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
Cristina Ungureanu of WXY Studio
by Cristina Ungureanu
May 4, 2018
This interview with Cristina Ungureanu, an AICP Associate at WXY, was conducted and condensed by frank news. W X Y is an award-winning multi-disciplinary practice specializing in the realization of urban design, planning and architectural solutions in challenging contexts.
I always like to start by saying where I'm from because I think it shaped why I got into urban planning and why I care about urbanism and design. I was born in Bucharest, under Ceaușescu, the communist dictator at the time. My parents and I wanted to emigrate while he was still in power but we couldn’t get out. My father left first and moved to Ridgewood, New York in 1992 . He laughs when I tell him how much Ridgewood costs now. We all moved to Vancouver in 1994. I went from living in Bucharest, which is a huge city and extremely metropolitan, subway systems, trolley car systems, beautiful brutalist modernist buildings — to Vancouver, a Pan-Asian growing power in the global economy. I saw towers going up around me. I lived in very dense and diverse environments there as well. I then lived in the Bay Area for high school and college. Again, a huge region, and very influential in how I thought about placemaking and good urban environments.
I studied urban design and planning at MIT. I worked in New Orleans for 4 years which was extremely formative for me. I was there right after the BP oil spill and did some recovery work in the coastal parishes, which was my first introduction to Louisiana.
It taught me to value landscape and the importance of economies as they interrelate with landscapes and remake them as well as destroy them. I did a lot interviewing of stakeholders affected by the spill over the course of 4 months. Crab-men, fishermen, people that ran oil rigs. A lot of politicians in Louisiana that were responsible for getting Louisiana back on its feet.
I fell in love with New Orleans and Louisiana and decided to stay and work there. I had an amazing mentor – Allen Eskew – who really took me under his wing. He passed away when I was living and working there. He was incredible. He was the architect of the World's Fair in New Orleans in 1984. He was a true collaborator. He formed great partnerships with the mayor, council members, and community groups, and I’d say he was crucial to reconceiving the New Orleans riverfront as a public asset. One of his last and biggest goals was to get people to the waterfront. And his vision is slowly coming to fruition, which is really exciting.
What are the fundamental differences between planners, architects, and designers?
That’s a fantastic question.
Design thinking cannot be stressed enough. Everyone can do design thinking. Scientists do it. Writers do it. Design thinking is a problem solving methodology. A way to identify the right questions, ask questions at different scales, and tap into solutions that create new paradigms. Every planner I know comes from a weird, wonky background. They didn't all go to urban planning undergrad, and none of them knew that they wanted to be a planner growing up.
I’ve always tried to position my research, analytical, and writing skills within a collaborative environment. Take those skills and use them to leverage a design question and design solution. With planners on a team, you create a transdisciplinary framework and set of solutions. When I use the word transdisciplinary, it is the engineer becoming the planner, the architect becoming the social scientist, the planner becoming the artist, and those roles shifting to such a degree between those people that you’re essentially creating a new field. Basically creating a new discipline.
How do you relate planning to activism and government?
I think the reason WXY gets hired to do the work that we do is because we’re able to navigate these channels of stakeholders that don’t agree with each other. Red tape, governments that are trying to find financing to actually make projects happen, but don’t know how to express those projects to people. I don’t think it’s a divide necessarily, but I do think it's a particular type of skill set that planners have, that architects don’t. Where they’re able to advocate for the project. Advocacy on one end is advocating for the project in and of itself.
I have to say, though, that architecture has deep roots in social engineering and creating a social impact through remaking cities. The most famous architects all had a social platform that they were trying to fulfill with their work. They had an idea of what they thought cities should be, and how they thought people should interact with each other. And they wanted to make spaces where they influenced society to act accordingly. Architects still do that to this day. The best ones and the worst ones.
Think about the Panopticon. It’s an idea of watching over people, them not being able to see you, and exercising control through that physical environment. There is a sense of ownership and control that architects want over their environments.
Tell us about the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan, the project you managed at WXY in 2016-2017.
