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
Losing Our Religion
by Lonna Atkeson
October 14, 2020
This interview with Lonna Atkeson, professor at University of New Mexico, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Lonna Atkeson | I study political science, election science, and election administration, and have been studying these subjects for a very long time. I like to think of myself as someone who has elections in my DNA. When I was a very little girl, around seven years old, I set up my own ballot boxes around my neighborhood. I have always loved elections, and see myself as having a long term connection with these questions and interests.
frank | How do voters establish their perceptions of election integrity? How does rhetoric affect the perception of integrity?
In political science, we measure the perceived integrity of elections with a couple of questions. How confident are you that your ballot was counted correctly? How confident are you that all the ballots in your state were counted correctly? In the nation? From these questions, we can assess how people feel about the legitimacy of the process.
This election year is obviously complicated with COVID, and the election process itself is much more complicated this time around for voters. That can lead to confusion, and confusion can go on to affect how voters ultimately feel about this election's integrity. The way people perceive the election is largely rooted in their own experience.
We have also been presented with two very interesting narratives about election integrity— one on the left and one on the right. On the left, you hear concerns about the potential for voter suppression. On the right, you hear issues about voter fraud.
Is there legitimacy to those narratives? Is voter fraud something to be worried about? Is voter suppression a legitimate thing to be worried about?
To begin thinking about this question, I think it is important to ask — what is the goal of an election? There are three pillars: integrity, access, and finality. These pillars work in tension with each other. The more accessible the system is, the more open it is to mischief. The more you tighten the system to prevent mischief, the lower access is, and the more likely you are to prevent some people from getting the opportunity to vote. You can make changes to both integrity and access, but then you change the finality of the election — when is this process going to end? We need some sort of finality, and finality is almost certain to be affected in this election as we expect to see a longer counting process.
So the way people perceive the election is going to be in part affected by the narrative that they're placed in, as well as whatever experience they have with their own ballot and their own election system. Does their ballot get rejected? Do other people's ballots get rejected? How many ballots get rejected? People are seeing all these things on social media where people are receiving someone else's ballot. These are all new experiences for people, and they're having to evaluate them individually. What does that mean for the integrity of the process? We haven't talked about these things very much, but they could be very important in this election, and they're important in elections generally.
The conversation seems very specific to the United States. Why do you think that is? And how does the public perception of elections affect the democratic underpinnings of the U.S.?
I think it's about the affective polarization going on in the US — voting is just another space to be polarized. Again, the left and the right see things differently. Integrity and access are both natural things to look at when looking at an election. You can be more concerned about one or the other, depending on what your experience is, or depending on what the narrative of your party is.
The question of how the public is going to view the legitimacy of this election, is really the major question at hand.
The aftermath of the election is also going to be hugely important. Obviously, if it's a blowout election, then things are going to be easy to resolve. But if it's a close election, and there's a lot of rejected ballots due to people engaging in a process that they're inexperienced with, how does that affect the perceived legitimacy?
In May, in a local New Jersey election, there was an average of 10% rejection rate across all of the counties. If we see that kind of rejection rate in a close state like Pennsylvania or Florida, how is that going to affect our perception not only of the legitimacy of the election, but the legitimacy of who takes office?
It's one thing, to feel like, I voted in this process and I don't like the people who got elected, but I believe that they're legitimately elected. It's another thing to feel like, I don't like the people in office and I don't even think they belong there — in fact, I don't even think we elected them. That has the potential to undermine democracy. That is what is scary about this election.
What can people do to prepare for a disputed outcome?
If you're concerned about the post office, then drop your ballot off. Most states allow you to drop your ballot off at an early voting location or the county election official office. People should be primarily concerned about securing themselves. I think that's fundamental, because if I'm in control of my process, if I know what's happening, and if I have some sense that other people are doing the same, then I am going to have greater confidence in the election.
A lot of people are looking to the 2000 election and to Florida. It seems that the difference is, both candidates were prepared to walk away based on the result. How does this moment feel by comparison?
Gallup polled people's perspectives on the legitimacy of both the 2000 election and the 2016 election. The public response was the same in both elections. Despite all the loud rhetoric, most people accepted the legitimacy of the election, no problem.
Sometimes I wonder how much the voices, and the extremism of social media, enhances fear, outrage, and anger in an outsized way. If you were to just look around your own life, it's not that dangerous. But when we look at images, we have these mirroring neurons in our minds that make us feel like we are there too — that's why we like watching sports and dancing. And of course, that is a problem in politics, because it enhances the extremism in our society. No one's going to get away from social media, but, probably, that is what we should do.
How should the media participate in the narrative about the election's integrity and legitimacy?
