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
An Increasingly Compelling Case for UBI
by Sukhi Samra
May 22, 2020
This interview with Sukhi Samra, the Director of Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), was conducted by Chiara Towne for franknews.
Chiara Towne | Can you start by telling us about SEED and what your role is?
Sukhi Samra | SEED is the nation's first mayor-led guaranteed income initiative. In February of 2019 we started giving 125 randomly selected Stocktonians $500 a month for 18 months. The cash is unconditional; there are no strings attached, no work requirements. Our program has three main components: research, storytelling and community engagement.
On the research front, we're being evaluated by Dr Station Martin West at the University of Tennessee and Amy Castro Baker at the University of Pennsylvania. The key research question is: how does a guaranteed income impact income volatility? One, does it help stabilize the amount of cash and money folks are bringing in per month, and, two, how do changes in income volatility impact physical and emotional wellbeing? So looking at the impact that unconditional cash has on anxiety and stress and happiness, and how much time folks were able to spend with their kids, et cetera.
On the storytelling front, we are really committed to making sure that the people who are telling the stories are the folks who have the lived experiences of financial insecurity. To that end, we have a storytelling cohort of recipients who, prior to COVID, had opten into doing interviews talking about their experience with seed.
On the community engagement front, one of our core ethos is, this is a project with Stockton, not on Stockton. So really trying to reverse the history of the ways in which research and demonstration projects tend to be exploitative and extractive and really trying to make sure that this is a conversation that we're having with the community. My job as a director is to sort of oversee all of that.
Jovan Bravo and his wife. Photo courtesy of SEED.
Got it. So why did you guys choose to do a random selection rather than say, lowest possible income or something like that?
Sure. So our selection process and criteria were actually determined by a deep community engagement process. Again, going back to this is with Stockton, not on Stockton. We officially announced SEED back in October of 2017. Immediately afterwards we launched into a design phase during which one thing we did was hold town halls and meetings with the whole sort of diverse representation of Stockton's constituents. We met with nonprofit leaders, community leaders, other elected officials, and residents to understand what they thought a guaranteed income pilot in Stockton should look like. Through the town halls that we held, there were three common design ideals that we were hearing.
One was that whoever we select ultimately should be diverse and representative of Stockton. US News named Stockton one of the most diverse cities in America just a couple of months ago. So we really wanted whoever ultimately ended up receiving the money to capture that diversity. Because we do truly believe that diversity is our greatest asset.
Two, we heard folks wanting to make sure that the selection process was fair, especially because it's a city with a lot of need. About a quarter of our 315,00 residents live in poverty and we are 18th in the nation for child poverty. We were only going to select 125 folks so it was important that the selection process ultimately felt fair to everyone.
The third ideal that was echoed across everyone we were talking to was maximizing our ability to learn. So especially amongst the nonprofit leaders a lot of people recognized the unique potential that SEED had to really reverse the conversation. If Stockton was known at all, it was known because it was the first city to declare bankruptcy. It was known because it had really high crime rates and homicide rates. I think we expected to gain some national traction, I don't think we could have anticipated the amount of national traction that we actually gained. Folks really recognize that SEED was putting Stockton the map. And so there was a sentiment of let's make sure that out of this demonstration we have lessons that we can share with the rest of the world.
So the way that we operationalized that was a random selection and doing a robust RCT, a randomized controlled trial. Because we did an RCT, we have a treatment group and a control group which really allows us to provide foundational knowledge around a guaranteed income.
Because it is an RCT, folks are randomly selected. So no one can say Mayor Tubbs hand-selected these people. We had toyed between a signup process, but we decided against it. Signup processes aren't necessarily the most equitable. It's oftentimes contingent upon who is able to hear the news, who has access to a computer to sign up, or who has access to transportation to sign up at a community center. So that would not meet our diverse and representative ideal. Folks had to be 18 years of age or older and they had to live in a neighborhood where the median household income was $46,000, which is Stockton's area median income. So we were casting a wide and diverse net across the city, but still reaching those in need.
So why is it important or what made you choose to have a monthly, rather than say a quarterly infusion of cash or even a yearly one?
What we have seen and what we continue to see is that a household is no longer able to reliably predict what they're bringing in on a monthly basis. Sometimes it's way more, sometimes it's way less depending on other factors. For example, if they're in the gig economy, it depends on how many meals they're able to get through Door Dash. So in order to answer our research question, we wanted to provide something on a monthly basis that provided folks with a reliable income floor. A monthly distribution is actually a core tenant of UBI. We see lump sum distributions at a federal level sometimes with things like the EOTC, so this model really gives us the chance to examine how it changes month to month income volatility.
I wanted to ask what you thought about McConnell and the legislation that's just come through in the crisis funds for the country being based on 2018 tax returns, given what you've just said. So many Americans now having such volatile year to year income, do you have a better benchmark or a suggestion than tax returns?
So the economic security projects, emergency money to the people has a couple of different suggestions. I think even beyond just using the 2018 and 2019 sort of tax filing,we should be looking at the frequency. When we look at the conversation that's happening at the national level, it's still heavily revolved around a one time stimulus versus a recurring stimulus. Again, going back to our ethos, it is important to make sure that distributions are recurring and predictable. The CARE Act only gave $1,200. For most folks, that is not enough to cover rent for even one month during this crisis. So going forward, our advocacy goals, in partnership with the Mayor's office and in partnership with The Economic Security Project, revolve primarily around making sure that we're moving towards a recurring and monthly payment.
When you say we, do you mean on a national level?
Yes, on a national level.