WXY was involved with the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan as technical advisors on two fronts. We helped set up a community engagement framework that was as broad-based and ground-up as possible, facilitating dozens of workshops, working group meetings and stakeholder sessions. We also tapped into our zoning, urban design and planning expertise to help constituents visualize trade-offs, and make some informed decisions about the future of their neighborhood.
Part of the impetus for the Plan was the Mayor’s affordable housing agenda, which had a goal at the time of creating and preserving 200,000 units of affordable housing.
The Mayor’s mechanism of creating affordable housing is through adding density to neighborhoods. One way you add density to neighborhoods is to rezone them, giving them a different land use and density designation so developers can build higher. The way the housing plan ensures affordable units will be built is via Mandatory Inclusionary Housing. This means that if a piece of land is rezoned, a developer is required by law to build 25-30% of those units at certain affordability levels.
The difficulty is that the other 70-75% of housing that comes in is market rate. It will often be for people who have never lived in that neighborhood before, who are much better off. They are going to change that community in lots of ways: their kids will likely go to different schools, they’ll go to different grocery stores, they’ll seek out different amenities. They are going demand resources that people living in those affordable units will not be able to tap into.
WXY framed that choice – of saying “yes” or “no” – as a trade-off. If you do nothing, you are going to continue to lose affordable units, and you will not be tapping into this thing that will bring millions of dollars of resources into your neighborhood. For me, what keeps me up at night, is that this can feel like a Faustian bargain. The other day I was talking to someone who said, "I would take the word Faustian out of it", because people have to make hard choices every day. Whether or not that’s the case, a good planner needs to be well-equipped to lay out those choices factually and rigorously.
How many neighborhoods are being rezoned in New York, and how do you compensate for such a large density increase in these neighborhoods? When does it start having a huge impact on environment, human interaction, and quality of life?
But this needs to be complemented by supporting complete neighborhoods. This is where planners are integral, because we think about how an interrelated set of systems can accommodate and manage this growth – transportation, open space, hospitals, community centers, schools. This is how planners think when they consider density in growing cities.
What is a day in the life of a planner and what are the most important skills to have?
I can speak from the perspective of working in the private sector, and having a mix of private, nonprofit and city agency clients. Every day is pretty different. Client interaction is a big part of my day. I spend a lot of time in meetings, taking calls and writing thoughtful emails. I spend a lot of time with my team, setting goals, identifying how we communicate a design proposal, making sure we are on time and on budget, and being responsive to client needs. I spend lots of time mentoring and teaching. I work with several interns and I love spending time with them teaching them a new tool, or a new way to think through a problem.
Another one of my favorite things is going out to sites and seeing the work that is needed on them. As a planner, it’s harder to chase that high of seeing your idea get built. This is actually something fundamentally different between architecture and planning. As a planner, I go into a space to see the opportunities and challenges, and identify the latent capacity of landscape to take on more than it is currently taking, and to produce something better for society.
Right now, I’m working on this project in Broadway Junction. Our client has asked us to think about how we densify this amazing space because it has such rich transit capacity, but lacks the land use patterns or population around it to fully take advantage of it. How do you think about bringing office space, affordable housing, institutions like colleges and universities, to this new space? We are literally looking at underutilized space and thinking about how you transform it. So that part of the process is really exciting to me.
Is there anything you feel you would want to say to someone who has never heard of urban planning or who walks through a city everyday (or does not) and does not think about?
I think there is a huge emergence of people who think about urban planning but may not even know it. Take any walking tour of New York – there's nothing like experiencing or sensing a city through storytelling and narrative. Planning really is for people. Say you’re a bicyclist and you don't have a bike lane to get from point A to point B. You start questioning why that’s not the case, and maybe you go to your community board meeting, or a public meeting, and you learn about the power structures that create those opportunities to make you feel safer and happier in your environment. As the world is tapping more into that information and learning about those power structures and dynamics, they are learning more about planning.
Through that, people start to learn about histories of cities, how they come together, and they get a peek into planning and what urban planners do.