to
look at.
That, that statement might have been written
because Malloy asked the question: What happens if they
don't pay the assessment? And so I must have written that
down to talk to the District to see if I needed to consider
that. And I was told I was not, I did not need to consider
that.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. So in your analysis of the impact of the Marjorie
Stoneman Douglas Act and the Settlement Agreement, it was
not relevant -- that question was not relevant to you, what
happens if the growers don't pay the assessment?
A. See, the issue is, if they don't pay the
assessment, will the assessment get increased.
Q. On the remaining?
77
A. Right. And I was told not to do that at that time.
To just -- they can either pay it or can't pay it and
determine whatever the job impact may be and as acreage
leaves production, I don't up the assessment for the
remaining, I just keep it at 25 an acre or 100 an acre or
whatever I was looking at.
Q. Who instructed you to proceed along those lines?
A. I don't recall exactly. It was one of the project
managers for this project. Paul Muncy or Pete Rhoades.
Q. Let me show you another document and ask you if you
can identify that, we may want to mark this one.
A. Yes, these are my notes.
Q. Did those notes ever turn into part of your report?
A. I don't remember. We'd have to go to the report
and check it out and see if anything matches.
MS. STINSON: Let's have this marked as an exhibit
first.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 1 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Can you tell me just generally what these notes
reflect and for what purpose you wrote them?
A. Okay, this was my opinion on 6/6/92 but my opinion
has changed probably a little bit from what this says.
Q. It was your opinion about what?
78
A. Oh. About what would happen to raw sugar prices
and what would happen to recovery rates and that's about it,
as far as I can see here.
Q. Tell me what opinions you have now that differ
from what is reflected in that document.
A. The opinions that I have are in the report, the
contract completion report, so --
Q. Okay, well, how did and why did your opinions
change?
A. Just thinking about the issue a little more and
that's about it.
Q. Is there something in particular, some conclusion,
opinion that you changed?
A. I think where it says "Sugar recovery rates," we
ultimately did not hold them constant, we increased them
over time, because I thought it was just too pessimistic a
scenario to have them a constant especially when the data
did not reflect that. Then --
Q. What --
Go ahead.
A. (Continuing) And then the price of raw sugar or
the -- yes, price of raw sugar, I didn't do it exactly the
way that this describes in paragraph 2, as far as I can
tell from reading this at the moment. I have it jumping up
whereas in the final report we have it constant, the raw
79
sugar price.
Q. Was there anything in specific that caused you to
change your opinion about the recovery rate?
A. Well, writing all this down allowed me to think
about what I wrote and I must have just started then
looking more at sugar recovery rates and started looking
more at raw sugar prices and incorporating additional
information from the publications and the data into the
analysis.
Q. You can't recall anything in specific, a
conversation or a document or an article that --
A. Well, the USDA, it might have been -- I looked at
the recovery rates in the U.S. statistical abstract, I
looked at --
Q. For the record "recovery rate" means what?
A. Well, you can look at it in a couple different ways
but it's mostly the amount of sugar in the cane and you
could look at it in terms of the pounds of raw sugar in
terms of sugar cane, or you can look at it in terms of
pounds of raw sugar per acre of sugar cane, so that's what
I'm referring to.
Q. Do you recall why on 6/6/92 you felt that, that the
recovery rate should be held constant?
A. On that I was writing down what I had in my head at
that point and that's what I wrote down and I don't know
80
exactly what led me to write that down but that is what I
wrote down, but that wasn't my final opinion.
Q. A minute ago we were talking about whether it was
important to you what would happen if a grower could not
pay an assessment.
Did you make an assumption regarding whether
growers would continue to pay on an acre that was not in
production? If the land went out of production, according
to your analysis, did you make any assumptions as to
whether that land would continue to pay its assessment?
A. No.
Q. You made no assumptions?
A. We, if land goes out of production, we did not need
to look at whether or not whoever was left with the land
would continue to make an assessment -- pay the assessment,
no, we didn't consider that. It wasn't part of the
analysis.
Q. Back to recovery rates here.
I ask you if you can identify a document called
"Historical and Forecasted Sugar Recovery Rates," whether
that's something you generated?
A. Yes, that's something I generated.
Q. What does that document demonstrate or show; what's
on it?
A. It shows the actual recovery rates from 1930 to
81
1991 or '2, and then this is what it would look like --
then we added a trend. We trended the recovery rates based
on data from 1977 and 1991 or '2, and then I looked at,
well, what would happen if that trend continued into the
future.
And then I looked at a maximum, okay, well, we
can't let it trend forever, it has to peak somewhere or the
rate, you know, reasonably could stop somewhere. So then
we came up with the maximum. And then I just drew a
picture of it.
Q. How did you decide what the maximum could be?
A. I talked to an agronomist at USDA in Canal Point.
Q. Do you recall who?
A. His name escapes me at the moment.
Q. Where is Canal Point?
A. It's on the eastern part of Lake Okeechobee above
Pahokee.
MS. STINSON: Let's have this one marked also.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 2 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. On Exhibit 2, can you tell me why you chose the
years you chose for doing the trend?
A. By 1977, all seven mills and only those seven mills
were in production, from '77 to the present.
82
Q. Do you know whether any modifications were made to
those mills subsequent to 1977?
A. According to USDA, some modifications have been
made, if I recall correctly.
Q. How did you do mathematically the trend, how did
you determine what the trend was?
A. We ran a statistical -- I ran a statistical
regression of the data and then used the estimated model to
forecast the future.
Q. You did a regression analysis of all the data from
nineteen seventy-, what, -seven, to 1991; is that correct?
A. That's about right.
Q. Through 1991, using '91?
A. Yes, the most recent year, it's '91 or '92, I don't
recall which was the end year.
Q. Are you still of the opinion that the trend line
you used was the correct trend for those years?
A. Well, I'm still looking at it for the 20-year
evaluation that we're doing.
Q. Well, no, I guess my question is: Just
mathematically looking at the years 1977 through 1991, are
you still of the opinion that what you calculated to be
that trend is correct?
A. Yes.
Now, that's not the way I calculated the trend in
83
the report, though.
Q. Okay. Tell me how you calculated the trend in the
report.
A. We trended off an average of the last five years.
Instead of using the equation.
Q. How did do you trend off an average?
A. Well, we calculated the trend and then, instead of
using the equation, we took or I took the average of the
last five years of recovery rates and then added the trend
to that. That's about what I did.
Q. Rather than trending --
A. From the equation.
Q. Let me see if I understand this. You took the
average of the last five years and you got, let me just
guess a number, 220 pounds of sugar per net ton and then
you took the trend line from that and went up from there?
