Our United State of Water

 

Joe Mathews (Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It; UC Press, 2010) offered his perspective on the drought and current water situation in California in a March 13 article posted on foxandhoundsdaily.com. He is of the opinion that we need to "protect ourselves against a flood of conventional media wisdom about California water." According to Mathews, the conventional thought is that water divides California; that we are in a "water war." But he disagrees, stating that "water, more than anything, unites California." And therein lies the problem.

Mathews continues, "Anything that unites a place as big and diverse as California is going to create trouble. So of course we fight and battle and litigate, and then litigate some more, over water. But the fighting is not a symptom of divide. We fight over water because we share the same water.

In California, people can spend their whole lives depending on water from places they’ll never visit. San Francisco takes water from the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Southern California depends on the Colorado River, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta, and the Owens Valley. California’s water moves from mountains to the coast, and from the lightly populated far north of the state all the way down to the southern deserts.

It is the very length and scale of our water union that make water such a fraught question. Complex politics and conflict are givens when so many communities and interests are tied to the same supplies. What is remarkable about California is not our watery battles but the enduring cooperation that allowed us to build this system in the first place, and to more or less maintain it to this day.

Yes, we have neglected too much of this water infrastructure and are now seeing bills coming due. But the other big networks that unite California are arguably in even worse shape. The prisons are such an unconstitutionally crowded mess that the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered us to release tens of thousands of inmates—a mandate we’ve been unable to fulfill. We’ve gutted state support for our most important economic engines, our university systems; even if Governor Brown’s new budget plans come to fruition, that state support will remain a fraction of what it was before the recession. Indeed, public frustration with these systems and how they are governed runs so deep that they have become another binding agent; from the Oregon border to San Diego, Californians share a strong sense of the state’s governing dysfunction.

But water unites us more than any of these. After all, not everyone can get into California’s universities and prisons; water, for animals such as ourselves, is necessary. The current scarcity of water reveals our unity around it. A drought relief package passed our often-stalemated state legislature with only token opposition.

The real news in the drought so far is the announcement of the first-ever "zero allocation" in California. Our state and federal water projects have projected that they won’t be making deliveries of water—effectively shutting down water’s movement from north to south, and forcing regions to find alternatives. This has been described as a blow to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California’s people. More profoundly, it’s a shock to our water unity, because it raises the scary question of how much of the water that has connected California for decades will be there for us in the future.

So as you try to understand the conversations around water now and in the years ahead, ignore the media fight promoters and focus on the question of water union. Will the drought or the water proposals before us loosen the ties that bind us—and force each region to rely more on local sources of water? Or will they bind us more closely to existing, aging water systems—connecting Californians more deeply but adding to our risk if climate change and environmental regulation diminish the water supply?

There is movement on both fronts. The water bond that Californians may vote on in November, and the proposed tunnels to take water from the Sacramento River under the Delta to the South, both come out of state government, and so they are—quite naturally—the embodiment of the keep-us-together-in-water approach. At the same time, enlightened water districts around the state are embracing recycling and storage, and investigating other means to boost local water supplies.

The irony is that California’s regions, by keeping and producing more of their water at home, may bring the state closer together and diminish conflict. California state government and politics, after all, have become dangerously polarized and contentious thanks to increasingly centralized tax and fiscal power in Sacramento. When the budget is tight, we all fight against one another. In the same way, being tied so closely to the same water system adds to conflict as we all seek to draw from a common pool. More regional independence—in water and in taxes—might well make us better neighbors, and better collaborators in managing the networks that bind us together.

It’s the paradox of this moment in California: to keep the state together, we may need to stand apart."