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
This is Your Job as an Ally
by Wendell Williams
February 29, 2020
This interview with Wendell Williams was conducted and condensed by frank news.
Would you introduce yourself?
My name is Wendell Williams. I'm an African-American male, and I've been working in substance abuse and homelessness since 1991. I was more recently employed at a large substance abuse treatment facility that is nationwide, and I was employed in the mid-Atlantic division here in the DC area as a recovery specialist. My licenses, and certification, and designation is as a recovery specialist. I'm a CPRS, which means Certified Peer Recovery Specialist, and an ACHC, which is basically a counseling assistant for sub-certified substance abuse counselors. I've been working on an OBOT program and an IMAT, which is a medication assisted treatment, and my client base has been people who are underinsured or uninsured, paid for by a three year grant from SAMHSA.
How do physical and mental health treatments intertwine in recovery programs?
First of all, it is not that clear cut. My experience has shown me that until you can get a client stabilized for a period of at least six months, it's almost impossible to diagnose if it is truly mental illness or the phenomenon of the long-term drug use – and the withdrawal from the drug use. A lot of the behavior mimics the other one. The most important thing is to get people stable and that includes treating them as a mental health client – I'm all for that. Treat them as a mental health client if you're not sure, because we aren't sure when they come to us. We don't know what this behavior is, where it's coming from, where it's manifested. So let's treat them all as if they are suffering with mental health related issues. I think that's smart, that's prudent.
What we find in most cases is that both are present. It's just harder to determine when a person has substance abuse issues as well. You have to get them moving towards being abstinent, because if a person is any way, continuing to dibble and dabble with drugs and alcohol, the chances that they're going to be compliant with a mental health regimen is slim to none.
I could make that statement based upon my own experience. I've been in a couple of state mental hospitals – I've been in several. I know that if I'm using, I'm not going to be compliant with my mental health regimen. Medicines don't work over the top of marijuana. They don't work over the top of crack cocaine. I guess it's the proverbial, is it the chicken or the egg? My personal experience shows, treat the substance abuse, and then treat the mental health. You cannot ignore the substance abuse.
When a new client or patient comes to you, especially uninsured or underinsured, how do you begin to get them into recovery?
I've been at this a long time. My journey was long, full of a lot of stops and starts, I almost wore myself out physically. It's such a long process because in today's arena, clients have the right to be involved in your treatment. I think sometimes clients misunderstand what that means.
Clients tend to come to mental health professionals and substance abuse professionals, and have an opinion of what's going on with them, and how they should be treated.
Definitely a catch 22. The main reason people aren't successful in recovering from substance abuse and mental health, of homelessness – the main reason the success rate is so abysmal is that people simply won't do what they're told, they do not follow instructions. They're rebellious, they're of the mindset that they know themselves better than anyone else. Why should I listen to you? They pretty much take the Golden Corral approach. Now I wouldn't eat at Golden Corral if my life depended on it, but it is like when you go to one of those buffet places and you put on your tray what you like or what you enjoy. The solution to homelessness, mental health and substance abuse, is not going to taste good going down. You follow what I'm saying?
Yes.
How do you get people to take the medicine? I can remember being sick as a child. My mother and grandma were trying to get me to take some medicine that tasted nasty and I was resistant. I acted out, I shook, I cried, I screamed, then when I took the medicine I felt better. It's kind of like that, getting clients off substance abuse to take the medicine and to listen to the suggestions of people who have seen hundreds if not thousands of people just like me – but it is my thinking that I'm unique, and I'm different, and that I require a different set of solutions and an approach that keeps me caught up in a cycle that usually leads back to using again.
With treatment, I think what we're missing are treatment centers designed for people who have substance abuse and serious mental health issues. Treatments have to be designed or oriented towards the person that has those issues. They cannot be put in a treatment setting with people who don't have those issues. That would move the needle some. That would give us a little more success.
Withdrawal from substance abuse mimics mental health issues. We may have legitimate mental health issues too. Our treatment facility programmatically need to be specifically geared toward providing treatment for people with mental health issues.
If you can't afford treatment what are your options? How do you get reasonable, thoughtful, effective treatment?
Well, the thoughtful part is not an issue. All of us who work in treatment are thoughtful, we care and we are passionate about people changing their lives. But when you use the term effective, that's when the red flag comes up, because the majority of the people we're talking about, seek treatment in a community treatment setting. Are you familiar with what I mean by that term?
