WaterWired

Matthew McKinney's Montana Marseille Reflections on 6WWF

Matthew McKinney, Director of the University of Montana's Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy (CNREP) was quite active at the recently-concluded Sixth World Water Forum. 

Here is CNREP's 6WWF page.

He recently penned this essay that's an 

...account of the experience of federal officials, state legislators, and representatives of Native American Tribes, an international water commission, and a conservation organization as they shared the story of water management in the U.S. American West at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille, France, in March 2012.

Download Essay WWF6 4.3.12

I love this passage:

During one of the audience participation sessions, one person seemed somewhat skeptical about the West’s adaptive, somewhat incremental approach to water management. More specifically, he questioned the effectiveness of voluntary water markets to meet large-scale changes in water use patterns and asked if the West would consider and/or be forced to transfer water from one major river basin (like to Columbia River) to another (e.g., the Colorado River). In response, Senator Fraser [state senator from WA] quickly and emphatically answered “no – N-O – no.” The international audience was surprised (if not stunned), not familiar or necessarily comfortable with a sub-national government official being quite so quick and bold in the face of representatives from the national (federal) government. The panel members laughed and shook their heads with approval.

This response revealed both the tensions that underlie water management in a federated system as well as the opportunities it presents for creative solutions built upon cooperation and shared authority. Brian McPeek (The Nature Conservancy) repeatedly articulated the importance of working together to solve water problems at all spatial scales in the West – from shortages in particular watersheds to meeting new demands for instream flows to sharing water across state and international boundaries. Panel members agreed with this observation, and emphasized that the effectiveness of managing water in the West is a dynamic tension that simultaneously respects people’s private property rights to use water, seeks to restore indigenous rights to water, and productively engages both federal and state governments, as well as the private sector and non-governmental organizations, to build and maintain infrastructure and administer water rights.

The key message the panel shared with the international water community is that water management in the West is adaptive, and that adaptive strategies more often than not emerge through a process of negotiation and mutual gain. This message echoes Wallace Stegner’s oft-quoted conclusion about the region in The Sound of Mountain Water – “When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then … it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”

Gotta love adaptive management!

Download a copy of the report CNREP prepared for 6WWF, Water in the U.S. American West.

Ahhh...Western water! You either love it or you obsess about it. I recall trying to explain Western water management and law to my South Caucasus colleagues a number of years ago. The looks on their faces spoke volumes. And it wasn't my English they could not understand!

Enjoy! I did.

“When it [the West] fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then … it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.” - Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water (from the essay)

Phil Isenberg: California Bumps Up Against Hard Facts: Water and the Delta

This morning I received an email with this in the subject line: "NAS Report on Bay-Delta -- comments by Phil Isenberg". "Hmmm..." I said. I served on the committee. [Self-serving warning!]

When I opened the Word document I saw that it was a speech given by Isenberg, Chair of the Delta Stewardship Council, to the California Water Law and Policy Conference on 20 April 2012.

Here is what greeted me as I started reading: 

California bumps up against hard facts:  Water and the Delta  

Let us start with a quiz:  Take out your pens and jot down the name of groups, associations or individuals who recently said the following controversial things about California water policy and the Delta:

• “…the future will require planning and management that specifically acknowledge and take into account that there is not enough water to meet all desired uses in California with the required degree of reliability everywhere and all the time.”  (NRC 2012, p. 32)   

• “The fact of water scarcity does not mean that the state is ‘running out of water.’  Although most surface flows have been fully allocated or over-allocated, the state  can use a number of tools that optimize the use of existing supplies.” (NRC 2012, p. 38)

• “The historic strategy of developing storage and conveyance facilities in response to growth in water demand is being replaced with a variety of supply and demand-management alternatives, including conservation…”  (NRC 2012, pp. 31-32)

• “…the Delta as it was before large-scale alteration by humans (before about 1880) cannot be recovered.” (NRC 2012, p. 152) 

• When speaking of the Delta, “Consideration of the large number of stressors and their effects and interactions leads to the conclusion that efforts to eliminate any one stressor are unlikely to reverse declines in the listed species.”  (NRC 2012, p. 8)

• “Given the diverse set of organisms and processes that constitute the Delta ecosystem, the ultimate success of any approach targeted to particular species seems doubtful.”  (NRC 2012, p. 6)  Italics added. 

Who said all these things?  Who would dare to claim that our water supply is scarce, and that we cannot save every endangered species in the Delta?  Well, it was that bunch of high-flying scientists from the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, Medicine and Engineering. Seventeen of them --- talented and well respected --- with scientific, engineering, legal and water and ecosystem management backgrounds, who issued their report [Note: Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta] a month ago.

 Ironically, elected officials from California asked these smart scientists to get involved, in hopes they would answer the question: “How can we get out of this water/Delta mess?”

 ‘Be careful what you ask for” goes the old adage, ‘you may get it!’

 These scientists managed to turn the tables on us.  They refused the invitation to pick sides and declare one side the winner.  Instead, they tell us what we need know; but not what we want to hear.

I am still speechless. Thanks for the kind words, Phil.

Lots of work ahead.