A. Yes.
Q. Rather than beginning the trend line in '77 or
whatever beginning date you used and going out?
A. Correct.
Q. So in fact, that would give you a higher number,
would it not, than beginning the trend in the year you
began the trend analysis?
A. No.
MR. SAXE: Objection.
84
BY THE WITNESS:
A. (Continuing) No, not necessarily, no.
Q. Do you know whether it did?
A. No.
Q. Why did you change your method?
A. Because I wanted to spend more time on the trend
issue and more time on the recovery rate issue, so that's
one of the areas of the report that we're improving on.
Q. For your 20-year analysis?
A. Yes.
Q. We'll talk about that later then.
Even though you are still looking at it, can you
tell me why you changed just from Exhibit 2 to what you put
in your report, your 10-year report?
A. Well, overall I don't exactly remember the mind
thought that I had between why I wanted to start to spend
more time on that trend or at least on our use of the
recovery rates, but it had something to do with feeling
that we could improve on the recovery rate issue in terms
of our analysis.
Q. Well, so that led you to the change from using the
formula to beginning the trend with the average?
A. Yes.
Q. Other than doing a linear regression of the trend,
did you do any other types of analysis of the recovery
85
rate?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. Let me show you another document. Just take a look
at that.
MR. BURGESS: Excuse me, Donna, did we mark that
last one?
MS. STINSON: Yes, we did, Exhibit 2.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. At some point did you have a discussion with Carl
Woehelke at the Water Management District about, I don't
know what term to use, the returns to land or the profits
per acre and the difference between what he figured it was
and what you put in your report?
A. Yes.
Q. Does the document I've just showed you reflect some
of that discussion?
A. Yes.
Q. And was Mr. Woehelke of the opinion that the
returns to land were higher than you had calculated?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. He was just trying to do some calculations with the
data in the USDA and wanted to know why his average came
out different from my average.
BY MS. STINSON:
86
Q. Did you discuss that with him?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you figure out why his average came out
different from your average?
A. Yes.
Q. Why?
A. I'm trying to remember as best I can. But after
looking at his, what he did, and looking at what I did, I
came to the conclusion that what we did was the appropriate
way to do it.
In other words, the difference between the net
returns per acre between his and mine were due to some
factors that he didn't include in his calculations. For
example, one of them was -- well, to be honest with you I
don't remember what the differences were at the moment.
Q. But did you review those?
A. Yes.
Q. And did you determine that your analysis was
correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Was inflation one of those factors?
A. Yes, now that you mention it.
Q. That he failed to consider inflation in terms of
costs?
A. Yes.
87
Q. Were there other matters as well, you just don't
remember them at this point?
A. Yes.
Q. Let me show you a record of a telephone
conversation with Ron Lord. Are those your notes?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you recall the substance of that discussion with
Mr. Lord?
A. At the moment I don't recall exactly what this had
to do with the study, but I was trying to get some
information on the number 14 contract, what it represents.
Q. What is a number 14 contract?
A. It's the futures price of raw sugar in New York,
all duties and fees paid. Raw sugar delivered to New York.
Q. The date of that telephone conversation is February
of '93; correct?
A. Yes.
Q. At that point you were working on your 20-year
analysis; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you used any of the information that you
obtained from Ron Lord in developing any opinions or
conclusions for your 20-year report?
A. Not that I recall at the moment, no.
Q. Mr. Lord is with USDA; correct?
88
A. Yes.
MR. ROSENBERG: Is that a marked exhibit?
MS. STINSON: No.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Can you identify this document, it indicates it's
"Costs of Production continued," but I didn't see anything
called costs of productions.
Can you tell me why it says "continued" on the file
name?
A. No, it doesn't necessarily mean that because it was
in this file that it was really costs of production.
Q. Are those your notes?
A. Yes. These are mine.
Q. What do they reflect on them?
A. I think this first page is now irrelevant.
Q. What is the first page?
A. Causes of maximum --
It had to do with what we used for the price
received by the raw sugar mill.
Q. What you used in your 10-year report?
A. Yes, but as it turns out this -- this was my notes
that reflected an issue I was concerned about, but I have
taken care of the concern so this page is irrelevant.
Q. Can you tell me what the issue was?
A. Now, this one is not.
89
Q. Back up. What was the issue you were concerned
about and how you resolved it?
A. Making sure that we properly and as best as
possible represented the price received by the mill, by the
raw sugar mill in the EAA, and I don't exactly remember
writing this first page, but it is my handwriting so this
was an issue I was concerned about and I addressed and --
Q. You have resolved that issue; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. You now feel you know what to use as the price of
raw sugar --
A. Yes.
Q. -- to be received at the mill?
A. Yes.
Q. Why was there a question? What about that number
was not clear?
A. Well, Ron Lacewell had called me up and he had some
questions about how I decided what the Everglades FOB price
was, and I told him. And then he asked me a couple
questions that made me think, hum, maybe I should, you
know, recheck a few things just to make sure that we
calculated it properly.
Q. Would that conversation have been shortly before
the date on your notes?
A. Probably; I don't know.
90
MS. STINSON: Let's go ahead and get this one
marked.
THE WITNESS: Do you want to hear about the next
page.
MS. STINSON: Yes, but let's put a marker on it
first.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 3 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Before you get to the next page or maybe on the
next page also it says "Causes of difference"; is that what
it says at the top?
A. Yes.
Q. Causes of what differences; differences between
what and what?
A. That, I don't know. I don't recall why I wrote
causes of differences.
Q. What does the second page reflect?
A. Oh. This causes of differences is when we were
going from the 10-year to the 20-year analysis, we looked
at, we evaluated some of the assumptions we made on the
10-year analysis, and on 3/2/93 I started writing down what
might be the causes of the differences between the 10-year
forecast and the 20-year forecast.
Q. On any assumption?
91
A. Well, on this case it was the price received by the
raw sugar mill and the second page is the yield per acre
for the model farms.
And so for the second page here, yield per acre, we
actually, when we received the individual field yield per
acre from the Florida Sugar Cane League, it was at that
point really too late to really look at the individual
yield belt data, so we took the average that the Palm Beach
County property appraiser's office had already calculated.
Q. This is your 10-year study?
A. Yes, this is when we were doing our 10-year
study.
When we got to the 20-year study I said, well,
okay, let's look at this individual field data of each
yield belt that the League provided us. And when I did
that I realized that in yield belt five that the property
appraiser was appraising all the fallow fields in with all
the regular fields.
