interviews
Water and the American West
by Richard Frank
October 25, 2021
This interview with Richard Frank, professor of environmental practice at the UC Davis School of Law and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Can you tell me a little bit about the story of water and how it's tied to the West, and to California in particular?
Richard | A friend of mine who's a Court of Appeals Justice here in California wrote an opinion on a water law dispute and started it with the quote, "the history of California is written on its waters." And I think that the point is true of the entire American West.
Water policy and legal issues are inextricably tied to the development of the Western United States; water is the limiting factor in so many ways to settlement, to economic development, to prosperity, and to the environment and environmental preservation.
Can you talk about the difference between groundwater and surface water– and the policies that regulate each?
There are really two types of water when it comes to human consumption. There's surface water: that is the water that is transmitted by lakes, rivers, and streams. Then there is groundwater, and a substantial amount of water that Americans and the American West rely on is groundwater. That is water that is stored in groundwater aquifers, which are naturally occurring groundwater basins. Both groundwater and surface water are critical to the American West and its economy and its culture.
Traditionally a couple of things are important to note, first of all, water is finite. Second, water gets allocated in the Western United States generally at the state level. There's a limited federal role. Primarily, policy decisions about who gets how much water for what purpose are made state by state.
I think allocation is really interesting in that it's more state-level than federal. How was water and the allocation of water in California designed? Is it a public-private combination? What goes on in terms of the infrastructure of water?
Another very good question. The answer is it depends. Most of our water infrastructure is public in nature.
Again, in the American West, the regulation of water rights is generally done at the state level, but the federal government, historically, has a major water footprint in the American West because it has been federal dollars and federal design and management that really controlled much of the major water infrastructure in the American West — you know, Hoover Dam, and the complex system of dams and reservoirs on the Colorado River in California, with the Central Valley Project that was built and managed by the federal government with Shasta Dam on the upper Sacramento River as the centerpiece of that project. But we also have a California State Water Project, the key facility being the Oroville Dam and reservoir on the Southern River that is managed by state water managers. If we were starting over, that kind of parallel system would make no particular engineering or operational sense.
But, we are captive to our history.
And then you have these massive systems of aqueducts and canals that move water from one place to another throughout the American West. They are particularly responsible for moving water from surface water storage facilities to population centers. In the last 50 to 75 years, these population centers have really expanded dramatically, so you need massive infrastructure to deliver water from those storage facilities, the dams, and reservoirs, which generally are located in remote areas to the population centers. So it takes a lot of time and energy to transport the water, from where it is captured and stored to where it is needed for human use.
California has faced continuous drought – what measures is the state taking now to manage water?
Just to frame the issue a little bit — we have, as I mentioned, a growing population in the American Southwest at a time when the amount of available water is shrinking due to drought and due to the impacts of climate change. We have growing human demand for residential and commercial purposes and at the same time, we have a shrinking water supply. That is a huge looming crisis.
And it is beginning to play out in real-time. You see that playing out in real-time. For example, several different states and Mexico rely on Colorado River flows based on an allocation system that was created in the 1920s, which is overly optimistic about the amount of available water. From the 1920s until now, that water supply has decreased, and decreased, and decreased. Now you have interstate agreements, and in the case of Mexico, international agreements that allocate the finite Colorado river water supplies based on faulty, now obsolete, information. It is a real problem.
What measures do you take now, knowing this information?
If you look at the US Drought Monitor, it is obvious the problem is not limited to the Colorado River. We are in a mega-drought, so cutbacks are being imposed by federal and state water agencies to encourage agricultural, urban, and commercial water users to cut their water use and, and stretch finite supplies as much as possible through conservation efforts.
In California, we have the State Water Resources Control Board, the state water regulator in California, and they have issued curtailment orders. Meaning, they have told water rights holders, many of whom have had those water rights for over a hundred years, that, for the first time, the water that they feel they are entitled to, is not available. Local water districts are also issuing water conservation mandates; the San Francisco water department is doing that, in Los Angeles, the metropolitan water district, is urging urban users to curtail their efforts.
And then agriculture. Agricultural users — farmers and ranchers — have had to get water rights in many cases through the federal government, as the federal government is the operator of these water projects. They have contracts with water users, individual farmers, ranchers, or districts, and they are now issuing curtailment orders. They're saying, we know you contracted for X amount of water for this calendar year, but we are telling you because of the drought shortages we don't have that water to supply. Our reservoirs are low at Lake Shasta or at the Oroville Dam.
When you drive from San Francisco to LA on the five, you see a lot of signage from the agricultural farming community about water. There's apparently some frustration about this. What are the other options for them?
About 80% of all human consumed water goes to agriculture. That is by far the biggest component of water use, as opposed to 20% used for urban and commercial, and industrial purposes.
Over the years, ranchers and farmers, and agricultural water districts assumed that the water would always be there — as we all do.
