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
We Tried Reform and it Failed
by Larry Smith
June 10, 2020
This interview with Larry Smith, an ex-police officer of 18 years, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
franknews | Could you start by telling us a little bit about your background?
Larry Smith | I was a police officer for 18 years in Baltimore, from 1999 until 2017. During those 18 years I worked in various functions - patrol units, as a gang liaison, as an internal affairs detective for three years.
What made you want to become a cop?
The question, “why did you become a cop,” is a question that I've never been able to give a clear answer to. I think the simplest answer is that I was 24 years old. I was pretty much directionless in life, and I couldn't afford college. To become a cop is in most states, you don't need much more than a high school diploma. I knew it was a job that paid well and had benefits and a retirement. So I applied.
What was the impetus for leaving?
I was in Baltimore city, which is a city that has suffered from systemic poverty, addiction and violence for decades. I don't know that I could compare my experience to somebody who's a cop in a small, middle America town, or even a smaller city, but I was just completely dumbfounded by the physical state of the city. The vacant homes, the blight. The fact that some neighborhoods like Roland Park had million dollar homes, clean streets, expansive lawns and trees, but two blocks to the east looked like a war zone.
There were a few years where I was really invested in the job and I really thought that my presence made a difference. I believed that I was arresting the bad guys, that I was keeping people safe and that I battling crime in the city. But over the years, I became really disenfranchised with the job.
You stand out because you did have this realization and then act on it, whereas a lot of people don't. What happened internally that brought you to the point where you made the choice to step away from doing that work?
Well, I mean, I don't want to give myself too much credit. When I initially came to the realization that what I was a part of was wrong and was harmful, the way I acted on it was to shut down. I still continued to go to work. I didn't quit, but I did basically the bare minimum.
I think the realization happened during 2006 and 2007. I was in a specialized unit in East Baltimore, and basically our job was to make as many arrests as possible to try to prevent violent crime - we were asked to recover guns, narcotics, things like that. But in reality most nights, especially during the summer, we ended up just harassing groups of black men who were either standing on a corner or hanging out in front of their house - there's not a lot to do in Baltimore, especially in neighborhoods that have been ignored for so long. We were basically forcing people off the street because our commanders felt that the fewer people that were out on the street, the less potential victims there were for violence or crime. We were just making very petty arrests - arrests for loitering, for drinking in public, for urinating in public or for trespassing if people were hanging out in front of vacant houses.
And I was like, what does that do? If I arrest 5 or 10 guys for drinking in public, what did that prevent? In the long term, how does that help? I'm potentially ruining somebody's life by taking them to jail over drinking in public. I had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I had the ability to really impact someone's life in a negative way for just such an absolutely ridiculous crime.
Did you vocalize these thoughts to people within your department, other police officers?
I definitely did, especially within my specialized unit, and I was eventually kicked out of it. I would tell my sergeant and my lieutenant that the approach was nonsense, that all we were doing was producing stats. They would give me a hard time about not having enough arrests for a month, and I would just argue what difference does it make?
I got kicked out of that in 2008 and was sent back to patrol. I did enjoy patrol a little bit more because you're answering 911 calls. You are a little bit more useful because people are calling you for help - you're not actively looking to interfere with somebody's life. But you're still a police officer, so there's still the potential that you could harm somebody either physically or by arresting them for something.
And how do you leave? What is that moment like for you?
Well, I had been contemplating quitting the department for a few years, I'd say around 2015, 2016, I really started giving serious consideration to quitting. I was in internal affairs at the time. I don't know how much you know about Baltimore, but we had a very corrupt unit of cops who were finally arrested and federally indicted in March of 2017. I had investigated some of them before they were arrested. Realizing that really bad cops were being allowed to remain employed and remain on the street really got to me. There were upper command level officers interfering in investigations or allowing these cops to continue to get away with things. The one moment that finally pushed me over the edge was when the sergeant of the unit waited for me after work and confronted me in the parking lot.
I just had had it. I couldn't deal with the department, I couldn't deal with the stress. I had had a hard reckoning with a lot of the things that I'd seen and done. I tried to kill myself. Eventually I ended up in a psychiatric facility for 10 days. I knew that if I didn't leave the police department then, it was going to kill me in one way or the other. That was how I left. As far as letting anybody know, my supervisor at the time knew I was in the hospital. When I was released, I called them and I said that I couldn't do it anymore. I quit. He came and collected my equipment in my apartment and I filed a resignation form. And that was it.
What have the last three years looked like for you?
I still think about what I was part of, and I still regret a lot of the things I did and took part in.
When I first left I really harbored a lot of ill will towards my police department in particular. I also knew that policing in general was bad. But, I guess I still thought that policing could get better. Over the last three years, however, I just realized that it's such an evil institution that there is no way it can be reformed. Reform has been tried, and it has failed. I just don't think there's any way to save it.
What do you think it says about what police departments believe in, if they haven’t been able to effectively reform?
Honestly, I am so confused as to what police departments believe in. I really don't know anymore. There was a big push for police reform in 2015, after you had high profile deaths like Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and, here in Baltimore, Freddie Gray. There were protests back then, and it led to reform on some level. But it didn’t work. I mean, the police got body cameras and still, they “forget” to turn them on.
Then and now, there is this conversation around community policing, which is supposed to build relationships between the police and the community. My question is, why do police departments need to create homeless outreach programs, youth programs, or give officers special training to respond to people in mental health crises? Why can't money be taken away from the police department and actually invested in hiring civilian social workers and counselors?
