interviews
Water and the American West
by Richard Frank
October 25, 2021
This interview with Richard Frank, professor of environmental practice at the UC Davis School of Law and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Can you tell me a little bit about the story of water and how it's tied to the West, and to California in particular?
Richard | A friend of mine who's a Court of Appeals Justice here in California wrote an opinion on a water law dispute and started it with the quote, "the history of California is written on its waters." And I think that the point is true of the entire American West.
Water policy and legal issues are inextricably tied to the development of the Western United States; water is the limiting factor in so many ways to settlement, to economic development, to prosperity, and to the environment and environmental preservation.
Can you talk about the difference between groundwater and surface water– and the policies that regulate each?
There are really two types of water when it comes to human consumption. There's surface water: that is the water that is transmitted by lakes, rivers, and streams. Then there is groundwater, and a substantial amount of water that Americans and the American West rely on is groundwater. That is water that is stored in groundwater aquifers, which are naturally occurring groundwater basins. Both groundwater and surface water are critical to the American West and its economy and its culture.
Traditionally a couple of things are important to note, first of all, water is finite. Second, water gets allocated in the Western United States generally at the state level. There's a limited federal role. Primarily, policy decisions about who gets how much water for what purpose are made state by state.
I think allocation is really interesting in that it's more state-level than federal. How was water and the allocation of water in California designed? Is it a public-private combination? What goes on in terms of the infrastructure of water?
Another very good question. The answer is it depends. Most of our water infrastructure is public in nature.
Again, in the American West, the regulation of water rights is generally done at the state level, but the federal government, historically, has a major water footprint in the American West because it has been federal dollars and federal design and management that really controlled much of the major water infrastructure in the American West — you know, Hoover Dam, and the complex system of dams and reservoirs on the Colorado River in California, with the Central Valley Project that was built and managed by the federal government with Shasta Dam on the upper Sacramento River as the centerpiece of that project. But we also have a California State Water Project, the key facility being the Oroville Dam and reservoir on the Southern River that is managed by state water managers. If we were starting over, that kind of parallel system would make no particular engineering or operational sense.
But, we are captive to our history.
And then you have these massive systems of aqueducts and canals that move water from one place to another throughout the American West. They are particularly responsible for moving water from surface water storage facilities to population centers. In the last 50 to 75 years, these population centers have really expanded dramatically, so you need massive infrastructure to deliver water from those storage facilities, the dams, and reservoirs, which generally are located in remote areas to the population centers. So it takes a lot of time and energy to transport the water, from where it is captured and stored to where it is needed for human use.
California has faced continuous drought – what measures is the state taking now to manage water?
Just to frame the issue a little bit — we have, as I mentioned, a growing population in the American Southwest at a time when the amount of available water is shrinking due to drought and due to the impacts of climate change. We have growing human demand for residential and commercial purposes and at the same time, we have a shrinking water supply. That is a huge looming crisis.
And it is beginning to play out in real-time. You see that playing out in real-time. For example, several different states and Mexico rely on Colorado River flows based on an allocation system that was created in the 1920s, which is overly optimistic about the amount of available water. From the 1920s until now, that water supply has decreased, and decreased, and decreased. Now you have interstate agreements, and in the case of Mexico, international agreements that allocate the finite Colorado river water supplies based on faulty, now obsolete, information. It is a real problem.
What measures do you take now, knowing this information?
If you look at the US Drought Monitor, it is obvious the problem is not limited to the Colorado River. We are in a mega-drought, so cutbacks are being imposed by federal and state water agencies to encourage agricultural, urban, and commercial water users to cut their water use and, and stretch finite supplies as much as possible through conservation efforts.
In California, we have the State Water Resources Control Board, the state water regulator in California, and they have issued curtailment orders. Meaning, they have told water rights holders, many of whom have had those water rights for over a hundred years, that, for the first time, the water that they feel they are entitled to, is not available. Local water districts are also issuing water conservation mandates; the San Francisco water department is doing that, in Los Angeles, the metropolitan water district, is urging urban users to curtail their efforts.
And then agriculture. Agricultural users — farmers and ranchers — have had to get water rights in many cases through the federal government, as the federal government is the operator of these water projects. They have contracts with water users, individual farmers, ranchers, or districts, and they are now issuing curtailment orders. They're saying, we know you contracted for X amount of water for this calendar year, but we are telling you because of the drought shortages we don't have that water to supply. Our reservoirs are low at Lake Shasta or at the Oroville Dam.