And the farmers and ranchers have, in hindsight, exacerbated the problem by bringing more and more land into production. You see on those drives between San Francisco and Los Angeles, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, all these orchards are being planted. Orchards are more lucrative crops than row crops — cotton, alfalfa, and rice. But, if you are growing a row crop, you can leave the land fallow in times of drought.
We don't have to plant. If the water stopped there, or if it's too expensive to get, it may make economic sense, but if you have an orchard or a vineyard it's a high value, those are high value crops, you don't have that operational flexibility and they need to be irrigated in wet years and in dry years. Now, you see these orchards, which were only planted a few years ago, are now being uprooted because the farmers realized that they don't have the water necessary to keep those vineyards and orchards alive. For ranchers, the same thing is true with their herds. They don’t have enough water for their livestock.
The water shortage has never been drier than it is right now. Farmers and ranchers are being deprived of water that they traditionally believed was theirs and they're very understandably, very unhappy about it. They see it as a threat to their livelihood and to the livelihood of the folks who work for them. Their anger and frustration are to be expected, but it's nobody's fault.
To say, as some farmers do, that it is mismanagement by state and federal government officials, I think is overly simplistic and misplaced in the face of a mega-drought. Everybody's going to have to sacrifice. Everybody's going to have to be more efficient in how they use water. All sectors are going to need to be more efficient with the water that does exist.
Looking at this percentage breakdown of water use – is it actually important for individual users to change their water habits?
Well, every little bit helps. When you're talking about homeowners, about 70% of urban water use is for outdoor irrigation. So we're talking parks and cemeteries and golf courses and folks' yards. You know, that used to be considered part of that American dream and the California dream — you would have a big lawn in front of your house and behind your house. Truth be told, that has never made much sense in an arid environment. That's where the water savings in urban areas is critical in the way it really involves aesthetics rather than critical human needs, like water for drinking and bathing and sanitation purposes. There is a growing movement away from big lawns, and away from the type of landscaping that you see in the Eastern US — there is no drought in the Eastern United States. As Hurricane Ida and other recent storms have shown, the problem is too much water, or rather than too little in most of the Eastern United States. So it really is a tale of two countries.
We just need to recognize that the American West is an arid region. It has always been an arid region, we can't make the desert bloom with water that doesn't exist. We need to be more efficient in how we allocate those water supplies. And it seems to me in an urban area, the best way to conserve and most effective way is to reduce urban landscaping, which is the major component of urban water use.
You also write about water markets and making them better – for those who don’t know, what is the water market?
Water markets, that is, the voluntary transfer of water between water users, is more robust in some other Western states. Again Arizona and New Mexico come to mind. California somewhat surprisingly is behind the curve. We are in the dark ages compared to other states. Water markets are kind of anecdotal. There is not much of a statewide system. It is done at the local level, through individual transactions without much oversight and without much transparency. And I have concerns about all of those things.
I believe conceptually watermarks are a way to stretch scarce, finite water resources to make water use more efficient. I can, for example, allow farmers or ranchers to sell water to urban uses or commercial usage or factories in times of drought.
Farmers sometimes can make more money by farming water, than they can by farming crops.
There are efficiencies to be gained here.
The problem in my view is really one of transparency. The water markets are not publicly regulated, and some of the people who are engaging in water transactions like it that way, frankly, they want to operate under the radar.
In my opinion, water markets need to be overseen by a public entity rather than private or nonprofit entities. We need oversight and transparency, so that folks like you and myself can follow the markets to see who's selling water to whom, for what purpose, and make sure that those water transfers serve the public interests and not just the private interests.
There have been a number of stories in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Salt Lake City Tribune about efforts in some parts to privatize water transfer. Hedge fund managers are buying and selling water, as a means of profiting. And it strikes me that when you're talking about an essential public resource — and in California, it is embedded in the law that public water is an inherently public resource, that water is owned by the public and it can be used for private purposes, but it is an inherently public resource — the idea of commoditizing water through the private, opaque markets is very troublesome to me. I think it represents a very dangerous trend and one that needs to be corrected and avoided.
Why is California so behind?
There's no good reason for it. It's largely inexplicable that since the state was created on September 9th, 1860, we've been fighting over water. In the 19th century, it was miners versus farmers ranchers. In the 20th century, with the growth of urban communities, the evolution of California into one of the most populous states with 40 million Californians, it has been a struggle between urban and agricultural uses of water.
In the second half of the 20th century, there was a recognition that some component of water had to be left in streams to protect ecosystems, landscape, and wildlife, including the threatened and endangered wildlife. That suggestion has made agricultural users in California angry. You will see those signs that allude to the idea that food and farming are more important than environmental values. I don't happen to believe that's true. I believe both are critically important to our society. But the advocates for the environment have a proverbial seat at the water table. So that's another demand for water allocation that exists.
