Thomas J. Graff, a lawyer and environmentalist who helped influence California water policy as regional director of the Environmental Defense Fund for 37 years, died Thursday at an Oakland hospital of complications from thyroid cancer. He was 65 years old.
At the Environmental Defense Fund, Graff was a champion of using market forces to improve the environment by pushing for water marketing in California, and for plans to cap and trade sulfur dioxide emissions in the Eastern states to combat acid rain. He was also a driving force behind the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, the 1992 law that reworked one of California's biggest water projects.




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