interviews
Water and the American West
by Richard Frank
October 25, 2021
This interview with Richard Frank, professor of environmental practice at the UC Davis School of Law and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Can you tell me a little bit about the story of water and how it's tied to the West, and to California in particular?
Richard | A friend of mine who's a Court of Appeals Justice here in California wrote an opinion on a water law dispute and started it with the quote, "the history of California is written on its waters." And I think that the point is true of the entire American West.
Water policy and legal issues are inextricably tied to the development of the Western United States; water is the limiting factor in so many ways to settlement, to economic development, to prosperity, and to the environment and environmental preservation.
Can you talk about the difference between groundwater and surface water– and the policies that regulate each?
There are really two types of water when it comes to human consumption. There's surface water: that is the water that is transmitted by lakes, rivers, and streams. Then there is groundwater, and a substantial amount of water that Americans and the American West rely on is groundwater. That is water that is stored in groundwater aquifers, which are naturally occurring groundwater basins. Both groundwater and surface water are critical to the American West and its economy and its culture.
Traditionally a couple of things are important to note, first of all, water is finite. Second, water gets allocated in the Western United States generally at the state level. There's a limited federal role. Primarily, policy decisions about who gets how much water for what purpose are made state by state.
I think allocation is really interesting in that it's more state-level than federal. How was water and the allocation of water in California designed? Is it a public-private combination? What goes on in terms of the infrastructure of water?
Another very good question. The answer is it depends. Most of our water infrastructure is public in nature.
Again, in the American West, the regulation of water rights is generally done at the state level, but the federal government, historically, has a major water footprint in the American West because it has been federal dollars and federal design and management that really controlled much of the major water infrastructure in the American West — you know, Hoover Dam, and the complex system of dams and reservoirs on the Colorado River in California, with the Central Valley Project that was built and managed by the federal government with Shasta Dam on the upper Sacramento River as the centerpiece of that project. But we also have a California State Water Project, the key facility being the Oroville Dam and reservoir on the Southern River that is managed by state water managers. If we were starting over, that kind of parallel system would make no particular engineering or operational sense.
But, we are captive to our history.
And then you have these massive systems of aqueducts and canals that move water from one place to another throughout the American West. They are particularly responsible for moving water from surface water storage facilities to population centers. In the last 50 to 75 years, these population centers have really expanded dramatically, so you need massive infrastructure to deliver water from those storage facilities, the dams, and reservoirs, which generally are located in remote areas to the population centers. So it takes a lot of time and energy to transport the water, from where it is captured and stored to where it is needed for human use.
California has faced continuous drought – what measures is the state taking now to manage water?
Just to frame the issue a little bit — we have, as I mentioned, a growing population in the American Southwest at a time when the amount of available water is shrinking due to drought and due to the impacts of climate change. We have growing human demand for residential and commercial purposes and at the same time, we have a shrinking water supply. That is a huge looming crisis.
And it is beginning to play out in real-time. You see that playing out in real-time. For example, several different states and Mexico rely on Colorado River flows based on an allocation system that was created in the 1920s, which is overly optimistic about the amount of available water. From the 1920s until now, that water supply has decreased, and decreased, and decreased. Now you have interstate agreements, and in the case of Mexico, international agreements that allocate the finite Colorado river water supplies based on faulty, now obsolete, information. It is a real problem.
What measures do you take now, knowing this information?
If you look at the US Drought Monitor, it is obvious the problem is not limited to the Colorado River. We are in a mega-drought, so cutbacks are being imposed by federal and state water agencies to encourage agricultural, urban, and commercial water users to cut their water use and, and stretch finite supplies as much as possible through conservation efforts.
In California, we have the State Water Resources Control Board, the state water regulator in California, and they have issued curtailment orders. Meaning, they have told water rights holders, many of whom have had those water rights for over a hundred years, that, for the first time, the water that they feel they are entitled to, is not available. Local water districts are also issuing water conservation mandates; the San Francisco water department is doing that, in Los Angeles, the metropolitan water district, is urging urban users to curtail their efforts.
