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
On Organizing Around Racial Justice
by Saladin Muhammad
March 11, 2021
Saladin Muhammad is a retired international representative for the United Electrical Workers and one of the founders of the Southern Workers Assembly. In an interview with franknews and Payday Report, Saladin discusses how the failure of the labor movement to organize around racial justices hurts organizing efforts in the South.
Saladin | There is a recognition that the South needs to be organized as a part of building a stronger labor movement throughout the US. For a long time, the confidence of the working class in the South and the effort to organize has been very weak. Attempts to unionize the Volkswagen and Nissan plants in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Clanton, Mississippi, are indications of organized labor’s recognition of the importance of organizing core industries in the South. This is a recognition that has not really existed probably since Operation Dixie in the late 1940s.
frank | What was Operation Dixie?
Operation Dixie was the first major Southern organizing campaign. It took place after World War II. There was some organization as early as 1920 with sharecroppers and tenant farmers, but in terms of industrial unionism, Operation Dixie was the first. It came about around the time the Taft-Hartley Act was passed.
There was a special section (14b) of the Taft-Hartley Act that gave states a way to implement right-to-work laws. In most of the right-to-work states, public sector employees are denied bargaining rights, and in the private sector, this allows workers the option to not join the union and not pay dues.
Since the main base of the states' rights movement was in the South as a part of the racist Jim Crow system, right-to-work laws continue to have their main concentration in the Southern states. In addition to dividing the working-class, tripling the exploitation and oppression of Black workers and their communities, it also weakened efforts to unionize workers in the South.
Atlanta sanitation workers strike supporters' "King Memorial Rally," at the Martin Luther King's gravesite, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Auburn Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia, April 4, 1970.
So, Operation Dixie was good, but it really didn't take up this question of the racial oppression and repression that Black workers were experiencing. The organizers were mostly white. They did not focus on groups like the tobacco workers union, which was a majority-Black workforce. Instead, they focused on the textile union, which was a majority-white workforce at that time. They avoided organizing in places where there was a large concentration of Black workers. It kind of seemed like an outside project coming in. I think that affects the way people think about union organizing even now.
Do you think Bessemer represents change?
Bessemer is drawing a lot of attention towards organizing in the South. I think it is drawing even more attention than the Volkswagen and the Nissan campaigns. It has the opportunity to deepen the struggle around race as a part of the working-class struggle. I think there are some real possibilities with this campaign.
There are issues in the workplace that are coming into sharper focus with the pandemic. Workers are searching for a way to protect themselves and challenge these injustices. We are starting to see a fightback, where many workers are self-organizing without unionization to wage collective actions.
There are around 50 solidarity actions taking place across 25 cities. 16 or 20 of those actions are being organized in the South.
The Southern Workers Assembly, and the work of the Black Workers for Justice, see building organization to help deal with the present conditions and raising consciousness among workers, to help develop infrastructure of and social movement that has to be developed to organize labor in the South. It's important for workers to understand that that real union organization starts with worker organization. It is not just about being legitimized by the National Labor Relations Board.
And even if they are voted in, especially at a major corporation like Amazon, bargaining for a 1st contract usually requires a continuous struggle that will need ongoing national and international support. Sometimes it takes years. Some unions have walked away because they couldn't get first contracts. You know, so this question of organization is tied to a movement that seeks to change policies.
Atlanta sanitation workers strike, Georgia, April 13, 1970.
Can you tell us a little bit about what organizing has looked like? How do you continue to operate as a union, even without being one?
Well, I can give you an example. We were at a big diesel plant called Cummins Engine [in Rocky Mount, North Carolina] with about 1,600 workers. There's been a number of struggles to impact change there. Years ago, probably as early as around 1985, we formed a committee. We were not yet a union, but we found opportunities to build the structure and to act as a union.
What were some of those opportunities?
We had an underground newsletter that became public and an official monthly organizing toolkit that was distributed inside the plant and at the plant entrance. There have been more than 175 issues published so far.
We called on workers to join the Workers Unity Committee, which was the name of the rank-n-file organizing committee at the plant. The committee formed carpools to pick up people in the rural communities from 3 counties surrounding the plant to bring them to a People’s Health Clinic organized at a community center within walking distance of the plant.
Atlanta sanitation workers strike supporters' "King Memorial Rally," at the Martin Luther King's gravesite, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Auburn Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia, April 4, 1970.
Then around 1990, we were able to get several hundred workers to sign a petition calling for a paid MLK day holiday for all workers. This campaign probably lasted almost a year or so, and we won the campaign. The Workers Unity Committee, along with another manufacturing plant, also formed the Carolina Auto Aerospace and Machine Workers Union (CAAMWU) and sought to organize manufacturing workers.
