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California conundrum: big and rich SoCal drinking its way to oblivion

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California conundrum: big and rich SoCal drinking its way to oblivion

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CALIFORNIA CONUNDRUM:
BIG AND RICH SOCAL DRINKING ITS WAY TO OBLIVION

By

Kari Antero Rintakoski

________________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)

August 2013

Copyright 2013 Kari Antero Rintakoski
i

Table of contents

Abstract ii

Introduction 1

California Conundrum:
Big and rich SoCal drinking its way to oblivion 4

Land of aqueducts 6

People and water move each other 9

The public, constantly ignorant 10

Agriculture overwhelmingly major user of water 15

Complex management needs to be simplified 17

References 21

ii
Abstract
Big and rich Southern California maintains its wealth with water that is imported
from hundreds of miles away. The huge water transfer projects of the last century have
allowed Los Angeles and the rest of the region to grow way beyond what their own
resources could sustain. Water shortages are not unfamiliar to the region, but now more
than before that wealth is threatened. Climate change will most probably diminish the
amount of water available from the main sources that Southern California relies on, the
snowpack of Sierra Nevada and the Colorado River. In the same time the agricultural and
urban consumers of water in Southern California are reluctant to make any bigger
changes to their way of life.
On the contrary to Southern California, people in the Nordic countries live with
abundant water. They have it difficult to understand a situation such as in Southern
California. Most of them don’t even know about it, but because in the globalized world
more and more things are interconnected, they should know it. The goal of this article is
to explain California’s water conundrum to the Nordic audiences.

1
Introduction
Water is abundant in the Nordic countries. If one looks at a map representing the
inland waters of Finland, Sweden or Norway, one sees amazing amounts of blue in them.
There are hundreds of thousands of lakes and rivers. The municipality of Inari in
Northern Finland alone has more than 8,000 lakes. Ten percent of the area of Finland and
Sweden consists of lakes larger than 6,000 square yards. Norway is a superpower of
hydroelectric energy getting practically all of its electricity from its rivers and selling
surplus to its neighbors. Groundwater is plentiful. In an average year, each and every
Swede has access to 53,000 billion gallons of freshwater, and they consume annually
only 0.5 percent of that amount. Not only the quantities are huge, the quality of water is
also excellent so that Finland’s freshwater quality and management, for instance, are
assessed as the best in the world. (Alahuhta et al. 2013; Svenskt Vatten 2006;
International Energy Organization 2013; Tieteen Kuvalehti 2013.)
Water is not abundant in Southern California. If one looks at a map representing
the inland waters of California, one sees an amazing amount of dams, reservoirs and
canals stretching from the north to the south and from the east to the west. One can also
see most of the state’s few lakes marked as saline or alkaline, and one can see the few
wild riverbeds of Southern California running mostly dry. Half of the groundwater in
California is unusable because it is either of poor quality or too difficult to extract. There
are no statewide groundwater management laws, and extracting too much water is a
constant threat: once the saltwater intrudes an aquifer with too low water level there is no
way to fix it back into a freshwater source. (Water Education Foundation 2007; Carle
2009.)
2
Southern California’s nature and climate consequently are characterized by
geographers as either arid or semi-arid, which means that there is relatively little water.
Despite of that the state of California is the largest producer of agricultural products in
the U.S. There are regions in Southern California that are major agricultural producers
not only regionally, but also nationally and even internationally. There is also the
metropolitan Los Angeles area, which with its 13 million people is among the fifteen
largest metropolitan areas of the world. In order to drench their thirst, Angelenos built in
the beginning of last century an aqueduct hundreds of miles long to carry water from the
Eastern Sierra Mountain range to the city. The state of California and the federal
government of the U.S. have constructed even larger projects to provide water to the
Central Valley and Southern California. They all are transferring huge amounts of water
from where it is to where it otherwise wouldn’t be.
For an outsider, it is hard to comprehend how all that imported water has allowed
Los Angeles region to grow far beyond what it by its own means could sustain. Even
harder to understand is how all that water is used. Yes, it is used for irrigating alfalfa and
cotton and rice fields, for growing fruits and vegetables. It is also used for keeping lawns
green in the endless suburban areas of Southern California, and it is used for landscaping
with plants that are native to climates totally different than in Southern California.
This paper represents an English language version of a Finnish magazine article
that explains the water conundrum of California. The article will include maps that
illustrate the complexity and scale of the water transfer systems in California. As a
reference there will be a map illustrating the rivers and lakes of Finland, Sweden and
3
Norway as well. The article will also include charts explaining the amounts of water
transferred between different regions.
The article’s target audiences are the readers in the Nordic countries who find it
difficult to understand how big and rich Southern California may drink its way to
oblivion. Why should the Finns or Swedes care about all this? Because it concerns them
as well as it concerns the farmers of the Central Valley of California or the Mexicans in
the Colorado River Delta. In a globalized world more and more things are interconnected,
and the people of the Nordic countries are an integral part of that development. The
raisins and nuts they eat, iPhones they use, television shows they watch, and Levi’s jeans
they wear all have their origins in irrigated California. Without the huge water
development projects the Californians wouldn’t have been able to create such global
brands as Sun-Maid or Apple. Without imported water Los Angeles would not be the
global city it is today, or there would be no Hollywood producing movies and television
shows for people all over the world to watch. The growth of Southern California has been
financed with water taken from other parts of California and other states, and everything
the Californians do affects people and areas far away. The lack of water is a constant in
Southern California although one rarely sees it. More freshwater is no more available,
rather there will be less water and that water has to be used wisely.