No.
Nonprofit community organizations have started to do treatment. Their staff may not be as effective or highly trained because of budgetary concerns. Most of these treatment centers are free, if you have Medicaid or something to that effect.
That's not a bad thing because what we know in the recovery community is if we focus on teaching the individual not to drink or use drugs, even if they want to, their chances are greatly improved. They'll be able to stay away from the first drink or the first drug, which gives them a better chance of following through with the mental health regimen being designed for them.
Once a person starts to use they are not going to come to appointments, you're going to be spotty as far as being compliant with a whole bunch of things. But more importantly the group treatment of drug and alcohol use, is not honest enough to work in concert with the therapist or their counselor.
For years I lied to my therapists and counselors every week. You use? You getting high? Nope. You're going to meet the Mrs.? Yeah. That's why I don't have a lot of faith in this data-driven world that we work in today, where they're saying these crazy success rates based upon telephone interviewing after a person leaves some mental health or substance abuse treatment facility.
They're going to have somebody call me from a place and ask me am I still sober? Of course I'm going to say I am.
I don't know if you're familiar with John Oliver, he has a show on HBO. He did a complete show on the rehab industry involving substance abuse, mental health and touched on all those issues. If you watch that show, he will give you a different look of what rehab treatment is like for substance abuse and mental health issues.
There are people like me, where you get committed to a state hospital. That gives you time to stabilize. I remember a doctor telling me – we used to call him patch Adams, he was a young guy, he said, “Mr. Williams, you ain't going nowhere. We got to spin this back. We have to figure out if you’ve been properly diagnosed from the beginning and medicating properly over the years.”
I found out I was misdiagnosed. I'm taking every medication known under the sun, every psychotropic. Years later I take nothing. A lot of what was going on with me was complicated by my substance use, which mimicked mental health issues I was treated for. What I needed was some time to get stable, some time without a drink or drug to be stable.
When that happened I was more willing to be honest with the people who were charged with helping me straighten my life out. I was able to get clear-cut, straightforward answers to what was going on. I'm one of these people I see out there.
I don't think I would be living the life to date and enjoying it if it wasn't for that initial period of being closely monitored by mental health officials or workers, whatever you want to call it.
That's the hardest thing for people with mental health issues. Then you throw in substance abuse. The hardest thing for us to wrap our heads around is that we can't do it ourselves. It's the most difficult decision you have to make. I'm going to have to let these people help me.
But for most of us, it only comes after multiple arrests, going to prison, getting locked up on a regular basis. Living like a reptile. It only comes after all that.
We live in a high tech world. The solutions I found to health issues and substance abuse issues are very low tech. Success comes when we finally become willing to do what the fuck we’re told. Sorry. That was the aha moment. After about six years of being clean and sober and living this great life, I have all the things I never thought I would have again. I had this moment where I said to myself, is this all I had to do? That's all I had to do? I mean it was just this simple? Do what they tell you to do? I was mad I threw away a couple of decades because I wasn't willing to do what I was told by mental health professionals. I thought – check this statement out – I knew just as much as they did, or more than they did, about me.
Therein lies the problem. I cannot diagnose or fix myself. That's why I need a mirror in the morning when I get dressed because I can't see myself accurately. I need somebody to tell me what they see in me and my behavior.
We cling together in this mental health, substance abuse, homeless thing, but to get our lives together, we have got to make a conscious decision to leave some people behind. Even if it's very difficult, because we laughed together, we cried together, we've huddled up to keep warm together. We shared our last 50 cents or our last cigarette together. You're telling me I have to leave these people behind to save myself?
It is very difficult. You have to stop living the way you used to live, but you’re fearful of living life. There’s no way of anticipating what it’s going to be like. We live in fear of change, and are already comfortable with the misery we’re living in. My life was the crisis of the moment, if not the crisis of the day, and it would become very comfortable.
Almost all of us will say our lives are boring. That medicine is making me boring, or that medicine is making me feel like I'm stuck in neutral. That medicine doesn't allow me to feel. It was only after I had four, five years being clean and sober that I understood what the medicine did. It kept me from swinging to the extremes. Extreme faded, extreme depressed, it gave me a better chance of managing the impulses to use drugs and alcohol.