When you drive from San Francisco to LA on the five, you see a lot of signage from the agricultural farming community about water. There's apparently some frustration about this. What are the other options for them?
About 80% of all human consumed water goes to agriculture. That is by far the biggest component of water use, as opposed to 20% used for urban and commercial, and industrial purposes.
Over the years, ranchers and farmers, and agricultural water districts assumed that the water would always be there — as we all do.
And the farmers and ranchers have, in hindsight, exacerbated the problem by bringing more and more land into production. You see on those drives between San Francisco and Los Angeles, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, all these orchards are being planted. Orchards are more lucrative crops than row crops — cotton, alfalfa, and rice. But, if you are growing a row crop, you can leave the land fallow in times of drought.
We don't have to plant. If the water stopped there, or if it's too expensive to get, it may make economic sense, but if you have an orchard or a vineyard it's a high value, those are high value crops, you don't have that operational flexibility and they need to be irrigated in wet years and in dry years. Now, you see these orchards, which were only planted a few years ago, are now being uprooted because the farmers realized that they don't have the water necessary to keep those vineyards and orchards alive. For ranchers, the same thing is true with their herds. They don’t have enough water for their livestock.
The water shortage has never been drier than it is right now. Farmers and ranchers are being deprived of water that they traditionally believed was theirs and they're very understandably, very unhappy about it. They see it as a threat to their livelihood and to the livelihood of the folks who work for them. Their anger and frustration are to be expected, but it's nobody's fault.
To say, as some farmers do, that it is mismanagement by state and federal government officials, I think is overly simplistic and misplaced in the face of a mega-drought. Everybody's going to have to sacrifice. Everybody's going to have to be more efficient in how they use water. All sectors are going to need to be more efficient with the water that does exist.
Looking at this percentage breakdown of water use – is it actually important for individual users to change their water habits?
Well, every little bit helps. When you're talking about homeowners, about 70% of urban water use is for outdoor irrigation. So we're talking parks and cemeteries and golf courses and folks' yards. You know, that used to be considered part of that American dream and the California dream — you would have a big lawn in front of your house and behind your house. Truth be told, that has never made much sense in an arid environment. That's where the water savings in urban areas is critical in the way it really involves aesthetics rather than critical human needs, like water for drinking and bathing and sanitation purposes. There is a growing movement away from big lawns, and away from the type of landscaping that you see in the Eastern US — there is no drought in the Eastern United States. As Hurricane Ida and other recent storms have shown, the problem is too much water, or rather than too little in most of the Eastern United States. So it really is a tale of two countries.
We just need to recognize that the American West is an arid region. It has always been an arid region, we can't make the desert bloom with water that doesn't exist. We need to be more efficient in how we allocate those water supplies. And it seems to me in an urban area, the best way to conserve and most effective way is to reduce urban landscaping, which is the major component of urban water use.
You also write about water markets and making them better – for those who don’t know, what is the water market?
Water markets, that is, the voluntary transfer of water between water users, is more robust in some other Western states. Again Arizona and New Mexico come to mind. California somewhat surprisingly is behind the curve. We are in the dark ages compared to other states. Water markets are kind of anecdotal. There is not much of a statewide system. It is done at the local level, through individual transactions without much oversight and without much transparency. And I have concerns about all of those things.
I believe conceptually watermarks are a way to stretch scarce, finite water resources to make water use more efficient. I can, for example, allow farmers or ranchers to sell water to urban uses or commercial usage or factories in times of drought.
Farmers sometimes can make more money by farming water, than they can by farming crops.
There are efficiencies to be gained here.
The problem in my view is really one of transparency. The water markets are not publicly regulated, and some of the people who are engaging in water transactions like it that way, frankly, they want to operate under the radar.
In my opinion, water markets need to be overseen by a public entity rather than private or nonprofit entities. We need oversight and transparency, so that folks like you and myself can follow the markets to see who's selling water to whom, for what purpose, and make sure that those water transfers serve the public interests and not just the private interests.
There have been a number of stories in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Salt Lake City Tribune about efforts in some parts to privatize water transfer. Hedge fund managers are buying and selling water, as a means of profiting. And it strikes me that when you're talking about an essential public resource — and in California, it is embedded in the law that public water is an inherently public resource, that water is owned by the public and it can be used for private purposes, but it is an inherently public resource — the idea of commoditizing water through the private, opaque markets is very troublesome to me. I think it represents a very dangerous trend and one that needs to be corrected and avoided.