Do you maintain optimism?
Yes. I think it's human nature to look on the bright side. I try to do that through research scholarships and teaching. There are models for how we can do this better in the United States. Israel and Saudi Arabia and Singapore are far more efficient with their water policies and efforts. Australia went through a severe megadrought. They came out of it a few years ago, but they used that opportunity to dramatically reform their water allocation systems. That's an additional model. I think most people would agree in hindsight that their previous system was antiquated, and not able to meet the challenges of climate change and the growing water shortage in some parts of the world.
Here in the United States, we can learn from those efforts. There are also some ways to expand the water supply. Desalination for one. Again, Singapore and Saudi Arabia have led the world in terms of removing the salt content from ocean water and increasing water supply that way. In Carlsbad, California, north of San Diego, we have the biggest desalination plant in the United States right now, and that is currently satisfying a significant component of the San Diego metropolitan areas’ water needs. It's more expensive than other water supplies, but the technology is getting more refined, so the cost of desalinated water is coming down at a time when other water supplies, due to shortages and the workings of the free market are going up.
At some point, they're going to meet or get closer. Unlike some of my environmental colleagues, I think desalination is an important part of the equation.
In a proposal that came up in the recall election, one of the candidates was talking about how we just need to build a canal from the Mississippi River to California to take care of all our problems. That ignores political problems associated with that effort, as well as the massive infrastructure costs that would be required to build and maintain a major aqueduct for 2000 miles from the Mississippi to California. That's just not going to happen. Some of those pie in the sky thoughts of how we expand the water supply, I think, are unrealistic.
interviews
An Interview with Saun Hough
by Saun Hough
June 11, 2018
This interview with Saun Hough of SHIELDS for Families, was conducted and condensed by frank news. It took place May 23, 2018.
Would you introduce yourself briefly?
My name is Saun Hough. I am the vocational services coordinator here with SHIELDS for Families. For about two years, I was a project coordinator for Family First Jordan Downs in the Jordan Downs Project. My role there was to oversee the workforce development to make sure that the community members were being trained and prepared for job opportunities. As well as to work with the small businesses in the community to make sure that they also had opportunity.
How many people were you working with?
In a year span, we worked with about 150 people in the community.
What was the dynamic like working with Jordan Downs?
It was interesting. At first it was very promising. A lot of opportunities available. We were able to get a lot of people trained, we were able to prepare them for what we were told was going to be 60 jobs. We were looking at hundreds of local workers being employed.
What was the reality?
In reality, first you start getting pushback: We're going to start on January 1, and then January 1 became February 1, and then we’re into August and we still haven't started. But we have a workforce of about 90 people who are prepared for work. When the work would start, what was going to be 70 jobs, would be 5 jobs. Now we have to figure out who gets placed in those 5 jobs. Essentially what we began to do was look outside of the Jordan Downs to see how we could help the community and get them placed into other opportunities.
When did that partnership end?
We left last year. March 1, 2017 we decided, as it was set up, the community wasn't benefiting. We had been there for years, we'd earned a lot of trust within the community as an organization and we weren't prepared to start lying to the community. We're fighting for the community. We could fight better not being contractually tied to the project.
Do you think this redevelopment is ultimately beneficial to the community of Watts?
As it is now or the potential of it?
Both.
I think ultimately, yes. It can be. If, how it's spoken about, the inclusion of the community both in preparation for the work that's there, but also when the work is done, inclusion into homeownership, access to the small businesses coming in, and having a part in how it's governed, yes. As it is now, I don't think the community is being included the way it should be.
Can you explain this to me a little bit further? Is the redevelopment private privately run?
Yes.
But through the L.A. Housing Authority?
The Housing Authority of L.A. owns it right now. There are two master developers who will eventually take ownership, but they're working in collaboration with the Housing Authority. Those master developers are hiring general contractors to do the work on site.
Will it transition from entirely low income?
It's supposed to be subsidized, low income, and market rate housing.
What's the rate of low income to market rate?
I believe it's 50/50 or 1 to 1.
How do you feel about that?
I think it has the potential to really hurt the low income and subsidized. They have no input. If you don't have ownership, what input do you have in the community, how it's governed, how it's run? I believe there will be a lot of rules applied to them for the purpose of getting them out.
As it stands now, within public housing, there are different things that can get you kicked out of the apartment. You can lose your house. You can be kicked out of the development. I believe that as a home owner, if you’re bringing down the value of my home, I want to have very strict and tight rules on you to make sure that if you do anything that compromises the value of my home, we can get rid of you.
What can get you kicked out of the development currently?
Tickets for hanging out after a certain time. There's trespassing rules.
If that carries over to this new development, where there's not just subsidized or low income housing, but market rate as well, I can imagine a number of people getting kicked out for petty reasons.
