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<p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><span style='font-family:
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width=152 height=23 id=NYTLogo src="cid:image001.gif@01CA6B4E.4DB2E030"
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt'><a name=articleBodyLink></a><span
style='font-size:22.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black'>Thomas J.
Graff, an Expert on West Coast Water Use, Is Dead at 65 <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:gray'>By <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/jesse_mckinley/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More Articles by Jesse Mckinley">JESSE McKINLEY</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:gray'>Published: November 22, 2009 <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>SAN
FRANCISCO — Thomas J. Graff, a leading environmentalist who championed
the idea of offering financial incentives for environmentally friendly
behavior, an approach that had far-reaching impact on state and federal
policies, especially on water use in the drought-prone West, died Nov. 12 in
Oakland, Calif., where he lived. He was 65.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/science/earth/22graff.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper#secondParagraph"><span
style='color:#004276;display:none;text-decoration:none'>Skip to next paragraph</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><img border=0 width=190 height=230
id="Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:image002.jpg@01CA6B4E.4DB2E030"
alt="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/11/22/us/22graff_CA0/articleInline.jpg"></span><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=caption4><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Thomas J. Graff <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><a name=secondParagraph></a><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The cause was thyroid
cancer, his family said. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Mr.
Graff, who founded the first California office of the <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/environmental_defense_fund/index.htm?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about Environmental Defense Fund"><span style='color:#004276'>Environmental
Defense Fund</span></a> and led it for 37 years, dealt with a host of
environmental issues, including AB 32, the first-of-its-kind legislation,
adopted in 2006, that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions in California.
But he made his biggest impact in the realm of water use, a constant source of
vexation in the West. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Mr.
Graff’s early support for using market forces to encourage
environmentally friendly behavior was a somewhat radical idea at the time. But
it has since become increasingly common in environmental negotiations
nationwide and has echoes in “<a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/greenhouse_gas_emissions/cap_and_trade/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="More articles about carbon caps and emissions trading programs."><span
style='color:#004276'>cap and trade</span></a>” policies around the world
involving things like airborne pollutants and carbon emissions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>“If
a resource is scarce, we ought to put a price on it that reflects its value,”
Mr. Graff said in an interview in 2008. “Otherwise there’s an
incentive to over-consume.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Mr.
Graff’s theory was put to wide use in 1992, when he cajoled federal
lawmakers into passing the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, a landmark
bill that established a new accounting system to assure that diversions of
water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, whose waters help irrigate
millions of acres of farmland to the south, would not outstrip the
delta’s own ecological needs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
bill also established a groundwork for a so-called water market, which allowed
agricultural interests to sell excess water to cities and other users for a
profit. This process rewarded farmers for conservation and simultaneously
helped protect the delta, where salmon and other fish are sometimes endangered
by giant pumps and low water levels in tributaries. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>“On
the Central Valley Improvement Act, no person was more important than Tom
Graff,” Senator <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/barbara_boxer/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about Barbara Boxer."><span style='color:#004276'>Barbara
Boxer</span></a>, Democrat of California, said in a statement after his death.
“It wasn’t just his knowledge of water. It was his knowledge about
the stewardship of the environment and what this state had to consider if it
really thought about its future.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Mr.
Graff also played a major role in Project 88, an influential, privately
financed 1988 report to President-elect George Bush, which focused on ways to
use market forces to protect the environment and led to the development of
market-oriented controls on acid rain.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Born
in Honduras to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and educated in law at
Harvard, Mr. Graff learned the art of politics and persuasion in Washington and
New York, serving as a clerk for a federal judge in the capital and a
legislative assistant to Mayor <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/john_v_lindsay/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about John V. Lindsay"><span style='color:#004276'>John V.
Lindsay</span></a> of New York. In 1970, a private law practice drew him to San
Francisco, but his love of the environment quickly led him across the bay to
Berkeley. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>In
1971, Mr. Graff established the first California office of the Environmental
Defense Fund in Berkeley, near the law library of the <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about the University of California."><span
style='color:#004276'>University of California</span></a> campus. He was
joining an organization that had staked out a science-based middle ground in
the growing and often polarized environmental movement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Mr.
Graff’s own philosophy combined equal parts pragmatism and personal
charm. In Berkeley, he used economists and computer analysts to break down
energy and water issues, believing that hard data were a singular tool for
winning arguments, whether in boardrooms or courtrooms. (His obsession with
statistics was also personal; he kept a running tally of his free-throw
percentage during his down-time basketball games.) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>While
corporations and public utilities had long been viewed as the enemy in the
environmental movement — an early motto at the defense fund was
“Sue the bastards” — Mr. Graff showed a willingness to work
with potential combatants. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Indeed,
last week, Gov. <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/arnold_schwarzenegger/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about Arnold Schwarzenegger."><span style='color:#004276'>Arnold
Schwarzenegger</span></a> of California hailed Mr. Graff’s
accomplishments even as he signed a new state water reform law, calling him a
friend to “even those who would normally be considered
adversaries.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Mr.
Graff is survived by his wife, Sharona Barzilay of Oakland; two daughters,
Rebecca Graff of Cambridge, Mass., and Samantha Graff of Oakland; a son,
Benjamin Graff of San Jose, Calif.; a sister, Claudia Bial of Fort Lee, N.J.;
and two grandchildren. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
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<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
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