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
It's All About the Money
by Mike Williams
October 20, 2021
This interview with Mike Williams, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Mike | I'm on the energy and environment team, but my focus is on how we put forward energy, environmental, and climate policy in a way that supports working people. My background is working at the intersection of labor and environmental movements. I spent 12 years at the BlueGreen Alliance, focused on passing some significant climate, energy, and environmental policy alongside the labor movement.
frank | How has your work been lately?
Busy, but positive. I think there's a lot of good things that are on the horizon.
I think it's nice that everyone is starting to engage in infrastructure. Does it feel like people are finally paying attention to some of this work you’ve been doing?
Yeah, when I worked for the BlueGreen Alliance, we started pushing the connection between solving the climate crisis and remaking our infrastructure. I think we started really putting it out as a public proposal in 2012, with a report called Making the Grade, when Superstorm Sandy hit New York City. So yes. Been at this for quite a while. It's phenomenal that this has finally broken through, that folks have made the connection between climate change and infrastructure, and that hopefully, we can get to some significant solutions.
To look at the infrastructure as it exists is to realize how massive it is in scale, but also how regional it is. How do you start thinking about modernizing the infrastructure and outlining priorities?
It's an incredibly important question and it's one that gets into the nuts and bolts of how you actually implement infrastructure policy. Some folks think it can be quite boring, but it is so important because what this will eventually come down to is actually building projects that change how our systems work. We have to think about it in a couple of different ways. One, there's obviously the function of the project. We have to make sure that whether we're rebuilding roads, rebuilding bridges, building transit systems, repairing the electric grid, or rebuilding water systems, they have to be safe and reliable. In the end, we're humans who need these systems to live and to have a decent quality of life.
The mindset around infrastructure in the past has been "we need to get the best bang for our buck." There needs to be a better purpose for our infrastructure projects. In addition to being safe and reliable, they need to meet the moment and achieve the goals that we as a society have. We need to make sure that our infrastructure projects think about their goals in a holistic manner. How are our goals lifting up communities and working for people who live in them? The projects need to be paying people decent wages, providing benefits, and using unionized labor. The projects need to pollute less, or potentially eradicate pollution at the point source. So that it's making everything around it better.
When we think about reductions, specifically reducing our emissions by 50 percent, what steps need to happen for that to be seriously attempted or achieved?
Before the last nine months, I would have been pretty worried that we could get to that metric, but with the investments at the forefront in Congress right now, I think we can get there.
When we sit down and we again look at it comprehensively, each system has its role to play. Some more than others, but they all add to emissions. When you think of the big ones, like the electric system, the shift to renewables and electrification is huge.
How do we get to zero emissions? Renewables are the biggest driver of that, but additionally, there needs to be a corresponding investment in transmission and storage. We need to be able to build transmission projects to move that electricity to the population centers where people need it. These renewables are to a certain extent intermittent, so we need high capacity transmission, and be able to store energy and then deliver it when people need it.
The technologies are there. We just need to be able to deploy them, at scale. We need rapid deployment of electric vehicles, and we need a major expansion of electric vehicle infrastructure. That's not just charging stations, but an updated and functional electric grid that can deal with all of these vehicles being plugged in.
All of these pieces together can take us beyond the emissions reductions set forth in the Paris Agreement. It can get us on the path to a 50% emissions reduction, which President Biden has called for. But again, this is across multiple sectors. I didn't even get into manufacturing. I didn't get into municipal wastewater management, so on and so forth. They all have their roles to play, but it's that direct investment that will get us there.
As far as implementation goes, how does this rollout? The scale makes it seem top-down.
The coordination from local all the way up to the federal government will be critical.
There are municipal planning organizations in every city across America that are specifically focused on planning for infrastructure projects in their area. So, whether that is Austin, Texas figuring out what we are going to do with their transit system, or whether it is Trenton, New Jersey saying their road situation is a mess, all these planning organizations have put forward their ideas of what would we do if we had this money?
Now it is a matter of starting to put those ideas into motion. The money is hopefully coming. A lot of the planning has already been done locally. The federal government has the capacity to start to approve currents and future projects quickly, and then it's just going to start to move.
But, there isn't much planning needed. A lot of this stuff has been thought out. A lot of it is fairly straightforward. For example, there's been work from the Department of Interior for more than a decade, specifically on how we permit and locate offshore wind projects. These projects need an injection of funding right now from the federal government, and we need to set forward clear goals for what that funding is used for. And so, again to harp on it, the bills that are going through Congress right now do both of those things. It's helping us meet the goal that we need to reduce emissions by 50%, and it's providing the money to back that up. Once we give the money to local municipalities, I have full faith that it can be done.
I wanted to ask about challenges that rural areas face in terms of climate and adaptation, that are different from cities which we talk a lot about.
For a long time, rural areas have been under-invested in. We can see that across multiple areas. Broadband is the most obvious one. Rural areas do not have decent internet access. That is inequitable for people who live in rural areas. You're not as competitive in the job market if you do not have high-quality broadband. That is a hallmark of underinvestment in rural areas. We're about to go hopefully forward with massive investments in our country that will include rural areas. President Biden has called for 40% to go to disadvantaged communities, black and brown communities, environmental justice communities, and that will include rural communities. That's incredibly important.