Why is California so behind?
There's no good reason for it. It's largely inexplicable that since the state was created on September 9th, 1860, we've been fighting over water. In the 19th century, it was miners versus farmers ranchers. In the 20th century, with the growth of urban communities, the evolution of California into one of the most populous states with 40 million Californians, it has been a struggle between urban and agricultural uses of water.
In the second half of the 20th century, there was a recognition that some component of water had to be left in streams to protect ecosystems, landscape, and wildlife, including the threatened and endangered wildlife. That suggestion has made agricultural users in California angry. You will see those signs that allude to the idea that food and farming are more important than environmental values. I don't happen to believe that's true. I believe both are critically important to our society. But the advocates for the environment have a proverbial seat at the water table. So that's another demand for water allocation that exists.
Do you maintain optimism?
Yes. I think it's human nature to look on the bright side. I try to do that through research scholarships and teaching. There are models for how we can do this better in the United States. Israel and Saudi Arabia and Singapore are far more efficient with their water policies and efforts. Australia went through a severe megadrought. They came out of it a few years ago, but they used that opportunity to dramatically reform their water allocation systems. That's an additional model. I think most people would agree in hindsight that their previous system was antiquated, and not able to meet the challenges of climate change and the growing water shortage in some parts of the world.
Here in the United States, we can learn from those efforts. There are also some ways to expand the water supply. Desalination for one. Again, Singapore and Saudi Arabia have led the world in terms of removing the salt content from ocean water and increasing water supply that way. In Carlsbad, California, north of San Diego, we have the biggest desalination plant in the United States right now, and that is currently satisfying a significant component of the San Diego metropolitan areas’ water needs. It's more expensive than other water supplies, but the technology is getting more refined, so the cost of desalinated water is coming down at a time when other water supplies, due to shortages and the workings of the free market are going up.
At some point, they're going to meet or get closer. Unlike some of my environmental colleagues, I think desalination is an important part of the equation.
In a proposal that came up in the recall election, one of the candidates was talking about how we just need to build a canal from the Mississippi River to California to take care of all our problems. That ignores political problems associated with that effort, as well as the massive infrastructure costs that would be required to build and maintain a major aqueduct for 2000 miles from the Mississippi to California. That's just not going to happen. Some of those pie in the sky thoughts of how we expand the water supply, I think, are unrealistic.
interviews
A Lack of Political Will, Pt. I
by Rey Koslowski
August 5, 2021
This interview with Rey Koslowski, Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Rey | My research is largely on international migration and border security, primarily looking at international cooperation on migration. I'm particularly interested in the politics of immigration policy-making. I'm also interested in emigration — policies regarding exit and the impact of immigrants on their home country politics.
I have been doing this for way too many years, several decades now. My research was originally focused on migration within the European Union. Gradually over time, the focus has moved more to US immigration policymaking and has since branched out from there to comparing the US with Canada and Australia, and even countries like China.
I compare migration policy in different parts of the world and put the United States in a comparative perspective, but also examine the broader consequences of migration for international relations.
I love talking to people who have studied this for a long time because even to my layman's ear, the arguments about borders and immigration are stale. There is a consistent level of migration happening, I think about 3.3% worldwide, and I wonder –
I'm gonna have to correct you here. I believe what you are referring to is the UN's figures on the international migrant stock. There are 281 million international migrants in the world, which is approximately 3.5% of the world's population right now. Migrant stock is not about the people who are migrating (or migrant flows), but rather those who have migrated, according to the UN’s definition, the number of people who are outside of their state of birth or nationality for more than a year. So that number includes my 90-year-old aunt who came to the United States in the 1960s, but it also includes some of the refugees from the DRC who are now in Albany.
I like to think in terms of the broader concept of global mobility, which includes all people who have crossed international borders for any length of time, for any purpose. For example, this includes the 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals in 2019, more than doubling 673 million arrivals in 2000, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. I’ve estimated that there were well over 2 billion international border crossings per year. That’s, of course, before COVID-19 travel restrictions were imposed worldwide last year. When you say all these people are still migrating, that perhaps gets to the issue a little bit better.
