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 Question of Extremism in American Politics
by Matthew Dallek
November 11, 2020
Matthew | I'm a political historian and have written a couple of books. The first, The Right Movement, was on Ronald Reagan's first campaign for Governor of California. In the book I explored how Reagan and the conservative movement were able to inoculate themselves from the charge that they were extremists or even pseudo-fascists who opposed Democracy. Of course, that charge had dogged the conservative movement for years before Reagan won office in 1966, and it continues to dog the Republicans through today. It has been a constant tension within the party, and one that has evolved for decades in American politics. Right now, I'm writing a book about the history of the John Birch Society, as a political movement.
frank | I can't wait for that.
All right, great! Well, I have only started to write it. The Birchers are interesting because they really personified extremism in the 1960s. They were extremism made flesh for a lot of people. I think it's fair to say they were the most controversial grassroots political movement on the right in the '60s. Robert Welch, the founder of the Society, had famously charged Dwight Eisenhower as a dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy. They tried to impeach Earl Warren, the Supreme Court Chief Justice. You get a sense, of course, of the ways in which they were seen as extreme. Yet they were also a quite successful grassroots movement with between 60,000 and 100,000 members nationwide.
Between the John Birch Society, and whoever occupies the right-wing extreme posts now, has the message changed? Has the true conservative component of the party shifted what it wants? Isolationism during World War II and President Trump’s rhetoric now feels like some sort of return.
Yes. Well, it certainly is not static. The first thing I will say is that there was an alternative tradition in the conservative movement that we see echoes of today. This alternative tradition was established by some of these more radical constituents like the John Birch Society, those who saw Communist conspiracies within the United States, the people who made the argument that Jews were controlling the international system, or those who argued that international institutions were dictating America's foreign policy. They tended to be isolationists in some ways, although there were certainly divisions, even on that count. But of course, going back to World War II, America First, was deeply isolationist. There were also elements in it that were anti-semitic.
After the 1960s, Trump’s predecessors kept this tradition alive. It was not necessarily the mainstream in the conservative movement, but it was a part of the coalition. It was a part of the coalition that some conservative leaders tried to wall off and tried to kick out of the party of the mainstream. But, I would say not very effectively.
The extremists were people like Phyllis Schlafly who led, among other things, the Stop the ERA movements. Pat Robertson, who described in his book a one-world conspiracy among international institutions and elites to control all elements of American life, and literally to destroy American freedom.
The idea that there are elites in Washington and on Wall Street, who are conspiring to fundamentally change the character of the country, to basically put big government in control of all their lives and destroy their freedom.
There are racist elements in right-wing extremism – we saw these when Trump rose to political fame during Obama’s presidency as a leader of the “Birther” movement. That remains such a critical moment of the past decade because it brought together these extreme ideas that there was a grand conspiracy, potentially, at the heart of government. That the country had been duped and that the nation's first African American president was actually “foreign-born,” that he was “a left-wing radical.” He wasn't “a true American.”
When John McCain was running for president in 2008 and the woman at his rally said, "Barack Obama is a Muslim" and was spouting some of these baseless theories, McCain stood up to her. The reason that got a lot of play is that that was a pretty unusual thing for a conservative leader to do.
I do think that the issues have evolved, and what is at the forefront of the debate has shifted, but some of the rhetoric, the anti-establishment rhetoric, the use of race and religion and gender, this idea that leftists are fundamentally un-American, and that the left is conspiring to destroy family values and freedom, that represents an alternative tradition that is traceable roughly from the 1960s through today.
I’ve been reading Myron Magnet, and all the ideas you outlined above, the appeal to the culture over policy, to elites conspiring against family values, had a big influence on Karl Rove and the Bush campaign. Their conclusion became “compassionate conservatism”, which on its face is different from what we see in the GOP now.
That's an interesting example.
He was pro-immigration reform.
Right.
He did quite well among Latino voters in Texas and nationally, which was really important to his coalition and all of his political victories. He appointed the nation's first African American woman as Secretary of State, and before Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, of course.
When Trent Lott was caught saying he wished Strom Thurmond basically had won the presidency when he ran on the segregationist platform in 1948, Bush and his team moved to oust Lott as Senate leader, which is hard to imagine happening in today’s White House. At the same time, Bush attended an event in South Carolina at Bob Jones University. He then ran his 2004 reelection campaign in part by supporting referendums in key swing states to ban gay marriage. We see a tension within the movement, even within George W. Bush's campaign. McCain, of course – look who he picked for Vice President, Sarah Palin.
