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 Refugee Resettlement
by Matthew Soerens
August 26, 2021
This interview with Matthew Soerens, US Director of Church Mobilization and Advocacy for World Relief and the national coordinator for the Evangelical Immigration Table, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Does your work change as patterns of migration change? Does your work shift from the Southern border to Afghanistan for example?
It certainly does. In both roles, I work with faith-based constituencies on immigration advocacy. So the values and the principles that guide our work don't change — those are rooted in our understanding of the Bible — but of course, those are applied to what is happening in immigration policy.
My whole day has been consumed by the dynamics in Afghanistan and whether the U.S. is going to evacuate those who served alongside U.S. forces as translators. And before the dynamics changed so dramatically in Afghanistan, most of my conversations were about the DREAM Act, and what the solution is for Dreamers who have been in the United States for, in most cases, 15 or 20 years. The day-to-day elements of my work tend to be dictated by what's happening in the news, which is obviously directly affected by changes or proposed changes to immigration policy.
What are those conversations like? Are they prescriptive — do you layout what policy should be implemented? Or is it about logistics — what to do when communities are receiving people?
It's a little bit of both. World Relief is one of the nine national refugee resettlement agencies. For example, we have been actively preparing for months to receive what we anticipated would be a significantly higher number of arrivals from Afghanistan. That includes the logistics of finding housing, finding teams to help welcome people into communities, and raising private resources to augment the resources we get from the federal government for that process.
In terms of policy, of course, we don't get to ultimately decide who comes into the U.S. Those are policy decisions that were made largely by the president and the administration. We were grateful that the Obama administration did what they could back in 2012 with DACA, but it's clearly inadequate. We need Congress to act in order to provide a permanent solution so that Dreamers can get permanent legal status.
So I would say my work is a mix of speaking to the government, particularly Congress, and to congregations, particularly local churches. In both cases, it is about laying out the reasons why we, as Christians, think it’s so important to welcome immigrants. Last week I was in Montana speaking to a bunch of pastors and church leaders. This week I'm helping draft letters to the president related to the Afghanistan situation.
Do you have a sense of how people are interpreting what's happening with Afghanistan right now?
Yeah, that's a great question. I've not seen a poll on this, but anecdotally, we are seeing tons of concern and shock at the images that are coming out of Afghanistan. I think people are surprised that the administration hasn't apparently thought this through more carefully. We have known that the U.S. armed forces were going to be leaving Afghanistan for several months.
And if we are going to be leaving, it was pretty obvious that that would make it a much more dangerous situation for people who had served alongside the military. We've been saying for months that they ought to be evacuated to Guam if they can't be approved to be brought immediately to the United States. We respect the importance of processing and vetting, but you need to get these people out of there safely.
We were open to other ideas, but leaving them there, which is what's mostly happened thus far, is turning into a disaster. We are not giving up hope that the U.S. government will figure out a way to get people out, but it's becoming increasingly difficult.
Anecdotally, where do most of the refugees you work with end up? And what work do you do to prepare those communities?
Absolutely. There are nine national resettlement agencies, and World Relief is just one of those. Each of those agencies has local offices or affiliates in different parts of the United States. World Relief has 16 offices around the U.S. The number's gone down in the last few years with the decline of the Refugee Resettlement Program under the previous administration.
When people register as refugees or are approved for a special immigrant visa, which is very similar to refugees, but technically a different process, they are asked if there is a particular place they want to go where they might have a tie to someone. That happens all the time. Bhutanese refugees for whatever reason tend to want to go to Akron, Ohio. Somalis tend to want to go to Minneapolis, Minnesota. A significant share of the Afghans that we've received in the last five years have gone to Sacramento, California. That's where people have either a relative or maybe a close friend from the country of origin. We do our best to honor those requests wherever we can. That is not to say all Afghans will end up in Sacramento, but certain communities tend to draw people from particular countries of origin.