But I didn't go to Harvard so people don't tend to listen to me, because I ain't got a whole bunch of data driven stuff to back this up. I only have my experience, and the experience of other people who have recovered. We don't do studies in research. We see it in people's faces. We know that they were as bad or worse than us, and we see them, they're beaming. Good life, healthy jobs, apartments, cars, houses, marriages, kids, and have been maintaining it for years.
This idea of not being able to help someone suffering with addiction until they’re ready for it goes against our instincts, I think. People will always try to help the people they love.
There's some truth in that. There's an old saying, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.
Yes.
That is true, and that's what people mean when they say you can't make them get clean.
You don't have to make them drink, you have to make them thirsty as hell, so they feel like drinking. They know where the water is. I understand you can't make them do it. That is indeed correct. But you make the ring so small people can't run. That's our job as loved ones and allies.
Our job is to stop enabling and let them experience what they need to experience to become willing to make the change themselves. Otherwise it won't work. People have to learn how to stop – and I understand people may die, but they have a right to die. They can choose life or they can choose death. Here's your choice as an ally or a loved one, you can help them plan for a better future, or you could plan a funeral. When we continue to enable them, make life soft and make soft landings for them, we're helping them plan a funeral. I speed up the timeline theoretically, where that person gets to the part where he says, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. And that's the only true organic reason that works where people get clean and sober and seek mental health treatment.
The more you tell an addict, especially a person suffering from mental health and addiction, they need to do something, the more you tell them they need some help, or the more you try to force them into help, the more resistant they're going to be – they're going to comply so they don't lose the roof over their head or their mom's support, so mom doesn't stop paying the iPhone bill. But the heart's not going to, I see it every day at work.
It does a disservice as a society to be sending people to drug treatment at 15, 14 18, 19 years old repeatedly. I recently had a 19 year old, loved him to death. Great kid. I didn't see what all the ring and row was about. I was pretty much like, leave him alone and let him figure life out. When we were 18 ain't none of us knew what we wanted to do. But the kid's been to treatment seven times already. The danger in that is, if it ever comes to a point that he seriously thinks and believes he needs to do something, he's going to be burnt out on the treatment process.
Why don't we save it until they express they're ready? Let's put things in place to minimize the damage to family and loved ones and let them seek help when they're ready to seek help. You cannot force them into recovery. It does not sustain. And that's why the quote unquote relapse rate is so horrific. I don't believe in using that term. It will not stick and hold until they're doing it because it's what they wanted to. I think that's where we go wrong.
A whole industry has sprung up around the fear that parents feel for losing their child, or people feel for losing a loved one. That's what John Oliver is talking about in that particular program. People getting in and being mercenary about it. In terms of the money being made.
The fear is that I got to get my person into treatment. That person may not be ready or even seeking treatment. He'll go, please you, or to keep their job. And don't get me wrong. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I'm not going to say it never works, but in most cases it doesn't.
The profit motive with more and more States allowing Medicaid to pay for treatment, both mental health and substance abuse, a whole bunch of industries have sprung up.
Let me give you one as an example. The transportation industry for Medicaid clients who go to treatment, mental health, substance abuse is a booming profitable field. A Medicaid client gets a ride to and from treatment every day. I don't care if they come in 80 miles. I've had some clients come from as far away as 90 miles every day to treatment. The outpatient treatment.
Medicaid pays for their cab to and fro. It's where the business opportunity has come in not feeding directly from the Medicaid process, but from associated or affiliate or ally industries. So everybody's making money but boots on the ground. I'm not impressed or enthusiastic about the number of people who are improving their lives and saving their lives.
People say Wendell, how can you say that? It is on the CDC website. If you look at emergency room visits and drug overdose, in 2017, 76,000 people died of drug overdose for that last reporting period. And in this opinion of the center for disease control, they are looking for eight to twelve percent increase in the next reporting year, which will be 2018.
What should that tell us? You know politicians use that term. The country's headed in the right direction or the countries headed in the wrong direction. I think people care about these issues should be looking at those hard nose statistics at the CDC. That gives you some microscopic view of if we get in the right direction in helping people deal with these issues. Think that's enough. But I don't know if that's any help to you. That's my opinion. And it's not precise to any mathematical degree.
I usually tell people it's all my opinion based on my experience and the experience of other people like me who have recovered.
I really appreciate your time and openness. Thank you.
We need more opportunities to share our truth.