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
#CutCovidNotCUNY
by Kelsey Chatlosh
May 4, 2020
This interview with Kelsey Chatlosh, a cultural anthropology Ph.D. candidate and Digital Fellow (alumna) at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, was conducted and condensed by frank news.
Kelsey Chatlosh: My name is Kelsey Chatlosh and I am a 6th year PhD student at the City University of New York Graduate Center. I am also an adjunct instructor. This semester I am teaching three different courses, 104 students total, at Brooklyn College within CUNY.
frank: Pre-COVID, there's a history of organizing on the CUNY campus.
Yes. Last year there was a movement called $7K or Strike. It was an effort for adjunct professors to make 7k per course they taught. With the concessions made, it ended up resulting in much less per course, with a slow increase over the years. And then there is organizing that happens within PSC, our union. Though I was not really involved in previous efforts when I was teaching less while working another job or fellowship, it does seem like a lot of the structure that exists now is as a result of these past efforts.
What is happening now? How did the most recent proposed cuts change your participation?
Brooklyn College has proposed cutting classes by 25%. Other campuses have not yet made similar proposals, but we know cuts are happening there too. From what I know, Brooklyn College is suggesting the most drastic measure out of all the campuses. President Michelle J. Anderson and other top administrators at Brooklyn College have a particularly fiscally conservative perspective.
So I guess it became personal. I am concerned about losing my primary source of income. A lot of us within the anthropology department also depend on these jobs as our primary source of affordable health insurance. A lot of us are concerned about qualifying for unemployment because it becomes really complicated to apply as a graduate student and an adjunct professor. And, even if we do qualify, New York is obviously already overrun with unemployment claims right now.
We are in the midst of a global pandemic in one of the places that has been hit the hardest, and we are at university where our students are being disproportionately affected. A lot of our students are people of color, a lot of our students are first generation students, a lot of our students have immigration status. The cuts directly affect adjuncts and our income and our health insurance and so forth, but it's also about the effects that the cuts would have on students. Cuts will negatively affect their education and their support networks.
It was kind of a combination of things that really pushed me to get involved. Also, the tenured faculty and the tenure track faculty within the anthropology department let us know that cuts were coming as soon as word got out. They started meeting with us on a weekly basis to organize and strategize what we were going to do, and how we are going to fight for these things, which I am really grateful for. They also encouraged us to begin meetings just among the adjuncts. We organized our first adjuncts-only departmental meeting last week and now plan to meet weekly among just us too. It’s a lot of time and work, which leads to more work as we take on more projects together, but I have a lot of faith in this space we are making. I think it would be really fruitful if adjuncts created their own organizing space in every department.
What does organizing look like on campus now? And what are you seeking?
There are a lot of different pieces at play when it comes to this sort of organizing at CUNY. There are a few different organizations. In addition to our union, the two active ones that I am most familiar with are FREE CUNY and Rank and File. The two groups work together, but they are separate groups.
Free CUNY has their own set of demands on a change.org petition and that has been very widely shared recently. They are a group that has been mostly organized by a set of really incredible undergraduate and graduate students. These are the demands from their current petition:
There is also Rank and File action, which is a group that splintered off at some point from the mainline of PSC, our union. They operate as a group within the union that is more militant. They also have five demands that have been posted on twitter:
And then of course there is also the Brooklyn College PSC. Each campus has its own division of the union. They started a petition, the title of which is "Keep Everyone at Brooklyn College Working at Fight for Full Public Funding at CUNY." Their main targets are Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, the CUNY Chancellor, and President Michelle J Anderson, the president of Brooklyn College.
Additional key groups include CUNY Struggle (featured in Teen Vogue), and the Adjunct Project based out of the Graduate Center. And the CUNY Rising Alliance and University Student Senate (USS) CUNY--which invited me to present at their press conference together this Wednesday.
What has your involvement looked like personally?
So far, I have sat in on meetings for both of those groups and the PSC chapter meeting, but mostly I am organizing with other folks in my department. Actually an adjunct in our department came up with the hashtag #CutCovidNotCUNY and the text of the Brooklyn College PSC petition was drafted by another set of professors, so we work in and between the different groups and the union.
The main demand from us as adjuncts within the anthropology department right now is to resist the 25 percent cuts to classes at Brooklyn College for the fall semester. It is both to keep our jobs and to address the effects that those cuts would have on students and the resources that they have access to. We are also fighting the proposed increase in class sizes set to begin along with those cuts.