I guess I mean, more generally, that there’s a consistency to human movement over time.
Yes, the number of migrants as a percentage of the world population has been consistently around 3% to 3.5% since I started studying this decades ago. So it's remained fairly consistent but relatively small. The majority of people never leave their country of birth, even Americans. 44% of Americans have passports and fewer than half of Americans have traveled abroad. If you think about large populations of India and Sub-Saharan Africa and even China for that matter, large majorities of those populations never will leave their country. Those who cross borders need to have sufficient resources to do so, whether as a short-term tourist or a permanent immigrant. Migrants are not the poorest of the poor. In contrast, the number of international border crossings has increased dramatically over the past few decades mostly because a relatively small but growing percentage of the world’s population has enough money to travel internationally – for some, many times in their lifetimes and even many times per year.
I want to talk about border security in the U.S. You look at a place like El Paso, it’s been increasingly militarized over the last few decades. But has that done anything to deter migration? Is there a correlation between borders and security in a tangible way?
Let me start with the question of deterring migration. Most of the focus has been on unauthorized migration when we talk about the border.
There have been many episodes of "securing the border" by either hiring more border patrol agents or building more fences — this is referred to as increased border security or the militarization of the border.
In the mid-1990s Operation Hold the Line and Operation Gatekeeper stationed border patrol agents every hundred yards along the border to deter people from coming. Border Patrol also put up fences so that people trying to cross in urban areas would have to go around through mountains and deserts. The thinking was that migrants wouldn't cross where it is so dangerous. Well, guess what, they continued to cross and as a result, we have more people dying in the desert.
And then of course after 9/11, there was an additional focus on border fencing, through the Secure Fence Act in 2006. But despite all of those resources, the population of unauthorized migrants in the United States basically increased from around 6 million in 1996 to about 12 million in 2007. And it's been around 11 million the last few years.
I would suggest that all of this fencing and increased Border Patrol staffing didn't reduce the unauthorized population in the United States. In fact, Doug Massey and others have made the argument that essentially what happened is that people who had been going back and forth, particularly in agriculture, basically, were now fenced in. Instead of going back and forth to be with their families in the off-season after they made some money, families started to reconstitute themselves in the United States, and were, in most cases, smuggled in. That's how we got to this point.
We have very little enforcement of employer sanctions, people who hire unauthorized migrant workers.
There is a fairly good correlation between the business cycle and migration. During the Great Recession, for example, there were fewer apprehensions along the border and many more people leaving the United States. It's not surprising that as we see more demand for labor, we see more migration.
You touched on symbolic politics as a way to look like someone is doing something. Why does that still work?
One thing to be clear about is that many permanent residents and naturalized citizens compete in similar labor markets with unauthorized migrant workers. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, labor unions were pushing for tougher border controls and to get employer sanctions. When labor unions were stronger back then, Democratic politicians would often say, "we are in favor of legal migration, but we need to stop illegal migration.”
One of the reasons that we've seen a certain realignment politically is because along comes a guy who has been employing unauthorized migrant workers, is probably one of the best at practicing these symbolic politics of border control, and starts his campaign no less with this issue. And then he becomes the “champion of the working class.”
Democrats also used to oppose NAFTA and trade liberalization, if you go back to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In many ways, Trumpism was a means of taking away those issues from the Democrats that appealed to the economic interests of the working class. Keep in mind how well Trump did with Latino voters in 2020. This was a surprise for a lot of people, but a lot of these economic issues resonated and particularly resonated in the Southwest.
How should today’s left respond to these claims about immigration and migration?
I think there needs to be a bit of a rethinking and relistening to a broader range of constituencies that are concerned about economic competition from unauthorized migrants. I think that is a starting point.
Gallup for many, many years has asked the public, "Do you think that the level of immigration in the United States should be decreased, increased or kept at the same level?" And for a long time, the majority of Americans thought that it should be decreased or kept at the same level while fewer than 20 percent thought it should be increased. Now there are more people who would say we need more immigration. But, I think in general, the percentage of those in the middle, is shrinking. We are polarized in the way we are approaching the politics of immigration.
And, if you look at all comprehensive immigration reform efforts in the past, reform has only been enacted through coalitions of Republicans and Democrats. It's really hard to see anything like that occurring in the current Congress. Part of the challenge here is that everyone feels like the system is broken, but we don't have the wherewithal to politically address this.
Disappointing.