And then agriculture. Agricultural users — farmers and ranchers — have had to get water rights in many cases through the federal government, as the federal government is the operator of these water projects. They have contracts with water users, individual farmers, ranchers, or districts, and they are now issuing curtailment orders. They're saying, we know you contracted for X amount of water for this calendar year, but we are telling you because of the drought shortages we don't have that water to supply. Our reservoirs are low at Lake Shasta or at the Oroville Dam.
When you drive from San Francisco to LA on the five, you see a lot of signage from the agricultural farming community about water. There's apparently some frustration about this. What are the other options for them?
About 80% of all human consumed water goes to agriculture. That is by far the biggest component of water use, as opposed to 20% used for urban and commercial, and industrial purposes.
Over the years, ranchers and farmers, and agricultural water districts assumed that the water would always be there — as we all do.
And the farmers and ranchers have, in hindsight, exacerbated the problem by bringing more and more land into production. You see on those drives between San Francisco and Los Angeles, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, all these orchards are being planted. Orchards are more lucrative crops than row crops — cotton, alfalfa, and rice. But, if you are growing a row crop, you can leave the land fallow in times of drought.
We don't have to plant. If the water stopped there, or if it's too expensive to get, it may make economic sense, but if you have an orchard or a vineyard it's a high value, those are high value crops, you don't have that operational flexibility and they need to be irrigated in wet years and in dry years. Now, you see these orchards, which were only planted a few years ago, are now being uprooted because the farmers realized that they don't have the water necessary to keep those vineyards and orchards alive. For ranchers, the same thing is true with their herds. They don’t have enough water for their livestock.
The water shortage has never been drier than it is right now. Farmers and ranchers are being deprived of water that they traditionally believed was theirs and they're very understandably, very unhappy about it. They see it as a threat to their livelihood and to the livelihood of the folks who work for them. Their anger and frustration are to be expected, but it's nobody's fault.
To say, as some farmers do, that it is mismanagement by state and federal government officials, I think is overly simplistic and misplaced in the face of a mega-drought. Everybody's going to have to sacrifice. Everybody's going to have to be more efficient in how they use water. All sectors are going to need to be more efficient with the water that does exist.
Looking at this percentage breakdown of water use – is it actually important for individual users to change their water habits?
Well, every little bit helps. When you're talking about homeowners, about 70% of urban water use is for outdoor irrigation. So we're talking parks and cemeteries and golf courses and folks' yards. You know, that used to be considered part of that American dream and the California dream — you would have a big lawn in front of your house and behind your house. Truth be told, that has never made much sense in an arid environment. That's where the water savings in urban areas is critical in the way it really involves aesthetics rather than critical human needs, like water for drinking and bathing and sanitation purposes. There is a growing movement away from big lawns, and away from the type of landscaping that you see in the Eastern US — there is no drought in the Eastern United States. As Hurricane Ida and other recent storms have shown, the problem is too much water, or rather than too little in most of the Eastern United States. So it really is a tale of two countries.
We just need to recognize that the American West is an arid region. It has always been an arid region, we can't make the desert bloom with water that doesn't exist. We need to be more efficient in how we allocate those water supplies. And it seems to me in an urban area, the best way to conserve and most effective way is to reduce urban landscaping, which is the major component of urban water use.
You also write about water markets and making them better – for those who don’t know, what is the water market?
Water markets, that is, the voluntary transfer of water between water users, is more robust in some other Western states. Again Arizona and New Mexico come to mind. California somewhat surprisingly is behind the curve. We are in the dark ages compared to other states. Water markets are kind of anecdotal. There is not much of a statewide system. It is done at the local level, through individual transactions without much oversight and without much transparency. And I have concerns about all of those things.
I believe conceptually watermarks are a way to stretch scarce, finite water resources to make water use more efficient. I can, for example, allow farmers or ranchers to sell water to urban uses or commercial usage or factories in times of drought.
Farmers sometimes can make more money by farming water, than they can by farming crops.
There are efficiencies to be gained here.
The problem in my view is really one of transparency. The water markets are not publicly regulated, and some of the people who are engaging in water transactions like it that way, frankly, they want to operate under the radar.
In my opinion, water markets need to be overseen by a public entity rather than private or nonprofit entities. We need oversight and transparency, so that folks like you and myself can follow the markets to see who's selling water to whom, for what purpose, and make sure that those water transfers serve the public interests and not just the private interests.
