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
Don't Feed The Trolls
by Imran Ahmed
May 19, 2020
This interview with Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate [CCDH], was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | To start, could you introduce yourself and your work?
Imran Ahmed | Sure. CCDH is an unusual organization. Our goal is to disrupt alliances between political actors and hate actors in digital spaces. Having experienced both the growth of antisemitism in the labor party in the UK, the vicious anti-Muslim and racist elements within the Brexit movement, and then having seen the rise of Trump six months later, we realized we were watching the rise of a new kind of political actor – one that intimately forms a symbiotic relationship with hate actors. We realized this new paradigm of hate actors was causing huge damage to our democracies and the liberal values that underpin it.
There are alliances between hate actors, and the political sphere transcends left or right or individual geographies. It is developing all across the world. It can go so far as Orban, who happily calls himself an illiberal Democrat, but we also see it with Modi, we see it with Duterte, we see it in Bolsonaro.
These alliances make sense for them. The political actors get armies of trolls who are going to harangue their enemies. They get people who create social proof for what were once considered fringe political beliefs. And they also get people who will go into the digital spaces, Facebook or Twitter, that we use to gain understanding of the world around us, and they'll post the material that turns people towards hateful extremism. And the hate groups, in return, get access. Look at the way in which trolls have literally been brought into the most senior places in our government, whether it's Trump embracing trolls in the Oval Office or Boris Johnson literally hiring a man named Andrew Sabisky, who had been training incels in sexual positions that they can use to dominate women. That is the kind of disgusting stuff that we've actually seen happening.
There are weaknesses in these alliances, however. They rely on a small number of people to play an outsized role. And often, they appear larger because our engagement pushes them up. The algorithms on social media platforms don't care about facts, they care about engagement. We try to capitalize on those weaknesses. Our "Don’t Feed the Trolls" project sought to teach people that actually engaging with hate online isn't something that should be rewarded as a virtue signal, it should be looked down on as actually spreading the disease. We've adopted that recently to Coronavirus, which is based on the same understanding of the algorithms on those platforms. It is actually endorsed by the UK government, and this morning we're talking to the United Nations as well about integrating it into their new anti misinformation scheme.
We also look at the groups in which hateful extremism is inculcated and we force those platforms to set precedents by shutting them down. We do that by working with celebrities who tweet out to people the kinds of stuff that we've shown Facebook and YouTube and Twitter, but that they refuse to take down. As soon as they have the public pressure from people realizing what they tolerate on that platform, the companies move very quickly. All in all, what we are trying to do is resocialize social media using a variety of different techniques based on evidence and research.
Will you define a ‘hate actor'?
Hate actor is an all encompassing term that takes into account both groups and individuals. We realized that the old analysis of hate groups focused on offline, in person networks. Social media now allows people to build consensus based communities very quickly, for no cost. It's these online communities that form the modern hate group. And there are individuals who act as amplifiers and as central nodes in the online systems of hate. That includes people from David Icke and Tommy Robinson in the UK, to figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Lauren Southern in the US.
You work in both the UK and the U.S., I'm curious about how you see misinformation coming up. The U.S. has institutionalized some hate actors. Fox News is on cable. Is there an equivalent in the UK? Do you approach the information differently because one is coming from a ‘journalist’, while the other comes from civilian online participants?
We do look at the information ecosystem in each country and examine how they differ from each other. In the UK, for example, Fox News wouldn't be possible because of OFCOM rules. But Australia does have an equivalent to Fox News.
Across countries, however, we find that broadcast is less relevant. Fake news sites like Breitbart have huge readerships, quite often as much as any newspaper. They preach a gospel of hatred and misinformation, and often, quite structured misinformation. For example, there are Islamophobic sites which will pump out stories day after day after day about Muslim rapists. If your entire output is about one particular thing, it gives you an inclination as to what it is that they're trying to make you feel. Those sites are particularly difficult because they're not illegal speech per se, but they nevertheless are disgusting.
What is the line between something that is hateful or negative and something that is actually threatening to democracy?
It's an increasingly blurred line. Conspiracy theories sit in that gray area.
But we as members of civil society have the right to say to an advertiser, "Hey, do you realize that your adverts are appearing on this insane site?" We have the right to go to Facebook and say, "Are you sure that you want to broadcast this material on your platform to billions of people?" And in return, Facebook has a right to say, no, we don't. Facebook is not part of the state. It's not subject to the first amendment. It's an economic actor. We, as members of civil society and as a society as a whole, have a right to say, if you want to profit from us and host this kind of stuff, we will hold you to account for it morally. It's a moral approach, not a legal one.
The state now is spreading externally created misinformation. Is this unique to crisis? Or have conspiracy theories always been a part of political parties and movements?