I think that's really complex because, again, there are two, rather extreme, narratives circulating. And everyone seems to be embedded in these narratives in a way that I have not seen before. Historically, we have not seen high levels of attitude constraints — the level of consistency between attitudes within an individual belief system. However, in the last decade, attitude constraint has increased. That is largely because we are embedded in systems, the media being one, that encourages us to create more constraint among our belief systems. It aligns everybody into much clearer tribes and camps than we have seen before.
People on both the left and the right clearly feel that the government is unresponsive, but their solutions and policy preferences are distinctly different. And we have gotten much worse at being tolerant of each other. I teach political behavior, and I added a moral component to my class where I actually try to teach intellectual humility. I think that we have lost a reasonableness.
We have such a tendency to see such undesirable traits in each other.
I live in a home where my sons are Republicans and I'm not, so I have to deal with this all of the time. Living in a home that is divisive makes me have to be not divisive, and I don't think we're living in many places where that's an opportunity anymore. I live in this unique home, in a unique environment. I come from a working-class family — I'm very educated and my family's not very educated. My family could be considered more Trumpian right now, and we have to be really tolerant of each other, but most people don't have to be.
As a professor, I go out and talk to my community all the time. Even eight years ago, I could go out into the community and have a discussion about interesting ideas. Now when I go out in the community, I feel like people mostly want me to tell them what they want to hear. That's a switch. It wasn't like that a decade ago.
Regardless of the result of this election, I find it hard to think about what happens beyond November 3rd. The polarization seems hard to overcome.
I'm expecting a whole barrage of litigation regarding the integrity of ballots or arguments about the counting of ballots on November 3rd, but I can't think much beyond that either. If I try to think about what a different administration would look like under COVID, is it really going to be much different?
Between the parties, there are push and pull factors. When you think about how working-class Americans have turned to the Republican party and turned to Trump, that is not just a pull factor. The Democratic party has made a huge effort to push those people away. It's part of the rhetoric these leaders use as well. Both Clinton and Obama spoke about working-class voters in a certain way that sent a message to working-class voters that they were not wanted in the party.
It seems to me that we only ever focus on the pull factors, and we don't think about how it's both a push and pull system that works to move people into different camps. That is much more dynamic and a much more complete understanding of what is going on in our political system.
I think if we are adamant Republicans admit the failure of their party lies in race, we should be equally staunch about Democrats acknowledging the failure and abandonment of the working class.
My family is all working class, they're all out there in the grocery store, while all of my professor friends are locked away in their houses, Zooming along. To me, this moment seems like such a class issue, but we don’t seem to be talking about it in that way at all.
Our conversations in the political realm seem to consistently fail to get to the root of people’s needs. There is an underlying feeling in this country that the government is unresponsive. I mean, I have heard politicians talk about bringing businesses together for cheaper health care and lowering the cost of prescription drugs for basically my entire life. I've heard the same messages, from both sides, over and over and over again. People have experienced this over and over again, and who is or isn’t in power hasn't mattered much to their bottom line.
There are many reasons why people could find Democrats unattractive and Republicans or Trump attractive. We all think that politicians are liars. The thing about Trump is that he wears that all on his sleeve. He’s honestly dishonest. Do you know what I mean? I think for some people, they look at him and think, well yeah he's dishonest, but so is Biden, so is my Congressman.
Right, and when people operate under the guise of morality and ethics, it feels more evil.
Morality is something that worries me so much in politics. It results in equating politics with religion, because moral authority is what religion has. If you have a moral reason to do something, you can't and won’t compromise. There is no ability to compromise — if you claim moral authority, there's a line in the sand.
The whole design of the American government is to try to compromise — to thwart majoritarianism, to thwart the passions of the people, and to thwart moral authority. Madison was obsessed with the possibility of the majority being tyrants, and the whole system is designed to stop that and to enforce incrementalism.
But now, I hear politicians regularly use the word moral – easily, which is dangerous because morality prevents them from compromising. It leads the people to believe there is only one right outcome. And as we see the decline of religion globally, is politics the next religion? We tried hard in this country to remove politics from religion, but it seems that as political ideology becomes more constrained and more important in people's lives, we are moving to a place where politics is our religion. Especially on the left, because people on the right actually have another religion that they are attracted to. That is very worrisome.
Promoting politics as religion is dangerous, and promoting politicians as idols or celebrities is dangerous too. It makes it easy to forget they work for you, because celebrities have fans, fans act as a congregation, not as a critical electorate.
It's too affective. It's not rational. Where's the rationality? We've been moving away from rationality towards affective politics, and that is problematic.
When I think about candidate campaigns, I think of them as love affairs. I think it is a really great metaphor for the way you are introduced to a candidate. You can think about this in the context of 2008, where there is this love affair with Obama. And what happens in a love affair? You project onto a person and see yourself in them — they believe this, or they are just like me on this. And over time, you come to realize, well, no, they're not just like me. And the love affair starts to change. But because politics is a collective love affair, not an individual one, the projections can remain longer. In a collective world and as a collective person, I can continue to project onto them because what is the real impact on me?