This said, we look forward to doing more outreach, involving more Brooklyn College adjunct instructors as well as tenure track and tenured instructors, engaging more students, and bridging efforts across CUNY campuses. We also plan to reach out to the DC-37 union that includes more CUNY workers, other organizations of public workers in NYC, and adjunct and graduate student unions and activist groups across the country -- #HigherEdWorksBecauseWeDo!
Funding from the state is 21% less per student than it was 10 years ago – displaying a continuous underfunding of education and educators.
I think it is a testimony to the neoliberalization of the state. It is a testimony to the idea that the economy is the most important thing. We continue to see these policies that put profit over people at a national level and a state level, and this is no different.
Beyond all of our immediate demands, there is a larger issue at stake that we are all aware of. We know that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cuts to CUNY, and when it comes to austerity in New York City.
The idea that there is no money, so what are we going to do. There is a lot of money here in New York City. We have some of the most millionaires in the country. When the question of where the money is going to come from comes up, the answer is that we need to tax the rich. We are a public university. CUNY used to be free.
Do you feel solidarity between students and teachers at the moment?
Certainly within these organizing spaces I see a lot of solidarity between students and teachers. Again, Free CUNY is made up of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. I think you see student teacher solidarity in the classroom as well, it just really depends on the professor and their teaching style and politics.
This moment has shown a lot about student teacher solidarity or lack thereof on the part of the teachers in terms of the grading. Once the severity of the crisis became apparent, and the intensity of it hitting New York became apparent, a lot of professors decided to change their syllabus and make assignments shorter or optional. Many of us also decided that all of our students are going to get A's for our class. That has been a really big moment of solidarity between students with teachers in terms of understanding the stakes. Of course some professors have assumed that because everything is cancelled, students should have more time on their hands, and as such have increased the work-load, but I think that is really awful.
In my experience, I feel like I've gotten closer to students. All of my students now have my cell phone number. I have so many students that it has honestly been hard to keep track how they're doing. But they know that if they really need to reach me they can via text and I'll respond.
I have students who are home and are able to focus a lot of time on school. But I also have students who have lost very close friends or family members. I have students who were or are sick with the covid-19 virus. I have students who have kids at home who are using all the tablets and computers. I have students who are essential workers themselves. The main thing, I think, is to remember that at CUNY, these are mostly working class students, and students of color, and we have seen that the impacts of this virus, due to structural and historical reasons, have had the greatest impact on the working class and people of color.
You mentioned you're worried the ethnic studies courses would be the first to go. Why?
I'm trying to think of what I can say on record. These are things I have heard through the grapevine, so they are not necessarily facts. I have heard from other people that not all department chairs were told that they needed to make 25% cuts. I heard, for example, that computer science wasn't asked to make cuts at Brooklyn College. I think the reason that there is concern around classes within the Africana and Puerto Rican and Latino Studies departments being cut is because historically they are the ones who have been first on the chopping block. The courses that are electives and electives taught by adjunct faculty, and the classes that the conservative president may see as less valuable and less directly translatable into getting students jobs, tend to be classes that focus on social issues of race and gender. This includes humanities and humanistic social sciences courses that focus on these topics as well.
Are optimistic about what comes out of all of this?
I kind of wrestle with optimism. As someone who is anti-capitalist, I wrestle a lot with optimism especially during times like these. It is an incredibly awful crisis that, again, has really intensified inequality, historical inequalities in the United States and of course on a global level as well. Sometimes it's just unbearably devastating, but other times you can see a new consciousness starting to emerge. More folks are arguing for policies that often got negatively labelled as socialist, especially within a US context. That the idea of a universal basic income and the idea of universal healthcare are spreading more and more.
I am new to these organizing spaces, so I don't think I have the longer term perspective to really speak to larger trends. I do know that there were over a hundred people at the Rank and File town hall meeting last week and over two hundred fifty at the last PSC Brooklyn chapter meeting. The people who were organizing those meetings seemed very excited about increased involvement. And I am a testament to that. I am someone who was not organizing in this specific space, and now here I am, and I am really dedicated to that. I know a lot of people within the anthropology department who are newly activated and engaged as well.
As a person, I tend to oscillate between devastation and hope. But as Mariame Kaba said, “hope is a discipline.” I try to remind myself of that. We need hope in order to continue organizing, to continue to try and make things better, to continue to try to see the possibility for an alternate world for the working class and for what Sylvia Wynter has called a “praxis of being human,” in which we are all truly free. A world that is against capitalism, against white supremacy, against coloniality, against the patriarchy. So I try to hold on to that, but sometimes it's hard, especially when the circumstances are this extreme.