I would like to take a little risk of my own and suggest where some of the variables may rest in water that could be pathways to solutions or failure. I don’t want to predict the future, but will suggest how we might build robustness -- or “anti-fragility.” To achieve this, we must not only convince the public about the Delta’s doom scenario and our own agency’s challenges, we must see beyond to other shared risks with people who don’t concern themselves with our affairs.
Let’s look at what has happened since the 1950s. California’s population has grown from 10 million to almost 40 million today. The backbone of our regional and local water systems was built from the 1920s to the 1970s. According to the American Water Works Association, in a report issued last year, the life span of our key regional and local water facilities is coming to an end, stretched by the quadrupling population and a financial model for maintaining and modernizing it that is unsustainable.
In other words, the system itself is fragile because of a financial model and political system that can’t keep water rates on pace with the needs of maintaining and improving all parts of the system.
Please consider that in most places in Southern California, real water-system efficiency is unaffordable. Let’s be frank. Conservation is a prerationing tool when supplies are beginning to run scarce. Conservation and efficiency are impractical in normal times because, in order for water utilities -- especially public water systems -- to meet the expense of operations and management requirements, they must sell water.
With the wholesale price of water increasing from sources such as Metropolitan Water District, and regional agencies trying to improve local water reliability, all require increases, new fees and assessments to finance. To absorb those costs with reduced water sales, utilities must either raise rates or borrow from the Capital Improvement Budget to absorb the higher price of water -- which has been the preferred option for many local water departments, even after Proposition 218 passed and required that fees and rates reflect the cost of service.
In my city -- Fullerton, in Orange County -- borrowing (some would say “stealing”) from our CIB has resulted in a pipe-replacement program that will take 600 years to accomplish, and talk of water rate increases is fodder for City Council recall elections.
The looming failure of local water systems is diffused -- spread around -- rarely getting our attention. Perhaps they are adding up to something big, like a scenario where local crumbling infrastructure overshadows much-needed improvements to the State Water Project because city councils can’t afford to pass through additional water-rate increases to finance state solutions.
In March, in Los Angeles County, failure to approve a county storm-water-parcel fee everyone assumed as a given, was such a “Black Swan” event. In the past, when groundwater came up full of salty brine, ruining crops, everyone knew it. Farmers and their suppliers in the nearby towns knew economic hardship and fallowed land when they saw it and invested to avert the day of reckoning.
Despite the complexity of water, our population trends and the economy, I would like to suggest that this diffused doom in local systems is also adding up to a common recognition of the challenge before us.
Al Brandt’s (water expert for the state Assembly and panel speaker) comments about expanding our reach to other officials and the public lead me to share that, a month ago, there was a water conference that attracted one in four of California’s Latino elected mayors and council members. Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, D-Lynwood, participated in the organizing meetings early before the primaries last year.
Organized under the title of Water Education for Latino Leaders, or WELL, these leaders gathered in Sherman Oaks to learn the basics of California’s water history, infrastructure and finance. Who are these “Latino leaders”? Most are of Latino ancestry, but many are white, African-American and Asian- American. With the demographics in California, it’s hard not to be a Latino leader, whether you are Latino or not.
In considering WELL, let’s compare the people who built our original water infrastructure with our population today. University of Southern California professors Julie Park and Dowell Myers studied this in their 2010 study on “Intergenerational Mobility in the Post-1965 Immigration Era.”
They compare socioeconomic attainment of second-generation immigrant groups -- those before and after 1965 -- using the lifetime mobility and intergenerational progress of second-generation white immigrants as the reference for gauging the progress of other immigrant groups. They found that intergenerational mobility, in terms of educational attainment and income, share a strong overall pattern.
According to Park and Myers: “Overall, Latinos, since 1965, have experienced substantial mobility across all socioeconomic outcomes, from the first to the second generation. They have more than doubled their share completing a high school diploma. Latino progress with respect to rising above poverty and entering homeownership is even more substantial because the Latino second generation not only achieved intergenerational mobility but also converged with the mainstream.” A similar story can be said of Asian immigrants in California.
What this is telling us is that the generation of people from the 1920s to the 1960s, who built California’s infrastructure backbone, is not that different from the current generation of Californians when it comes to their shared interests as workers, consumers and homeowners.
Expanding on Richard Katz’s (water adviser, former assemblyman and panel speaker) observation about consensus being overrated, it’s true, in the absence of self-evident general consensus.
At the WELL Conference, Katz also observed, in his summary of a panel discussion, that the water issues the Latino leaders were most concerned about were driven by the wish for local control in determining water reliability. While the generation before worried about briny groundwater, today’s leaders are worried about crumbling local infrastructure, unreliable imported water and basic access to safe drinking water in our smaller communities.
What is driving today’s local leaders is also the means to providing for our economic engine through reliable water supplies and water systems. In the mid-1900s, it was agriculture. Today, this also means having adequate water pressure and good quality and supply to meet manufacturing and commercial needs.
In the weeks after the WELL Conference, we’ve had mayors and council members around the state reaching back to find ways to support water-rate increases some of them previously opposed, admitting that they had not understood the nature of the need.
I would like to end with this: No matter where you stand on issues of water, climate change and related fields, we know the fundamentals. We know that today’s knowledge of the natural dynamics driving water supplies is greater than what was available to California’s pioneers. We also know that our population has greatly increased and changed. As we grow, we are more sensitive to the risk that some years our water supplies will come up short and that our local infrastructure will fail as well.
Our solutions are all around us. There does not need to be a bust in the water bubble. The question is whether we will let those with potential answers we might not expect join us at the table. Even if we don’t mutually agree, we must begin asking: Who are the advocates of “eco reconciliation” and who would be interested if we began talking about water as a public commodity?
Failure is relative, and if we don’t invite fresh faces to expand the context of our debates, someone else might, and our doom as water professionals and agency officials will be someone else’s success.
- Adan Ortega Jr. of Fullerton is the managing partner of Water Conservation Partners Inc. in Fullerton, which is introducing private funding and investment for water-conservation projects and strategies for making water available for new development, off-setting lost access to contaminated local supplies and helping inventors market new conservation devices. He is a former vice president of external affairs for Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and California’s deputy secretary of state, under Secretary of State Bill Jones. He was also assistant general manager of the West Basin and Central Basin municipal water districts in Los Angeles County.