Now, because there -- apparently because there was
a few more fallow belts in yield belt five than in yield
belt four, we found that yield belt five, when they're not
fallow, and we took out the fallow fields in our
calculations for yield belt four, we found that the average
yields were not different from each other, in yield belt
four and yield belt five.
92
Yield belt five actual yields actually went up per
acre, average yield per acre went up. When I took out all
the fallow fields in the data.
The data in the yield per acre is by yield belt and
oftentimes you'll get -- you won't always plant the field
back to sugar, you'll let it go to fallow for a while.
That was a zero in the data.
So for a certain year and a certain yield belt and
a certain plot, piece of data might be blank, and that's
supposed to indicate that the field was fallow. Then the
next year you might have a number for that field because it
was planted to sugar cane.
So you'll have a whole time series of numbers for a
particular field that has positive numbers for some years
and zero for other years. Actually the field is blank for
other years.
What the appraiser office apparently did was
average even the zeros, they called the blank zeros and
averaged that over all the years for each yield belt.
So if you happen to have a lot of fallow -- a lot
of high frequency of fallow fields in a yield belt relative
to another yield belt, you will actually get a lower yield
in one yield belt than another.
And this was the case between yield belt four and
yield belt five. When I took out the fallow observations,
93
the zero observations, and recalculated the average, the
averages were not too different from each other and the
average of yield belt five is now actually higher than what
we used in the report.
Q. Wouldn't it be true that if you took out the fallow
fields in each yield belt, each yield belt would be higher
because you are taking out the zeros; right?
A. The northern -- the other yield belts didn't have
as many fallow. I took out all the fallow and I
recalculated all the averages. It just so happens that
four and five have a higher frequency of fallow fields so
it made a bigger difference in yield belt four and five,
whereas yield belt one, two and three were okay.
Q. Do you know whether the fact that yield belts four
and five have more fallow fields is because the quality of
the soil requires it to be left fallow more often than in
the other yield belts?
A. I have to look into that, I don't know why that --
why there's more fallow fields in that data.
Q. Is even taking out the fallow, is it true that
yield decreases from yield belts one through five?
A. When the fallow is taken out?
Q. Right.
A. Yes, it increases, yes.
Q. No, I think you misunderstand my question.
94
Is the yield per acre for yield belt one still,
even taking out the fallows, still greater than the yield
per acre in yield belt two which is still greater than et
cetera, et cetera, three, four and five?
A. Yes, yes, until you get to four and five.
Q. And four and five are similar?
A. Are similar.
Q. Does that document, Exhibit 3, discuss any other
differences in assumptions?
A. No.
MR. NETTLETON: Can we have a break for five
minutes.
MS. STINSON: Sure.
(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)
(Whereupon, a discussion was held off the record.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Miss Johns, you sent a letter, did you not, on
February 24 to Mr. Fred Hill requesting some information?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you received a response to that request?
A. Yes.
Q. Subsequent to that letter, did you have a telephone
conversation with Mr. Hill about some of the issues?
A. I tried to have a telephone conversation with
Mr. Hill. I only got as far as his secretary and she asked
95
me to put it in a letter and that's why we have the letter.
Q. Did someone give you the information that 25
percent of the sugar has gone to Texas and Louisiana, 50
percent to Savannah and 25 percent to New York and
Baltimore?
A. Yes, the percentages in the letter were something
that Ron Lord just suggested I try asking him.
Q. This was not information that Mr. Hill had given
you by telephone?
A. No. No, no.
MR. SAXE: Counselor, can I see that document.
MS. STINSON: Yes, just one second. Let me ask
one more.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. There's a comment on here, if I can read it right,
it says 85 cents per pound freight estimate GT; is that
what that says?
A. GJ.
Q. GJ?
A. (Indicating.)
Q. That's your estimate? What is that figure?
A. That's an estimate I came up with based on
information in an USDA publication.
Q. And that, what does that figure represent, an
estimate of what?
96
A. The cost of freight to ship sugar from the EAA to
its markets.
Q. Is that your current opinion, current thinking as
to what that figure should be?
A. I don't recall.
MS. STINSON: Let's mark this one.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 4 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Let me show you what's been marked as Exhibit 4 and
ask you to identify what that represents.
A. These are notes from a meeting with Barry Glaz at
Canal Point USDA.
Q. I'm sorry, with whom?
A. Barry Glaz.
Q. Who is he?
A. He is an agronomist with USDA in Canal Point.
Q. Why did you meet with him?
A. To understand the type of sugar cane varietal
research that is being done at USDA in Canal Point.
Q. Was anyone else at that meeting?
A. No.
Q. Help me understand your handwriting here. Can you
read the top of -- above the horizontal line there
(indicating).
97
A. I was trying to ask them if they had done specific
experiments to produce varieties that were more -- that
were easier to mechanically cut and successively replant
versus to let the land go fallow and hand cut.
In other words, if they were -- oh, moving, that's
what that word, moving from experiments where cane is
fallowed/hand cut to successive/mechanical cut.
Q. What was the response?
A. I don't recall on that one. I'm not sure if that
was an answer or a question.
Q. Did Mr. --
A. Glaz.
Q. -- Glaz indicate to you that yield per acre will
never go up in Florida?
A. Their -- yes, only because of experimental, they're
not really -- the growers don't want necessarily an
increase in yield per acre, they want an increase in the
amount of sugar in the cane.
Q. When you say "yield per acre," you are talking
about cane, not sugar per acre; is that correct?
A. Correct.
(Whereupon, the pertinent portion of the Record was
read back by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Did you speak with Mr. Glaz about whether the sugar
98
per acre would increase in Florida?
A. Yes.
Q. And do your notes reflect his comments on that
topic?
A. I can tell you what he said but I don't know if I
can back it up with the notes.
Q. Well, tell me what he said.
A. He said that they were trying to produce varieties
that had more sugar in them.
Q. Did he indicate to you what he thought the
prospects may be for that?
A. He thought they were good.
Q. Did he give you any kind of estimate of numbers,
recovery rate?
A. I tried to get his opinion. He gave me his best
opinion at the time.
Q. What was that?
A. That they would increase to a maximum.
Q. Did he give you the maximum?
A. I'm not sure if he did or not.
Q. Are you using any of the information you obtained
from him in your 20-year analysis?
A. Yes.
Q. In what respect?
A. Just the respect at this point where they are
99
expending effort to produce sugar cane varieties with
higher sugar content in them.
Q. Did he give you anything more specific in terms of
time it will take to develop these or what the prospects
are for, a trend line or anything on that that you are
using in your 20-year analysis?
