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
Trickle Down Liberalism
by Chris Lodgson
February 11, 2021
This interview with Chris Lodgson, organizer in Sacramento, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Chris | My name, Chris Lodgson. I'm originally from New York City. I was born and raised in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I spent 20 plus years in New York City and then I moved to Sacramento, about six years ago. I've been organizing for what feels like my whole life. Some of us choose to get into this work, and I love and respect those who do, and some of us don't really have a choice based on how we were brought up.
frank | A lot of your organizing centers around reparations.
I had the privilege and pleasure to be a part of the groups that helped get our state's first reparations task force passed through AB-3121. I've been very fortunate to work with folks like Dr. Sandy Darity, probably the foremost reparations scholar. He has helped me understand how reparations is really the only pure solution to the plight of African Americans. I am also campaign lead for Fix HR40, the only organized campaign to help improve the only reparations legislation in Congress. HR40 has been sitting in Congress in some way, or some facet for 30 years.
Reparations is critical to us. The lack of reparations is why the Black and white wealth gap has continued for many many years. Reparations is the only way to fix that. There are a bunch of universal programs that we think would be awesome. Raising the minimum wage, great. Canceling student loan debt, great. However, ultimately, none of that is going to end the racial wealth gap.
With that in mind, what does an effective anti-poverty movement look like to you?
First of all, those interested in the anti-poverty movements have to accept reparations as a part of an efficient, effective anti-poverty program. This is not something that's outside of or the extreme of an anti-poverty movement.
If you look back to Johnson in the 1960s, in the process of debuting some of his anti-poverty policies, he reintroduced affirmative action specifically for Black Americans who descend from U.S. slavery, as a part of an effective anti-poverty framework.
In his speech at Howard, he talks about how in the post-war period, in the 60s, the conditions of almost every group improved, except for Black folks who descended from slavery. Why? He said that this has to be because of the legacy of slavery. He said that we need to take some affirmative action. That, of course, is a fraction of what we needed to do. We needed a reparations program. We needed it then and we need it now. But, we can look to Johnson talking about specifically targeting Black Americans who descend from US slavery as part of the history of anti-poverty movements.
So, to answer your question, an effective anti-poverty movement today is one that embraces reparations. It is one that is not scared by policy solutions that are race-specific or lineage-specific or ethnicity-specific.
We have to do this together, but that doesn't mean that our specific interests and our specific needs go unmet.
What push back do you get on race-specific or lineage-specific policies?
We hear that reparations is reverse racism. We hear that you can't fight racism with racism. We hear the old tropes about how this is America, you can and should lift yourself up by your bootstraps. If you haven't succeeded, you don't work hard enough or you're not educated enough. You are telling me that an entire community is disadvantaged because of something that each and every single person was doing? No.
It is this idea that if we do something for everybody, then by osmosis or by accident, you all are going to do better too. But there is no evidence for that. In fact, the evidence says that the opposite. You can actually hurt Black people by doing things like canceling all student debt. Trust me, I know there's a lot of people who want that, but less than 20% of Black Americans who descend from slavery go to college and have college debt. In effect, you end up widening the wealth gap. I want to see that these things happen, but they have to happen at the same time as a reparations program or after a reparations program.
Why do you think Democrats, the party that has embraced “anti-racism”, have failed to implement targeted economic proposals to their platform?
I think that the Democratic party is influenced and managed and run by people who subscribe to a lot of the same arguments the Republicans do. They believe in the “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” argument and the “rising tide lifts all boats” argument. These are common ideals within the Democratic party, even if you look to the progressive left.
I mean, universal policies were Bernie's whole thing. I think that Bernie would have had a better chance, and the progressive wing would have had a better chance, if he could say the words, "Black people." Not “Black and brown people.” Not “people of color.” And I know that for a fact because I was organizing during the campaign. Most Black folks, my age, were not comfortable with Joe Biden. A lot of us were children in the 90s and saw what that crime bill did to us then, and what it is still doing to us now. A lot of us had to go live with our grandmothers and aunts because somebody was in jail or somebody's mom was on crack or because the neighborhood was too dangerous. That is scarring.
If the progressive wing of the Democratic party, if Bernie, could address Black folks specifically and target Black folks through policies, I think they would be more successful.
I can't speak for the rest of the party as to why they don't address those policies, but I would guess that it is because it is not always in their political benefit to target Black folks. Particularly in a political system rigged by redistricting, gerrymandering, and the influence of money in politics, it is not in the interest of the Democrats to fight for Black people.
What is echoed through our interviews this month is this sense that Democrats don’t speak to the deep needs of the working class – whether that's Black working class or working class more broadly – because they don't see them as essential constituencies to win. Do you think that's true?
I think it's true, but I think there's something else underneath that. When it comes to Black folks, specifically Black folks that have descended from U.S. slavery, our history of who we are in this country makes us a unique group. It makes it more difficult for Democrats to decide to do something specifically on our behalf.
