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
Recruitment Practices Show Us Our Priorities
by Karina Salazar
May 14, 2019
This interview with Karina Salazar, a doctoral candidate in the Center for The Study of Higher Education in the College of Education at The University of Arizona, was conducted and condensed by franknews. Her research interests focus on investigating whether the enrollment management practices of public universities undermine access for underserved student populations.
Karina is one of the principal investigators on a project that analyzes off-campus recruiting visits by colleges and universities. Project reports and data can be found at emraresearch.org.
Karina: Ozan [Jaquette] and I started this work when I was a first year PHD student, he was my advisor. The topic of the investigation of off campus recruiting happened organically in our conversations regarding our stories about how we went to college. We compared our stories and realized we had very different ones. I’m a local Tucsonan. I live about six miles south of the University of Arizona. I went to high school in one of the poorest and predominantly Mexican-American communities in the city. I was a really good student. I had above a 4.0 GPA. I had taken every honors and AP class that my high school offered, and I did well on my entrance exams. Despite all of this I never received any brochures, any emails – I never saw any recruiters on my high school campus. It was just luck that I somehow ended up attending my flagship university as a first generation student. I didn't quite understand the admission process. I didn't understand the application process. It just happened, luckily for me.
Versus Ozan, as he explained – was this average student that grew up in a wealthy suburb of Boston. He was shocked at how many universities reached out to him via email or brochure – he had large college recruiting fairs at his high school, and all these universities expressed interest in him attending. And he couldn't figure out why that was.
Once we compared stories, we realized there were a lot of differences in the way we grew up and the way we were recruited or not recruited to attend college. We started questioning whether our stories were anomalies or if there was something going on systemically in regards to the recruiting practices of universities. So, we started investigating the recruiting practices of universities.
We started thinking about this in terms of how policy discourse on college access is informed by scholarship that largely places the onus on students, on K-12 schools, on families – rather than analyzing the behavior of the universities that enroll these students. We started questioning the enrollment priorities of universities as a way of addressing college access.
What did you find the top priorities of these universities to be?
We started off by thinking about one intervention. Universities are using different types of interventions and methods to recruit potential students or to identify prospective students. Our first study is focusing on off campus recruiting visits. Looking at off campus recruiting visits, we see that universities tend to visit more out of state high schools and communities than schools and communities within their states. And universities tend to focus their visits on highly affluent schools and communities that also happen to be predominantly white.
Is that because their priority is in finding students who don’t need financial aid?
Yes. I think universities are recruiting wealthy students that can pay full tuition with little or perhaps no financial aid. We do control for other factors to the extent that the data is available. When we're looking at – what is the probability of a high school receiving a visit – we control for factors like distance away from the university. They might also be looking for students that are able to gain admission to the university, so we control for the academic achievement of a school. But we find that income biases persist even after controlling for these factors.
What’s become your primary goal for this research?
We really started this project with the goal of transforming policy debates at all levels about the causes and solutions to inequality and college access. Explanations for the racial and socioeconomic inequality to college access places the onus on students and K-12 schools, and they highlight explanations like achievement gaps. They say low income students and students of color are just not achieving at the level of white upper income students. They talk about undermatching. Students who attend under resourced K-12 schools don't have the resources to apply to the most selective colleges.
A lot of the discourse and debate makes the assumption that increasing the number of low income students and students of color that apply to university would equally increase their enrollment. And to the extent that the enrollment priorities of universities are biased against low income students and students of color, then increasing the number of applicants to the university wouldn't necessarily increase their enrollment. The goal is to shed light on the behavior of universities and open the conversation about what's really happening on all levels.
The question really becomes, how do we change the enrollment priorities of universities? This is a really complex question that in some ways has a lot to do with the decline in state appropriations to public universities. This decline has shifted the public good mission of these universities, which causes them to pursue the revenue lost from state appropriation in other ways. One of these ways is in increasing the number of non-resident students enrolled that can pay full tuition, and recruiting students that can essentially pay full tuition as well.
What do you think this debate should look like?
Again – at the national level we are always talking about how do we change the behavior of students as a solution to access inequality. I would certainly like to see at a national level a conversation focused on how do we change the behavior of universities?