4
California Conundrum: Big and rich SoCal drinking its way to oblivion
“Sun-Maid raisins from under the sun of California.” The jingle reminds us of the
bountiful California far to the west where the sun is shining, crops are growing and the
life is pleasant. The juicy raisins fill the buns so inseparable from the Finnish afternoon
coffee, they spice the liver casserole, and they pop up from the bottom of the “sima”
bottle when the beverage is brewed and ready to be consumed.
But there are looming threats under the sun of California, and raisins are part of
that. Water, so essential to California's rich lifestyles and bountiful agriculture, faces an
uncertain future.
Sun-Maid raisins travel to Finland from 3,500 miles away from California’s
Central Valley, one of the main agricultural centers of the world. The global Sun-Maid
brand is a cooperative, Sun-Maid Raisins & Dried Fruits, owned by farmers who grow
raisin grapes all within 100 miles of each other in the Great Central Valley of California,
midway between Los Angeles to the south and San Francisco to the north (Sun-Maid
2013).
Established in 1912, Sun-Maid has grown to be “The Raisin” all over the world.
What has made it possible for both Sun-Maid and the whole valley to grow into
agricultural giants is an enormous system of water transfers and water projects that cover
the whole state of California. These projects have brought water to where it otherwise
wouldn’t be. They have benefitted not only the Central Valley’s farmers but also allowed
California to become a global center of agriculture, entertainment industry, high-tech
communications, education, and research.
5
The state of California occupies an area just a little larger than Finland, but it has
a population of 37.3 million, and that is nearly 11 million more than all of the five Nordic
countries together (U.S. Census; Statistics Finland). If California were a country, its
economy with its gross domestic product of $1,958 billion in 2011 would be the ninth
biggest in the world leaving behind countries like India, Russia, and once again the five
Nordic countries, which generated a GDP of $1,637 billion as a group (U.S. Census;
World Bank).
The history of settling Southern California is the history of getting water. With its
Mediterranean, arid and semi-arid climates, the area has very little water of its own, and
having water has always meant surviving. Therefore water development in California was
started as early as the Native Americans, the region’s original inhabitants, built their
dams for catching salmon. In the late 1700’s, Spanish padres had ditches built from
streams for irrigating the fields of their missions. The Gold Rush in 1849 started the first
period of extensive development as the miners built systems of reservoirs and flumes,
more than 4,000 miles of them, for “hydraulic mining.” With these hydraulic works the
miners blasted hillsides in search for gold, making huge amounts of debris wash down
from mountains and causing the state’s first serious environmental damages. (Water
Education Foundation 2008.)
Since then, in order to solve the problem of getting water, Californians have made
enormous water development projects and are moving huge amounts of water from the
north to the south and from Colorado River to the west. Looking at maps, one can see
that most of the system, which is the largest in the world, is focused on delivering water
to Southern California. These transfers are enormous: Although 75 percent of the demand
6
for water comes from regions south of Sacramento, 75 percent of the water supply of the
state comes from north of Sacramento. (Carle 2009.)
Land of aqueducts
California has the size and power of a nation. It feeds the Americans with fruit
and vegetables, it provides both them and the people all over the world with nuts and
raisins, it is also responsible for most of the wine production in the U.S. Hollywood
produces movies and television shows that are shared by people of New York, Helsinki
and Mumbai alike. Silicon Valley in San Francisco Bay area is the cradle of the Internet
revolution, and Los Angeles region is a global magnet for talented people in search for
their success story. Although California is not recognized as a sovereign power,
everything it does affects people all over the world. Its spectacular growth has been
possible only by solving how to get water to where it isn’t.
Six major systems of aqueducts redistribute water in California: The State Water
Project, the Central Valley Project, Colorado River systems, and the Los Angeles
Aqueduct serve mainly or exclusively the southern half of the state, whereas the
Tuolumne River/Hetch Hetchy system, and the Mokelumne Aqueduct focus on San
Francisco Bay area. These systems are operated by state, federal and regional agencies,
which as wholesalers pass the water to local water districts. (Carle 2009.)
Perhaps the most famous, or notorious, of these water transfer projects is the Los