A. He didn't have a problem with us using a trend, he
was just trying to provide an opinion on the maximum and he
might not have completely finalized that during our
conversation.
Q. Has he, since that conversation, supplied you with
any specifics?
A. No.
Q. Have you spoken with Frank Coale regarding recovery
rate?
A. I don't remember.
Q. Look at Exhibit 4, there's a comment in the corner
here, it says "Yet to be released high sugar, freeze
tolerant, stands straight" and some other things.
Do you know what that refers to?
A. No.
Q. You don't recall?
A. No, don't recall.
Q. Did you discuss with Mr. Glaz the effect of higher
water tables on yield or the effect of --
100
A. I may have.
Q. Did you discuss with him the effect of BMPs on
yield?
A. I don't remember.
Q. Did you discuss with him a lower use of phosphorus
on yield?
A. Yes.
Q. And did he have any opinions with regard to whether
decreasing the use of phosphorus would affect yield?
A. I don't remember.
Q. Did you discuss with him the possibility of sugar
production expanding acreage outside the EAA?
A. Talked about sand land but I don't remember that
specifically, no.
Q. Did you discuss with him whether there is potential
for increasing sugar production in Florida?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. The question's not clear to me.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Did Mr. Glaz have any opinions with regard to
whether there was other acreage that could be used for
sugar production in Florida on a commercial basis?
A. I don't recall.
Could you repeat that question again, I'm not sure
101
if I answered it right.
(Whereupon, the pertinent portion of the Record was
read back by the Court Reporter.)
THE WITNESS: Okay.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Does your answer stand?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you discuss with Mr. Glaz whether there's a
difference in results whether cane is mechanically
harvested or harvested by hand?
A. I asked him if he had any -- if they had
specifically developed varieties in the past that made it
easier to use mechanical harvesters on.
Q. And what did he respond?
A. He said no, they didn't specifically do that;
however, they did happen to select for varieties that stood
straight up and that tended to help but they weren't
specifically thinking about mechanical harvesting.
Q. Now, Mr. Glaz gave you his opinion that yield per
acre, cane per acre would go down but that sugar per ton of
cane would -- could go up; is that correct?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. No, that's not correct.
BY MS. STINSON:
102
Q. How was I wrong?
A. He was just saying that they weren't going to focus
on increasing tons per acre, they were going to focus on
increasing the amount of sugar in the cane.
Q. Did he indicate to you any opinion with regard to
whether yields per acre, cane per acre would go up or down?
A. No, he didn't say either way.
Q. Did he not indicate to you that the yield per acre
will, at best, stay the same and probably trend down
(handing Exhibit 4)?
A. Yes, maybe he did say that, since I have it in my
notes, but, see, when he said that, he wasn't real
committed to that. I mean, it was like we're not going to
go either way in terms of up or down.
The growers want it down a little bit --
Well, this is by ratoon, so they want the first
ratoon higher and the second ratoon constant and the third
ratoon lower than it is now.
Q. What do you mean "they want" it?
A. Well, the growers tell the USDA what they want, in
terms of the type of cane they want, so there's a plant
cane and then there's ratoons, and so, they like it to be a
certain --
My understanding that I recall is that they like it
to be a certain tons per acre for each, the plant and the
103
ratoon. So even though I do have this written, I don't --
my impression was that it wouldn't trend down
significantly.
They -- what he communicated to me, Mr. Glaz, was
that they were going to concentrate on increasing the sugar
production but they were not going to concentrate on
changing the yield, either increasing or decreasing.
Q. Now, we've been discussing throughout this
deposition the fact that you are currently working on a
20-year study; correct?
A. Yes.
Q. You finished your 10-year study in September or
thereabouts of '92; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. How did it come to be that you are now doing a
20-year study?
A. The District called me up and asked me if I would
do -- if I would extend the analysis to 20 years, and I
said yes.
Q. When did you get that call?
A. I don't recall exactly when.
Q. Was it right after you turned in your 10-year
report or a few months later?
A. It was probably a month or so later.
Q. Had you had any contact with the district between
104
the time you turned in your contract completion report on
the 10-year and when you got the phone call for the 20?
A. Yes.
Q. What contact?
A. I do recall they asked me to write a letter that
said, you know, what I thought should be done next in terms
of this evaluation, and I did jot down some things for them
in a letter and they -- that was about the only contact I
recall having.
Q. Well, after you got the phone call, then what?
A. I guess --
Q. Did you get together and negotiate a new contract?
A. It was mostly done over the phone.
Q. Did you enter into a new contract or was it an
extension of the pre-existing contract; do you recall?
A. A new contract.
Q. And do you remember when that was executed?
A. No.
Q. When did you begin work on the 20-year evaluation?
A. About December.
Q. Are you working similarly on a 20-year look at
benefits?
A. No.
Q. Or in any way updating or changing the benefits
side?
105
A. No.
MS. STINSON: Let me have this marked.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 5 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Would you identify what's been marked as Exhibit 5,
please.
A. (Reading.)
Q. Would you identify it for the record?
A. It's a letter from Pete Rhoades to me.
Q. What's the date of the letter?
A. May 22, 1992.
Q. At the time that letter was written, was he the
Water Management District person to whom you reported?
A. Probably, since Paul Muncy was departing that day.
Q. And he took over those responsibilities for Paul?
A. Yes.
Q. In here it indicates that you recommended using a
10-year horizon rather than a 20-year horizon due to
problems in predicting domestic and international issues;
correct?
A. That's what, his interpretation of what I said.
Q. Tell me, is that not correct?
A. That wasn't the reason why I wanted to go from 20
to 10.
106
Q. What is the reason you wanted to?
A. To spend more time and effort on the 20 years
analysis and --
Q. On the 20 years?
A. To spend more time on the first 10 years and spend
no time on the second 10-year period so that we could spend
more time on the first 10 years, so that we could feel
happy and comfortable and confident with our evaluation of
he first 10 years.
Q. Are you saying that, given the scope of your
contract, you didn't feel you had the time or the funds to
be able to do an adequate 20-year look?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Well, you might infer it from that, but I guess in
that time period that we had I wanted to spend more time on
the first 10 years and get that finished, completed first.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. This letter also states you further indicated
support for the shorter horizon by the Justice review
group. Who is the Justice review group?
A. I imagine he was referring to the economists hired
by the Justice Department.
He had asked me when I talked to him over the
phone, either him or Paul Muncy, I don't remember which
107
one, they asked if -- what I thought about what the Justice
Department economists thought about it. And I told Paul or
Pete, one or the other, that they didn't have a problem
with going from 20 years to 10 years.