At the state level, I think that's an interesting question. There is more nuance there. We've been asked by several different folks, what would the right amount of recruiting within a state be? Or, how much of the enrollment at public research universities should be targeted to providing a spot for in-state students? At a state level, this gets complex. Each state is different, each state has different systems for higher education that serve different purposes. It becomes a little bit more nuanced in terms of the needs of each state. Our research so far has focused on public universities. Public universities have a very unique mission in serving state residents. I don't think anyone would deny that colleges and universities at a state level have a responsibility to provide equal opportunity and access to higher education to state residents. So the debate is then on the interpretation of this principle and this commitment in practice.
What would you ask candidates?
Several candidates have expressed different strategies and plans in terms of higher education, some of which are very ambitious. A lot of them focus on making college more affordable and on alleviating some of the debt students take on. Over the last 10-20 years, the financial landscape of higher education has changed to placing the burden of financing higher education on students. A lot of solutions are focusing on how do we alleviate some of this burden off of students. I don't necessarily think that a lot of it is thinking at a broader level –how this burden has come to be placed on students.
The conversation is happening around the federal financial aid process without thinking about what's happening at the state level too, especially for public universities.
Often it's these students that are in most need of financial assistance to pay for higher education and it’s these institutions that are the most underfunded. The conversation should be asking about what's happening at the state level in terms of the disinvestment that states have made, and how that has driven universities to pursue non-resident students and students that pay full tuition. What does that mean for students who can't pay?
In regards to free college initiatives we also need to be asking questions about how to support institutions in providing these students with a quality education. The discourse is often focused around making college free without talking about how the institutions that would serve the most marginalized students are already underfunded. Increasing the number of students at these institutions without any changes in the resources these colleges and universities have would only perpetuate inequitable educational attainment and returns to a college education. Making college free for students while colleges and universities don’t have adequate resources to provide a quality education for these students is not a solution.
Have you spent time looking at why these became the priorities of universities, when that happened?
We haven't empirically tested when or why this has happened. As researchers we use theories and frameworks to try to understand why this is happening to frame our work in certain perspectives. Universities have historically relied on resources from the federal government to conduct research that serves society. And have also relied on money that's provided from the state to educate in-state students.
Public universities were historically created to serve their states and to provide upward mobility for low income students and students of color. When universities engage in market like activities, the public good mission is put on the back burner.
Do you look at private institutions as well?
We have collected data on the off-campus recruiting methods of private universities. The New York Times piece did have some of the analysis for the private universities, but the report we just released focuses on public research universities. The first manuscript for the project also focuses on public research universities.
Everything we’ve mentioned has a direct affect on the admission process, do you think it would affect the outcome and experience of the student once they’re enrolled?
I do think this translates into the college experience. While our research tends to focus on the very beginning of the college process, we often don't, at least on our part, talk about the college experience. I feel that in some ways when universities recruit and enroll non-resident students that are highly affluent, that are coming from other states, that does change the college experience and the college culture on campus.
Personally, I did experience that feeling of "not belonging" in the admissions process translate into the college experience. I went to college and there were very few students working 30 to 40 hours a week like I was. There were very few students commuting to campus everyday. A lot of them were staying in the residence halls. They were going to all these events on campus that I wasn't. As a first generation student on scholarship I was taking college very seriously, knowing that any sort of wrong move – if I were to fail a class, then this opportunity would slip through my fingers.
The more people we talk to who have ended up becoming activists or researchers or academics and focus on this, a lot of them have a similar experience. The sense of not belonging can be traumatizing and isolating. To feel that separate from your peers is really unfortunate and unnecessarily difficult, at a place and time when you're supposed to integrate with your peers and learn from each other.
What do you think would have made your experience feel safer, easier, better, more efficient? In practical terms what did you need that you didn’t have?
That's a great question. We pull on some research by Megan Holland, who's at the University of Buffalo. She did an ethnographic study of recruiting practices by universities from the high school perspective with students going through the college application process. She found that oftentimes low income students, first generation students, students of color – are persuaded to attend a university via these off-campus recruiting visits because the universities make them feel wanted. When a recruiter is visiting your high school, is encouraging you to apply, and is guiding you through this process – and makes you feel like you belong there, students are more likely to attend these universities than those that didn’t take the time to visit.
That really struck a chord with me. I was thinking about my 18-year-old self going through the college application process. That would have certainly made me feel like I didn't just get there out of luck. Having a personal connection with someone from a college or university, someone telling you that you would be an asset to the university and they hope that you apply, and would have really changed the way I experienced the college admissions process.