Conservatives had to put together the coalition, but the coalition has included extremist elements, in terms of both the ideas and the individuals that are embraced. Romney even. He took the endorsement from Trump. Why did that matter in 2012? It wasn’t because Trump was a real estate mogul or even a Reality TV star. It was entirely, I think, because of the Birther smear against Obama.
There was a large portion of Republicans during the 2016 election who were vocally opposed to Trump.
Yeah.
Can the party return to a version of moderate after President Trump?
It's an interesting question. When Trump goes away, is no longer President, no longer the leader of the party, it's almost inconceivable that aspects of not just his personality — but his ideas on trade, immigration, his incendiary rhetoric around race, won’t be part of any Republican campaign.
There is a reason why Trump won the nomination, and why he won the presidency, and why he is still at 43%. There is a real market, a real constituency, for a lot of his ideas.
There's a reason there's a conservative infrastructure to support Trump. You've got Fox News. There's Breitbart. You now have the Daily Caller, people like Kellyanne Conway and Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh. These people have been around for a long time, and they have been very influential in the conservative movement.
Even those like Bob Dole, who are really the embodiment of what people would call the establishment, have courted this faction of the party. When he was running for president, he had to go to Pat Robertson's Christian coalition and appear at the conference and declare, in essence, "I have a 100% rating from you. I'm with you. I'm with you, Robertson, every step of the way."
Did Bob Dole subscribe to Pat Robertson's conspiracy theory about this global world order that was destroying American freedom? No, I don't think he did. At the same time, he recognized what Robertson and Robertson's supporters had tapped was an essential part of the conservative coalition, and that Dole was going to have to prove his loyalty to that if he was going to win the nomination.
The infrastructure and the ideas that the radical half of the party has built will still be very much a part of the conservative appeal and, in some ways, will be fundamental to the coalition that they're going to build. That's not to say it's going to remain static. Of course, nothing ever does in politics.
Both left and right are leaning into “extremes,” in direct opposition with each other. What does that mean for democracy?
One thing that has enabled the country to survive so long, more or less intact, is that there has been an important element of pragmatism within the political parties and within the constitutional structure. It's very hard to get things done. Radical change is very hard to enact. We have peaceful transitions of power. There has also been, in the modern era, respect or regard for democratic norms and democratic institutions.
With Trump on the right, first and foremost, and Sanders on the left to a lesser extent, though he’s certainly playing a part in this, we get a steady drumbeat of attacks against the system, against the idea that our institutions can function in any sort of effective way. What does Sanders say? The system is rigged. There is a corporate establishment. There is a political establishment and they are conspiratorial.
Sanders and Trump, even though there are major differences between them on policies and important stylistic differences, there's also a shared sensibility. This idea that the establishment has completely screwed people over, that while the rich have gotten richer, everyone else has been left behind, and that this is part of an orchestrated campaign or plot to elevate this top one percent. The idea that there is a military-industrial complex that is taking people into wars and that politicians are beholden to it.
Look at their positions on trade. They both argue that globalization has done more in the way of harm to people than it has in achieving the goals of opening up borders and promoting tolerance and economic dynamism.
In terms of what does that rhetoric do to democracy? It continues to erode people's faith in democratic institutions. There is trampling on democratic norms that we have seen, obviously, with Trump.
Part of the problem is that there has been a legitimate failure on the part of the American government and American politics. You can take the example of growing income and economic inequality over the past five decades. Trump and Sanders are tapping into something clearly real, something that is deeply felt. At the same time, I think these are worrying trends for democracy and that we have seen some of the fruits of that rhetoric in the Trump administration with the attacks on the judiciary, and Congress, and calling the media the enemy of the people, or in Sanders' case, the corporate media.
Right. Not me, I’m the independent media.
I don't know who owns you guys...
Myself.
Oh, really? Okay, good. That's cool.
I think the appetite for this sort of leadership [on both sides] shows anger within the electorate, rage even – which drives a base and certainly calls for participation. But voter turnout is still abysmal. Does that apathy symbolize distrust in the system to such an extreme people don’t want to participate? Is it just too hard to vote?