So this project is clearly really unique and very forward thinking, but, as you said, it still has certain limitations. It is only going on for two years and only going to 125 people. How do you work within those limitations to come up with advocacy that you can get behind?
That is exactly why research and storytelling are embedded in our program design. In October 2019, we released a data dashboard that has data on spending as well as demographic information on who our cohort is.
That sort of goes in the face of everything that research typically is. With most research studies, you first have a preliminary findings report and then you have a final findings report.
And our data largely proves what other unconditional and conditional cash transfer research studies have show previously. Which is that when you give people money, they are going to spend it on the things that they need most. The data that we released back in October showed that folks are largely spending their guaranteed income on food, utilities, and auto care, basic everyday things that anyone would spend their money on. Our research is ongoing; the preliminary findings don't come out until later this year, and our final findings will come out sort of April 2021. That's where storytelling comes in play, and that's why it's really important to us that the folks who are talking about SEED are those who have the lived experience of receiving guaranteed income.
Since we launched, we've seen the discourse seismically shift in the ways in which guaranteed income is being talked about. And we saw that even before COVID. Part of that, of course, is due to the presidential candidates. But there is also work happening in Jackson, Mississippi with the Magnolia Mother's Trust, which is giving a guaranteed income of a thousand dollars to single black mothers. On a state level, Governor Newsom more than doubled the state's AITC and Senator Harris proposed the LIFT act or Representative Tlaib proposing the BOOST Act. We had really seen a shift in the way that people were talking about the feasibility of a guaranteed income, and I think the current reality has only amplified that.
Mayor Tubbs was more supportive of Senator Harris's LIFT proposal than he was of Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend? Why is that and what does that tell us about different UBI models?
As a 501c3, we are not allowed to take position on either, but I will lay out the differences. The key difference in the way that Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend would work, as it was being espoused on the national presidential stage, is that it would have replaced other benefits. Folks would have had to choose between receiving benefits like food stamps, CalWORKs, et cetera, or the guaranteed income.
SEED obviously is going to be affected by what's happening nationally and by there being other infusions of cash. Do you feel that you need to make any changes in how you're analyzing either your data or in any other way that you're having conversations with the recipients?
Sure. We've internally talked about that. Obviously we are doing a research study in the middle of a pandemic and that will affect the ways in which our research is interacting with the current state of affairs. We will be analyzing the data pre pandemic separately and then data post pandemic. We have a year of disbursements pre COVID, and then we will have a couple of months of disbursements during COVID. Our team will be trying to parse out if there are any differences between those two. And we will do qualitative interviews to understand how folks have experienced COVID and what difference a guaranteed income has made, and we will be able to do those interviews both with our treatment group and our control group.
In a sense, I would think that actually is a really unique opportunity because you can look at an emergency situation which you might not otherwise have been able to do.
Exactly, making the best of the worst case scenario, SEED is perfectly positioned to really understand the effects of an unconditional cash transfer during a pandemic, especially as the conversation around emergency cash stimulus is happening at the national scale. We are incredibly grateful to have this opportunity to understand what it means.
But obviously that comes while recognizing that a lot of our folks are incredibly hard hit hard. A lot of our recipients are immunocompromised, others are elder and are not going out currently, some have lost their jobs already during the pandemic. When we are having these national conversations around folks who are left out and folks who are disproportionately impacted, those are the folks in Stockton and those are the folks in SEED. And so the research definitely provides us a unique opportunity to really dive into those experiences.
Totally. I am really appreciative of all of the specifics that you're giving me and I wanted to know if we could have switched the conversation to talk a little bit about the broader concepts behind giving out money in America. Obviously, we're a hyper individualistic nation to begin with. I personally have found it really fascinating that a lot of the conservative pushback against the UBI has accused it of almost being a paternalistic idea or program. How do you respond to that? How do you feel about it in a more kind of thematic, broader context in the country?
I would actually disagree entirely that it is paternalistic. Especially relative to the social safety net and all the ways in which our system is super paternalistic. One recipient specifically spoke about how during her experience rectifying CalWORKs she was asked - when was the last time that you slept with your child's father. That is incredibly invasive and incredibly paternalistic. When we are talking about unconditional basic income and unconditional cash and what we are talking about is giving people the money and letting them do however they wish with it.
Over and over again, we see that when you give people cash, they spend it on the things that they need most. And at SEED, I think partly because we are led by a young black mayor who has these lived poverty experiences, we have not shied away from calling out the racist and gender stereotypes that often go into the ways in which we regulate welfare. There is such a stigma around welfare because we have racialized it, and attacked it with gender stereotypes that are unfair in the first place. It is important to not be afraid to have those candid conversations.
I would love to know if there's anything that you don't normally get the chance to talk about that you would like to talk about.
One of the reasons that SEED has really been effective in the way we have been able to maintain trust with our recipients is the one on one human contact that we've been able to provide them. Of course, part of the reason we're able to do that is because we are working with 200 people in our control group amongst three staff members. But one of the things that we hear over and over again from our recipients is that they're really grateful that when they call, someone picks up or when they text, they get a text back. It is helped in generating trust with our folks and has helped us in our research efforts.
We are currently thinking through how we take this away as a lesson for policy at large and how can we operationalize that for policy at a federal level, especially given the scale is a lot bigger. How can we make sure that in an age of social media and increased sort of hiding behind our computers, how do democratize human contact and make sure that everyone is able to like have their voices heard?
I really look forward to seeing what you guys come up with. I think, it's a time when we're all understanding that human contact is the driving force in our daily lives.