Then the workers sued the company because they were promised a bonus if the company’s value had increased by some amount, they would give the workers a 75 percent increase in the bonus on whatever the stock value is worth. They didn't. They gave everyone a 25 percent increase. The workers filed a complaint with The Wage and Hour Divisions and wound up winning over a million dollars to pay the full bonus amount.
At one point the diesel plant tried to fire some workers for distributing leaflets in a breakroom, and we appealed it to the labor board. It went all the way up to the fourth circuit which was named the Jesse Helms court. I don't know if you remember him, but Jesse Helms was this racist senator in North Carolina. We won in his court.
The company was ordered by the Labor Board to set up union boxes in every break room, where leaflets left on tables must be placed. They had been previously disposed of by managers claiming to do clean-up. So now, that means if there is newsletters or union literature on a table, it has to be put in the union box.
A lot of what you are doing is a lot about training folks on how to fight, and not waiting on a union to come along. You seem focused on making sure people know how to mobilize their fellow coworkers.
Right. Because of the lack of a labor movement culture, and because of a low density of unionization, we felt like we were in a position to define union culture in the South. We don't say we act like a union, we say we are a union.
We also think that organizing in North Carolina has to be a part of a wider strategy to organize labor in the South. We called for a conference to form the Southern Workers Assembly. Workers came from different parts of the South, mainly North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. We held a march on Wall Street South because, at the time, major corporate banks like Wells Fargo were moving into Charlotte. We were really trying to show the role that Wall Street had in factories in the South. We were also trying to show the impact of foreign direct investment. There is a lot of foreign direct investment that exists in the South from Japan, from France, from Germany, from the UK, and now from China with the big Smithfield Plant, the world’s largest meat slaughtering plant. So this was about developing a guiding perspective of our social movement. The practical aspects are not as easy as the theoretical aspects.
Atlanta sanitation workers strike, Georgia, April 13, 1970.
Do you think unions understand how to organize around racial justice issues from an intersectional standpoint? From what I have seen, unions tend to focus so heavily on class that they forget that the core of unions should be about respect.
Systemic racism oppresses people almost as if it were a form of domestic colonialism. We see it in power relations, subjugation, and underdevelopment. Class to the elimination of race, as opposed to the intersection of the two, only creates issues in the struggle to organize.
I mean, that was the problem with Operation Dixie.
They tell them they are going to lose out. But if we constantly give in to that view, corporate power will remain. Organizing is not a quick process. This struggle has to be learned and solidarity has to be built up in order to create a climate that encourages people to organize.
Looking at class without looking at race, reflects a wrong understanding or an incomplete understanding of class. Why isn't race understood as a class issue? Why is it not made a class issue? Is it racism that prevents it from being made a class issue?
I think those questions have to be answered. When we formed the Black Workers for Justice in 1981, even leftists would tell us that we were dividing the working class.
It's not easy. I remember being in one workplace and a Black worker was saying, “My supervisor is prejudice.” He looked at the white workers next to him and made it clear that he wasn’t talking about them. He felt like he had to apologize. But, then, he also asked the white worker, “Would you take that? “ And the white worker said, “No, I wouldn’t take that.” He didn't say that he wouldn’t take that sort of treatment and disrespect if he were Black, he said he wouldn't take in generally. You have to approach the issue like this. You have to make it clear that I am not asking you to sympathize with only me, I am talking about a condition that affects a lot of workers here.
Talking about race in any way is perceived potentially dividing the working class, but the working class is already divided. It wasn’t Black power or Black civil rights that divided the working class. In fact, the Civil Rights Movement tried to unite the working class. We are just the first working class. We are the first working-class that allowed for the accumulation of capital in this country.
City Worker Strike March, Atlanta, Georgia, April 18, 1970.
The question comes down to, do white workers see Black workers as their equals? I'm not going to try to answer that question. But it is a question that needs to be addressed. That mindset makes organizing hard.
Sometimes when a workplace is 70 to 80 percent Black workers, most of the organizers are white and are coming in from out of state. This allows the companies to paint these people as “carpetbaggers.” They say, “Oh they don’t know anything about our culture. They are just dropping in.”
Which we've seen with the UAW in Chattanooga and elsewhere. Do you think the Bessmer campaign is different?
Well, the plant is a very new plant. They officially opened in March 2020. By November, according to what has been publicized, they had a petition where about 2000 workers signed on. This is good, but there is always the question of what kind of self-organization exists.