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
What Mass Incarceration Really Means
by Christopher Wildeman
June 19, 2018
This interview with Christopher Wildeman was conducted and condensed by frank news.
Christopher Wildeman is a Professor of Policy Analysis and Management (PAM) and Sociology (by courtesy) in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, where he is also co-director of the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) and associate director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR).
What’s the difference between incarceration and mass incarceration, as you see it?
Incarceration becomes mass incarceration when historically marginalized groups experience incarceration at such high rates that it permeates their entire social and familial existence.
To be totally frank, I think our research on the causes of mass incarceration is pretty weak. And so, when I think about mass incarceration I tend to worry less about what the actual causes of it are, and more about describing it as a social phenomenon. Thinking about contemporary criminal justice policies that we could alter, or dramatically overhaul in an effort to decrease the incarceration rate.
In terms of how incarceration affects families, I think there are two or three really specific things that are important to focus on. The first is that families who experience incarceration were disproportionately dealing with a whole bunch of difficult situations before they experienced a family member's incarceration in the first place. This isn't to say that everybody is, this is just talking about averages, so families that experience incarceration would be more likely to be African-American, more likely to have low levels of family income, relatively lower levels of educational attainment, live in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.
I think one way you could think about family member incarceration is that it's kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. Families are dealing with a ton of things already that make it hard for the women who will eventually be left behind, make it hard for the children, make it hard for the grandparents. There are a whole host of stressors that folks are already exposed to, and an incarceration essentially piles on, in ways that end up hurting children's outcomes even more.
The place where I think the research is probably most well-established, at this point, is in terms of how mass incarceration affects children, so that's the second thing I'll talk about. At this point, there's a pretty broad consensus in the social scientific community that having a father incarcerated dramatically increases children's behavior and mental health problems in early childhood, that it affects their outcomes in school in ways that are extremely negative for them in the long run, that it increases problematic behaviors in adolescents and early adulthood, and that it eventually increases the risk of criminal justice contact in adulthood, especially for boys.
Research on maternal incarceration is a little bit trickier, but for paternal incarceration, there are very strong signals that it's an event that has really negative effects on children in sort of a host of different domains.
The third thing, and I think this is something that's really important when thinking about kids, especially, is that because parental incarceration is unequally distributed, where kids who are already disadvantaged in a bunch of domains are more likely to experience it than kids who are more advantaged, and because it has these negative effects on children,
That's the core, empirical finding of my book, Children of the Prison Boom, that my friend Sara Wakefield and I wrote together.
We find that, depending on the outcome you're considering, mass incarceration has increased black-white disparities in child well-being anywhere between about 5-10%, to about 40-50%. It's actually had these really important effects on childhood inequality.
Thinking about family functioning more broadly, and effects on women who are left behind, I actually think that we know a lot less than we should, at this point. There are certainly folks like Megan Comfort that are doing really great research on that, and my collaborator Hedy Lee and I have done some work in that area, too.
There's certainly some research on those types of effects, but there's actually a good bit less research on the women who are left behind. One of her arguments, which she would make better than I would, but I think it's an interesting argument, is it's actually pretty disrespectful toward African-American women how this research literature has developed, where the effects of having a partner or other family member incarcerated on women is treated mostly as it's important because that then affects the children.
So, the effects of paternal incarceration on children are kind of the core thing that research has been interested in, and the effects on women are kind of the mechanism through which paternal incarceration affects kids. I think it's actually a pretty deep argument, but it's hers, not mine.
The thing that we really, really, really don't have a good handle on in terms of the family functioning literature, is how mass incarceration affects family violence, and how it affects family violence both directly and indirectly. I think this is really a core gap in the existing literature.
Why do you think it's missing?
I think the vast majority of folks who are doing research on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration have this idea that the effects have been largely negative on the African-American community. There's not going to be a neat, tidy, socially acceptable answer about how mass incarceration affects family violence. It's going to be complicated, and it's going to be messy.
One of the things that you read in the criminology literature, I'm a weird, interdisciplinary social scientist at this point, but I'm more a criminologist than anything else, and one of the things that you read in the criminology literature is that immediately before folks experience contact with the police, basically, there is actually an increase in criminal activity. Which is not something that, as somebody who works in the collateral consequences area, are talking about as much, but there is this increase. Often it's some combination of untreated addiction, and mental health problems, or labor market shocks, or housing shocks. Perfectly reasonable things, and one of the things that's tricky is that it probably also means that there's some sort of increase in tensions in romantic relations, especially, around that time, because of these external stressors.