You can read Isenberg's entire speech here:

Download Isenberg_20April2012_Speech_CA_Water_Law

The last two sentences:

"In a better world, environmentalists would talk like John Hart, and water users would talk like the National Research Council. If that starts to happen, maybe we will survive as a society." - Phil Isenberg

Oregon Water Markets: IWW and INR White Paper

My colleagues at the Institute for Water and Watersheds and the Institute for Natural Resources have collaborated on a white paper, Oregon's Water Markets:

Download Oregon_water_markets_v3_0

Looks good!

Zetland would be proud of me for posting this.

"To know values is to know the meaning of the market." - Charles Dow

Thesis: The Origins of Reclamation - Ideology and Irrigation in the American West

A few weeks, Mark Panny, a prospective graduate student, visited OSU to check us out. He is a history graduate of Lafayette College in Easton, PA. I noted that his undergraduate thesis (May 2010) was titled, The Origins of Reclamation: Ideology and Irrigation in the American West. I was naturally fascinated that an undergraduate at at Eastern school would write a Bachelor's thesis on water in the West. I asked for an electronic copy and he granted me permission to post this.

I read it and enjoyed it. 

Download Origins of Reclamation

Here is the 'Abstract':

A monumental body of work exists already dealing with irrigation and reclamation in the American West. Despite this abundance of scholarship on the subject, very few authors and historians have analyzed ideology and its impact on irrigation in the West. This paper examines the four predominating ideologies in western development during the last 25 years of the 19th century. It follows the varying ideologies and their impact on the development of the West. It culminates with the passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which allowed for the creation of federal reclamation projects in the West. Each of the ideologies is represented by a key figure in western development. John Wesley Powell embodied a populist approach to irrigation, steeped in the American agrarian tradition. William Stewart, a Senator from Nevada, epitomized the capitalist forces influencing western development at the time, including mining and railroads. William Smythe and his journal Irrigation Age captured the industrial spirit of the 1890s that aimed to combat economic recession with the productive capacity of the West. Finally, Francis Newlands represents the progressive era of western development, which instilled an ideology of federal oversight of irrigation and reclamation.

Here are the final paragraphs (emboldening mine) of the 'Conclusion', which allude to the current plight of California (recall the thesis is two years old):  

This case (Note: 'case' meaning federal support of Western irrigation) is no better illustrated than in present-day California. In the midst of a three-year drought, the state is desperately seeking a solution that will enable it to continue its massive agricultural production. Farmers, aside from being challenged by drought, must now deal with a cut in irrigation from the San Luis Dam, a Bureau of Reclamation project. The flow from the reservoir was decreased due to environmental concerns, and now farmers are demanding a solution from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger recognizes that much of the state’s reclamation projects are in need of repair, especially the Sacrament-San Joaquin Delta, which contains deteriorating levies on the brink of collapse. Schwarzenegger has been able to secure some funding to repair the delta from the state legislature. But California is already carrying a $21 billion deficit, and Schwarzenegger estimates that the project will cost over $40 billion. Schwarzenegger has chosen to take on this problem at the state level. But due to the enormity of the projects carried out throughout the West, it will be difficult for a state budget to match the scale of irrigation systems such as the San Luis Dam, let alone satisfy the infrastructure and economies that have sprung up with these projects. It seems inevitable that Schwarzenegger’s plan will have one of two results: either send the state deeper into debt as it attempts to continue using the available resources beyond their limits; or open the door for a plea for federal support as the project evolves beyond the state’s scope of control.

The cries from some for federal intervention are a result of the sweeping reform fostered by the Newlands Act. While decades of progressivism and the immense growth of the federal government during the twentieth century certainly exacerbated the phenomenon of states relying upon the federal government, the passage of the Newlands Act was an early stimulant for this effect, specifically regarding irrigation. At the turn of the century, the western states already knew that the federal government would provide water where needed, and for better or for worse, the federal government remains as the provider over one hundred years later. As with much of history, the past is often echoed in the present. The comments of Jeffrey Mount, founder of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, are reminiscent of the warnings that Powell issued over a century prior: “The future for California is going to be dealing with scarcity. We have to adapt to basically chronic scarcity." Mount fails to mention however, that this was always California’s future. Powell warned of the imminent scarcity that settlers would encounter, and Mount is simply observing Powell’s premonition today. Unfortunately, Powell’s advisories were ignored and disregarded, permitting the continuation of an inadequate water rights scheme and the passage of the Newlands Act. In many ways, Powell was the lone voice crying out against the mismanagement of the West’s scant water, with no one but the empty desert to hear his warnings.

Enjoy! 

Note: I just heard that Mark has decided to attend Duke University. Our loss is their gain. He will do well.

“...no corporation -- no body of men -- no capital -- can get possession and right to your waters. Hold the waters in the hands of the people.” - John Wesley Powell, speaking before the North Dakota Constitutional Convention, 1889 (from Panny, 2010, p. 57)

Report: What the Media Said About the NRC Bay-Delta Report - And More

The news and public information folks at the NAS-NRC assembled this 62-page PDF of media highlights for the NRC's recernt report, Sustainable  Water  and  Environmental  Management  in the California  Bay‐Delta.

It even has a Table of Contents!

From my perspective the coverage looks to be fair and balanced (no, I'm not being sarcastic).

Download Media_Highlights_Bay_Delta_Report 

Here is more information about the Bay-Delta report.

And more? Here is a paper that addresses former Bay-Delta Committee member Pat Glibert's ammonium-fish paper.

Enjoy!

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." - Isaac Asimov