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
Report for America
by Steven Waldman
June 10, 2021
This interview with Steven Waldman, president and co-founder of Report for America, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Steven | Report for America is a national service program that places talented journalists into local newsrooms to cover undercovered topics and communities. I'm also the chair of something called the Rebuild Local News Coalition, which is a public policy advocacy group trying to help rejuvinate local news.
frank | What pushed you into starting Report for America? Is it a similar business model to Teach For America?
It's similar in one way, which is that we recruit talented people from all over the country who want to go out into communities to serve those communities. It's different from Teach for America in that most of our reporters are not right out of college. They are people who have a few years of experience and know they want to be a journalist. It is not a training program or program trying to convince people to become journalists; this is a program to help them actually do the work where it needs to be done.
The local news system is collapsing.
That's a collapse on the scale of the coal industry, for example. That has left thousands of communities with no local news, which is a huge crisis for democracy. We place reporters into local newsrooms. Right now, we have 300 reporters in the field in 210 newsrooms.
The way it works is we have two competitions. We have a competition for people who want to become reporters. We also have competition for the newsrooms that want to be in the program. They have to prove that there's a serious news gap and that they're going to use these reporters well to really address the severe needs that these communities have.
And is there a part of this that buttresses the financing of those local newsrooms?
Yes.
How does that work?
We pay half the salary in the first year, and the newsroom pays the other half. We work with them to help raise their half from the community. We are focused on helping them create a sustainable business model at the same time that we're helping them produce local journalism.
How much money does each reporter get?
We refer to local news as a public service profession, and that means a lot of things. One, it means, unfortunately, they don't get paid much. The average salary is around $40,000 a year, but we have some that are as low as $30,000 — it varies from community to community. We don't set the salary rate, the local newsroom does.
Where does the money come from on Report For America's end?
We raised it from national philanthropic organizations, primarily. The Knight Foundation is a big supporter. Facebook is a big supporter. And various individuals, like Craig Newmark.
Is Facebook interested in sustaining local news?
The whole picture is complicated. Both Facebook and Google put some money into sustaining programs like ours. At the same time, we know that Facebook, Google, and the internet in general, have been part of what has undermined the business model of local news.
Can you explain how digital changed the world of journalism so significantly and so quickly?
The big thing is that advertisers no longer needed local newspapers to reach local consumers.
People tend to think the internet took readers away, but that wasn’t what killed the business model.
It used to be that if you wanted to reach a certain type of person in your community, you would need to place an ad next to content in the newspaper. Now, Facebook, Google, or even just your phone will track you wherever you've gone, and can reach the consumer directly without having to use content as a proxy. It used to be if you wanted to reach a 40-year-old woman, you'd advertise in a glamour magazine.
The whole notion that the way to reach people is to associate with content that they're interested in getting blown up. It doesn't work that way anymore. And there are so many ways to reach people now. That is the main thing that killed all local news business models.
Of course, there are other elements.
For a while, news organizations weren't charging for subscriptions, now they are trying to but it's hard. The internet has made it so much easier to find content that’s of interest to you. Local papers are not just competing against other local news organizations for attention, they are competing against everything.
You mentioned earlier that with the decimation of local news comes this greater threat to democracy. Can you explain why it's such a threat to democracy?
The lack of local news crushes democracy in a few different ways. One is lack of accountability. People in power in a community will get away with corruption and bad decision-making if no one is watching. There are many, many examples of that.
In a less dramatic way, it is also how communities solve their own problems. You can't know how to clean up the toxic waste dump in your community if you don't know it exists or who the elected officials are that are supposed to be dealing with it. If your drinking water is not clean, you won't be able to get it cleaned without having a sense of who else has unclean drinking water, why is it that way, and who you should talk to about it.
More recently, we've seen another reason, which is that these vacuums get filled with disinformation and conspiracy theories.
It's also, in a more indirect way, part of the story of the spread of polarization and the fragmenting of communities, local news often has this binding effect of teaching people about each other and focusing on local topics You get to know people in your community, not as cartoon characters, but as actual people. And they are not viewed as threats to the country in the same way as when you're seeing national news about people you don't like across the country.
Do you think there's a tie between the nationalization of local politics and the decimation of local news?
Senator Jeremiah Denton is interviewed by reporters. US National Archives.
That is a little bit of a chicken and egg situation, as to which came first, but they certainly reinforce each other. If you don't get local news and you're into politics, you're going to read national political news. It's often the case that you will get more information about the hot congressional race across the country than in your own community. That definitely leads to the nationalization of politics.
Anything that's competitive is covered by national entities, but that doesn't happen with city council races or planning commissions or the school board, even though those things have so much impact on people's lives.
We're coming out of a month on philanthropy, so forgive me for the tie-in, but do you feel like this is a place where philanthropy should step up more? Could rich people save local news?
Absolutely. The irony here is that it's a hugely consequential problem, but not a particularly expensive one, in the big scheme of things.
We know that one way or another, the nonprofit sector of local news is going to have to be bigger than it has been in the past. Traditional commercial models for local news are not going to get back to where we need them to be. We have to think in much more innovative ways. Philanthropy absolutely has to be a key player in that. We estimate that it would take about an increase of about a billion dollars a year to solve this problem, which sounds like a lot of money to me and you, but that would be less than 1% of charitable giving.
The head of the Knight Foundation, Alberto Ibargüen, used to say that local news should be every foundation’s second most important issue. We are not saying you shouldn't still primarily care about healthcare or domestic violence or hunger, but if there's no good local news system, good luck actually making progress on those issues if no one's covering them. I think people are starting to realize that the primary victim of the collapse of local news isn't journalists — they'll get jobs somewhere else — it's the community itself and its ability to solve its own problems that is impacted.
