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
Our Job is to Direct the Wind
by Rev. Carolyn Foster
March 10, 2021
This interview with Reverend Carolyn Foster was conducted and condensed by franknews.
I am Reverend Carolyn Foster. I am currently serving as one of the chairs for the Alabama Poor People's Campaign. I'm also the Faith in Community Coordinator for a nonprofit here in Birmingham, Alabama, called Greater Birmingham Ministries. We serve the greater Birmingham area and we also serve as an anchor organization for the Alabama Poor People's campaign. So, essentially, I'm wearing two hats.
Important hats.
I hope so.
Are you from Alabama?
I grew up here in Birmingham, Alabama. I came of age during the late sixties, during the turbulent time of the Civil Rights Movement. I actually grew up just west of the downtown Birmingham area, in a neighborhood called Smithfield. This was during segregation. Smithfield became known as Dynamite Hill, because it was bombed quite often by the Klu Klux Klan.
Jeremy Gray. 'Birmingham Alabama Bombing scene, 1960.'
There were a lot of activists that lived in the neighborhood. There were a lot of people who were working for civil rights. There was also an attorney who, whenever Dr. King was in town and got arrested, would bail out and represent Dr. King. His home was bombed at least twice in my memory as a child. So that was my neighborhood. I grew up in those surroundings and I have no doubt that that is what has led me to my social justice leaning as I became older.
How does the Poor People’s Campaign tie into larger civil rights movements, specifically in Alabama?
Well, history has happened in Alabama. The Children's March happened in Birmingham. The Bloody Sunday Selma bridge crossing happened in Selma. So Alabama was ground zero for the civil rights movement.
Once the Voting Rights Act was signed into federal law, Dr. King turned his attention to economic injustice issues. He began to work with low-income people and organized with them so that the Poor People's Campaign could become what he called a new, unsettling force. He was assassinated actually one month before the campaign was to launch.
Dr. William Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharis, 50 years later, decided to pick up the torch of this movement and carry it forward because the issues that Dr. King was wrestling with then are the same issues that we are wrestling with now. Dr. Barber got in touch with my organization, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and we arranged for him to come to Birmingham twice for a Moral Revival, similar to the Mass Meetings of the 1960s. It was just a relaunch of what Dr. King did, and I got involved personally because it was my job to help organize that effort. My experience as a child was coming back to me again as an adult. I became very actively involved because I still live here in Birmingham, and I still see the same struggles. We've come a long way in Birmingham, and in our state in some ways, but we still have a long way to go.
Some areas of Alabama would really surprise you, it's almost like a third-world country, in particular in this area called the Black Belt. It gets its name for the rich, black topsoil that the slaves worked. The area is very poor. There is a lot of ecological devastation. There is soil contamination there because there is no proper sewage and children are playing and people are living among hookworms that are openly exposed in their yard.
Jerry Siegel. Birds. Perry County, Alabama. 2002
We see people who are suffering every single day in my organization. They come to us because they need food or clothing or school supplies or help with their utility bills. We hear these stories every single day, so it was natural for us to become actively involved with the Alabama Poor People's Campaign.
So when we relaunched the Poor People's Campaign in 2018, it seemed that my work and my ministry were joining together, like a hand in the glove.
Why is poverty a moral issue?
I think poor and low-wealth people have been so ignored and invisible to people in power that it is almost easy to say they don’t even exist. These people feel they have no power and no voice. They feel invisible to the larger society, and, because of that, they feel helpless to advocate on behalf of themselves.
That is a moral issue in my view. To completely ignore folk who are hungry, who are homeless, who have trouble paying their bills, and who are having trouble feeding their children, is a moral issue in a country that is as rich as the United States is. That is immoral in a country where, really, there is no scarcity.
What makes organizing in the south, or in Alabama, different?
I believe organizing in the South is quite different. We come out of a place of segregation. We have deliberately been kept apart as people. We have deliberately been told wrong and fearful things about one another. If you're going to cross lines of economics and race, then you have to be really intentional about that, when you have grown up in a place that has always kept people apart on purpose. The work begins with building trust and building community. We have to work first with our commonalities. We have to show that we have more in common than we do in differences.
We're all brothers and sisters. We're all related. We all are one human family. We should be united in this fight.
In my work with the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, I have been working for over 20 years facilitating anti-racism workshops, intentionally bringing people who are racially different together to learn about one another and to dispel myths. I bring that to the table in my work with the Poor People's Campaign. Once you build community between people who thought they were so different, and they begin to see they have the same concerns - caring for family, health, and well-being, it is easy to start building and working towards a purpose like overcoming poverty. So Alabama in particular, because of our history, there is still so much of that thinking about the separation of races and that poverty is a black issue when in fact, there are more white people living in poverty in Alabama.
