Urban, Rural Unite for a New Water Ethic

Water policies for California remain as uncertain and tumultuous as they were during the bitter 1982 Peripheral Canal referendum. Northern-Southern California divisions, conflicts between environmentalists and the water industry and growing tensions between urban and agricultural users all reflect the lack of consensus.

Part of the uncertainty is based on the erosion of water industry clout--exercised by a longstanding coalition of public agencies and private interests. This coalition recently has demonstrated a declining aptitude for setting the water agenda. Water-industry lobbying groups, such as the Assn. of California Water Agencies, continue to argue the need to build and expand. But the cost and the environmental consequences of constructing new, large-scale water development projects no longer generate automatic support from the Legislature, the media or the public.

Even with the turmoil of current water politics, we see the possibility of a new type of alliance based on the development of emerging social movements in both urban and rural communities. These are movements concerned with the quality of daily life, growth and development issues, the continuing expansion of the urban megalopolis and the agribusiness empires of the Central Valley and the need for a new ethic of respect for the land and for community or neighborhood. The hazards of chemical-intensive agricultural production, urban expansion and water development are key issues for a new urban/agricultural water alliance.

Such an alliance can play a crucial role in establishing what the staff of the state Water Resource Control Board has called “a new water ethic.” Such a water ethic would consist of the following guidelines:

-- The greater the use, the higher the price. The current pricing structure in the state and federal water systems is neither fair nor efficient. The big price breaks given large-scale farm businesses encourage industrial-like farming operations, heavy pesticide use, farming of marginal lands and employment of farm laborers working under serf-like conditions. In urban areas, the prevalent approach is to charge the same rate to everyone--including new users such as developers in outlying areas and big users such as industry and owners of large-estate homes.

A more equitable and efficient system would operate on the principle of the greater the use, the higher the price. In agriculture, water subsidies would be strictly limited to 960 acres or less to protect and encourage smaller, residential family farmers, while larger water users would be charged a substantially higher price. These would include farm-management arrangements that have been used to mask larger farm holdings. In the cities, small residential water users would be protected while the largest and newest users would pay higher fees, reflecting the additional costs they bring to bear on the system.

-- A rural community betterment fund. In the last several years, talk of water transfers or sale of water by agricultural to urban users has become popular. Such a proposal often benefits the major owners who control most of the land and thus the water rights to the land. But there has been little discussion of how to protect the people and communities whose livelihoods depend on agriculture. Water transfers from agriculture to urban users can depress rural communities by eliminating jobs and taking lands off the tax rolls. A community betterment fund established through transfer or sales proceeds and controlled by local rural communities would be a good starting point to address those impacts.

-- Water quality as a priority. The issue of water quality has become a dominant concern of urban residents. Less known is the pollution of water supplies in rural areas, where thousands of wells have been contaminated by pesticides. The water agencies, in the business of development and expansion, have to reorder their priorities to place water quality at the top. That requires a major effort aimed at reducing or eliminating the use of high volumes of pesticides, industrial solvents and industrial and commercial chemicals that are the major culprits of our deteriorating water quality.

-- Greater accountability: opening up the water industry. Water agencies are some of our most unaccountable and inaccessible public decision-making bodies. Elections are undemocratic, decisions are made without public input, and the water agencies function in a kind of “clubby” atmosphere with their private-interest counterparts. The inner workings of water agencies have to be opened to the public, the media and the Legislature. Water agency elections with one person/one vote would be a good starting point. Such a system would replace current practices, such as one acre/one vote for many irrigation districts and the appointment, instead of election, of urban agency directors.

Due to the turmoil in water policy today, certain urban environmentalists and legislators have called for a Northern California-Southern California urban water alliance against the Central Valley. That is a mistake, one that is both polarizing and shows a lack of sensitivity to rural issues and agriculture. Many small family farmers are at the forefront of a new land ethic, farming without chemicals in an environmentally sensitive manner. Urban residents share some of these same values placed in an urban context. A dialogue has to be established, creating a new understanding: The interests in protecting the land and those who work it are compatible with protecting communities and the people who live there and drink the water. We all want to be safe.