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
Swipe Out Hunger
by Rachel Sumekh
May 16, 2019
This interview with Rachel Sumekh, the founder and CEO of Swipe Out Hunger, was conducted and condensed by frank news.
frank: How did you find yourself doing this work?
Rachel: I'm 27 years old. I live in Los Angeles, which is also where I'm born and raised. I'm a first generation student, both my parents are Iranian immigrants. I was always a student leader. I was student body president in high school – but suddenly in college it became cool to care about leadership as opposed to it being a nerdy thing. I had a friend [Bryan] who posted on Facebook inviting other students to come take action and end hunger with our meal swipes and I messaged him saying, "Hey, I have a background in Photoshop, I will help make the flyers so that students can come donate their meal swipes." He's like, "Cool, come on this day, we're going to move a bunch of food."
We had students donate swipes. After the swipes drive, we had all this food, but barely anyone showed up – except for me and Bryan. The pivotal moment of what really got me into this work was watching him. Instead of saying, "Wow, we have thousands of pounds of food to move, and only two of us on this hot June day in L.A., let's reschedule," he's like, "Cool, we told the school we were going to do it, and now let's do it."
We spent the next five hours moving food across UCLA's campus to the food closet. In my mind what it meant to be a leader changed, and the power of one person to take a stand that seemed really unreasonable, not easy, and unknown, was very inspiring. I decided from that point on I wanted to provide that opportunity for people. I still feel that moment.
Today, Swipe Out Hunger is a national nonprofit that operates on 75 universities and colleges; each of those campuses are committed to ending college student hunger, and that work is led by college students. They reach out to us, say they want the program, then we train them on how to write proposals, how to negotiate with the university, how to organize their campus, how to market the resource – and then they go and make it happen. A bad policy is waiting for a student to say it needs to be changed, a student to know how to organize, and a student to know how to clearly demand what they need. We want to build a movement that makes it easier, with each added campus, to make a basic statement – no one should be able to make money off of food on campus until everyone has access to food.
How does the program work logistically?
The core program, is in the meal swipe drive; essentially, a program that allows students at the end of each semester to stop by a table, say they have extra meal swipes on their meal plan, and donate. Freshmen, and often sophomores, who live on campus, are required to buy a meal plan. They get 10, 20, or 25 meals a week. If you don't use all those meals they don't roll over. Typically at the end of the semester they're completely unredeemable unless you want to buy a water bottle in exchange for a whole meal.
We provide students with an alternative. Stop by one of our tables, say you want to donate your meal swipes. It takes about 30 seconds. The university then takes the funds from students' accounts and puts them into a communal fund. There's a partnership set up between dining services and the social services office on campus; with the person who interfaces with students that are food insecure, and electronically moves the credit from the general swipe fund into the account of a student who's food insecure. That student, just like everyone else, can swipe into the dining hall and have access to more nourishing dining hall meals. That's the core of our program.
It involves a lot of stakeholder buy in. To get started you need to have a meeting; the first meeting should have the dining director, students, dean of student life, and a basic needs coordinator, or the person who manages a food pantry, and whoever would be in touch with students who are food insecure. We train those core people and you're able to establish a swipe program.
In addition to that, we've written and passed millions of dollars in legislation that has funded anti-hunger programs on campus. We push for Swipe Out Hunger programs, we push for legislation that gives more money to schools, and the way we support campuses in spending those dollars is twofold. One is SNAP programs; getting more students enrolled in SNAP and getting more campuses to accept SNAP. Then secondly, strengthening food closets; food cloests are a reactive solution, but they're also an incredible resource for an everyday student to grab what they need, take it home, and have access to food. How do we make sure food closets have really good hours, are centrally located, have good produce, and that student volunteers who are running the closets can get a stipend or something?
How do food closets work?
There’s a big range. On some campuses, like UCLA for instance, access is not regulated. Anyone can walk in, get food, and walk out, there's no check in. There are other campuses like UC San Diego, UC Davis, where it's a point system; you're allowed to get three or five points worth of things. You're able to come to a certain amount and pick up what you need. There's a huge diversity, some are very well stocked and very well resourced, and funding for them comes in a variety of ways. It's, as you can imagine, a very easy thing to fundraise for if the university decides to fundraise for it.
A lot of campuses don't want to be known for having homeless students and hungry students.The reason we have such stunning and robust dining halls is because when a parent is on a campus tour and they're helping their child decide where to go to school, if a school has a beautiful dining hall, that's what a parent who's paying full freight, full tuition is going to want their student to experience. A full tuition paying student wants to live the life of college in the movies. So that's what they prioritize.