Angeles Aqueduct that brings water from the Eastern Sierra Mountains to the city of Los
Angeles. Completed in 1913, it was the first of California’s long-range water delivery
projects. The city gained water rights by buying 300,000 acres, or nearly all of the private
land in the Owens Valley, more than 200 miles to the northeast of Los Angeles between
7
Sierra Nevada and the White and Inyo mountains. The farmers, ranchers and other
landowners of the valley were pressured to sell their land with dubious methods such as
bribery and deception -- methods so familiar to the people of Kemi River in Northern
Finland, whose rights to the river’s rapids were bought by power companies in the
1940’s.
Water flows by gravity in the first Los Angeles aqueduct, and with help of pumps
in the second aqueduct, finished in 1970. The aqueducts run 338 miles from Mono Basin
and 233 miles from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles. The city gets more than third of its
water from the two aqueducts. Half of its water the city buys from the Metropolitan
Water District. Some 10 percent comes from groundwater, and only 1 percent is recycled.
(Los Angeles Department of Water and Power 2013.)
More than two-thirds of Californians receive some of their water from the State
Water Project (SWP). The project includes 34 reservoirs and lakes, 20 pumping plants, 4
pumping-generating plants, 5 hydroelectric power plants, and about 701 miles of open
canals and pipelines. It moves water from the Feather River valley in the north to 29
urban and agricultural water suppliers mainly in the San Joaquin Valley, the Central
Coast, and Southern California. The system in Feather River watershed gets its water
over 600 miles away from its southernmost service areas in Southern California.
The Central Valley Project (CVP), one of the largest water systems in the world,
diverts water from five major rivers and stores about 17 percent of the state’s developed
water. It reaches 400 miles from the Cascade Mountains in the north to the Tehachapi
Mountains in the south. It consists of 20 dams and reservoirs, 11 power plants, and 500
miles of major canals and tunnels. (Bureau of Reclamation 2013; Carle 2009.)
8
CVP provides water mainly to farms in the Central Valley. One of its original
goals was to end groundwater overdrafting in the area, i.e. to stop extracting so much
water that the aquifer can’t replenish itself. But the results were just the opposite: The
more water that became available, the more acreage went into agricultural production,
and the groundwater pumping actually increased. (Bureau of Reclamation 2013; Carle
2009.)
The Colorado River, 1,450 miles long, runs from Colorado through Utah to
Arizona forming the border between Arizona and California and ending its journey in
northern Mexico, emptying into the Gulf of California. The river gets its water from the
snowpack of the Rocky Mountains, and it supplies it to more than 30 million people and
helps to irrigate millions of acres of farmland. It is estimated that more water is exported
from Colorado River’s basin than from any other river basin in the world. Thus the great
Colorado River reaches the Gulf of California only in very wet years because so much of
its water is diverted in arid Southwest of the U.S. (Adler 2007; Carle 2009; Water
Education Foundation 2008.)
California gets more than ten percent of its developed water from the Colorado
River. Although six other states and Mexico share the allocated portions of the river’s
flow, priority water rights are held by four California agencies that are the Metropolitan
Water District and the irrigation districts of Palo Verde, the Imperial Valley and the
Coachella Valley.
“So Arizona and Nevada would take decreases in water before California would,
but if drought was severe enough we would also see cuts to our water allocation,” Prof.
Glen M. MacDonald (2012) from UCLA says.
9
California’s allotment is 4.4 million acre-feet per year, and three fourths of that is
used to irrigate farmland in Southern California. Acre-foot is the amount of water that
fills one acre of land 1 foot deep. More water is allocated than the river carries, which is
typical to the California water system as a whole. The State Water Project, for example,
has contracted to deliver 4.2 million acre-feet of water annually, but in average years it
has been able to deliver only 2.3 million acre-feet. (Carle 2009).
People and water move each other
The more people have moved in, the more water has been needed – and the more
water that has become available the bigger the population has become. Los Angeles is a
good example. An often quoted notion of William Mulholland, the city’s chief engineer
who led the building of Los Angeles aqueduct, is “Whoever brings the water, brings the
people.” The first Los Angeles aqueduct was initially capable of delivering four times
more water than the city demanded, but as the steady supply was secured the city grew
