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
A Barren Marriage
by David Zonderman
February 4, 2021
This interview with David Zonderman, head of the history department and a professor of history at North Carolina State University, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Why do you think unions are important?
I would say unions are important for several reasons.
One, they are a fundamental way for workers to express their basic demands for decent wages and decent benefits in a safe working place. Secondly, it's a way for workers to balance the corporate powers that are arrayed against them. Corporations often band together in various associations, yet they often seem incredibly reluctant, if not viciously opposed, to workers doing the same thing. That's been an issue for literally hundreds of years in this country.
There are also two other, more macro reasons. Unions often serve as a counterweight to the political power of conservative forces. That really explains why most conservative political forces today oppose unions — they know that unions are one of the last bulwarks against conservative corporate political power. Unions cut into corporate profits, they cut into corporate power over the workplace.
The Plasters Union. Austin History Center.
The final reason ties directly into the theme of anti-poverty movements. Unions are one of the great anti-poverty tools of the past two centuries. Our solutions to poverty often revolve around SNAP benefits or TANF benefits or housing subsidies. All those are good things. I'm not opposed to any of them. However, if people made a living wage, we would not need these things. One way to get a living wage is to be a part of a union that demands a living wage. Most people in unions usually have higher wages, better benefits, and safer workplaces. Unions are one of the most effective ways to lift people out of poverty.
Historically, do you identify the New Deal as the moment where labor is really strengthened?
Certainly. There were all of these various attempts before the 1930s, but the 1930s is when we have this dramatic upswell in union organizing. This upswing defies models. Most models predict that when unemployment is high union organizing goes down because everyone is worried about losing their job. The boss, theoretically, has 50 people lining up outside to take your job if you're not happy with it.
But, in the 1930s, as unemployment rates breached 25%, there was a huge swelling of organizing. Why is that? Well, that is up for debate, and it is a debate that I'm not sure we are ever going to resolve definitively. History is complex and messy and usually has many causes. We know that, for one, there were changes in labor law. There were new leaders like John L. Lewis. There was a tremendous amount of rank and file organizing. I always tell my students that in history the answer is always E, all of the above. The single cause explanation is usually wrong in politics, and it's almost always wrong in history.
The Bob Fitch Photography Archive.
What were the specific pieces of new labor law?
There are two major pieces of legislation in the 1930s.
The first big law in the 1930s does not have to do with unions and the right to organize. It has to do with labor conditions. That is the Fair Labor Standards Act passed in 1938. That law is still with us today. That is why there is a legal minimum wage. That is why there is a 40 hour week. That is why there's a ban on child labor.
The other major law is the National Labor Relations Act, often called the Wagner Act after Senator Robert Wagner, the major sponsor of the bill. That law was passed in 1935. This the first time the US government goes on record to say that labor organizing is a good thing, and that the rights of workers to organize should be protected.
The preamble of the Wagner Act speaks to two, I would argue, empirically proven things. One, it says that stronger unions lead to higher wages, which boosts consumption. Consumer spending represents 70 percent of the U.S. economy. We should want consumers to make a decent living so they can spend their money. Driving down real wages makes no sense in a consumer-based economy. But, we have spent the last 40 years undermining unions and undermining workers' attempts to achieve living wages. Corporate profits have skyrocketed and real wages have been almost stagnant for millions of workers. That's not a coincidence.
The Wagner Act also said that unions are also good for “labor peace.” The idea is that if everyone's not fighting and striking, it is good for the economy. The last thing you wanted was lots of strikes when you're trying to get an economy out of a depression. The Wagner Act set up the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, which exists to this day. The NLRB supervises elections for workers to choose whether they want a union to represent them or not, that's its major role. It also hears unfair labor practice complaints.
Fast forward to today – corporations have found the loopholes. Laws have certainly been weakened between the 1930s and now.
Right. One of the many problems with the Wagner Act is that it's been weakened by subsequent laws. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 is one. It set up the “right to work” provisions. These laws basically say that if you work in a workplace that has a union contract, you get the benefits of the contract. The union must represent you. You get all the wage increases, all the benefits, without paying union dues. Right to Work laws create what is called a free-rider problem. Or, I could quote Mitt Romney and say it's a moocher problem.
Strike at Air Base. Hardin-Simmons University Library.
