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
The 10 Year Promise of College Track
by Katie Hooper
May 31, 2019
Katie Hooper, Director of Communications at College Track interviews Elissa Salas, CEO of College Track, and Omar Butler, Executive Director of College Track Northern California.
The conversation has been condensed by frank news.
Katie Hooper: The first is easy. Introduce yourselves, your role with College Track, and how you got into this line of work.
Omar Butler: I knew you were going to throw it to me first. I knew it. I am the regional executive director of College Track, Northern California. I would like to think I got into this work purposely and intentionally, but I think it was more organic. My story is very similar to the students we serve. As I entered into a career at the college, it became a natural fit for me. It was instinctual to want to support students, to want to work in a youth development setting. Given my history and experience, I thought it would lend itself well to the work College Track was doing around getting students to and through college.
KH: Elissa?
Elissa Salas: I joined College Track eight years ago as a site director, and now I'm the CEO. I got into this work as a burnt out educator, having worked in K-12 as a teacher and principal, and also at the district level. I found myself feeling like I was perpetuating the systems of inequity that I sought out to change as a teacher. When I found College Track, which had a much more comprehensive view of how to educate young people, with college as the vehicle for life outcomes and choices, I fell in love with the mission.
KH: What are we dealing with today that is fundamentally different from 10, 20, 30 years ago?
ES: I'd like to offer that back in 1997, when College Track was founded, I was also a young person. First one in my family to go to college, trying to understand and navigate what college affordability was. Our oldest alumni are only one year younger than I am. Based on my own experience, and what I know to be true about our students and our earlier alumni that have gone through the program, some things are still true. California has some of the best higher ed funding in the entire country, that is still true, and it was true back then, with both Cal Grant A and Cal Grant B. However, there's huge discrepancies across regions. What we didn't have back then was the California Dream Act, nor was there any notion of DACA. Back then, students who were undocumented were paying school as an international student. That's one thing that's different.
My assumption is that tuition was much cheaper relative to the cost of living in general, back in '97. What I think is particularly interesting, is the federal program has not changed to keep up with the cost of living.
KH: How does the return on investment of a bachelor's degree play into the calculus of what an affordable college is? From our experience at College Track, how are we guiding our students to what we deem is an affordable college? What's that definition we've come to as an organization?
ES: For me it's the combination of average debt with average first salary. That's how I think about ROI. When we broadly are talking about a bachelor's degree, from the alumni that we survey, we make sure our students are graduating from college able to get a job six months out of college, that their average first-time salaries are on par with the national average for bachelor's degree holders, which is higher than a high school diploma or even a certificate. Generally, those themes have been true for our students who are graduating from college. That's the differentiation between the bachelor's degree, a high school diploma, or community college.
It's also important that students are really discerning when they're choosing between what seems to be two relatively similar options, in terms of post-grad salaries, but have perhaps radically different levels of investment up front. That's why we use the federal higher ed report card, because what students need to understand is that while you might want to go to a super brand-name school that doesn't necessarily have a high endowment, you're going to pay for that degree. And we should be paying for them, but if you're going to end up taking 50 thousand dollars to graduate from that college and your average starting salary is 40 thousand or 50 thousand, it doesn't entirely seem to be worth it. We want students to be able to weigh those options. If you're going to be an engineer, or you have every intention of being a lawyer or a doctor, where you're going to have an average salary that's far higher, then it might make sense to go to a school where you can take on more debt. But if your career aspirations are aligned to being a teacher, and you're weighing between an option where you're going to have to take out a significant amount of loans versus an option that is relatively affordable, we want students to be able to make that active choice.
KH: Right.
OB: I think that's spot-on. I also wonder, how do we create opportunities for students to think about it much more thoughtfully. When we talk to our students and we understand the pursuit, or why they are thinking about certain colleges, we have to do a better job of helping students be selective, better consumers. This is an investment, and it's important. It will be one of the largest investments they ever make in life. And so, "My friend is going there, so I want to go there," shouldn't be a driving force in terms of why.
I think part of that conversation is also to the point you just mentioned in the fit around career and return on investment from that standpoint. I talk to students who articulate that they want to be teachers, or they want to be educators. And I find myself asking them, "Okay, well, why do you want to go to a college outside of California if you want to be a teacher in California? Why do you want to go to a small liberal arts HBCU in Alabama to get a degree in education or sociology, if your intention is to come back here?" It's not to discourage it, but it's to help them be more thoughtful in their decisions. Part of the conversation around affordability is, "What are your future aspirations?" Because I think all those things are connected to each other, and as we think about career fluency, career guidance, fit around those type of things, in addition to fit around all the other metrics we use we encourage students to think about as they're reflecting and evaluating college choices, I think that's important as well.
