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
The Boiling Point
by Dr. Elwood Watson
June 15, 2020
This interview with Dr. Elwood Watson, historian, public speaker, and cultural critic, professor at East Tennessee State University, and author of the recent book, Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Would you start by giving us a background on your work?
Dr. Watson | I am a professor of history, African American studies and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. I have been here for 23 years. I focus on the intersection of race, gender, and pop culture, and I write about current issues and current events through that lens.
What are you thinking about as you watch this moment from your perspective?
Well I’ve written a lot about this. I’ve many books on violence against Black bodies. My most recent book, “Keeping it Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America,” is a book of essays about race in present day era America.
This is an extreme moment. This is the boiling point. People have had enough. It's George Floyd. It's Breonna Taylor. It's Ahmaud Arbery. Its ongoing senseless murder after senseless murder. It's a blatant disregard for Black lives that is unacceptable in 2020. With the protests from people from all walks of life, people are making it clear that Black lives do indeed matter.
One of the larger questions about the moment is this narrative around what counts as peaceful protest, what counts as violent protest, does one negate the other, etc. You wrote in one of your essays, that Black activists are continually asked to subscribe to a form of respectability politics. How do you see that theme tie into this continuous questioning about the right way to protest?
Putting on a suit and tie doesn’t change anything. In that essay specifically, I was talking about how we’ve seen certain Black figures ascribe to respectability politics, but, of course, the supremacists, the bigots don't care. It doesn't make a difference.
People think playing by the “rules” gets you ahead, but the rules have always been different for Black people. Black people have a certain set of rules that apply to them. White people have a certain set of rules that apply to them.
And there’s a sense of white denial of how those rules advantage them, which leads us to today.
I don’t think it's denial. I think white people very well understand. Not all white people are removed from the reality of Black America. Sure, some are in genuine denial, but there are also others who know the truth, but are trying to maintain power. When you talk about race, white people can get extremely defensive. They tell you – “it's in your head or it's not that bad.”
But there exists literature and studies and data. There are things written from Black writers, and white writers. If you want to know what is going on in the Black community you can go out and find it. There is no excuse. But people have a tendency to find out about things that they want to find out about, and I don’t think it's any different with racism.
Why do you think white people are reluctant to do that?
History is very ugly. It's not a pretty picture – in order to unpack it, it requires a recognition of racism, sexism, and all these things that make people uncomfortable.
Building on that idea, today, the Press Secretary, while decrying the “violence” of the current protests, held up the March on Washington and MLK as the gold standard of “acceptable” protest looks like. It seems to me that there has been a tendency to repaint the history of Black struggle in a way that is palatable to white America.
That happened to MLK among his peers as well. When he went to talk about race and inequality in the south, he was quite revered, but when he went on to talk about racial and economic inequality, housing discrimination, police brutality, hyper-segregated neighborhoods in the north and other regions of the nation. The stark socio-economic class disparities that existed across racial lines in America. The disproportionate number of lower-income and poor young men – White, Black, Latino etc, who was actually doing the fighting in the Vietnam war – the same people (so-called White liberal allies, fellow Black middle-class leaders, some Black journalists such as Carl Rowan and some clergy) who supported him suddenly wanted him to stop talking and told him to be quiet. By 1967, Martin Luther King Jr., turned into a pariah in many quarters. The same people who had supported him at the beginning turned against him in the later years of his life.
Do you think that indicates, then and today, that there is a more “socially acceptable” way to talk about racism, one that kind of precludes a larger examination of economic struggle or other social issues?
Personally, I don't think there is a right way to talk about racism.
You can’t talk about racism without talking about economics. Black people are politically marginalized and economically marginalized. There is no way to talk about the Black experience currently or historically without talking about economics and systematic racism. Period.
It seems like it might be easier for people, mainstream media, people on the periphery of the movement, to look at a specific, horrible injustice, like the murder of George Floyd and say, “that is bad, that is obviously racism,” than it is to look at the picture whole and extrapolate on the economic injustices that are fueling the movement right now.
There are a lot of people who are going to march because of something galvanizing like the video. I don’t know if you got the chance to see it, but it's a very violent video. It's an obvious abuse of power. Mr. Floyd was calling for his mother. His oxygen is cut off. In certain moments, it looks like the officer is grinning, almost smiling. It was sadistic! That is what really upset and outraged me. Any reasonable person who sees that is going to react in some manner whether it be marching, donating to progressive social causes or otherwise.
One positive development is that the protests that are happening today are very diverse. They include people of all different races, from all walks of life. They are much more diverse than they were in the 1960s. There are a lot of journalists who are quick to draw comparisons between today and 1968, but I think that is a little too simplistic. We have a whole different set of problems today than we did in 1968. Yes. We have a lot of very similar problems, but the dynamics in America are a lot more racially diverse than they were in 1968. And there are a lot of things that have happened over the recent years that paint a very different picture of America including the election of the nation’s first Black president..
What else do you think about when comparing this to previous historical movements?
Of course the big difference is social media. There was the March on Washington in 1963. There was Rodney King in 1992. There were all these events and controversies that occurred but you didn't have a 24/7 hours news cycle. 25 years ago, what happened with George Floyd might not have been heard outside of Minneapolis.
But that's the other jarring part of it, because the cop knew he was being taped. And the cop in question, Derek Chauvin, had 19 previous violations before this deadly incident. Again, he knew that he was being taped, and that shows you that he simply did not care. That was very troubling. It shows you how arrogant he is, and how immune he thought he was. I don't think he meant to kill the guy, but the fact is he did. He had his leg on Mr. Floyd’s windpipe for 9 minutes. That is totally unacceptable!
That is one of the most startling parts to me, that he knew he was being taped and he didn't care. That he has seen this play out before, and that he assumes immunity.
Yes. It's atrocious.
And on top of all of this, Black people are dying at disproportionate rates from COVID-19, suffering from high unemployment, ongoing discrimination in housing, jobs, being deprived of adequate educational opportunities etc. The injustices go on and on. People just can’t handle it anymore, understandably. There are a lot of things that are culminating right now.
It’s very inspiring to see people (some, who are in some cases, putting their personal health and safety at risk) in this global pandemic protesting in such large numbers, supporting Black people. To see Black people responding and letting other people know that the current state of affairs is not acceptable.
To demand change. To say that we need to see immediate change and solutions. We need to end police brutality. There at least needs to be background checks. We need to reexamine police unions. You can’t allow police officers with legitimate infractions against them into our communities. And then there are larger structural issues that Black communities face – voting access, health care, education.
As far as I am concerned there needs to be a Marshall Plan for Black communities.