These laws are deliberately designed as a poison pill to unions. The states that have Right to Work laws are essentially saying to unions, don't come here because we are going to make it really, really hard for you to organize and really, really hard for you to collect your dues.
The Fair Labor Standards Act is a fundamental law even today. But again, companies have found loopholes and ways to undermine this law. For example, if you are classified as an independent contractor, you're not an employee.
How do you think the evolving nature of work, like the increasing number of people being labeled as independent contractors, changes organizing efforts?
It is a huge challenge. I think if this nation would actually reform its labor law to both close the gaping loopholes and to have a law that reflects the economy of today and not the 1930s, those changes would be a really good thing for millions of workers. It is much more difficult to organize because many of those workers don't fall under even what little protection is afforded by the current labor law.
In fact, there's been an ad recently for Uber, where a woman is talking about how much she loves being an Uber driver because she can set her own hours and run her own life. My wife and I started screaming at the TV, like really, lady, do you really believe that? You are getting screwed because as an independent contractor you're not subject to minimum wage or maximum hours. You don't have the right to organize. You don't get benefits. What's so great about that? But you know, that's the American way, I guess.
It's interesting to think too about how unions have been painted over history by the opposition. They are often spoken of as third parties when they are literally made up of the workers.
Exactly. Third-party is literally the phrase that's used. They often say to the workers, you are our associates, we're a family, why do you want another party coming into our relationship? It's bull hockey. The boss has all the money. You have almost nothing, who's going to win in this battle?
They also play into this idea of corruption.
The opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009 came out with an ad I can only describe as evilly brilliant. They used actors from the Sopranos. If you remember, Tony Soprano and his boys were into a couple of local unions. One of the Sopranos was saying to a worker, sign this card, we are your friends.
And I remember when that ad came out, I just looked at my wife and said, you know, those SOBs. This is brilliant. It played on the fear of corruption and played on the idea that signing a card is somehow less free than having an election where you have captive audience meetings.
Corruption has been a part of labor history. I don't ignore that. It's my responsibility as a historian to present the whole picture. But the corruption is not as bad as right-wing critics make it out to be. Critics love to take every story of corruption and blow it into an attack on the whole labor movement.
A lot of our research this month looks back at the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. I am curious, in 1968 as both unions and the Civil Rights Movement were seeing some political power, did they work together at all? Do they organize together? Do we see monetary support from one to the other?
There's an excellent and growing literature on exactly that question. To turn a long reading list into a short answer, yes, though it tended to be mostly at the individual union level.
For example, the UAW, the United Auto Workers at that time, had Walter Ruther as its president. He was one of the great labor organizers of the mid 20th century and had started out as an avowed socialist. He was a huge supporter of the March on Washington. If you look at photos of the March on Washington, many of the signs say “for jobs and for freedom” and the signs have the union bug that says “sponsored by UAW.”
Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. US National Archives.
So, the UAW was very supportive on a national political level. They put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the March on Washington. But even in the UAW, if you asked Black workers in the sixties, they often were very dissatisfied with the way their local union was treating Black workers, even though they knew that the union nationally was supporting Dr. King. It gets very complex from union to union and even within unions.
It really comes down to the idea that if we only organize the white people, it's not going to go well, right? In 1919, there was a series of huge strikes in the packing houses of Chicago, but they only organized the white workers. Black workers, not surprisingly, had many of the worst jobs, like on the killing floor.
So, in the 1930s, when United Packinghouse Workers Union went back and organized again with many Black, and left-wing leaders. They ended up having a remarkable record on organizing Black and white workers fighting against racial discrimination.
The Vietnam War is a whole other thing. Some individual unions and some local unions had a lot of young members and very antiwar, but overall, the labor movement, the AFL-CIO was a very strong backer of anti-communism and the Vietnam War. They stuck behind Johnson and Nixon, even though individual unions disagreed.
And do you think that was primarily out of loyalty to the political figures?
Well, there was a sense that this is a fight against communism and we're all anti-communists. I think your point is also a very good one. My guess is there was also a calculation like Lyndon Johnson is a liberal Democrat and he's good for unions.
Bayard Rustin at AFL-CIO conference.