quickly. Local water supplies would have allowed a population of only 500,000 people,
but with the additional water imported by the aqueducts, the city of Los Angeles itself has
grown from 100,000 people in the beginning of the last century to nearly 4 million today.
(Carle 2009, LADWP 2013.) And then there are its nearly endless suburbs.
Adding water supply has also been the main element - if not the only ingredient
besides the railroad and immigrant workers - in making large-scale agriculture possible in
California. Although agriculture is responsible for more than three-quarters of water
consumption in the state, at $43.5 billion in cash receipts in 2011, it accounts for only 1
to 2 percent of its GDP (Hanak 2012). But agriculture is still a major part of California
landscape: half of the land in California is privately owned, and half of that area is in
10
active agricultural use. And the state still feeds a lot of Americans. According to the latest
Census of Agriculture that was a $44 billion industry in 2011. That’s more than 12
percent of the total market value of the products sold by all U.S. farms that same year,
and makes California the biggest producer of agricultural products in the country. The
state produces 95 percent of U.S. apricots, artichokes, kiwis, raisins, olives and almonds.
Of California’s almond production, there is enough to provide all of the Earth’s
inhabitants with a fifth of a pound of nuts – just to give couple of examples of the scale of
the activity. (California Department of Food and Agriculture 2013; Starrs and Goin 2010;
Garfin et al. 2013.)
The public, constantly ignorant
California’s water system is very complex, very decentralized, and very
interconnected. It was built during the 20
th
century with focus in transporting water from
where it is to where it is not. Population growth has been and is a constant that keeps
pressure on water demand. Now the climate change poses new challenges. In the U.S.
Southwest, the current century will be increasingly arid, droughts will be more severe,
and they will be longer, climate models indicate. In California that means increased
temperatures, less snow, earlier snowmelt and possibly rise in sea level. (MacDonald
2010; Water Education Foundation 2008.)
As a result of climate change, all California’s main sources of water -- the Sierra
Nevada snowpack, Colorado River, and groundwater -- will diminish. According to
calculations by Dan Cayan and Mary Tyree from Scripps Institution of Oceanography
(according to Garfin et al. 2013, 691), the projected snow water equivalent in Sierra
Nevada Mountains will in the 30-year period of 2006-2035 diminish to 84 percent from
11
what it was in 1971-2000. By the last 30 years of current century, it would be only 43
percent of what it was in the last decades of the 20
th
century.
With less snow in winter there is less water in spring running down from the
mountains and to be collected by reservoirs. With less rain, there will be less water in the
Colorado River. And with less melt from snowpacks and less rain, there is less water to
replenish the aquifers. Extensive research has been done around climate change and
water scarcity in the U.S. Southwest. Academics are well aware of the situation, but
relatively few other Californians are.
“It’s an issue that’s largely confined to a small group of salient audiences,”
professor David L. Feldman of the University of California at Irvine says (2012). “Most
of the public doesn’t really get it all that much. We as consumers hear about it, we pay
more for our water, but as far as we’re concerned we turn on the taps.” Feldman is
professor of planning, policy & design and political science and specializes in water
resources management and policy and adaptive management and sustainable
development. His current research is focused on the sources of value conflicts over
allocation and distribution of water.
Opinion polls confirm Feldman’s assessment. The Public Policy Institute of
California’s (PPIC) statewide survey (Baldassare et al. 2012) showed that although some
six in 10 Californians think that water supply is a problem, 39 percent of them don’t
consider it to be much of a problem. Of the people in the Los Angeles area, a semi-arid
region with practically all its water imported from far away, 57 percent see water supply
as a problem but as much as 41 percent say that it isn’t much of a problem in their area.
12
Another survey from San Diego County, south of Los Angeles and practically
arid area in itself, showed that only 8 percent of respondents identified water supply,
quality and cost as the most important issue in the county, which was a significant slide
from 2008 when 19 percent of people saw water as the most important issue. Water was
seen as a good value for the money, but when asked to indicate the best value among
utilities 33 percent said that gas and electricity were the best value. Only 15 percent
ranked water as best value for money paid. (San Diego County Water Authority 2012.)