College is a step towards a journey, not the end of the journey, and so helping students understand that piece and taking it into context around what it's like to graduate with 60 thousand dollars in debt, what will that mean for you and your future? That's a hard lesson some of our students have learned. But I think we're making a lot of inroads. Saturday I'm going to a graduation at Mills for our student who was choosing between Howard and Mills. At Howard, she probably would've graduated with 50-60 thousand dollars worth of debt easily. She's graduating from Mills debt-free. I want to see more of those stories, because to graduate from a great university with literally no debt, puts you on a trajectory for a lot of things that may not have been available had you graduated from another great university with tremendous debt.
KH: Does that also come with a culture shift? We continue to stress that our students go to what we call at College Track "best-fit schools" that are affordable, that help them graduate in four to six years, that help them graduate without an enormous amount of debt. Parents want their kids to go to the most elite institutions, but the name brand may not be the best institution for that student, regardless of financial aid needs.
ES: For me, I think the culture shift is first and foremost an understanding. The bachelor's degree is a tool that can set me up, or not set me up so well for the rest of my life. Particularly in K-12, we've missed that boat a little bit, because that wasn't necessarily our initial mission.
To evaluate the quality of that choice, we have to understand what other liabilities come with that. I feel like that's where the first culture shift needs to happen.
What are some of the hidden costs we're not thinking about, that financial aid and scholarships don't cover?
OB: In California, we have the benefit of having great public institutions that attract people from all over the world and definitely provide our students with an opportunity to look towards, as destinations. But when we think outside of California, things like gear that the students need in the winter. Growing up in California, you take for granted that a coat is year-round. That is a cost we don't really account for. When I was in school, it became less and less affordable to travel between California and the South. And so the impact of being able to purchase airline tickets, and really having to decide, "Okay, do I go home for Thanksgiving or do I go home for Christmas, or Spring Break? I can't go home for all of those things."
Those are some of the immediate things that come to mind, but some of the incidental needs our students experience, being able to call home to get 50 dollars or 75 dollars, to just cover the cost of something that's immediate. I'm not even talking about living life as a college student, but I'm talking about immediate needs of personal care and things like that, that I think really, after experiencing so many of those challenges, it becomes emotionally draining for students to have to confront those things on a month-to-month basis and really recognize that there are some things that are not available to them, that are available to a lot of their peers. And so I think those type of things come to mind that are very connected to the sense of belonging and a sense of connection to campus that sometimes we don't account for and understand, and institutions don't always account for.
OB: There are some great initiatives; I learned about an initiative at Georgetown where they actually account for those type of things and try to do it in a way that doesn't ostracize or prop up the students as needy, but really creates a space where students can access those things without the specter of their income. There are definitely some initiatives and institutions doing the work to keep first-gen low-income students engaged and flourishing in their institutions.
ES: Yeah, I would add again, just to stress the point earlier about community college, is that most four-year colleges, if you're a residential student, actually capture the cost of attendance quite well. They make sure that you have medical care through the college, if you don't already have it through your family. Living expenses are included. But again, community college students, the cost of attendance assumes that a portion of your cost of attendance is subsidized by your family. I just want to stress that point again.
The second piece that I'd like to add is the extracurricular activities that are really there to help maximize and further your degree. When I think about internships in the summer, for example, when students aren't perhaps living at their college, but they want to be able to do some type of internship, but it's not necessarily a paid internship. Or transportation, housing, those types of things. The other thing that comes to mind for me that I've seen with some of our students, and I had a personal experience with myself, is being able to study abroad. Oftentimes, if you're going to a country that is higher cost of living, or you're going to be staying on campus when you normally live on campus, that becomes out of reach.
KH: What are the biggest and boldest ideas about making college more "affordable?" There are some free college initiatives going on in Tennessee, and my home state of New York, and then there's those that are being floated nationally by presidential candidates and elected officials. We don't have to get into the weeds on each specific one, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on the notion of free college. How we can move the national conversation forward in a way that is feasible and brings merit back into the system?
ES: I have a position on this, in that many free college initiatives focus specifically on tuition, and they typically focus on open-access institutions, so a community college or a lower-tier public university, and again, I want to stress that college tuition is not the only expense. It's about half of the expense for a young person to be able to go through. And for families that are unable to subsidize the living expenses, it's actually not that helpful.
What I might also offer, particularly the states that you have offered up, is that with the higher ed funding that they have available to their constituents, many of those states already have a free college tuition through the higher ed system that they have now. From my point of view, I think this advantages middle-class families more than any other family. Not to say that that's a bad thing; middle-class families need help too.
That's my first reaction to that.