Q. Who with the Justice Review Group had you discussed
that issue with?
A. Ron Lacewell and Lonnie Jones.
Q. Had the Water District indicated to you that the
Justice Department economists should review what you did?
A. Could you say that one more time.
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
MR. SAXE: Object to the form. Characterization.
They're not Justice Department economists. You are
mischaracterizing or misquoting the witness.
MR. NETTLETON: I just object to the form.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Rather than Justice Department economists,
economists retained by the Justice Department but the same
question.
MR. NETTLETON: Same objection too.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. The District -- all we were supposed to do for the
District, the economists hired by the District was to just
show them what we were doing.
BY MS. STINSON:
108
Q. Hired by the District?
A. I mean the Justice Department. Was to show them
what we were doing. They were not rubber stamp. They were
not a review committee that said good or bad.
In my mind we were just showing them what we were
doing.
MS. STINSON: Let's have this marked.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 6 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Would you tell me what Exhibit 6 is, please?
A. This is the draft of the benefits report --
Oh, wait a minute, I don't know what this is. Hold
on. I ought to look at it.
This is a memorandum updating the benefits report.
In other words, the progress report, progress for the
benefits report.
Q. It was sent to you by Richard Carson who was
working on it; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Was it sent to you for your review?
A. Let me see the front page and see what it says.
(Perusing) Yes.
Q. In here it indicates that "our working assumption
is that a relatively healthy ecosystem will result if the
109
proposed PLAN is implemented along with the measures
currently being implemented by the Army Corps of
Engineers.".
Do you know how he arrived at that working
assumption?
A. I don't remember.
Q. Did you have discussions with him about that
assumption?
A. I don't remember.
Q. Do you know what he means by "the measures
currently being implemented by the Army Corps of
Engineers"?
A. I can only guess, I don't know. I do not know what
he was referring to there.
Q. Do you know where he would have gotten that
information?
A. No.
Q. Do you know whether anyone instructed him to make
that assumption, anyone from the District?
A. This was based on discussions between me and him
and perhaps Paul Muncy, maybe Pete Rhoades.
Ultimately what we decided to do, though, on this
was not to even relate the study to the plan. This was
sort of a working, you know, in the middle of the project
memo where we're discussing, you know, how to go about
110
performing on the project, estimating the benefits.
So at the beginning, we were actually going to try
to link the benefits to the SWIM Plan but it came real
clear that, you know, pretty quickly that we really
couldn't do that at this time, so we just decided with the
approval of Pete Rhoades to look at three levels of injury
prevention as opposed to trying to tie it to the SWIM Plan.
Q. Is that because in addition to the projects in
the SWIM Plan other things needed to be done to solve the
problems in the Everglades?
MR. SAXE: Objection to form.
What is the "that" you are referring to, Counsel?
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I don't know.
MS. STINSON: She said she didn't know anyway.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Then why did it become clear, what made it clear
that the benefits could not be or should not be linked to
the SWIM Plan as you just indicated?
A. Because there was no formal document that said
what the Everglades would look like if you implemented the
SWIM Plan.
Q. Do you know whether Richard Carson, in his work,
ever visited the Everglades?
A. I don't -- oh --
111
I don't know.
Q. To your knowledge, did he come to Florida and
meet with you and --
A. Not to my -- no, he did not come and meet with
me.
Q. Did he speak directly with people at the Water
Management District?
A. Yes, I believe so.
Q. Do you know who he dealt with there?
A. Well, Pete Rhoades was one of them. And I don't
remember who he talked to.
Q. You indicated that there was no formal document
that linked, I think you said what the Everglades would
look like with the SWIM Plan implemented; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. In addition to there being no formal document, was
there any information upon which an economist could look at
the Everglades with and without the SWIM Plan?
A. There was not enough information at that time.
Q. Do you think there is, at this time?
A. I don't know.
Q. Let me show you another document and just ask if
those are your notes in the margins on sort of the back
pages.
A. What is the question?
112
Q. Are those your handwritten notes?
A. Yes.
Q. Is that your editing of Richard Carson's draft?
A. Yes.
MS. STINSON: Let's have this marked.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 7 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Would you please identify for the record Exhibit 7.
The question pends, would you identify it for the record.
A. Yes, this is a letter I wrote to Richard Carson on
May 5, 1992.
Q. Does that letter discuss the reasons that the
benefit assessment should not be of the SWIM Plan that
we --
A. Yes
Q. --discussed a few minutes ago?
A. Yes, that's one of the reasons.
Q. Let me ask you a couple of questions about that.
You indicate in here Mr. Muncy, that "he says it is
okay to evaluate the benefits of the Everglades as it
exists now versus a worthless, destroyed Everglades. The
United States Justice Department concurs."
A. Um hum.
Q. Did you discuss that with anyone at the U.S.
113
Justice Department?
A. Yes, the economists for the -- that were hired by
the Justice Department.
Q. Who, in particular?
A. Lonnie Jones and Ron Lacewell and Tio Assuno
(phonetic) was also at that meeting.
Q. You had an in-person meeting?
A. Yes, that's one of the things that they talked
about, we talked about.
Q. Was it important that the United States Justice
Department concur in that approach to the benefits study?
MR. SAXE: Objection.
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. You'll have to repeat the question because I don't
remember.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Did you feel it was important that the United
States Justice Department concur in that approach to the
benefits?
MR. NETTLETON: Same objection.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I didn't have an opinion either way.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Did anyone at the District indicate to you that you
114
should find out whether the U.S. Justice Department
concurred?
A. Nobody told me that I should get concurrence from
the Justice Department.
MR. SAXE: I'd like to take a look at that exhibit
at some point, Counsel.
MS. STINSON: Certainly.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. In here you indicate: "Despite what others may
believe, I would feel more comfortable taking this approach
only if the benefits are estimated in response to the
effective solution of problems a through e as described in
the SWIM Plan on page ii, which also includes the impacts
of the Settlement Agreement."
MR. SAXE: Are you reading from the document or
paraphrasing?
MS. STINSON: I'm reading.
THE WITNESS: This is it (indicating).
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Did the problems, and I apologize I don't have the
SWIM Plan in front of me, but do you recall whether
problems a through e in the SWIM Plan include problems that
will not be solved by the SWIM Plan?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY MS. STINSON:
115
Q. Does that make any sense to you?
A. No.
Q. No.
Do you recall what problems a through e are?
A. No, I'd have to take a look at it, I don't
remember.
Q. Okay, we'll do that tomorrow when we get a copy
of it.