The message is clear. Two of every five Californians don’t see a problem. And in
a more detailed survey they don’t realize the value of water. Even though human life does
not exist without water, fewer than one in ten respondents thought the issue was
important, and only a few more considered water worth the money they paid for it.
“I firmly believe it has to start with public education,” Feldman commented. “The
public needs to understand that we are all partly the cause, partly responsible for this.”
There are numerous attempts to teach people water awareness. Non-profits work
statewide and locally. The Water Education Foundation is one of the most prominent of
the non-profits. Being sponsored by a wide range of water districts and agencies,
businesses, and cities, but also educational, environmental and other public interest
organizations, the foundation enjoys a semi-official status in providing information about
water resource issues. The foundation’s blog, Aquafornia, is a news aggregator covering
California water and from various sources. (Water Education Foundation 2013c;
Aquafornia 2013.)
More local attempts include Friends of the Los Angeles River and Tree People,
two nonprofit groups. The former says its “mission is to protect and restore the natural
13
and historic heritage of the Los Angeles River and its riparian habitat through inclusive
planning, education and wise stewardship.” Once the only water supply of the city, most
of the river was paved with cement in the 20
th
century for flood-control purposes. As a
result, it has become what is now called “the world’s largest storm drain.”
Tree People focused initially on trees, but has expanded its focus to global
warming and looming water shortages. The organization argues that clean and abundant
water can be had by re-creating the functions of a healthy forest in an urban setting.
“Examples of these nature-based solutions include permeable paving, French drains,
swales, rain barrels, cisterns and other relatively simple ‘forest-mimicking’ innovations,”
it says (FoLAR 2013; Tree People 2013.)
In addition, official urban water agencies, environmental and public interest
organizations, and private businesses have created the California Urban Water
Conservation Council to increase efficient water use statewide through partnerships
among these organizations. California Department of Water Resources and the
Association of California Water Agencies have created the Save Our Water campaign to
help Californians to reduce their everyday water use. (California Urban Water
Conservation Council 2013; Save Our Water 2013.)
On the local level, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has many
incentives to reduce water use and to increase conservation. There are savings tools and
savings tips. There is a water conservation rebate, there are rebates for high efficiency
washers, high efficiency toilets; there is Residential Drought Resistant Landscape
Incentive Program, weather-based irrigation controllers, and rotating sprinklers. The
department also provides free, water-conserving bathroom and kitchen faucet aerators
14
and showerheads. For commercial customers, the department has rebates for high
efficiency toilets, ultra-low water urinals, weather-based irrigation controllers, and
controllers for cooling towers.
The efforts have not been for nothing. Since the 1990’s, after a period of severe
drought Southern California became “very aggressive in terms of water conservation and
water management,” Prof. Glen M. MacDonald (2012) from UCLA says.
“Since that time per capita use of water within Metropolitan Water District has
declined with such a rate that we have increased our population size but we haven’t really
increased significantly our water use,” he says.
Indeed, since 1990 the population of Los Angeles County has grown over 12
percent to 10 million people in 2012 (U.S. Census Bureau 2013). At the same time,
average total water demand for Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s service
area has actually gone down to 621,000 acre-feet from 686,000 acre-feet, which means a
drop of over 8 percent (LADWP 2010).
But wasteful use of water continues especially in landscaping. “In the greater Los
Angeles area somewhere in the order of 40-70 percent of water is used on landscaping.
It’s not used for you to drink or to take a shower or to do your dishes. It’s used on lawns
and flowers and things like that,” MacDonald (2012) says.
“So we have a tremendous buffer there if we were to go to xerophytic
landscaping, which is drought-tolerant, low-water-use plants,” MacDonald says.
That means using plants that tolerate the harsh, semi-arid conditions of Southern
California. Such plants don’t require irrigation unlike many of the currently popular ones.
15
Not to mention lawns, which are highly unfit for the region – but nevertheless highly
popular.
Many water agencies and other organizations try to address the problem of