Right. I guess philanthropy is the place where you don't need a direct return on investment.
I like to think in terms of Civic Return On Investment. It's totally legit to have high standards about your philanthropy having a real impact. You should do it to actually improve things, you shouldn't just give to make yourself feel better.
We think both are important. In local news we need businesses and we need nonprofits and the nonprofits have to be supported by philanthropy. That can mean $5 donations from individuals who are members of a new news organization, as much as it can mean a big grant from a wealthy person or a foundation.
I think people sometimes think of philanthropy as temporary giving, but I guess it can be done in a more continuous way over time.
I've had this argument with people who say philanthropy is a good temporary solution until the new business model is created. I say philanthropy is the new business model.
That actually has to be a permanent commitment from philanthropy, viewing local news as a civic good and a civic responsibility, just the same way you do libraries and schools and hospitals.
We have to get over the idea that this is a temporary blip and that a vibrant commercial model is going to come roaring back as soon as there's a new phone app invented for it.
What do you think about the government's involvement in journalism? Both in terms of funding [like PBS] and policy.
It's a great question. It's a really puzzling issue because if you look at the scale of the collapse of local news, there is an obvious case for government intervention. The damage that's being done is so severe, that you would expect a government response. The problem, of course, is the First Amendment and the very real and legitimate concern that government money will warp journalism, undermine editorial independence, and jeopardize the free press. That is a big problem. I think that there are ways to do it.
For instance, there's a piece of legislation that we're advocating for called the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. What this does is, instead of a PBS-style grant program, they essentially give tax credits to residents of the community that they can use to buy a subscription to a news organization, or make a donation to a local nonprofit news organization. It also has a tax credit for hiring journalists and another tax credit for small businesses to spend on advertising of local news. It gets government money pumped into the system, but the decisions about where it's going are essentially being made by consumers, not by someone who works at a government agency.
I think something like that could work as a way of helping local news and essentially pumping more money into the system without running into the problems of government control.
Interesting. The negative potential makes sense. But I think if you were to ask a random person on the street about news networks and trust, PBS would be at the top of that list.
They are trusted because people think of Sesame Street and educational programs and things that are non-controversial.
And the news that they do, like NewsHour, is not uncontroversial. It is an open question if you did that on a local level, whether you could pull it off. I'm not opposed to trying experiments in vain, but I do think, having just lived through the Trump administration, it's not that hard to imagine how, if it were done without serious firewalls and protections, the government could use it as a way to manipulate the press.
Yes. Do you think policy, or the FCC, can really make an impact?
God, I used to have a lot of opinions about that because I worked at the FCC for a couple of years, and the truth is that the regulatory regime had all sorts of impacts on local TV and local radio, but most of what's caused the current crisis is just a different set of problems. I would say that the regulatory regime right now is neither helpful nor harmful.
I do think there are huge opportunities for them to do more to help. For instance, the Federal Communications Commission periodically auctions off spectrum, which is what allows you to have wireless access and is also used by local TV stations. The FCC has been trying to get TV stations and radio stations to give up some of their spectrum, so it can go to AT&T and Verizon to give our phones faster access.
It makes total sense through a public policy lens, but what I would like to see happen is the government uses the proceeds from these auctions to help sustain local news. It generates billions of dollars and right now it just goes back into the Treasury.
Renato Ruggiero, Director General of the WTO (L), and Neil McMillan, President of the Negotiation Group on Basis Telecommunications, use their mobile phones after negotiations on the pact to liberalize world telecom trade in Geneva, February 15.
If it is this fixable, why is no one fixing it? Is it something people don’t actually care that much about?
I think the transformation of local news is such a recent phenomenon in some ways, it's just taking people a little time to understand how big a problem is and why we have to think very differently. It really wasn't that long ago that there was a perfectly healthy commercial business model for local news. The collapse has been so fast and so severe, but I do think it's fixable. Honestly, Report for America is part of what makes me optimistic, because you see these reporters covering mental health in Buffalo, housing in Charlotte, the rural economy in Wyoming, or education in Mississippi. Very quickly, they're doing stories of serious impact because there's so much that's not being covered right now. It may not be a financial impact, but you can see the impact on the community.
Sometimes the return is in dollars and cents. One of our Corp members named Zak Podmore, who works at the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, covered a story about how San Juan County in Utah, the poorest county in the state, was being double billed by their law firm. He found this just by going through the city budget. They were refunded about a hundred thousand dollars.
There's another study that showed that in communities where there wasn't enough local news, bond prices went up and the bond ratings went down, literally making it more costly for the city to operate. Usually, that leads to higher taxes or cutting spending because no one was watching and the investors knew. There are all sorts of studies that show when you have less journalism, you have more corruption and more waste.
Have you noticed particular outlets succeeding where others have failed?
That's a great question. The ones that seem to succeed, aren't relying mostly on advertising anymore. They either rely on subscriptions or it's a nonprofit from membership, or, before COVID, many were doing live events as a way of making money and as a way of engaging with the community. The most common thread is that they have to view themselves as community organizations. They're not just writing an article, putting it out there, and having that be the end of the relationship with the reader.
You need to build community to be successful. If you don't do it, you won't succeed. If you do do it, you still might not succeed, but it's a prerequisite. It's an essential part of it because it's how you make people feel like you're providing something of worth.
I could pull at this thread forever, but I want to be respectful of your time. Thank you.
It is sort of an exciting time at the same time that it is terrifying. There's more innovation going on on a local news level right now than we have seen in a long time. The desperation has led to all sorts of experimentation.
It's not all about the money, but a lot of it is. There's a lot of really good ideas and models out there now on how to do local journalism. If we can solve business model problems, we really will make a lot of progress.