You indicate here too, and I'll read all the words,
"If we take this approach, the public will, no doubt, try
to compare the benefits we estimate with the economic
impact (costs) of the Settlement Agreement. This is not
appropriate unless we also consider the costs of solving
problems a, b, d and e.".
Was it your opinion at that time that it is not --
that comparing the benefits to be determined in the
benefits report as opposed to the economic impacts in your
impact side of the report is like comparing apples and
oranges, they were measuring two different things?
A. I don't understand the question.
Q. Did the benefits report and the impact report
measure the benefits and impacts of the same thing?
A. No.
Q. So in your opinion, or is it true that in your
opinion it is not fair to compare the one against the
116
other?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
MR. SAXE: Objection to form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. It's a confusing question. You've got the
economic -- the economic evaluation evaluates a specific
part of the SWIM Plan, whereas the benefits looks at the
value of preserving certain -- I'm sorry, the value of
preventing three different types of injuries to the
Everglades. Now, those injuries may or may not be related
to the SWIM Plan.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. But there is nothing to link the two?
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Not directly.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Do you know whether there was done, is being done
or will be done a benefits study to relate specifically to
that which the impact study measures?
A. I don't know.
Q. You know of none?
A. I know of none.
Q. Here where you say that "he," Mr. Muncy, "says it
is okay to evaluate the benefits of the Everglades as it
117
exists now versus the worthless, destroyed Everglades," do
you know whether there are any documents which would
indicate that without the SWIM Plan the Everglades would be
worthless and destroyed?
A. I have never seen any documents like that, that I
recall.
Now, the SWIM Plan might say that somewhere, but I
don't remember exactly. I've read the SWIM Plan but I
don't remember everything I've read in it. Just let me
qualify that answer.
Q. You wrote a letter at one point requesting
information on where the sugar cane and vegetable growers
and mills purchase their supplies and machines; did you not?
A. Yes, I did ask them.
Q. Did you ever get an answer?
A. No -- no, I did not. Not that I recall.
MR. NETTLETON: Can you identify that letter?
MS. STINSON: I'm not going to put it in. Just
wanted to refresh her recollection.
MR. NETTLETON: Just for the record, can you
identify who the letter was to?
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. If you like.
A. It's a letter to Andrew Bernstein from me dated
May 5, 1992.
118
MS. STINSON: Let's have this one marked as 8.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 8 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Does Exhibit 8 reflect additional editing you did
of the NRDA benefits work?
A. Yes, the handwritten stuff is my edits, reflects my
edits.
Q. Do you know what the shaded portion represents?
A. I don't remember.
Q. You don't remember whether it was something --
there's also underlined portions, is there not, or stricken
through portions?
A. Um hum.
Q. Do you know what each of those represents?
A. This may be how they changed it from one edit to
the next, what they added and what they deleted.
Q. A little bit ago we were talking about the 20-year
report and you said you had gotten a phone call and that
you had written a letter suggesting what should be done for
the 20-year study; is that correct?
A. No --
Yes. Yes, that's correct.
MS. STINSON: Would you mark this.
Q. Well, let me ask you first, does what I'm showing
119
you represent what you suggested should be done for the
20-year look?
A. Yes, this looks right.
MS. STINSON: Let's go ahead and get it marked as
Exhibit 9.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 9 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
MS. STINSON: Let's mark this too.
Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 10 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Tell me, if you would, please, what 10 is.
MR. SAXE: May I see Exhibit 9, please, Counsel.
MS. STINSON: Yes, I'm sorry. You wanted to see
8 too; didn't you?
MR. SAXE: Yes.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. This is a letter I wrote to Sally Mlecz at the
South Florida Water Management District on October 7,
1991 -- 1991? 1992.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Does it propose some additional work?
A. Yes.
Q. Was that work funded?
A. No.
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Q. How did you come to propose that additional work?
A. I was asked to by, I believe it was by Sally, to
write up a proposal to do additional work.
Q. And the District determined not to do that; is
that correct?
A. It was not funded at that time, that's right.
Q. Has it ever been funded?
A. No, I guess not. Not in that form.
MR. BURGESS: What was the date?
MS. STINSON: October 7 of '92.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Is any of the work in Exhibit 10 reflected or is it
being done in your 20-year analysis?
A. That's -- I don't know, let me look at it again, if
you want me to answer it.
Q. Okay.
A. (Perusing exhibit 10) Well, the meeting at Hazen
and Sawyer's office with economists, that was done under
this newest contract.
The memorandum on sources and soundness of
differences, we've done that, I believe.
That's it.
Q. The memorandum on sources of differences, was that
that handwritten document we were looking at earlier?
A. No, it's -- it's either a letter or a memo written
121
to either Sally or Pete Rhoades.
Q. Was that letter written after a meeting with
economists in December; do you recall?
A. Yes. And there was also one written before then.
MS. STINSON: Number 11, would you mark that,
please.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 11 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. I believe you did mention earlier that you were
asked to give a letter to suggest additional issues that
could be addressed after you completed your 10-year report.
Does Exhibit 11 reflect your suggestions in that
regard?
A. Yes.
Q. And then does Exhibit 9 then reflect continuing
thinking about what should be done for a 20-year analysis?
MR. SAXE: Objection to form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. Yes, I don't understand the question.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Well, Exhibit 11 precedes Exhibit 9; correct?
Exhibit 11 reflects what you think should be done; correct?
A. Is this -- yes, if this one is Exhibit 11, then
you are right, yes.
122
Q. Essentially is Exhibit 9 a follow-up to Exhibit 11?
A. No. Exhibit 9 is responding to a request from
Peter Rhoades at the South Florida Water Management
District. And so is Exhibit 11, but Exhibit 9 is a
proposal that's going to be funded whereas Exhibit 11 is
issues that the District might want to consider.
Q. Who is Jeffrey Morris, is he somebody --
A. Jeffrey Morris, he was also somebody we
subcontracted with to help us complete the economic impact
evaluation. I forgot about him.
Q. Is he working on the 20-year analysis?
A. No.
Q. What was his role?
A. His role was to look at the different mitigation
methods used in other parts of the country. His work
corresponds to one of the chapters in the report, one of
those later chapters in the report about what other
agencies in the United States have done to mitigate the
economic impacts of environmental regulations.
Q. Are you not proposing to change that portion of
your analysis for the 20-year?
A. No, I'm not proposing to change that portion of the
analysis.
MR. SAXE: What is the spelling of the last name
on that person?
123
THE WITNESS: M o r r i s.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Norman Pearson was the guy who worked on BMPs; is
that correct?