One of my favorite things to do in a presentation is to ask people which vegetable it is that helps your eyes. Everyone always says carrots. But that was actually created by British intelligence in World War II as a way to hide from the Germans that we developed plane mounted radar. We planted a story in the newspapers in the UK saying that carrots were the reason for the accuracy, not the radar. That endures as a myth to the 21st century; seventy years later we're still telling our kids that they should eat carrots to have good eyesight. People don’t fall for conspiracy theories because they are stupid. Conspiracy theories are based on leap of faith, and we make leaps of faith all the time. Around half of British people believe one or more of the most frequently cited conspiracy theories, whether it's that 9/11 was an inside job or that the moon landings were faked.
However, it's been turbocharged in this modern environment. And political actors, especially fringe actors, pick up on these techniques. They've been toiling in the mire, on the fringes, ignored and unloved for decades. Suddenly a tool comes along that might give them purchase with the majority, of course they are going to use that. It is an important way in which they reconcile beliefs that they know to be unpopular or untrue. Whether it's extreme Trotskyite groups on the left or it's far right groups on the right, they will use conspiracy theories to create their own versions of reality and history in order to try and grow their audiences.
Right. Many of the platforms being used to spread misinformation were left alone under the assumption that regulation stifles innovation. Do you think it’s possible to create restrictions and boundaries retroactively?
What CCDH seeks to do is put the pressure and the spotlight directly on the social media companies and their failure to enforce their own terms of service and their own claims of intent. Their actions often diverged wildly from their claims. We seek to hold them to their own word. They make these claims because they know that if they didn't say that they would address violent extremism, child sexual exploitation, coronavirus misinformation, people would say these platforms are toxic and they'd discourage their children from using them.
Our goal is not to destroy these companies, or to stop them from making money, it's to help them become sustainable over the long term by detoxifying their platforms. And no one should or would allow their children to go onto platforms which contain material like this? No one would want to have their information environment skewed by bad actors. Everyone seeks to receive the best information possible. If these platforms are failing to deliver what consumers want, they're going to die in the short to medium term. If they fail to create sustainable businesses, they're going to be replaced.
What is the pushback then? Why the hesitation to be harsher on misinformation? Is it purely financial?
I think it is economically driven. These companies are driven by the peculiar vulnerability of being disruptors in a sector and in a time of incredibly compressed business and economic cycles.
So they're going to sign every endorsement, and they're going to take every buck that they can, because they know that in 10 years time the game is over for them. What we've sought to do is put a staying hand on their shoulders and say, come on, actually there's a whole world out there for you. This is not the NFL. You are sustainable businesses. Facebook has a monopoly position. The barriers to entry to that market are now absolutely insurmountable. You will be able to run for a long time.
If you look around the world, liberal democracy is in retreat, elections are under threat, there has been the first genocide planned on Facebook in Burma, which they themselves have accepted partial responsibility for, there is coronavirus misinformation, and yet they still haven't taken action.
The first thing is we'll enforce rules. We've suggested the possibility of creating new torts in law so that people could take action against platforms if they are harmed by content that platforms have allowed to stay up on their sites, despite being aware that it was problematic. The second is we will create new levies in Europe and in the UK, where companies must pay taxes for the social harms that they cause. There are material harms that result from misinformation. We've published research recently by Daniel Allington, of King's College London, which shows that people that believe the 5G conspiracy theory, for example, are less likely to physically distance, less likely to stay at home, and less likely to wash their hands. But of course, why would you do any of those things, if you thought that a tinfoil cap could protect you from COVID? I think that this may be the catalytic event that actually starts to put pressure on social media companies, sufficient enough that they themselves make the changes that they know they need to make.
Do you think the media has the same responsibility as the individual to stop sharing misinformation, or addressing it?
Absolutely.
How do you talk to journalists about that?
One of the things that we've already done is spoken to broadcasters in the UK to help them understand the underlying logic that underpins these platforms. And to help them understand that what can look like a widely held belief circulating through social media, actually often stems from a highly dense network of professional trolls who understand the dynamics of social media and make it look as though lots of people are saying "X." And of course it then gets reported as Twitter said "X".
Giving a platform to these ideas is in itself so damaging because it allows these fringe political movements to achieve social proof, and social proof is a central part of influence and extremism.
There is also an obsession with appearing equal for the sake of fairness that gives life to things that are just not true. What is Twitter's role in amplifying the voices of planned conspiracy?
If I said to you now the sky outside is green, you'd say to me, what are you talking about? What has happened? Has there been a chemical leak in London? Are you colorblind? You've started engaging with my statement. If someone says something which is a bit wacky, a bit extreme, it draws engagement. No one retweets the UN or the NHS or the US government because that's just factual information coming from civil servants. And, again, these platforms fundamentally reward engagement, not accuracy.
[Laughing] Wacky hot takes on Twitter are going to take down democracy. We need to punch-up the UN’s Twitter to combat entertaining trolls.
Right. We've got a hell of a battle ahead of us.
I think that the failure of social media companies to live up to their claims around fighting misinformation around COVID has been a real strategic mistake by the social media companies, and one they won't get away with it for long. Perhaps they believed Donald Trump and thought that the crisis might go on for weeks, but this crisis is not going to be gone for a long time, and they'll be held accountable for the damage that they're causing to our society.