There have been a number of stories in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Salt Lake City Tribune about efforts in some parts to privatize water transfer. Hedge fund managers are buying and selling water, as a means of profiting. And it strikes me that when you're talking about an essential public resource — and in California, it is embedded in the law that public water is an inherently public resource, that water is owned by the public and it can be used for private purposes, but it is an inherently public resource — the idea of commoditizing water through the private, opaque markets is very troublesome to me. I think it represents a very dangerous trend and one that needs to be corrected and avoided.
Why is California so behind?
There's no good reason for it. It's largely inexplicable that since the state was created on September 9th, 1860, we've been fighting over water. In the 19th century, it was miners versus farmers ranchers. In the 20th century, with the growth of urban communities, the evolution of California into one of the most populous states with 40 million Californians, it has been a struggle between urban and agricultural uses of water.
In the second half of the 20th century, there was a recognition that some component of water had to be left in streams to protect ecosystems, landscape, and wildlife, including the threatened and endangered wildlife. That suggestion has made agricultural users in California angry. You will see those signs that allude to the idea that food and farming are more important than environmental values. I don't happen to believe that's true. I believe both are critically important to our society. But the advocates for the environment have a proverbial seat at the water table. So that's another demand for water allocation that exists.
Do you maintain optimism?
Yes. I think it's human nature to look on the bright side. I try to do that through research scholarships and teaching. There are models for how we can do this better in the United States. Israel and Saudi Arabia and Singapore are far more efficient with their water policies and efforts. Australia went through a severe megadrought. They came out of it a few years ago, but they used that opportunity to dramatically reform their water allocation systems. That's an additional model. I think most people would agree in hindsight that their previous system was antiquated, and not able to meet the challenges of climate change and the growing water shortage in some parts of the world.
Here in the United States, we can learn from those efforts. There are also some ways to expand the water supply. Desalination for one. Again, Singapore and Saudi Arabia have led the world in terms of removing the salt content from ocean water and increasing water supply that way. In Carlsbad, California, north of San Diego, we have the biggest desalination plant in the United States right now, and that is currently satisfying a significant component of the San Diego metropolitan areas’ water needs. It's more expensive than other water supplies, but the technology is getting more refined, so the cost of desalinated water is coming down at a time when other water supplies, due to shortages and the workings of the free market are going up.
At some point, they're going to meet or get closer. Unlike some of my environmental colleagues, I think desalination is an important part of the equation.
In a proposal that came up in the recall election, one of the candidates was talking about how we just need to build a canal from the Mississippi River to California to take care of all our problems. That ignores political problems associated with that effort, as well as the massive infrastructure costs that would be required to build and maintain a major aqueduct for 2000 miles from the Mississippi to California. That's just not going to happen. Some of those pie in the sky thoughts of how we expand the water supply, I think, are unrealistic.
interviews
What Is Crypto Art?
by Blake Finucane
January 19, 2020
Blake Finucane is providing crypto context for all who will listen.
frank | My most basic question is, what is crypto art?
BF | The best question. 100 percent. There's not really an institutionalized definition, where everyone agrees upon what it is. So I break it down into three sections.
Firstly, crypto art can be considered art that’s subject matter has something to do with crypto currency, or blockchain technology. That would be a painting, a sculpture, in which the subject matter is crypto related – a painting of Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, for instance.
The second is a work of art that incorporates blockchain technology or crypto currency into how it actually operates. For example, there is this project called The Plantoid by Primavera De Filippi, the founder of the art collective Okhaos. Every Plantoid has its own Bitcoin wallet, you, the spectator, pay the sculpture via a small cryptocurrency transaction. Once the payment is received, the sculpture lights up, and basically gives you a show for paying it. It's a physical object, but cryptocurrency is also central to the piece.
The third way I define crypto art is a work that's completely immaterial, so that it only exists in digital form. Central to how this type of work operates is “tokenization.” The image itself, which is digital, is connected to a token on the blockchain. It's a completely immaterial work, and that token represents the image.
One example is this project called CryptoPunks, where 10,000 unique images of different characters were created. You were able to claim them for free, and you owned a unique token which represents the image, which was tracked on the Ethereum blockchain. Now, they can be sold/purchased via a marketplace that's also embedded on the blockchain. Of course, you can take a screenshot of one of these images and say that they’re yours, but the original and authentic ownership of each image is tracked and proven via the Ethereum blockchain. If that makes sense?