And we only talk about this in relation to poor black and brown communities. You don't go to the rich white suburbs and see cops parked on corners or walking on foot just constantly patrolling the neighborhoods. There's no police community interaction there, so why are we forcing people to have it in other communities?
What's baffling to me is when you look at cities around the country, like New York and Los Angeles, and here in Baltimore, the budgets for police are incredibly high. The New York City police budget is nearly $6 billion, but they will cut funding to other social services up to 80%. Here in Baltimore, the budget is $500 million and the school budget is about half of that. And what's the return on investment? In Baltimore we have had over 300 homicides in the last two years. So where is that money going? What is the police department doing?
What are they doing with money?
That's the question. They don't seem to be preventing violent crime. Police budgets is the one part of the municipality's budget that really seems to have no hard oversight. Most of the money in a police budget goes to paying officer's salaries. But then you look at a department like New York City, they have over 30,000 cops. Do you really need an army of 30,000 cops?
Politicians also seem so afraid of police and police unions. It's rare for city council, for instance, to vote against the police budget. There is very rarely pushback from city councils when it comes to police budgets. If crime goes down, the police will argue that they need the same or more this year to keep crime down. If crime goes up, the police will argue that they need more officers, better equipment, and better technology.
Can you explain some of the issues that come with police unions?
Police unions fight against transparency, and that's the bottom line. They will try to protect personnel records and internal affairs complaints from being released to the media and the public. The members of the police unions are the police officers. If the union doesn't even at least give the outward image that they're fighting for their members, they have no support. If you really look at the rhetoric that comes out of police unions across the country, it is almost like a script that all the unions follow. In any crisis, the union president will immediately get in front of the cameras and blame the mayor or the governor for whatever ills the police department is suffering. A perfect example is that Governor Cuomo criticized how the New York Police Department was acting during the protest the other night, and the Police Commissioner demanded an apology. Their union president is out in front of the cameras, screaming about that too. And the governor apologized.
Yeah. Cuomo walked that right back.
That's the kind of power they have. Police unions contribute financially to political campaigns. Every politician wants that endorsement and they want that donation. A lot of politicians walk a really fine line when it comes to criticizing police unions and police departments.
Unions seem liberal in principle. They protect laborers and workers. Do feel like police departments are entitled to these unions?
It's really hard to think of police as workers. They're not part of the means of production. Cops will tell you how dangerous their job is, but you look at the statistics, jobs like logging, garbage collectors, and taxi cab drivers are all more dangerous jobs than cops do. So, you know, I don't think cops are workers. They aren't producing anything. Most departments also have what is referred to as a Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights. So cops are afforded even more protection than normal citizens if they're accused of misconduct on the job. Any time that there's any sort of pushback against these Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights, the union will be there to fight it.
I really don't think police unions serve any legitimate purpose, and I think that they are way too powerful.
What would your calls to action be?
Again, reform has been tried. There was a really big push reform after 2015. The ironic thing is that when you talk about something like restorative justice as an alternative to policing and incarceration, the “law and order types” scoff. But when the police department continuously screws up, the same people who scoff that restorative justice propose reform as the solution. And what's happening with reform? Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on reform. I mean, are we going to do this every five years? If the cops don't follow the reforms, then what's the point.
There are other ways than police. When you call to abolish the police, people say, "Well what about murder? What about violent crime?" The police don't prevent a lot now. And you don't need an armed agent of the state to investigate a murder after the fact. There are other ways to deal with violence. You need to address the root causes of violence to prevent it. A cop standing on every corner is not going to prevent a murder.
I really wish people, specifically white middle class people, would challenge themselves to think about their perception of the police. Imagine what it would be like to walk out your front door, literally every day, and see the police either on foot or on bike or in cars, as people of color do. And the question is not if they are going to stop me, but when are they going to stop me. Think about how some communities of color can't walk through their neighborhood on a daily basis without having an interaction with the police, and think about how inherently dangerous that is.
And then the question is, well, what do we need them for? Because if they're not in your white neighborhood, keeping you "safe," what are they here for? What are they doing? So I think people really need to challenge the perception of the police. People are hardwired into thinking that the police need to exist to enforce the law or to keep us safe. It's a fairytale that has been beaten into our heads.
I guess for an average, middle class, white person, the question is, if somebody breaks into my house, who do I call?
There are alternatives to armed police on who you can call. There are some communities who have unarmed security, there are block watchers, there are citizen patrols. I think the deeper question is why is that person breaking into the house? And if we had addressed the conditions of society much earlier in that person's life, maybe they wouldn't be breaking into my house now.
Do you feel like the political consequences of this moment might be different than ones prior?
As far as political consequences- yes, definitely. The current protests are way more widespread than they were in 2015. I think a lot of people are seeing now that police are an absolutely unhinged militaristic force, and that our elected leaders are sitting by while people are literally being gassed and beaten in the street.
These protests also seem like they're going to be around a lot longer. I don't think these are going away anytime soon. I think the big difference is that it is young people. There are young people out there who are not old enough to vote right now, but they are going to be old enough to vote soon. I think the writing is on the wall that there's going to be a massive change in this country as Boomers and Generation X starts to age out of politics. And I think that's a good thing. I think we need more leaders like Julia Salazar and Alexandria Cortez. We need younger politicians who have a more radical opinion of how to change things in this country.