In fact, a parallel debate went on the Civil Rights Movement. On April 4th, 1967, exactly a year before his death, Dr. King gave a famous speech at the Riverside Church in upper Manhattan, where he came out strongly against the Vietnam War. A lot of newspapers criticized him. A lot of white allies of the civil rights movement were furious at him. Even within his own inner circle, people were angry with him. Bayard Rustin, the man probably most responsible for organizing the March on Washington, said to King, Johnson is our friend. Why do you want to piss him off? If you want to say privately that the war's morally wrong. Okay. But do not do this.
I want to ask specifically about the Democrats and their alliance with labor. As you mentioned, Johnson was obviously a strong ally. When do you see liberalism and labor break?
In fact, there's a historian by the name of Mike Davis who calls it The Barren Marriage — nothing was produced from that alliance.
Austin History Center.
A lot of people say the tie between Democrats and labor goes back to Franklin Roosevelt. I think you can actually go back probably to Woodrow Wilson, the first democratic president that developed some overt connections with organized labor. But, it is true that during the 1930s organized labor and the Democratic party, because of those labor laws we discussed, became solidly intertwined. In fact, that was one of the selling points that Robert Wagner made to Roosevelt when pitching the Wagner Act. He argued that it would help Roosevelt organize millions of people and endear them to him.
Those connections remained very strong all the way through the 1960s, they were strained somewhat over the Vietnam War, and then, in the late 70s under Carter and in the 90s under Clinton, there was a shift toward a more moderate Democratic strategy. I would argue that it's probably not a coincidence that both Carter and Clinton were Southern governors coming from southern states that were not strong bastions of labor.
They say, of course, we're pro-union, of course, we believe in unions, but there is not a lot of substance to back up their claims.
There was an attempt to reform labor law under Carter. He supported it, but he didn't really break knuckles and it died in a Senate filibuster. The same thing happened early in the Obama Administration with the Employee Free Choice Act. Obama also supported the Act, but didn't push for it. And this was early in Obama's term. There were 60 Democrats in the Senate. If he'd gone to every Democrat and really pushed, maybe, something would have happened. People often talk about how during the protests in Madison, Wisconsin against Governor Walker, Obama really didn't give a full endorsement of the protests. And he never went up to Madison, even though he was begged to by some people in the labor movement. So...
It seems like an issue that compounds itself because as laws remain weak, as union membership continues to decline, it becomes less of a substantial voting block, which makes it less politically salient for politicians to go after.
Exactly. That is what the right wants to accomplish. The only way to stop it is by pushing for better reform of labor law. The Democrats will pay lip service to the idea, but they haven't invested the political capital.
I've had these discussions here in my home state of North Carolina. I push people in the Democratic party to try to build the labor movement. It is extremely weak here and has been for decades, if not centuries, but there are ways to make it stronger now. We're not going to become Detroit of the 1950s, but we could be stronger. It would almost certainly be to the benefit of Democrats, yet they have up until recently shown little interest. I was part of a group way back in 2008 that met with some of the leaders of the state legislature, and one guy literally said to us, "If you can get me the votes, okay." I felt like screaming! You're the legislative leader, it's your job to get the votes, not ours.
Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. US National Archives
The progressive wing of the Democratic party gets it. And they know that if you rebuild a labor movement, today's labor movement is going to look different. The average worker today is not a steelworker. It's not a 50-year-old guy with a lunch bucket. It's a 30-year-old single mom working at McDonald's. Organize them! It's not easy, but you should go where the workers are!
How have political alliances and political participation changed since the break between the Democrats and the working class?
How we define who's working class is up for debate. Put five historians and sociologists in a room and we'll all throw things at each other.
But voting among people of lower-income, if you want to look at it that way, has declined in certain areas. Union households have increasingly shifted away from the Democrats. The majority still vote Democrat, but it's a higher and higher percentage who vote Republican each year.
That actually shifted a little bit back to Biden. I mean, I would argue Biden ran the most openly pro-union presidential campaign since maybe Hubert Humphrey or George McGovern of '68 and '72. Or maybe Walter Mondale of '84. Biden has a record of being pro-union, with very strong links to the firefighters union. This was a Democratic campaign that mentioned unions more and more. It may have been a symbolic pitch made in order to get some of these voters to come back, but I also think that Biden is sympathetic to the voices within the party who are saying that we should rebuild the labor movement.
If it is good for people, and if we get more voters in our column, why would that be a bad thing?