landscaping by giving advice in water efficient landscaping. The Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power is even buying back turf from its residential customers.
While the coastal metropolitan area has gained efficiency, inland areas are still
increasing their use of water. Water use is climbing especially in the areas “that are the
hottest, that receive the least precipitation and that have the highest rates of the vapor
transpiration,” UC Irvine’s Feldman says.
That is because more people are moving to the interior in search for cheaper real
estate, and because the lot sizes are bigger, which means more landscaping, which means
more water use.
“And thirdly, again the economic incentives that would impel people toward
conserving water, such as tiered pricing systems, have not been as readily adapted in the
inland areas of California as along the coast,” Feldman says.
Agriculture overwhelmingly major user of water
Even with major improvements in water efficiency in cities California’s total
water usage won’t diminish dramatically. Although there are more than 38 million people
in California, agriculture will remain the major user of water taking roughly 80 percent of
the water used in the state.
However, there has been positive development and the efficiency in water usage
on California’s farms has increased. “While the agriculture is still the greatest water user
in California, the amount of water going to agriculture relative to the amount food being
16
produced is actually going down,” Feldman says, but he argues that there are some types
of agriculture that in the long run cannot be justified in a region like California.
The issue has been discussed many times. In 2008, the Pacific Institute published
a report (Cooley, Christian-Smith, Gleick) in which the writers determined that changing
to less water-demanding crops and using more efficient irrigation systems would save
billions of gallons of water. The agricultural industry’s response then was that efficient
irrigation techniques were already being used. Industry spokesmen also said that
choosing what to grow only by assessing the water needs of the crops oversimplified
agricultural economics. (Aquafornia 2013.)
More than five years later the positions haven’t changed that much.
“There are some areas of agriculture that probably in the long run cannot be
justified in this region of country,” Feldman contends. “The one that most readily comes
to mind is the producing of alfalfa to feed cattle. It’s a highly water intensive crop, it goes
into producing food source that could be produced elsewhere. There are other things that
those farmers could probably be doing.” (2013).
The U.S. is the world’s biggest producer of hay that has a very straightforward
use: it feeds the livestock. California produces six percent of all the hay in the U.S. That
includes oat hay, barley, grass hay, and biggest of all, alfalfa. (Starrs and Goinn 2010).
The California Farm Water Coalition, the mouthpiece of irrigated agriculture in the state,
stresses the effectiveness of the industry.
“Contrary to popular belief, alfalfa is a very efficient user of water. Unlike some
permanent crops, almost the entire alfalfa plant is harvested at each cutting, which then
re-grows for the next harvest. Alfalfa production uses approximately the same amount of
17
water as other crops grown in the same region. It is the most important source of protein
for California’s dairy industry and an integral part of the production of milk, cheese,
butter, ice cream and other dairy products,” says Mike Wade (2013), executive director of
the Farm Water Coalition.
Alfalfa may be an efficient user of water, but it still demands a lot of it. Imperial
Valley, with the help of the Colorado River water an astonishingly green area in the
middle of a desert east of San Diego, has half of its fields on alfalfa. In that environment
it demands twice as much irrigation water than in other parts of the state (Carle 2009).
Some shifts from crops to others have happened. “As water costs have risen, some
farmers have planted different crops to increase the financial return in their farming
operations,” Wade says. “The production of almonds, pistachios and wine grapes has
increased consistently over the past ten years while crops like cotton, fresh vegetables
and forage crops have declined.”
According to Wade, sheer volumes of water are not the main concern for
agriculture, despite the projections foreseeing diminishing water supplies. “Diminishing
supplies due to climate change are not expected to be significant until the second half of
the 21
st
century,” he says (2013). “The more pressing problem is the wider variation in
wet and dry years, evidence of which can be seen today. Compared to the first half of the
20
th
century, wet years tend to be wetter and dry years tend to be drier, creating
challenges to managing useable supplies without sufficient storage, such as dams and
reservoirs and underground storage.”