There's a tension between that and schools also saying, "Yeah, also we have a bunch of hungry and homeless students." We hear many campuses who won't even fundraise for basic needs, even though it's an amazing way to mobilize their alumni. Traditionally, pantries are funded through parent circles, community events, and student fees. Many campuses receive student fees to fund their pantries.
What percentage of students on university campuses, on average – I know there will be a wide range depending on school – are experiencing hunger?
What sort of legislation are you focused on?
The legislation we advocate for is comprehensive. I was telling this story yesterday to another reporter, they asked me to tell them what we think the solution is. I was called by a legislator recently, she said, "I want to take Swipe Out Hunger onto every college campus in California. What's the bill I should write?" Our response was actually, "Swipe Out Hunger's great, but it's not the solution. I can help write what an effective bill would look like."
I've never written policy before, but I sent back a few ideas including one that would establish a funding pool to any campus that has three things. One is if they have a pantry or some sort of pop-up pantry; two, they should have at least one person trained in how to enroll students in SNAP; and three, if the campus has a meal plan they should give students a chance to donate their meal swipes, and then assign a campus point person to work with students to manage the pragrams. Legislation that we believe is effective has all three of those things built on existing resources in the community. There are food banks who know how to food bank really well – partner with the food banks. The staff already exists, all you have to do is train them in SNAP and that'll happen.
I don't want to be the next Feeding America, our entire model is not built on building a new building, it's built on integrating this into existing campus culture, resources, and infrastructure. When we think about policy, we want more funding to the existing system. We want more funding to schools so they don't have to have food be a revenue source, so they don’t have to prioritize full freight students over Pell students and vice versa.
Have universities been open or reluctant to working with Swipe Out Hunger?
The perspective that we, as Swipe Out Hunger, have on this issue is potentially the longest standing perspective. When we began this conversation in 2009 the response we were getting from the university was, "This is not a problem. Maybe there's a couple students who are going hungry, but this is not a problem." Then they started to say, "Okay fine, maybe it's a problem but it's not our problem." By 2014, we had gotten five campuses to launch.
In 2016 as an organization, we decided not to talk to a single campus who didn't also want to work on campus hunger.
Historically it was always students writing us, saying "I want to start this program." In 2017, half of our interest came from people on campus, administrators saying they want this program.
Social pressure came in 2016 – I credit this shift to Sara Goldrick-Rab and The Hope Center's research and leadership. This issue suddenly became a legitimate thing. It was out in the open and schools couldn't deny it anymore. They began looking for a solution. It became an opportunity to be innovative, to be advanced, and so we had schools reaching out.
This resistance goes back to the decision makers. You look at their LinkedIns, it's all Ivy League schools, private high schools. In large part, many have only spent time with people who've never been food insecure – or they wouldn't know it because shame keeps people who have faced food insecurity silent – so no wonder it's so shocking to them. They genuinely don't believe it. I look at the principles Bryan Stevenson speaks about – one of them is proximity.
The social pressure was huge. 2017 was pivotal.
How do students hear about you?
Almost 60% of the students we serve hear about the resource from a friend, despite it being in the campus newsletters, despite it being in flyers and so on.
All of our programs are run by student leaders. Our special sauce is that we're not just a resource but a resource run by your friends. Who's at the tables collecting swipes? It's other students. Who's helping get the word out, who's in the meetings with administrators deciding the program? It's students. We have universities reach out to us and say they tried to start their own Swipe Out Hunger program, but only had four students apply for free swipes. But it's because no students were involved in designing the program. What would have happened if you had a student tell you that the pick up hours for a meal voucher were off, or that the vouchers were only for the dining hall that's all the way across campus, which is only accessible for students who live on campus?
How do you communicate the importance of this issue to others?
I feel like we immediately dive into the issue without providing context on poverty in general. What I like to remind people is that in America, poverty has become so god damn pervasive it's taking center stage on our college campuses.
That fact that we require students to work 20 hours a week to be eligible for meal swipes, means that our social safety net has failed. The fact that we've defunded higher education means we're not setting up our students to succeed. The fact that families can't be there to support our students – in fact, many students are the ones supporting their families – means that as individuals we are so exhausted by the reality of economics in America, that even our social fabric is failing.
I invested my life in college student hunger because if students are able to get through college and have enough to eat, and feel like their campus was truly built for them, they're going to graduate and they're going to feel like the work force and society was designed for them. They're going to get a job. The lifetime earnings of a person change dramatically depending on degree.
I'm invested in this issue, rather than hunger in general, because if we can help students get degrees, it changes their lives and their families' lives. This is not just ending college student hunger because hunger sucks, this is a systemic way to look at how poverty tends to keep people in poverty. We tell people to pursue education as a way to get out of poverty, but even that advice is failing them because the education system in America is not set up for the diversity of people who are on campus today.