It does...to an extent. Could you expand on the last part?
Historically, it's really hard to prove that artwork is authentic, and that it was, in fact, made by the person that people say it's made by.
Right.
If a digital work is represented by a token on the blockchain then authenticity and provenance are tracked automatically.
Okay.
The blockchain is essentially a database, it's a distributed ledger that traces every single token transaction that has ever happened. If I own this crypto art token, and I want to sell it, because it's attached to the blockchain, you can actually track every single move this artwork has ever made. There's no question about when it was made, how it was made, who made it.
Which of the things you just described, are you the most involved with, and the most interested in?
I am 100 percent most excited about, and most interested in, fully dematerialized work. Probably the most famous crypto art that is fully dematerialized, and fully digitalized, is a group of works called CryptoKitties. The company behind them, Axiom Zen, is also based in Vancouver. I consider them under the umbrella of “crypto art” but are also commonly described as “crypto collectibles.” I think this term is interesting because it expands their classification beyond just simply works of art, into other forms of asset classes. CryptoKitties can also be considered a “blockchain game” because of how interactive it is.
Cryptokitties are on the Ethereum blockchain and can be traded, collected and bred with one another. This highlights one of the really cool aspects of immaterial art, as the cats are able to have certain functions that are not possible with physical art—they are able to reproduce and multiply.
I'm looking now.
You buy a digital image, and that image is represented on a token on the Ethereum blockchain. One CryptoKitty in 2018 sold for $140,000, but this is was when the crypto marketing was booming.
That’s wild.
Totally! And something else that is important to acknowledge is that artists are so profoundly taken advantage of and blockchain technology allows artists to monetize their work – especially digital art work - in ways that I don't think have been possible before.
Of course, if a digital work is created, you can copy and paste it. You can take a screenshot. You can torrent it. These works are infinitely reproducible. There's no way to prove what image was authentic. There's no way to monetize that on the artist’s side because, again, it's just fully on the internet and everyone has it.
There's a way to actually embed authenticity and originality into a digital image in ways that weren't available before. I think that's super exciting for artists working in digital mediums because it allows them to monetize themselves, and protect themselves in ways that just haven't been possible.
How does the art world view crypto art? I don't think dematerialization, or the concept of a future without objects is so new, but this iteration is relatively new. How are “Art” people responding?
Yes, that's a good question. The short answer is: not particularly positively. I'm sure you may have guessed that. There's been a lot of pushback. Even for me, trying to write my master’s thesis, there was a lot of barriers that I encountered from an academic standpoint.
The criticism that I'm engaged with, a lot of it is not a rejection of the work itself, but a rejection of the technology, being blockchain. Because the technology is so new, I think a lot of people, they might not feel threatened by it, but they do feel confused. They don't necessarily know where to begin to learn about it.
Some of the other criticism, and I've also written about this, is that a lot of the artists working with this technology don’t come out of art school. They're not coming out of the traditional art training programs. They're not showing at traditional galleries. This movement has bypassed traditional art institutions.
The artists making these works are often technologists first. They are super familiar with blockchain technology. Maybe they come from a software background, a coding background. I think that it's really challenging a lot of the barriers that the art world puts in place around education, and around networks. A lot of the buyers, too, are not traditional art buyers, but they are actually crypto people.
Right.
I think all of that bubbles up to create this reaction from the art world. Obviously, this is not a blanket statement. There are people that are excited about it. The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with UCLA, held a Simon Denny exhition a couple of years ago, where he looked at blockchain technology. Art Basel Miami has begun to present blockchain related panels. The Whitney Museum has hosted some Bitcoin related work on their online portal. But in general, this type of work is not shown at the most well-known, blue chip galleries or museums.
I think it's been slow because, I don't know if “threaten” is the right word, but it challenges and shines a light on the barriers the art world puts into place.
There's a lot of really cool and unique platforms that show crypto art. And you can buy crypto art on them. DADA is a platform where you can buy and also sell your work, they make it super easy for you to engage. A platform called SuperRare acts in similar ways.