18
Complex management needs to be simplified
The public opinion about what should be done to secure water supply is very
divided. According to the PPIC’s statewide survey, 50 percent of all adults in California
feel that the focus should be on improving water use efficiency, but at the same time 47
percent prefer building new storage (Baldassare et al. 2012).
As the polls show, Californians have a somewhat unclear relationship to their
water. One reason why people are so detached from where their water comes is that water
governance in California is a “complex institutional web of federal, state, and regional
agencies,” as a recent study (Blanco et al. 2012) about water scarcity in Southern
California concludes.
At the top level, there are several dozen federal agencies that play some role in
water management. The Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of Interior, the Army
Corps of Engineering, and the Environmental Protection Agency are the most important.
On the state level, there is an institutional framework that is complex in itself,
“overlapping in some areas, and fragmented in others,” the study tells. Then there is the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), on which local water
agencies depend in terms of imported water. MWD is the State Water Project’s (SWP)
largest contractor taking nearly half of the water that SWP is able to provide. MWD’s
other main source of water is the Colorado River. The Metropolitan Water District’s 26
member agencies have voting rights on its policies. Fifteen of these agencies are retailers,
the biggest of them being Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; 11 are
wholesalers, such as the Inland Empire Utilities Agency or the Municipal Water District
19
of Orange County, serving retail customers such as city departments or special districts.
(Blanco et al. 2012.)
For the local water agencies, groundwater is their other major source of water.
There is no regulation of groundwater at the state level in California, which makes
conflicts about groundwater among competing agencies a constant. “The resulting
fragmented nature of such management can lead to overdrafts, saltwater intrusion, and in
general, an inability to plan realistically based on future groundwater supplies.” (Blanco
et al. 2012.)
The PPIC study (2009) notes that “Although local operations draw on
considerable expertise and analysis, broad public policy and planning discussions about
water often involve a variety of misperceptions – or myths – about how the system works
and the options available for improving its performance.”
Some of the myths the institute lists are that 1) California is running out of water,
2) the Californians can build their way out of their water problems, 3) they can conserve
their way out of the problems, and 4) they can find a consensus that will keep all parties
happy.
But in reality California is not running out of water now – it ran out of it a long
time ago. What it really needs to do is to adapt to increasing water scarcity. Building
new infrastructure can contribute to water supply solutions, the institute says, but that
can’t solve the problem.
“The era of major dam building has ended; all the suitable sites for large dams in
river canyons in California have been developed,” Says David Carle, the author of the
20
University of California Press book on California’s water resources and a former wildlife
park ranger.
And while conserving water has huge potential especially in urban water use, it
alone won’t solve the problem. And to hope that everyone could be kept happy is wishful
thinking. “Tough tradeoffs mean that consensus is not achievable on all water issues;
higher levels of government will need to assert leadership, ” the PPIC study asserts
(2009).
UC Irvine’s Feldman does think though that there are chances of successful
cooperation. “I see some possibilities, if the parties were convinced that the sacrifices had
to be equally borne, that every group was asked to make comparable sacrifices, and if the
solutions could actually be supported by the same public that doesn’t understand the
problems,” Feldman says (2012).
MacDonald from UCLA stresses the role of the coordinated management of water
resources. “We really need to move towards integrated water resource planning for the
state and particularly for Southern California,” MacDonald says. “The state is pretty hard
to take as one body, but Southern California, south of the Tehachapi mountains, that’s
something we really need to look at, and just try put together some means in which we
can have integrated water resource planning as we move forward.” (MacDonald 2012.)