OB: I think we heard from Michael Sorrell, the president of Paul Quinn College. What he's doing there is meeting a specific kind of need, connecting work with college and marrying those two things so that students experience what is a huge factor to persistence, really making it meaningful and resonating with them and pointing to the why, you know? Using the college experience as a pipeline and pathway to career success is an example and model of how some institutions can support their students, attract a certain demographic of students, and ensure the success of a demographic of students that have not experienced a lot of success in traditional post-secondary institutions. I look at that and it gives me a sense of some things that other post- secondary institutions can do. It gives me a sense of what high schools and college completion programs can do as well. Create more alignment between the learning and making it.
ES: Some districts are offering up a 13th year of education. Basically using a super-senior year in K-12 to pay for the first year of college. So you're using K-12 money to fund your first year of college.
Another one on work that I think is interesting are some hybrid colleges – colleges that are making it much easier to work and go to college. They’re more self-paced, so that if you're a student that can do all the work in a couple semesters, it's not necessarily bound to seat time, but it's bound to products. I think that's particularly interesting.
The third is income-sharing agreements. These are not necessarily at scale, and I think there's good reason to be wary of them, but I think there's also good reason to think about offering up a different way of financing college. The assumption that a proportion of your salary for some extended amount of time, would be post-graduate and would be variable, but then after ten years, you're done.
Right. It's like a 401K.
ES: It is. And moreover you're paying different rates based on what you believe the degree is going to be able to actually earn. I think it's interesting, and it's also funded by school endowments themselves, not necessarily federal funding.
Let's go back to the question around the landscape and how it's changed.
OB: I think College Track is very forward thinking. We've started the conversation early on about affordability, about best fit, about return on investment. I walk into spaces with context that may be more thought out than some of my peers. When I think what's missing, I think about a broader conversation around the entire community thinking about the impact of debt on someone who may be graduating from college and the barriers that could create for those students.
No one talked to me about the implications of that. No one talked to me about financial literacy and financial awareness in the broader context. I may have made different decisions. I still would have pursued a four-year school, but it might have challenged me to think about which school I picked.
ES: What's also important is that the eligibility for Pell has stayed the same, which in spirit is fine, in terms of 200% of poverty, but when you look at many urban centers that have rapidly gentrified, the Bay Area is probably one of the highest, similar to the D.C. region, similar to L.A... there are many students that are over that marker, but families that are absolutely struggling to be able to live, pay their day-to-day living expenses. To be able to think about actually affording college is quite a leap.
KH: Particularly because the middle class has been so thinned.
ES: That's exactly right.
KH: The gap between the least and the most is so much greater than it's ever been, and that capping at a certain amount is not helping a lot of the communities we serve.
ES: Yeah. That's exactly right. The other thing that's changed quite a bit over time is: community college has been seen as an affordable option, but our students are unable to tap into the cost of living expenses. It turns out our policies in this country have the least amount of money for the most vulnerable students, and when you're in places that are very expensive, the cost of living is half of the cost of attendance. Tuition is really just half the battle.
KH: The way that we think about college today is so tied to tuition. Which is a good thing, because it's grounded in a reality that tuition is astronomical, and people have jokes about their loan repayment. You joked about that.
ES: I just paid my loans off.
KH: You finished. And that's undeniably a huge part of this. But there's also other pieces of the return on investment for college. In the Bay Area, which is a very wealthy area, but also has wealth discrepancies that are particularly high, how do we level this?
OB: There would be some suggestion, which I tend to disagree with, that a college degree isn't necessary in this economy, and that most of the companies, particular tech companies always used as the standard, don't require a college degree. I would actually argue differently. I think there are positions you can get in those companies that don't require a degree, but when we think about long-term growth and long-term earnings potential, a college degree sets you on a pathway early on in your career to be able to access opportunities and positions that do put you on that trajectory. It's so acute here in the Bay Area that, in order to be able to afford to live here, you need to be on that pathway and that trajectory pretty early on. We have to help students, and parents, and families, and society in general, understand why it is extremely valuable. Probably more so for our students who are coming from an environment and context where they don't have access to resources and capital which would allow them to leverage a parent's equity in their home to buy a home themselves.
When we think about return on investment, we have to understand the long- term benefits, both from a financial standpoint but also an opportunity standpoint, which are linked together. When we deny that, we're denying opportunity, and we're continuing this caste system, if you will, where our students reach a glass ceiling and reach a barrier that they aren't able to break through because college degrees are a sense of sorting as well. As we think about the return on investment, we have to help our students understand the long-term benefits and values and what those opportunities will mean for them in the long run. And that's not just 20 or 10 years down the line; that's five, three, soon after they enter into the workforce.
KH: You guys have been wonderful. Thank you so much.