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
Another Way to Colonize You
by Cinthya Santos-Briones
August 30, 2021
This interview with Cinthya Santos-Briones, artist, anthropologist, ethnohistorian and community organizer, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Cinthya | I was born in Mexico. I studied ethnohistory and anthropology. For a decade I worked as a researcher through The National Institute of Anthropology and History. Focused on indigenous communities in Mexico and in New York on issues on indigenous migration, prehispanic and colonial codex, textiles, and traditional medicine.
In 2016, I graduated from the program in the International Center of Photography, in documentary practice and photojournalist. Now, as an artist, I use different methodologies to tell the stories through an interdisciplinary approach that juxtaposes visual storytelling with activism, ethnography, popular education, community work, and healing. With this methodology, I seek to create more democratic narratives, where photographers give agency to the people that I am photographing.
My practice is also focused on creating an aesthetic and political work that serves as a reflection of social empowerment. At the same time, I want my work to have a community impact. My work defies stereotypes of representation. I do a lot of work and reflection around how the media has been representing migrant communities, communities of color, and working-class communities.
My family immigrated to the United States in the eighties, in search of the American dream. A lot of the work I do is personal at some point.
frank | You move through disciplines and mediums, but I also think you move through narratives. You look at immigration and memory and identity and you do it through historical context and ethnography, but also, audio and visuals. What are you trying to learn? What are you trying to discover when you approach a new subject or start a new project?
For me, I think that I am learning all the time. I come from a background of studying ethnohistory and anthropology, and I was more objective in my projects then. Now, little by little, I see myself trying to un-learn the methodologies that I learned when I was studying.
For me it is not just about telling the truth of the situation of migrant communities, it is also about trying to work together in more collective and more holistic ways to tell the story. Migration stories have been overtold. How can I, as a woman of color and a creator, tell the same story but in a different way? When I start a project, I ask myself why I think I am the right person to tell this story. Why is this story important? What kind of impact is this story going to have in the communities that I am working with? And, how can I challenge stereotypes?
Cinthya Santos-Briones
Take my first photographic project, abuelas,as an example. I wanted to speak about the elders in my community. At the same time, I wanted to speak about migration and how difficult it is to try to find work when you are 60 or 70 years old. I wanted to speak about the territory — the places we recreate with memory. I also wanted to talk about the agency of these women and their place as the matriarchs of the family.
These images seek to contemplate the women’s relationship to place and the shaping and appropriation of their environment. And how the home's decorations become part of the women's wider symbolic recreation of culture, memory, and ownership beyond borders.
I photograph the environmental portraits in a participatory manner. I ask the women: "How do you like to be seen or represented through photography?" They choose how and where they want to be seen in their homes and what outfits they want to wear. The series seeks to offer them the opportunity to face the camera and be depicted in a way that reflects their own sense of identity.
I am really learning how to do better work, not just as a photographer, but as a human being.
Do you feel like you’ve found a way to execute the work so it represents the experiences you’re having?
Yeah, I ask people how they want to be represented. I show them the photos I take. When they are happy with the result, I can feel something shifting in how we are represented. I like how Ariella Azoulay in, “The Civil Contract of Photography,“ says that the viewers have the responsibility of observing photos. It is a citizenry exercise. I am interested in the relationship between the photographer, those who are photographed, and the viewers.
Project Infancia, is, in terms of age, is on the opposite end of the spectrum, it explores childhood in relation to migration? What has focusing on that part of a person's life in relation to migration exposed to you?
I think there have been various motives and interests that have pushed me to write and document childhood in relation to migration. Of course, one of the reasons was the anti-immigrant political climate during the Trump administration and its zero-tolerance law. Seeing the images of the incarcerated children crying as their parents were arrested by the immigration police moved my heart.
I have long been the legal guardian of migrant children who crossed the border unaccompanied. Being a guardian of these children has made me more aware of the psychosocial processes that these infants go through. It is a radical act of solidarity and empathy, which makes me interested in this topic. But it is also a personal reason since my cousin emigrated to this country when he was a child. He grew up as an undocumented child. So did my husband and many of my friends.
During the Trump administration, many families with final deportation orders took sanctuary in churches to fight their immigration cases. By documenting these families, I realized how these policies irreversibly impact children. At that time the media spoke of the children imprisoned in detention centers, there was little attention on children living in sanctuary with their parents. These children lived as "refugees" in churches and at the same time lived in confinement and house arrest with their parents. When a migrant takes sanctuary they are in a space of imprisonment. They cannot leave the churches because they run the risk of being deported. These events have a psychosomatic and social impact on children.
Cinthya Santos-Briones
When working with children in sanctuary and with migrant children specifically, I seek to understand how childhood is lived when violence accompanies you. What does childhood look like when violence threatens you to drown you alive? What does it mean to be an immigrant child?
A lot of this project was about trying to understand how the law impacts your childhood. Childhood is supposed to be this period of time where you play, where you imagine, where you enjoy life. But, that is not true for all children around the world — especially for children who are facing the migration process or are in sanctuary with their parents.
Cinthya Santos-Briones
One of the things I ask myself when I am going through photos with children, is, in what bio-political context are these images created? What are the circumstances of this image? What is the destination of the images?
And for whom?
Yes. For whom, too. What is the political and economic interface of this work? There was this one photo of a child that was crying at the border, while her mother was arrested, and for me, that seemed very violent.