A. Yes.
MS. STINSON: Would you mark that as 12.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 12 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Before I get on to 12, let me ask you a backup
question.
Am I correct in understanding that NRDA was a
subcontractor to Hazen and Sawyer for the benefits report?
A. That's correct.
Q. Do you have copies of all of NRDA's working files
and data and information that they used in producing their
report?
A. No, they're in La Jolla.
MS. STINSON: Paul, do you know whether those
were produced?
MR. NETTLETON: We produced whatever we had.
MS. STINSON: Well, does that include the
subcontractors' documents?
MR. NETTLETON: I don't know.
MS. STINSON: How would I find that out? I mean
124
I think as, insofar as it was a subcontract, they
should have been included, and frankly, it didn't occur
to me but I think it's included in the request since
the request is directed to Dr. Johns.
Can you find out for me whether those were
produced?
MR. NETTLETON: Yes, I can find that out.
MS. STINSON: Thank you.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Would you identify Exhibit 12, please.
A. This is a memorandum from Jose Alvarez to me
dated February 2, 1993.
Q. Why was he sending you a memorandum, what is it
about?
A. I asked him, I had asked him to comment on our
report, to write an evaluation of our report, you know,
what he thought of it.
Q. Of your 10-year report?
A. Yes.
Let me make -- double check to make sure that
everything is what I said it was (perusing Exhibit 12).
Q. Point one, Mr. Alvarez indicates that maximum
prices per net ton, he says, "Perhaps I still don't
understand the reasons behind your methodology but they
seem too high.".
125
Are these your handwritten notes in the margin?
A. Yes.
Q. There's a handwritten note that says "Maximum price
includes mill profit.".
Can you explain to me what that paragraph and your
comment are about?
A. Yes, he's referring to the maximum price that the
mill would pay the sugar cane grower for sugar cane and our
calculations, what it does is it allows all the profits to
sugar, raw sugar production and sugar -- sugar cane
production to go toward the bottom line, called residual
returns to land and risk.
And so you make the transfer of profit from the
mill to the sugar cane production enterprise using the
maximum price the mill would pay the grower for sugar cane
per ton of sugar care and he, at that time, did not
understand this.
Q. Have you subsequently discussed that issue with
him?
A. No.
Q. So you don't know whether he concurs or not with
your approach?
A. Correct.
Q. Point two, he asks "Why do you use the two ratoon
average in all of them," I believe that means in all yield
126
belts.
Did you have an explanation for that question?
A. Well, you have to point it out to me on this memo.
Q. It's point number two.
A. Oh.
Q. The second numbered paragraph.
A. What was your question, now that I've read it?
Q. Did you have an explanation for or an answer to his
question?
A. Okay. Well, our answer, the USDA cost data is
averaged for all of the EAA, but we may be able to
re-evaluate that here.
Q. Have you talked to Mr. Alvarez about that issue?
A. No.
Q. Have you, in fact, had any conversations with him
after you received that memo from him --
A. No.
Q. -- about the issues in the memo?
A. No.
Q. Do you intend to?
A. Yes.
MR. BURGESS: What is the date of that?
MS. STINSON: February 2, '93.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Let me just ask you to look at this one and ask you
127
a question.
Have you suggested to the District that it would be
a good idea to develop models to make it easier to assess
alternative BMPs and other practices, other proposals in
the EAA?
MR. SAXE: Object to the form.
MR. NETTLETON: Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. I put -- I actually talked about that a long time
ago before this happened, but Sally actually called and
asked me to write up a proposal for doing this.
BY MS. STINSON
Q. Has that proposal been funded? Are you developing
a spreadsheet?
A. Yes.
Q. Has the District said yes, they'll pay you to do
that?
A. Yes.
MS. STINSON: Let's go ahead and mark this then.
THE WITNESS: (Continuing) Now, that stuff on the
back, I don't know what that is.
MS. STINSON: Okay, we'll take it off.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 13 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
128
Q. What we just talked about with regard to
developing a spreadsheet is talked about in Exhibit 13,
just so the record is clear.
A. Are you waiting for me to answer?
Q. Yes.
A. What is the question?
Q. What we were just discussing with regard to
developing a spreadsheet is reflected in Exhibit 13; is
that correct?
A. Yes.
MR. SAXE: May I see this, please.
THE WITNESS: (Handing Exhibit 13.)
MS. STINSON: Would you go ahead and mark that
14.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 14 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Tell me what Exhibit 14 is.
A. This is where I actually formally write up the
scope of work, it's related to the --
Q. Exhibit 13?
A. -- Exhibit 13.
Q. And has your proposal, as reflected in Exhibit 14,
been funded?
A. Yes. I'm told.
129
Q. You have not yet received the written --
A. I don't have a contract yet.
Q. Have you produced the model, the computer model
that's discussed in Exhibit 14?
A. No.
Q. Are you working on it?
A. Yes.
Q. Before I mark it, tell me what that document is.
A. This is some notes that I wrote up.
Q. When and why?
A. I wrote them up, I think I wrote them up during one
of the governing board workshops or meetings.
Q. While you were in the meeting?
A. Yes, in case I would have to speak before the
board, I would at least have in my head what I wanted to
say.
Q. Do you recall when?
A. No.
Q. Would it have been recently, I mean --
A. No, a while ago.
Q. Before --
A. (Continuing) Maybe -- it might, I'm trying to
think.
It might have been the day after I gave my
presentation regarding the economic impacts to the
130
governing board at the workshop.
Q. And when was that?
A. In August.
Q. August.
A. But I never gave it. Never got to give it. I
don't even know why I have it.
MS. STINSON: Let's get this one marked as Exhibit
15.
(Whereupon, Johns' Exhibit No. 15 was marked for
identification by the Court Reporter.)
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Tell me what 15 is. Are those your notes?
A. Yes.
Q. And what are they?
A. This is a summary of the meetings that I had with
other people related to this project and the first page is
the list of Ag Economists who received a copy of the
report.
Q. When did you make up this list, do you recall?
A. Probably before the governing board meeting in
August.
Q. The first page is entitled "Peer reviewers";
correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And are those people to whom you sent the report to
131
receive comment from?
A. Yes.
Q. And that includes one of the economists retained by
the Justice Department, Lonnie Jones?
A. Yes.
Q. Does it contain, are there any names of any
economists representing agricultural interests?
A. No.
Well, what do you mean by that? I don't know
exactly what you mean "representing agricultural
interests."
Q. The league, Sugar Cane League, or the sugar co-op
or the Fruit and Vegetable Association?