We spoke to somebody a couple of weeks ago who really focused on things like post entry care, what happens to migrants, what support does the government offer, and, in turn, how migrants feel about the government. How do you approach community work in a practical sense? What do you focus on and how do you feel those communities are responding?
I would say in general, the most pro-migrant, pro-refugee attitudes that we encounter are the communities that receive significant numbers of refugees and immigrants. That is basic contact theory.
That said, a big part of our work is building welcoming communities. We focus not only on the individuals who are arriving but on the receiving community, the American citizen residents. We are looking for opportunities to help address misconceptions. And we can all think of some of the misconceptions that are quite widespread, whether it's around refugee resettlement or immigrants in general.
We help to provide accurate information, present stories, whenever we can, and encourage first-person interactions when people can share their own stories. For faith communities, it is about drawing people back to their Christian beliefs. A lot of our work is leading Bible studies and pointing people to look more deeply at their own faith and how it might inform how they would respond. You know, some people will be moved by personal stories. For some, a moment in reading the Bible really captures their attention. For some, it is about getting a particular concern addressed with factual information. And often that is about how this isn't the economic issue that they have been led to believe it is.
How do you find success politically if immigration is not the most important issue to someone? There are some obvious other categories that seem like higher priority single issues than immigration to the particular group you work with.
We are careful to never say that immigration is the only policy issue that matters. We realize that there is a whole range of issues that matter that stem from root convictions. What we will say is regardless of who you vote for, we need to hold our elected officials accountable for pursuing policies that are just and compassionate. Elected officials are often more concerned about losing people who voted for them than they are about losing the votes they never expected to receive anyway.
For example, we do work with a lot of white evangelical Christians, and it is not a surprise to people that they vote primarily for Republicans. When President Trump, early in his administration, announced that they were stopping the Refugee Resettlement Program, we organized as quickly as we could and sent out an opposition statement with some really prominent evangelical leaders. In some ways it shouldn't matter whether it's a Republican or Democratic president, we think that there's a level of principle that ought to be guiding our response that is more important than partisanship.
A lot of people we've spoken to think comprehensive immigration reform is beyond us. There is no political will. How do you feel about that?
I certainly hear that critique and I'm not naive to think that comprehensive immigration reform would be easy. To be really clear, if they pass pieces of reform, that would be positive. We have been on the record in support of the Dream Act or something similar for farmworkers.
But, I don't think that either the Biden administration or Congress should give up too quickly on providing solutions to the broad range of systemic problems in our immigration laws. That includes addressing an earned legalization of some sort, far beyond just for Dreamers and some essential workers. It goes to addressing the future flow of migration to the United States, recognizing that the reason we often tend to have people unlawfully in the country is that they didn't qualify for a visa in the first place, even though there often is a job waiting for them if they managed to get here. It goes to the fact that we've got to have secure borders. That doesn't mean a closed border, but we ought to know who's coming into the country and do everything reasonably possible to keep out those who would seek to do harm.
That is the basic framework that president Bush supported in terms of comprehensive immigration reform. Obama supported a bill along those lines. It got through the US Senate with 68 votes in 2013, but the House of Representatives refused to bring it to a floor vote. It probably would have passed if it had come to the floor. Given the current control of Congress, I think there ought to be a good faith effort to pass something similar. I think we give up too quickly on the idea that this whole situation needs a solution. We were supportive of President Biden's initial US Citizenship Act of 2021 as a proposal. We think that's a positive first step. I'm concerned that it was only a first step. It didn't go anywhere beyond that, in part, because it wasn't quite as comprehensive as past efforts.
What we found with our constituencies — and I suspect this is true for a lot of Americans — is that amnesty means that there's a violation of an immigration law somewhere, but there is no real consequence to that. It's hard to get majority support for that. That doesn't mean that people want all migrants deported, that means that they want there to be some sort of appropriate penalty, which could be a fine. That was part of the 2013 bill. It's part of the 2006 bill that passed the US Senate as well.