There are these cool platforms emerging where you can buy and sell. That's where I think a lot of the heart of the movement is. It really lives online. I learn a lot through being on Twitter, being on Reddit, and engaging in the crypto community, and learning what the exciting projects are.
Where do you store / show crypto artwork?
You can buy a traditional painting or sculpture which features a crypto theme in the subject matter. But I think another one of the interesting ways in which crypto art challenges the traditional art world is through expectations around display.
In general, most of what you're buying is digital, and there's not an immediate, obvious way to actually display it. This art fits more into the category of collecting, in which you can enjoy online or in a digital medium, but not so much in the physical world.
Our lives are increasingly online anyway.
Yeah. The other really cool thing about the melding of crypto and art is that there have been certain companies popping up, where they tokenize real world art. Probably the most famous example is a company called Maecenas, they got a lot of attention in 2018. They tokenized a piece by Andy Warhol called 14 Small Electric Chairs made in 1980. You were able to buy a “digital certificate” which would be verified by the blockchain, so you could own a fraction of the work, and you are able to resell your portion on the Maecenas marketplace. By the end of the sale, they had sold over a 30% stake in the work. I think fractionalized ownership will continue to grow in popularity, because it allow you to capture the value that something generates without owning the entire thing.
Again, because of the security and the trust system that blockchain really is, you were able to really trust that the token you're owning does represent part of the Warhol piece. What you're buying is just a piece of the Warhol. You'll never be able to display that piece. It's in London. But you own a part of it, and there's some value in that that people are getting not only monetarily but I think socially as well – they can tell their friends about it and post on social media.
Because so many of the artists come from a tech background, what do you think of the style, how the art functions as art, the quality of the art itself?
A lot of the work I actually love. A lot of it is quite self-referential. A lot of it is meta, in that it references things in the crypto community, or in internet culture. A lot of it is quite memetic. It borrows from the language of memes. It is such a product of internet aesthetics. It's able to do that because it's so reliant on digital technology.
Right.
So, I think in that sense, I'm very, very interested. I'm very excited by the imagery that's coming out. It's for sure not everyone's cup of tea. But for people who are, first of all, engaged in the crypto community, but also on Twitter, on Instagram, if you can get over the issues around what things cost, and if something is art or not, because I think that question is one that has infinite answers, and creates infinite debates, if you can get over that, a lot of people can enjoy the work. You can engage with it on a really light level.
I'm trapped in this idea of Instagram aesthetic and internet aesthetic moving into the real world. Petra Collins is an easy example. Waves looks like a Petra Collins set meant to look like a modern high school experience. I just read about Instagram Face. Glossier is an Instagram aesthetic that then exists IRL. The internet influencing everything. I'm spiraling. That's not a question.
I totally get what you're saying. I wrote about Petra in my honors thesis in my undergrad. When you look at the history of art, there has been, since the 1960s a lot of art practices that had to do with paperwork, looking at contracts and legalities (like Sol LeWitt, Seth Siegelaub, N.E. Thing Co., etc) It was never actually about material objects. For a lot of conceptual artists, one of the most important things they were looking at was the portability of their work. It was about using a limited amount of material and supplies to make art. Artists were really thinking through and challenging the sensory experiences that people often associate with and expect when they engage with an art work. In those ways, there's been a history of art challenging that.
This question of democratizing art, what you were talking about with Glossier, where it's all disseminating on social media, is interesting. Social media has a reputation of being this democratic place. But when you really look at it, there's certain types of bodies and faces people want to see online and certain bodies and faces that often gain more traction than others. There is this democracy, but there's still this very specific way in which images circulate and need to fit into literal boxes on Instagram. Certain images are still privileged over others.
That's, again, one of the issues around people talking about crypto art. They say it's democratizing. And it is, I think it really presents new things that haven't been available before. But at the same time, there are major barriers to accessing, consistently using and creating with technology. And often the main builders of the tech we use are white males who are economically privileged.
In the same way you were saying technology and internet culture has morphed into the real world, I think the real world, and people who are coding, and designing, and running a lot of the powerful technology companies, are grafting those privileges onto the tech they create.
That's no difference with crypto art. A lot of times, the people that actually have the skillset to engage on these platforms or even know that these platforms exist are the same people that go to tech conferences, who you see getting funding from venture capitalists. A lot of inequities exist offline and online.