Letter from David Kay to President Gerald Ford (PDF)

The letter accompanied petitions with 120,000 signatures that were gathered by volunteers from 1971 to 1972. Originally intended to be submitted to President Richard Nixon, they were personally rejected by his chief of staff John Erlichman, after Jerry Meral (EDF staff scientist and FOR co-founder) was refused admission to the White House by Erlichman (who of course later went to prison for his role in the Watergate scandals). After President Ford succeeded Nixon, FOR deemed it more feasible to have action on them taken by the Ford Administration. As it turned out, it would take until Jimmy Carter became president a year later that anyone in the federal government would evidence concern about the Stanislaus River.