Look at last summer. For a couple of months, it looked like we were about to take some important steps within the Democratic party. I was out there last summer. I took the tear gas and the flash grenades. I got sick with COVID. For a minute it felt like we may actually do something, but what actually did we do? I would argue that if the campaign centered more around Black folks who descened from U.S. slavery, there would have had more success legislatively.
What other factors do you think were important to the outcomes, or lack of outcomes from summer 2020? Do you think an economic message was put to the forefront?
Before I even go into it, I do want to give a shout out to the organizers and activists on the ground who took the tragedies that we saw, and got busy locally, statewide, and nationally.
But, I am disappointed that not more came from the energy we saw. I think part of that lies with the way that the media covered it. I think the last few months showed us that whatever you want to hear, you can find media that feeds you that opinion. That is why so many people think Donald Trump actually won the election and ran into the Capitol ready to kill people. I definitely think the organization of our media, social media, and social media influencers diluted some of the moment.
There is also the criticism that the only policy action that you can take from the protests is to defund the police. And this was coming from all sides. When I learned about defunding the police, I learned about it through a framework called invest-divest, back in 2016, led by Movement for Black Lives. And there was some success there, I actually created a tracker to track all George Floyd related legislation that divested in "public safety" and invested into community programs.
But, in the circles that I ran in, there was doubt about whether defunding the police was the solution. So there was some disorganization, some confusion, and some lack of faith in that big, single policy outcome. In my circles, in particular, we were saying we need reparations and we need a comprehensive reparations program, and we need it now. That is the solution. And it's better than saying defund the police and better than saying invest divest even, even though most of us support those movements as well.
It’s important for white liberals to realize their efforts to help may have paternalistic tendencies. Whether that's what you called “trickle-down liberalism”, or not being willing to have a nuanced discussion about the policies coming out of BLM, I don’t know.
Even with the most well-intentioned, left-leaning white person, we have to acknowledge that this goes back a long time. Me and you go back a long time. We have been in this for over 400 years. We are going to have to figure this thing out. We are going to have to figure out how to live together.
A lot of people in my community see the left and right as two sides of the same coin. As Malcolm X described it, the wolf and the fox. He said the left is the fox and the right is the wolf. He said that he had more respect for the wolf because the wolf will show you his teeth, whereas the fox will pretend to be your friend before he eats you.
Black folks weren't surprised about what we saw at the Capitol. We’re used to white people getting violent. Very used to that. I don't think it’s your average white person who is looking for AOC in the bathroom or for Nancy Pelosi, but that is a part of the white community.
So we're going to have to figure this out. I don't know what it is to be white, but I don't necessarily envy the position that a lot of white folks, who are well-meaning and who want to do good, are in.
Like you said, some choose to get in this fight, some are born into it. How do organizers think about changing participation and organizing around a working-class, or a Black working-class identity?
That's right. The folks who are the most impacted tend to participate the least in politics. But, I want to expand what we think about when we think of participation. I'm not just talking about voting, I'm talking about getting involved, organizing locally, standing up for yourself, and standing up for your people.
In New York, we have what we used to call a johnny pump. One of those open fire pumps with kids playing in the water. We did that a lot in the summertime. When the police show up, tell you to turn the water off, call y'all monkeys and animals, and say "I'm only here to lock you up, to me, politics looks like standing up for yourself and your community. Politics looks like saying, “No, I'm not going to let you talk to us like that. I'm not gonna let you treat us like that”.
I am talking from personal experience, this is something that really happened to me. That is politics. That is participation.
This, again, is my personal experience. This is real life. It's not back in the 70s, this is in the early 2000s. That's political.
And this is coming from New Yorkers. New York is run by Democrats. California is run by Democrats. The situations in these places are horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible.
And that is the point. That keeps us in the bottom caste. We are not supposed to do any better. Society was designed to do that and now, it is self-reinforcing. The system works without much effort. It doesn't take a maniacal conspiracy and people plotting behind closed doors to hurt us, that was already done. Now it just works. It's very efficient, it's very effective, and that's what we're up against.
The problem is, to make a real change, there has to be a high level of coordinated politics. There needs to be strategic voting. There needs to be community organizing on a wider scale. From one block to the next, we have to see each other as the same community. And I think we can be unified around the fact that we descend from U.S. slavery.
And I feel like I have to say this: if we don't achieve a reparations program in the next decade, there are going to be a lot fewer people like me in this country. It's not like we have to exist as a people. Your existence as a people is a function of whether or not you can survive. When's the last time you saw an aboriginal Australian? When's the last time you saw an aboriginal Canadian? Keep it real, when is the last time you saw a Native American?
I'm a firm believer that if we don't achieve a reparations program soon, we may pass a point of no return. As a people, we were already on the road to zero wealth in 2018. That's before COVID did its worst. Here in the city of Sacramento, one-third of all Black folks have zero wealth. If you add up the wealth of the bottom half of Black America, the total is less than $1.
I don't mean to sound like an alarmist, but I kind of have to say that we're on fire. It's not just a house that's on fire, the people inside it are too. Reparations is the solution. It's just one of many, but without it, nothing else works.