MR. NETTLETON: Object. Object to the form.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. As far as I knew, there were no agricultural
economists on any of those.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. How did you choose the peer reviewers?
MR. SAXE: Object to the form.
MR. NETTLETON: Same.
MR. SAXE: Assumes facts not in evidence. I didn't
hear the witness testify she had chosen the peer
reviewers.
BY MS. STINSON:
132
Q. Did you choose to whom you sent copies of the
report?
A. Some I did, some I didn't.
Q. The ones you didn't, how were they chosen?
A. The District asked me to send a copy to them.
Q. How was this list of peer reviewers determined
that's indicated --
A. If you provide -- any Ag economist or anyone who
provided key information into -- that helped us with the
report, in other words, provided key information that we
used, it was sent to, and then the rest of them were sent
to them because we either wanted their opinion or we were
asked by the District to send it to them.
Q. With regard to Lonnie Jones, did he provide any
information to you that you used in the report?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. Why did you send him a copy?
A. I was asked to by the District.
Q. What about Ron Lacewell, did he provide you any
information?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. And why did you send him a copy?
A. Because I was -- the District asked me to.
Q. And what about Bill Boggess?
A. He was helpful throughout the project with
133
information, so I sent him one.
Q. Were you aware that he was retained by the U.S.
Department of Justice?
A. At the time I, no, I was not aware. My
understanding was that he wasn't retained until, you know,
August or something like that.
Q. Let me show you a record of a telephone
conversation apparently with George Snyder.
Did you speak with George Snyder on that day, on
February 24, that you recall?
A. Yes, I did speak to George Snyder.
Q. Did you discuss with him the issue of soil
subsidence?
A. Yes.
Q. Do those notes that I've shown you reflect your
conversation with him on that issue?
A. Yes, this all in all reflects what we talked about.
Q. Are you using information you have obtained from
him in your 20-year analysis?
A. Yes.
Q. Also, let me show you a telephone conversation note
with RL. Who is RL?
A. Ron Lord.
Q. Did you have a conversation with him on
February 23?
134
A. That's what it looks like.
Q. Do you recall what issues you discussed with him,
just generally, not in great detail?
A. I guess we were talking about acreage allotment. I
guess we were talking about potential acreage allotments.
Q. What do you mean "potential acreage allotments"?
A. Well, if the Florida -- I'm sorry, if -- we were
talking about the possibility or the probability of acreage
in sugar cane being restricted in the future.
Q. Are you using any of the information you obtained
from Ron Lord on that issue in your 20-year --
A. Not at moment.
Q. -- study?
A. Not at the moment.
Q. It appears that your notes on Ron Lord continue for
some pages. Would you just take a brief look and let me
know if there were other issues you discussed with him
also.
What I'd like to know --
A. It was a long conversation.
Q. -- what issues, just generally, you discussed and
whether he provided you with any information on those
issues that you are using in your 20-year study?
A. Okay. This conversation I'm looking at right now
was a year ago. 2/23 -- oh, wait a minute, it says '93.
135
Okay, never mind.
MR. BURGESS: That was last week but it seems
like a year ago.
MR. SAXE: Objection to comment.
BY THE WITNESS:
A. (Continuing) We were talking about, I guess, you
know, what the future of sugar prices would be, talked
about cost efficiencies, talked about the Farm Bill, talked
about NAFTA, talked about where the raw sugar mills might
actually be sending their raw sugar, talked about the
appropriate price to charge -- that mills receive for raw
sugar. That was it.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Did you receive any information from him on any of
those topics that you will be or are using or considering
in your 20-year analysis?
A. He is responsible for much of what goes into the
sugar and sweetener situation and outlook report. So to
that extent, yes, I do receive that type of information
from him.
Q. Here's something called a record of telephone
conversation, but I don't see a person or a time, so can
you tell me what that is.
A. I have no idea what this is.
Q. There's a comment on there saying "Jones found
136
upward bias in multipliers.".
Do you know what that refers to?
Well, first of all, is that your handwriting?
A. It appears to be.
I don't know what this piece of paper is.
Q. Tell me what this document is before I bother
marking it.
A. These are the survey results of businesses in the
Everglades agricultural area.
Q. What is the date associated with that? Was that
part of your 10-year report?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you be using those survey results also --
Well, did you use the results of those in your
10-year report?
A. Some of them.
Q. Will you be using those in your 20-year analysis?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the survey designed to do?
A. To determine where they purchased their materials
and equipment and where they purchased the things that they
used to supply their customers, whether it's labor or
materials.
Q. How did you use the results from that survey?
A. Actually -- in this survey -- I don't recall where
137
we used them, but one of the things we used was the origin
of the labor force, you know, where everybody lived who
worked in the EAA, where they lived.
Q. What information did you get from the survey that
told you about the labor force?
A. We asked them the number of employees that they
hired seasonally and we asked them where they lived.
Q. Did you use any information from that survey about
where people bought supplies and equipment?
A. I may have, I don't remember.
Q. Were there any general conclusions you could draw
from the survey with regard to where growers bought
equipment and supplies?
A. I don't remember. This was done so long ago, I
don't remember.
Q. Do you know whether any information regarding where
supplies are purchased will be used or is being used in
your 20-year analysis?
A. Not to --
MR. SAXE: Objection, asked and answered.
BY MS. STINSON:
Q. Go ahead and answer.
A. I didn't understand the question.
Q. Do you plan to use any information, any of the
information that you obtained in the survey regarding where
138
supplies and equipment are purchased in your 20-year
analysis?
A. I don't know.
MS. STINSON: I think it's a good breaking point.
MR. HETRICK: I'm going to go ahead and order a
copy of the whole deposition of this witness, and an
ASCII disk, 3-1/2 inch.
(Whereupon, the depositions was adjourned at 5:20
p.m.)
o0o
139
C E R T I F I C A T E
STATE OF FLORIDA
COUNTY OF BROWARD
I, ELLEN N. COHEN, Registered Professional Reporter
of Parliamentary Reporting and Notary Public, State of
Florida at Large.
DO HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing deposition was
taken before me at the time and place stated herein; that I
administered unto the deponent their oath to testify to the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; that
said deponent was there and then orally examined and
testified as herein set forth; that I reported said
examination and testimony stenographically, and that this
transcript of deposition constitutes a true and correct
transcription of the shorthand report of said deposition.
I FURTHER CERTIFY that I am neither related to nor
employed by any counsel or party to the cause pending, nor
interested in the event thereof.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto affixed my hand
and official seal this 5th day of April 1993, at Broward
County, Florida.
______________________________
ELLEN N. COHEN
Notary Public, State of Florida
1