Jerry Brown's Misread of Public May Squander a Real Opportunity

                                                                                                                                                                  April 2015  

The coverage of California’s drought in the weeks after Governor Jerry Brown mandated four hundred local water agencies to oversee a twenty-five percent reduction in usage suggests an agreed upon basis for understanding this issue. Here’s the story: The governor has called on collective action and sacrifice from the majority of Californians towards alleviating this crisis and has fully fleshed out his self-image as heralder of the “era of limits.” As he said in his press conference announcing the executive order, “The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water every day, that’s going to be a thing of the past.” Billboards, signs on bus stops, and the local water agents who stop to measure residential lawns are attempting to bring this attitude into fruition. It is a necessary challenge to California’s inherent individualism that requires great courage from the challengers - Brown and his administration - and is here to stay.

The dominant understanding of California’s political history might lead one to accept this perception as true. In the second half of the 20th century, Californians repeatedly used state propositions to limit the state government’s role in their lives. They ended the law against housing discrimination (which was eventually overturned); they limited property taxes which has in turn limited funding sources for public schools.

The narrative explaining this - which books such as Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors have lent widespread credence - points to the suburbs. After World War II, when government subsidies allowed for expansive suburban development, midwestern GI families brought their conservative ethos to these new neighborhoods. As calls for integration and taxation from Democrats and the increasingly virulent student movement gained traction, these families felt the need to be private at the heart of suburban life come under threat. This inspired a backlash from places such as Orange County that brought the rise of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and allowed a slew of anti-government propositions to shape state government.

One could even argue that this remains true today. As recently as April 20, an appellate court in Orange County struck down the tiered pricing system mandated by its local water board on the grounds that it violates prop 218 - the ban on government agencies from charging more than the cost of their services. So through this lense, you might see Brown as courageous for taking on California’s political ethos. Indeed, it seems to have already limited his ability to entice collective action against the drought.

A deeper look, however, into the environmental attitudes of California’s suburbanites suggests a different story. I examined the responses of California’s suburban counties to the 2007 ABC/Washington Post global warming survey and found that the public has a far more collective and conscientious outlook than is commonly understood. Not only do responses demonstrate an acceptance of man-made global warming’s present reality but at least half the residents of each area believe “the federal government should do more than it’s doing now to try to deal with global warming.” They find most major forms of environmental damage - air and ocean pollution, rising temperatures, oil drilling - to be a cause for concern and are supportive of the government facilitating the development and distribution of environmentally-friendly technology. In most counties, residents believe that “building cars that use less gasoline” should be legally required in addition to being encouraged through taxation. Most importantly, a vast majority said they were “very willing” to make lifestyle changes to improve the environment, such as adjusting energy use to seasonal temperature, regardless of inconvenience. One should note that all this was reported at a time when no environmental crisis seemed imminent.

So Californians were already quite willing to take personal steps to preserve the environment before Brown mandated them to do so. Indeed, the development of sustainable home and water use technology is one of the state’s few assets combating this drought that it lacked during the last drought in the late 1970s. (It is, albeit, a weak asset considering the doubling since then of the state’s population). A number of towns have already turned to desalination to address their water needs. Engineers from Israel (where half the water comes from desalination) are assisting with construction of a plant that is expected to provide 50 million gallons a day to residents of San Diego county. Plans for similar operations in Santa Barbara and Huntington Beach are in development. While desalination consumes a great deal of energy and can be harmful to ocean life, the San Diego plant has promised to compensate for the environmental damage by paying into a California program that aims to offset greenhouse gas emissions. Rather than challenge California’s individualism, Brown seems to have tapped into their willingness to take action.

This is not to say that Californians believe there should be no limits to the government’s ability to take environmental steps. In the same poll, respondents demonstrated clear opposition to policies that enforce behavioral changes such as taxes on gas and electricity. What is interesting is that they are overwhelmingly supportive of applying similar policies to companies: A majority in every county supported legally requiring power plants to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Were Brown to lead a complete restructuring of the corporate elements that have consistently drained California’s water supply, he would likely have widespread support. Instead he is essentially laying the burden on innocent bystanders. After all, only twenty percent of total water use is urban and only twelve percent of it residential. How big a dent can reduced lawn upkeep really make?

Very little, in fact, has been done to challenge the structural reporting problems that provide conglomerates their free reign over California’s water. Take Nestle. The Swiss corporation garners about ten percent of its profits from bottled water but controls a third of the market in the United States. Its supply for Arrowhead, Nestle’s west coast product, comes principally from a spring on the Morongo Indian reservation just outside of Palm Springs, chosen because the sovereignty of Native American land exempts it from regulatory oversight. Recently, the U.S. Forest Service announced a pending review into the expired permit that gives Nestle lay of that land, but this could take up to two years. In the near term, Nestle will continue to deplete a substantial water source while farmers turn to groundwater to compensate for the lack of supply from aquifers.

Indeed, Brown has faced a fair amount of criticism for exempting agriculture from the reduction mandate in his executive order. Despite representing only two percent of the state’s economy, agriculture consumes eighty percent of the water maintaining its global market in broccoli, grapes, tomatoes and almonds. (California continues to provide 99 percent of the US almond supply even though a single nut requires about a gallon of water to harvest). While the 2014 groundwater management law creates, for the first time in state history, some legal basis for oversight of agriculture’s water use, it is not slated to take effect for another twenty years. Brown in his executive order required irrigation districts to report their groundwater levels, but it is unclear what the consequence will be if those levels become critical. This is a frightening thought given that once state aquifers are depleted, groundwater will be the state’s only water source outside of desalination.

And this remaining water may not even be useable. California continues to host one of the largest hydraulic fracking operations in the country with over 2,500 oil and gas wells functioning in aquifers that double as water sources. Because state regulation of aquifers is so lax - largely to allow farmers free reign over their use - forty-six percent of the permits for these wells was granted after 2011 when the drought was well under way. Regulators are currently assessing water contamination and have ordered the closing of wells placed near aquifers with high water quality - by October a grand total of 140 wells will have been shut down.

Rather than personal urban use, then, the drought has been driven by corporate elements that, due to lack of oversight, get to systematically deplete vast quantities of water. The mechanisms in place to mitigate this are either too weak, too delayed, or both. There are a number of steps that Brown could take to make these mechanisms far more substantial. He could ban Nestle’s operations from the state (the multinational’s bottled water profits are sufficiently miniscule that they would suffer little if at all); he could divert agriculture away from crops that use an excessive amount of water (a prospect he has labeled “Big Brother”); he could employ groundwater management technology and oversight right away; he could close, even temporarily, every oil and gas operation at a functioning aquifer. Most importantly, the data shows that if he went in this direction he would likely have the public’s support.

Instead, he has left macro elements of California’s water structure largely as they are and asked individual citizens to carry its burden. It is unclear how long the public will be willing to do their part without anything substantial being asked of the corporate elements. Indeed, while on paper wealthier areas are directed to make greater cuts (up to thirty-six percent) in water use, a New York Times report shows poorer areas are the only ones actually making sacrifices. Because their citizens would not be able to afford the rate increases, they have let their lawns go idle, switched to using paper plates and silverware, and - yes - drinking bottled instead of tap water. Wealthier residents, instead of sacrificing the work gone into their “nice little green grass” have simply absorbed the higher rates.

So on one level it might seem that Brown and the state water regulators have taken on great risk by calling on Californians to make necessary sacrifices despite their political ethos. In truth, he may be squandering a real opportunity to restructure the status quo, alleviating the current crisis and insuring California’s promise for posterity.