Hopefully, we make this investment, and hopefully, we do it right. We also need to be thinking about 5, 10, 20 years down the road, when ongoing maintenance needs to happen, will we have set up processes that are providing consistent financial support to ensure disadvantaged communities aren't left behind? Hopefully, this will not just be a one-time thing, but that we actually provide the consistent financial support to ensure that there's equitable access and equitable funding available to these places.
In terms of revitalizing parts of the US that were sucked dry from abandoned industry – when it comes to new climate-oriented infrastructure do people seem excited or is it politicized and pushed back against?
Yeah. It's a critical question. And I appreciate you asking about it. Deindustrialization has been one of the biggest drivers of inequality in America. We should be thinking about how this could be a way to help communities build for the future.
One current example is Rivian in Normal, Illinois. It was the old Mitsubishi manufacturing facility. They closed down, they were purchased, and are now making electric trucks. I think they're gonna start putting them out in public by next year. It's a pretty darn cool story, that would be even better if they honored that plant and town’s history and allowed their workers to collectively bargain. Normal, IL is benefiting from this investment. I saw an article that referred to them as a boomtown because of this investment. It's a great story. But, it's not always going to be just that specific story. I hope there'll be a lot of those stories. The way we make this happen, the way investments need to be made, they need to be made with domestic content included so that we're making investments that have American manufacturing incorporated into it. They need to make the investments that are made so that when projects are built, they're built using union labor so that we are truly lifting up as many people in the community as possible. Again, we need to think about this holistically.
Investment in infrastructure allows for that community to build for the future to think about what they can do to support the people there. So whether it's building out broadband, refurbishing the schools, making a small incubator for craft beer – that's a choice that they can make once the investment in infrastructure comes on top of that back.
And circling back to your question with this massive investment and influx of funds into the clean economy, there will be an expansion of the supply chain. Batteries, the parts, and components of wind turbines–there's roughly seven tons of steel per turbine–all of this can be made in America.
If we're truly incorporating domestic content in these investments, that's going to support American manufacturing. Same with solar panels. You know we make glass in America, that's put into solar panels. We used to make polysilicon, it's critical for making photovoltaic solar panels, but over the last 10 to 15 years, a lot of that production moved to China. That's a long way to answer your question, but thinking about how this investment should help de-industrialized and disadvantaged communities and disadvantaged communities is critical to the success of this investment, and should be prioritized.
Outside of rehab, what are your thoughts on helping people move from areas that can’t be saved? I know retreat is looked at in this really negative way, but sometimes that’s inevitable.
It is a hard and controversial question. When will folks say, “South Beach doesn't work anymore?” I mean, it's a horrifying question to ponder, but if you trust science, it's a real question that will need to be pondered. It coincides with a need for investment in resilience in communities, the ability for a community to adapt and thrive in the face of climate change and its impacts.
Because we will see these changes, they are already baked in. We are going to have to deal with that in places like Louisiana, Miami, New York. We have to invest in resilience, so that we can make that determination in the future, with more clarity.
We haven't actually made that investment in resilience in our communities in any big way. We have to do that first to see what we can salvage for the people who live there. That is job number one. And then from there, we then can start to evaluate the really hard question of places we can't. That's already happening in Louisiana.
The seas have risen across Southern Louisiana in the Gulf, and they are losing a football field a day of land. There are communities down there that are already swamped. There does need to be an investment in and support for communities that are already dealing with this, that can't punt that question, but for the rest, it truly is a matter of, we have to make this investment in resilience first.
I want to be careful of your time, so I'll make this additional question quick – are we past the point of arguing about the existence and impacts of climate change? There will be arguments about how to move forward, but are we done with the denial?
I hope so. I really hope so. It's hard to say that I'm optimistic that we can get there, but I sure hope so. There has been polling done by Yale and others, and the polling is positive across the board. Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals agree that yes there is a problem, and yes, we should deal with it. The vast majority of people seem to agree. Where it starts to falter is when it gets into our political system.
And our political system is making a lot of things falter these days. I think climate change has been a harbinger. This issue became very partisan, but it didn’t used to be. We entered the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in an effort to bring all countries together to fight climate change in 1992, under President George H.W. Bush. George W. Bush ran on pursuing climate action in 2000. He didn't actually do anything. In fact, he made it worse. John McCain ran on passing a cap-and-trade bill in 2008. These things used to not be partisan, but they are now and that's terrible.
It would seem like Governor DeSantis would have a lot to gain from putting Miami first in terms of resilience and climate. Even if that’s cynical, I don’t understand the hold-up.
Do you know who one of the few Republicans in Congress has stood up and said, “We need to act on climate change?”
Who?
Matt Gaetz.
Right.
A very far right-wing representative from Florida. He's from the panhandle of Florida and has seen direct impacts.
But, that was a number of years ago. I agree with you, I think a person like Governor DeSantis could actually make a positive move on climate that would be very politically beneficial.
That the climate crisis became such a partisan fight was simply a harbinger of how everything has become a partisan fight. This was just the first of the other big issues. We have seen this happen to others. Immigration used to be a very bipartisan issue. It is no longer. Hopefully, this fever will break. Again, as I said before, I don't know if I can say I'm optimistic right now. I hope so, but I'm not sure.