Right now there seems to be a divide between those living in rural and urban communities, so we are working to build that bridge. We want people to see that though we live in different geographic areas, we are struggling with the same thing, we are still poor. One expression of the Poor People's Campaign is what we call fusion. Let's bring people together to overcome those myths of differences in order to build something powerful.
The original Poor People's Campaign went to Washington, camped on the mall – made their physical presence felt and seen by Congress and Senate, the center of U.S. government. There is a lot of work on the ground to do locally, and there is a lot of legislative work to do as well. How do you marry the two now? Do you feel like you have any politicians in your corner?
We have allies. I'll put it like that. Elected officials, who very much support the Poor People's Campaign. But we need more. Definitely, we need more. This is a strong conservative state, but little by little, we are chipping away at that in order to help our elected officials see that Alabama is a state that is struggling with poverty, struggling with poor education, struggling with lack of healthcare, and making those issues real to them by bringing faces and voices to the forefront.
The Poor People's Campaign in Alabama is developing leaders among the poor, who are able to share their stories. Amplifying the voices and the stories of poor and low wealth people is just so important. You can't unsee something once you have seen it, or un-hear a story once you've heard it.
Low-income people are reclaiming their power coming into council meetings, rallies, press conferences, and speaking at legislative offices. That's really important.
The Poor People's Campaign has begun to have some town hall meetings virtually and invited elected officials to come, not to speak, but to listen to these stories.
Our population is about 45% low-income. Those are the folks that we are trying to lift up and empower. Jim Wallis, of Sojourners Institute, said in one of his books that elected officials lift their finger to see which way the wind is blowing. Our job is to direct wind. By lifting up these forty-five percent of the people who are low income, we can direct the wind and make the politicians come around to our demands.
Trees in Wind, photograph, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth49979/m1/1/?q=wind: accessed March 10, 2021), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Library and Hall of Fame.
You say your state is “conservative” – what does that imply about the state's support of the Poor People’s Campaign? There is a link in American politics between conservatism and Christianity, especially in the south. The obvious point here is that Christian politicians should be against poverty. But that’s not what you’re seeing.
In Alabama, we still have a long way to go. This is a strongly conservative state. Some people tend to view morality in different ways. Some have a very narrow view, in my opinion. There are some who only think of morality in terms of a woman’s right to choose, for example. It is not that this is not an important discussion to have but it is too narrow when talking about morality.
I mean, this is the Bible belt. We are, of course, predominantly Christian in Alabama. Jesus said, when I was hungry, you fed me. When I was in prison, you visited me. When I was naked, you clothed me. Jesus talked about bringing the good news to the poor.
Central Presbyterian Church, photograph, 1960; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth59197/m1/1/?q=church%20: accessed March 10, 2021), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hardin-Simmons University Library.
We keep hammering that message to our elected officials.
Do you feel like you understand how to work within a Republican government better than others because of your geography?
You know, there are a lot of systems in place here in Alabama that directly impact poor people, but they don't really understand how systems work. We are doing a lot of work around education. In Alabama, people tend to vote straight ticket without thinking a lot about what it means and how it impacts them personally. People also usually only vote in big elections, state and federal, and not municipal elections. So turnout is sometimes very low.
But, we are doing education around every single election that impacts people, including local elections. Tuscaloosa, Mobile, Montgomery have some municipal elections coming up soon. We are working toward finding out where those candidates stand on certain poverty-related issues and disseminating that information in poor and low-income areas. We don't tell anybody how to vote. We just want people to vote in a more educated kind of way. We are working on getting people to see how it connects to their lives more directly. A lot of education has to happen, which takes a lot of grassroots work, but we are willing to do it.
Voting is really key to turning this state around and to educating people on how the systems work for you or against you. Our systems were not made for low-income people. They were made to keep power in place.
I live here in Birmingham and several years ago, we worked really hard to convince our city government to raise the minimum wage, and they voted to raise it. But, very quickly, one of our wealthy state legislators, went to Montgomery and wrote a bill saying that only the state has the right to raise the minimum wage and it passed. So no municipality can not do it on its own.
That's just how these systems work. These are the kinds of systems we are trying to chip away at and to dismantle. We are trying to lift up our poor and low-income people. And we'll eventually change the wind in this state.