That speaks to this larger question of collateral damage of individuals who become incarcerated. If you're an individual who has some sort of run-in, it's your mom, sister, brother, nephews, nieces who pay the consequences.
Not only do they pay the consequences then, but after you've come out, the family has to decide do I, for a lack of a better term, excommunicate my family? Because if you've been incarcerated or you have a felony conviction and you're on parole you can't move back in.
You can’t live in the housing?
No you can't live in the community. That's one of the reasons we felt we couldn't benefit the community as a reentry program. We can't prepare that person in the community for work because they aren't able to be on the lease. We were so upset because we couldn't help people who weren't on the lease. If you have a community of people where there are ten men who are in re-entry, or ten family members who are on parole, we can't support them how the contract was written, because they're not on the lease. They're not on the lease because they have a felony parole or a felony conviction and they can't live in their household.
That's an impossible situation to be placed into. Does it make sense to you?
It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense at all. To put you in a position where you have to decide where your loyalty is or where your heart is. Are you going to support your brother or do you maintain your household? Maybe you have a small child or you're living with your parent. You can't allow me back into the house. You can't allow your brother back to the house, who has changed his life and is genuinely looking to right some of the wrongs they may have done.
Is this a state law?
It's a rule that's enforced by the Housing Authority, but it's not a state law.
It's not a state law.
No.
[Joe Paul Jr. enters]
Joe Paul Jr. The former HUD secretary issued a policy under Obama's administration that strongly suggested that local housing authorities give the benefit of the doubt to the re-entry population and that they extend opportunity to allow what Saun just talked about, so that families are not imposed upon, and left with these very difficult challenges to make a decision about following their heart or preserving their well-being. HACLA, in its effort to comply, in their attempt to demonstrate a face value response to what the former secretary had suggested, started a pilot under the Section 8 program that failed miserably.
They allowed Section 8 voucher holders who had family members who are incarcerated the ability to come on the lease under Section 8 vouchers. But they never extended that to public housing residents. We're going to give you this very superficial compliance. We heard you, we agree Obama, but we’re not really going to jump on board with that. The approach that they took in disseminating the information in the beginning to voucher holders for Section 8 was very sterile and bureaucratic. They sent it out in letter form, in very formal legal language, that threatened and intimidated. Most of the recipients of these 10,000 letters felt it was a tactic to expose them: Do you have a felon in your house? Because we want to kick you out now if you come out and say yes.
In my opinion – because we were part of a regional group of participants – there was no veracity behind the Housing Authoritie's intention to leverage this in an authentic way. To say, if we make this work we can spill into these other areas, maybe even public housing. It's better practice at the city level to really exclude and discriminate, versus the federal government's perspective that they receive a majority of funding from.
What do you do now?
Joe Paul Jr.: We fight. We report the news. Si se puede. We get out there, we go hard. Saun and I both were formerly incarcerated people who turned our lives around and have demonstrated that second chances occur. We are extremely adamant about advocating and defending and empowering both sides.
Saun: I think Joe's point is we have to fight. Look beyond the face and really see what's happening, really see what's going on. When they're reporting job numbers, are they real?
I'm thinking of an event that they had at Jordan Downs, there were politicians there, and this big grand opening. They had people there with hard hats and vests on as if they were employed — when actually they hired them for the day.
They were extras!
Extras, yeah. Here's your hardhat, here's your money, let's go over here.
That's what people are seeing — and then we're saying there's no jobs and we get push back. I just saw the news, I just saw the paper, I was at the event, I saw the workers there. No, you saw a group of men that meet once a week who were given a hundred dollar stipend to show up with helmets on. Then we hold the community responsible. Don't do that. “Why would you agree to accept” is one of our arguments. Why would you accept this money to portray this picture when you know how hard and how intense the fight is to make sure that you actually have a job.
Who's not going to take a hundred bucks if you need a hundred bucks?
There's a point to that, but then we have to see this hundred bucks is stopping a career. It's stopping more. And beyond that, it's presenting the wrong picture of what's happening in our community. Again there's this preying on the poverty of the people, because to your point, who's not going to take a hundred bucks? I know you need it, so I'll prey on that, and parade you around for my purposes. We're doing the community a disservice and really being dishonest.
It's hard to have foresight in a desperate moment.
Very, very, very — this will make sense tomorrow, but tonight I get to eat, tonight I get to provide diapers, or have a sense of self-worth, I have something in my pocket. However you got it, you come home with something and you know, it's hard to tell a person they're wrong for that.
That begs the question of motive of the other party. Because you're right, survival is a very strong instinct, period.
If I know that human behavior leads in this direction, why would I exploit that? I know if I give you this for the night you're going to eat, but you just forfeited two years, five years’ worth of progress and I knew you would take this bait. That's the diabolical scheming behind the system that I call a chess match.