21
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Baldassare, Mark, Dean Bonner, Sonja Petek, and Jui Shrestha. 2012. PPIC Statewide
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Institute of California.

Blanco, Hilda (PI), and Josh Newell, L. Stott, and M. Alberti (Co-PIs). 2012. Water
supply scarcity in Southern California: assessing water district level strategies.
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MacDonald, Glen. 2012. Interview by author. October 1, 2012.

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Other sources

In order to get background information the author of this article participated the
Santa Ana River Watershed Conference April 11, 2013 in Santa Ana, California.
Convened by the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) and coordinated by
the Water Education Foundation, the conference featured a range of presentations aimed
at encouraging regional players to work together and to enhance integrated regional water
management.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Big and rich Southern California maintains its wealth with water that is imported from hundreds of miles away. The huge water transfer projects of the last century have allowed Los Angeles and the rest of the region to grow way beyond what their own resources could sustain. Water shortages are not unfamiliar to the region, but now more than before that wealth is threatened. Climate change will most probably diminish the amount of water available from the main sources that Southern California relies on, the snowpack of Sierra Nevada and the Colorado River. In the same time the agricultural and urban consumers of water in Southern California are reluctant to make any bigger changes to their way of life. ❧ On the contrary to Southern California, people in the Nordic countries live with abundant water. They have it difficult to understand a situation such as in Southern California. Most of them don’t even know about it, but because in the globalized world more and more things are interconnected, they should know it. The goal of this article is to explain California’s water conundrum to the Nordic audiences.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Rintakoski, Kari Antero (author)

Core Title California conundrum: big and rich SoCal drinking its way to oblivion

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 07/28/2013

Defense Date 07/26/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Agriculture,OAI-PMH Harvest,urban development,Water

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Parks, Michael (committee chair), Blanco, Hilda (committee member), Smith, Erna R. (committee member)

Creator Email kari.rintakoski@welho.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-301324

Unique identifier UC11294896

Identifier etd-Rintakoski-1855.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-301324 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Rintakoski-1855-1.pdf

Dmrecord 301324

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Rintakoski, Kari Antero

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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