The oral history of Thomas J. Graff documents his long career with the Environmental Defense
Fund and his role in influencing California and national energy and water policy for nearly four
decades. He was one of three young men, two attorneys and a fishery biologist, who opened the
first office of EDF in the West in 1971. An easterner with a Harvard law degree, he was new to
California and had virtually no connection to the burgeoning environmental movement or the
outdoor life. Within just a few years, he had been fully initiated as a backpacker and river runner,
and with his colleagues had launched three important legal actions to protect California rivers:
opposing the New Melones and Auburn Dams and beginning a three-decade long legal battle
against the East Bay Municipal Utility District to protect the American River.
Title
Thomas J. Graff: California Regional Director of the Environmental Defense Fund, 1971-2009: Applying Economics to Environmental Policymaking, Reforming California Water Policy
Published
Berkeley, CA, Regional Oral History Office, 2011
Full Collection Name
Natural Resources, Land Use, and the Environment Oral Histories Individual Interviews
Type
Text
Archive
The Bancroft Library Oral History Center
Note
Thomas J. Graff, “California Regional Director of the Environmental
Defense Fund, 1971-2009: Applying Economics to Environmental
Policymaking, Reforming California Water Policy” conducted by Ann
Lage in 2009, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 2011.
Interview date(s) 2009
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