Hedy and I are working on a book on the consequences of mass incarceration for health inequality among women. One of the things that she and I have really been struggling with around intimate partner violence especially, is this idea that it's not going to be a pretty story, nobody on any side of any aisle is going to feel great once it's told, but domestic violence is a huge issue that women, both in the US and throughout the world, face, and so in some ways it feels like we do have this moral obligation to dig in on this issue, even though it's going to be messy.
Once you have that information, what does the research indicate is the best action?
One of the things that's tricky is, with the exception of a very small number of studies, most of which are from policy shocks in other countries, we don't actually have real good facts. Research makes it very hard for us to really seriously tease out whether it would, or exactly how much it would help kids if their parents had ended up getting probation or something, instead of experiencing incarceration. It's a really hard issue.
I think this is playing out in most states that have tried to focus exclusively on diversion programs. If you give someone probation, and you don't provide mental health services, and you don't provide addiction services, and you don't provide job training, certainly some folks will not end up in prisons or jails again, but a lot of folks will, because you're not doing anything to help their situation.
Decreasing the number of children who ever experience incarceration seems like it's almost certain to have benefits for child well-being, but I think focusing exclusively on these really low-level offenses is not going to get us anywhere, or not going to get us everywhere we need to go, in terms of criminal justice policy reform.
Taking seriously the idea that someone who commits murder should maybe not have a maximum sentence of over 15 or 20 years is going to dramatically cut the incarceration rate in the United States, and recidivism rates for folks who get out of prison when they're in their 40s and 50s tend to be pretty low. I don't think there's a big public safety risk that comes along with that.
The low-level cycling through the system piece is actually really, really hard. I think what to do there, especially in a society where the services that are available to poor folks are not that good, from a criminal justice policy side is really, really hard to figure out.
But in terms of devising a policy that would really help families, that one seems much more clear cut to me.
No one has brought that up yet.
Yeah, no, I mean unless you talk to Sara Wakefield, nobody will.
What are some of the literal effects on children with incarcerated parents?
The literature is pretty disorganized. Social science doesn't really move in a scientific way. I would say paternal incarceration increases children's risk of mental health and behavioral problems, including physically aggressive behaviors and externalizing behaviors more broadly, school readiness behavioral indicators, which are de facto an extension of external and internalizing behaviors. You even see, as children age, effects on internalizing behaviors as well.
There's this whole mental health and behavioral problems domain, and anybody who studies mental health and behavioral problems in children can tell you that those things are really interesting and important because they're associated with virtually all adolescent and early adulthood outcomes. Which is not to say that they're related there deterministically or anything, but just that there is a strong relationship.
In one study I did where we used Danish registry data, there was this interesting community service experiment, where basically everybody who would have gotten less than 90 days jail time, instead of spending up to 90 days in jail they just had 90 additional days of community service.
What we saw is that 15 years down the road the people who were in the community service experimental group, their sons had a 25% lower risk of experiencing criminal justice contact before their mid-20s. And so, in the little bit of experimental evidence we do have, we see these really strong effects of experiencing incarceration, or having a father experience incarceration, relative to not having them experience that.
How did you find yourself in this area of research, particularly?
To be honest, in terms of my personal biography, it makes a lot of sense because I grew up in a pretty heavily disadvantaged neighborhood, and certainly noticed high levels of criminal justice contact among folks I was growing up with.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in St. Elmo, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I grew up in basically the only racially integrated neighborhood in Chattanooga. I have Googled my ZIP code from growing up, and looked at it during the census years when I was living there as a small child, and realized that it seemed very normal to me, but it was a pretty poor neighborhood.
It was only after the fact that I reflected on that and thought about that. I started graduate school and I wanted to do stuff on childhood inequality. That was always what I'd been interested in, what made me go on to do my Ph.D., and my second year of graduate school my eventual advisor basically was like if you're really interested in childhood inequality, this is something that hasn't been studied at all in a serious way. If you really care about marginalized children, this is the way to go.