How can I tell the story of violence in deportation and migration, without replicating the same violence? How do I create stories that tell the truth, but don’t capitalize on people’s crying, that don't show people in a vulnerable situation, and thus avoid reproducing more trauma?
We've spoken to academics and lawyers, union organizers, politicians, but we haven't really spoken to many artists. I'm curious how you see your work as a photojournalist and multidisciplinary artist fitting into a larger framework of practices and policies for migration.
When I started taking photos I began to reflect on how the stories of migrants have been exploited through images. There I questioned how my practice could challenge a visual culture centered on colonialism.
There is a market for violent images that recreate trauma and suffering. Like the images of war. There is a status quo when it comes to what kind of images fit in the publishing market and what is visually salable. Capitalism corrupts everything, even the fight for human rights.
Cinthya Santos-Briones
I see photography as a practice to create community and a means of transmitting restorative messages. Although photography has its beginnings well-rooted in colonialism and the expansion of imperialism.
In a historical context where excessive inflation of images prevails, it is important to learn to generate tools that help us politically and critically question the abundance of images, through socially committed narratives that break with the codified patterns of visual culture and exercise, in turn, plural, disavowal authorship, and communal practices.
With the people with whom I collaborate to make images, we talk a lot about the representation of the image of migrants. I like to approach it in a collaborative process: the people I work with give me ideas. There is a shared authorship. When we take photographs, the people who decided to become images have a component of authorship and agency.
For me, as an artist and as a migrant, making political art is not enough. I feel that it is necessary to get involved with the struggle of the working class. And in turn, create a process that goes against the capitalist demands of the market around photography.
Can you talk about Spaces of Detention?
Cinthya Santos-Briones
This project began inspired by the work I had been doing for years as a volunteer in an organization called New Sanctuary, which accompanies families in their struggle to remain in the United States. I've been working at the immigration legal clinic and have accompanied many to the immigration court for their check-ins.
Through that experience, listening to the stories of people who had been detained -which I think is a euphemism, because migrants are not detained but imprisoned- or who had to go to court or had an ankle monitor, I decided to create this body of work. At first, I did a miniature review of the work of other artists who had been working on this topic, and I began to think about how to tell the story of immigrant incarceration or "detention" in a new way. I decided to focus on architecture and how it can shape or change the mental health and social interaction of migrants, their families, and communities. So, I began photographing the exterior of these jail buildings in upstate New Jersey, in Bergen, Essex, the Hudson counties, and Elizabeth City. These prisons where they profit from the bodies of migrants are not isolated cases. But part of a system that daily affects approximately 52,000 immigrants detained in more than 200 detention centers across the country.
Cinthya Santos-Briones
The question for me was how anti-immigrant policies in the United States are physically expressed through the structure of detention spaces. These places are designed with little natural light, no windows, no privacy, no recreational spaces, lit with fluorescent lights all day, no access to medical or legal care. I was thinking that we don't need any more photos of the people who have been detained. So I started taking photos of the spaces in these prisons and then making collages, in collaboration with the stories of the people I was interviewing. Then through a series of art workshops, I would ask them to write or draw about their experience in these places.
From the perspective of environmental psychology, it is thought that if the environment in which one lives is oppressive and dominated by negative emotions, the residents' distress will be evident.
We have had this conversation about the criminalization of immigration, which is completely legal. Obviously, you're allowed to be a refugee –
In this country, migrating is a crime, and requesting asylum is punished.
It is illogical that the rulers of this country, who create anti-immigrant policies, do not understand that people come to this country because in their countries there are wars, there is violence, and the only option they have is to migrate. People have to cross continents, jungles, and desert because life in their country is unsustainable. Migrants are willing to go through various types of atrocities on their way to the promised land, that is, to the United States.
The message is clear, if you are immigrating, if you want a better life, then you have to suffer. The state and the corporations realized that there is an economy of migrant bodies. Policies against migrants are expressed through the physical space and the architecture of detention centers and prisons.
In the workshops I have done with migrants who have been in these spaces, they tell their experiences through written narratives. There my work is focused on how we can deconstruct the category of criminal. How can we heal after arrest? How can we understand that it is not our fault that we are here? How can I use art as a healing process?
I think that on these issues one cannot be neutral with one’s work. One must take a political position in the face of so much dehumanization.
Through this work, I made a vocabulary of detention. In order to reflect on how the vocabulary we use daily categorizes bodies: criminal, illegal, undocumented, extraterrestrial, alien. For example, when I was doing the sanctuary project, I found in the newspapers of the 80s and 90s, the use of the word "alien" to refer to migrants. The vocabulary has been internalized in our bodies, violent, and marginalizes our bodies and consciences.
My dad immigrated from Brazil to the United States in the seventies. I found this legal paperwork recently where government documents referred to him as an alien, which feels so crazy and dated.
I know. I became a citizen two weeks ago and I joke all the time that I am an alien, but I guess I am not one any longer.
In the past democracies operated with caste systems — we were mestizos, mulattoes, indigenous, native. They want to put us in a box to categorize us. If you are in these boxes you can not succeed. And there is something about that internalized in our bodies. As Marx used to say, “our social class is internalized in our self.” There is an ideology that normalizes exploitation and the atrocities we see inflicted on those who come to our land.
Who is really invested in changing things when we're addicted to the experience of cheap labor?
People always say that the system is broken. The system is not broken. The system is designed to work like this. This system wants undocumented people to work with no resources. It is not hard to violate your rights if you have no papers. It's not hard to underpay you. It is not hard to exploit you. It is another way to colonize you.