Breaking Western Water Taboos

The recent severe drought in the western United States and California in particular has shined a spotlight on a range of water-management practices that are outdated, unsustainable, or inappropriate for a modern, functional 21st century water system

Unless these bad practices are fixed, no amount of rain will be enough to set things right. Yet a discussion of many of these bad practices has been taboo for fear of igniting even more water conflict. Well, water conflict is here and no strategy that can fix our problems should be off the table.

We have to move away from business-as-usual approaches. This includes ending opaque sweetheart agreements between government agencies and well-connected, wealthy water users. The recent appalling deal between the Westlands Water District and the federal government is an example of the kind of secret, backroom arrangements that are already the cause of so much of today's troubles. If these agreements are in the public interest, negotiate them in the open, subject them to public scrutiny, and implement them in a transparent way.

For public agencies, the drought has highlighted how unprepared the region is for growing pressures from population growth and from climate change, which has already been implicated in worsening the severity of the drought. Among the most egregious of our old management practices is the failure to monitor and measure all water uses, price water properly, and enforce water rights laws and allocations.

Equally disastrous has been systematic massive overdraft of groundwater. As studies have repeatedly shown, California overpumps more than 500 billion gallons (1.5 million acre-feet) of groundwater in normal years and this has tripled or quadrupled during the drought. And while modest new groundwater management legislation has been put in place, it perpetuates this imbalance for decades to come.

Also taboo has been any serious discussion of land-use planning, the role of population growth, and reining in poor development practices in new construction. The days when developers could build anything, anywhere, without regard to water availability or efficiency of use, should be over. It is no longer enough to simply assume unlimited water will be available.

The collapse of vital ecosystems and fisheries populations also shows how unsuccessful past efforts have been to restore even a modicum of ecological health. For example, the Delta Smelt, just one of several major indicator species of ecological health in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, is on the verge of extinction. Ninety-five percent of the entire 2014 generation of threatened winter-run Chinook salmon died when temperatures in the Sacramento River exceeded lethal levels. The chances are high and growing that within a decade the Salton Sea in southern California will be an ecological disaster of staggering proportions, yet there has been little public discussion of these threats.

The private sector, too, has been struggling to figure out its role in the context of severe shortages. As the drought worsened, bottled water companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé found themselves under the microscope of public opinion for taking public water resources, bottling them for substantial profit, and then failing to adequately respond to public concerns about their local impacts, lack of transparency of data sharing, and their role in helping the state share the burdens imposed by the drought.

Companies with a big water footprint can, and should, actively engage in water policy discussions to help craft practical solutions to these problems. At a time when new strategies and ideas are being developed for seriously improving corporate operational practices around resource management, disclosure, and the human right to water, the private sector must step up its game in real, transparent, and comprehensive ways. Until then, they shouldn't be surprised if they continue to be a target for a worried and anxious public.

Source: Huffington Post

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Taxonomy

• Crisis
• Drought
• Water Management