In our work, we've described that as a restitution-based immigration reform. Any good faith comprehensive immigration reform would say, there was a violation of law, we're acknowledging that with an appropriate penalty that demonstrates that the law matters, but it is not compassionate to break up immigrant families, nor is it in the economic interests of the United States to enact mass deportation, which is basically what it would mean to fully enforce all of our existing laws.
I think that there's a lot more support for that then than people might presume. But, sometimes I fear the conversation starts from polls and there's no coming together to say what can get both Democratic and Republican support in the U.S. Senate. Maybe I am naive to think that that's still possible, but it did just happen on infrastructure. There are some issues where it might be possible to forge that consensus. That is going to require will, and some give and take from both sides.
On the sort of side of the house and the Senate – who do you feel like is leading the movement? Who do we look at? Who do we put pressure on? Who has political and cultural capital to do something?
Yeah, that's a great question. Both on the Republican and the Democratic sides, I would look at some of the people who have led the way in forging some bipartisan consensus on other issues like the infrastructure bill. I also think frankly, the President has a really important role. He is the convener who knows the U.S. Senate better than anybody from his many decades of service there who has good relationships on both sides of the aisle. We would love to see the President convene those conversations and say, where can we find consensus that could actually get the 60 votes necessary to pass. And, hopefully, get a lot more.
In 2013, more than two-thirds of the U.S. Senators were willing to support that legislation, and right now Democrats have control. Of course, there is still the filibuster. I would be happy for positive legislation to happen through whatever process. However, I'd much prefer it to be more comprehensive and go through a process that actually had broad bipartisan support.
And I think that's important also for the receiving community. Just because a bill passes into law, doesn't mean that everyone in America celebrates it and embraces the people directly affected by the law. I think that embrace is much more likely if they are able to earn legal status through a process that has the support of people on both sides of the political divide.
Even when there does seem to be support, there are these larger moments that really kill empathy for this issue. Bush campaigned on immigration reform. He won, what, 40% of the Latino vote? Vincente Fox is at the White House and it's great. And then 9/11 happens. That obviously is an extreme example – but COVID too has had a similar effect. It is an issue that can be pointed to as a security concern, a public health concern, an economic concern, on and on and on.
I agree with your assessment and unfortunately, we've certainly seen that around COVID. And to a certain extent, it's understandable.
I mean, a year and a half ago when the world was shutting down, I think people felt like, wait, why do we need to prioritize letting other people in the United States right now when the whole world is locked down? Now, we're in a very different spot. We have vaccines available that are largely effective. Testing is no longer an issue. Refugees can be tested just before they get on a plane.
The flip side of the COVID dynamic is that there's been a lot of focus on essential workers and just how many of those people are actually immigrants and to what extent we relied on people to continue to have our food supply.
Frankly, I think that's part of why, if we see positive legislation in the near term, it most likely will be something around farmworkers. Part of our job as advocates for immigrants is to help make those connections and to help people realize that sometimes these issues are more complicated than the surface level of concerns that people may have.
Sure, but then there’s Title 42. I think that that was a moment of manipulation in order to expel people – and Biden has kept it in place.
We have been very critical of Title 42, both when it was started by President Trump and when it was continued under President Biden. And, in some ways, the case of Title 42 was even weaker under President Biden.
I mean, it's really hard to pretend that this is really primarily about public health instead of about managing the number of asylum requests. It is very clear that it was being used to send people, to send children, back to human traffickers. That's not acceptable. We need to find a way to both respect laws that protect unaccompanied children and that do our best to mitigate public health risks. In April of 2020, we made a statement saying that we cannot do this. Particularly for asylum seekers, the case for using Title 42 is only growing weaker. The further we get into this pandemic, as we have vaccines and the widespread availability of testing, the rationale gets weaker. No epidemiologists think that COVID spread is being caused by the relatively small number of migrants.
That's not to say we shouldn't have good systems in place to make sure that everyone who comes in, who might've been exposed, does not expose anyone else. But, we shouldn't sacrifice our national values of being a place of refuge for those who are fleeing persecution.