Trump and Sanders have spoken, and I think you're right, they have spoken to people who have felt left out of the system and they probably have brought some people to the polling booth who might otherwise not go because they just don't think that there is a candidate for them.
Sanders has brought people into the process, especially young people, and given them a stake, and he has spoken to their legitimate anxieties in a way that other candidates, like Joe Biden, have not done and are not able to do.
In terms of why overall participation rates are so low, it’s a complicated question. As seen with these most recent primaries, the youth vote did not really grow. If anything, in 2016, we saw increased turnout for Trump, but that was not the case among African American voters for Hillary Clinton. It didn't seem to be true for Latino voters, either. Where was the big turnout on Super Tuesday for the Democrats? African-American voters; and in the suburbs among white, educated, upper income women – the same voters who turned out to give the Democrats the House in 2018.
Two, I think you're right, voting has become very hard to do in this country. Seven-hour waits in Texas. Hours-long waits in California. These are obviously disgraceful things that shouldn't happen, but they do continue to happen. Look at the Iowa caucus; think about how hard it is to actually go out and vote or caucus. The barriers to entry are really high.
On top of that people are cynical. They don't think, with whoever they vote for, anything is going to change. The things that people do in Washington, those things don't matter. I don't think that's accurate, but certainly, that feeling is understandable.
Where was the big turnout on Super Tuesday for the Democrats? In the suburbs. White, educated, upper income, women – the same voters who turned out to give the Democrats the House in 2018.
But, another word about the question of extremism: I would say that all extremism is not necessarily a bad thing.
Sometimes what seems to be extreme or impossible at one time, does become possible, right? Public sentiment changes and part of the reason it changes is that there are mass movements and they have a cause and political leaders. The mass movements are not necessarily always taking extreme positions, although sometimes they do take positions that seem impossible to achieve in a given moment in time. Then, over time, they become achievable. They become reality.
I think the way it has manifested itself in contemporary politics, in the past 50 or 60 years, has represented this very anti-establishment anger and hostility towards people in power, a sense that the system is broken and at the heart of it, there is something or someone keeping us down. There is something or someone who is getting rich while all the rest of the people are left to suffer and struggle.
Again, there are elements of that that are true. There is real corruption. There is real corporate greed. There are a lot of things that do manipulate the system, but that argument really does make people more cynical, who already feel cynical.
But, of course, with extremism, comes intolerance. On the left, but mostly on the right, what we see, especially in times of economic anxiety, but also fundamentally as a part of American political life, is that extremism oftentimes presents itself in terms of intolerance. Intolerance toward religious minorities or racial and ethnic minorities or immigrants. The anti-black racism, nativism, anti-semitism. These things are alive as well in American life.
Often they are given oxygen and energy by these extremist groups and extremist ideas. That, of course, is a worry trending in American politics and one of the things that political leaders and the political system should tamp down as much as possible, as opposed to breathing life into it.
Is it even...
Achievable or fixable?
Yeah. Where do you go? How do you go?
One way to address these extremist challenges is when the policies of the country become more responsible for the vast majority of the country. When we are reducing inequality, when people feel more empowered at work, when people in the service economy are not so worried that they don't have to live paycheck to paycheck, when there is good access to good education, higher education, whether it's a community college or four-year public universities in a way that students don't have to come out with tons of debt, the stakes feel a little less existential.
It's not just the failures of our political system and American government; there are a lot of other structural factors like industrialization and globalization, the rise of social media, the focus on politician's personal lives, aggressiveness to root out scandals, to report on mini-scandals that have all contributed to this age of polarization. At some point the country and the government is going to have to be able to again address issues like climate change, which is increasingly central and existential for a lot of people understandably, then the extremists have less oxygen and there are people who don't feel as livid at the system.
The argument that the system is rigged, that the establishment is corrupt. I think those arguments have less weight for people if the county and the government can eventually get to address some of these big systemic problems in American society.
The last thing I'll say is we're still struggling with the country's original sin, which of course was racism and slavery. We're still living in the shadow of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which was just a partial revolution. It became extremely important, but it obviously did not go far enough, and I think a lot of people continue to feel like they don't have a real stake in our society. That it is not necessarily democratic for them.
So the elusive quest to achieve racial equality and racial justice is another massive challenge that has got to be confronted.