Water, Water : EVERYWHERE A SHORTAGE, YES, BUT WHO SHOULD CONSERVE...

California this year enters its worst drought since the near-Saharan summer of 1977. But while the natural conditions are similar, some other things have changed--in part as a function of government policy, in part as a matter of attitude. As a result, the familiar chorus of municipal appeals for water conservation and rationing seems this time to have more to do with the rituals of California’s old-time water religion than with any serious expectation of significant water savings.

The situation is certainly serious, although the effects of this drought, as in 1977, are unevenly distributed. The central coast, which even in wet years receives less water than many of the less heavily populated areas directly inland, will be especially hard hit. Santa Barbara has replaced Marin as the place where rich people live but can’t flush. Activists throughout the state’s water community love that kind of object lesson, often for directly contrary reasons.

Advocates of continued development point to the plight of Santa Barbara now and Marin then as cautionary examples of what can happen if you try to restrict urban growth by limiting water supplies. Environmentalists at the same time applaud these events as a way of reminding people generally of the limits of natural resources, while forcing the unhappy few who live in those areas to learn about the benefits of conservation at the most personal level.

Such problems also afford an opportunity for public water officials to demonstrate not only their own ingenuity but the remarkable flexibility of the modern water system as well. Just as Marin, for example, was “saved” in 1977 by laying a temporary pipeline to the East Bay, so can Santa Barbara secure relief in the short term, through plans now under way to tap into the Metropolitan Water District’s abundant supplies on the south coast. Although getting the water that far north, through the jurisdictions of at least four independent water agencies, will be a complicated bureaucratic exercise, MWD officials express confidence they are up to the task.

Indeed, the fact that we are entering the fourth consecutive year of little water, without having suffered any severe economic consequences and without adding any major new storage reservoirs to the water system as a whole, is itself a testament to how skilled California’s water officials have become at managing the resource efficiently. But if the evidence that we’re getting more experienced at dealing with droughts has robbed the current water crisis of some of its urgency, it is also true that conditions are generally not nearly as severe today as they were in 1977. Overall water storage in California is currently at 74% of normal as compared with only 49% at this time of the year in 1977. And while the Colorado River, the most important out-of-state source of supply for half of California’s population, has been running low, storage in its mammoth reservoir system is currently at 115% of the long-term average.

The focus of drought relief has shifted as well. In 1977, enormous efforts were expended at both ends of the state to get additional water for Central Valley agriculture. There were many reasons for that. Agribusiness then was facing the threat of drastic cuts--up to 75% in some areas. The conventional wisdom among campaign consultants of both parties held that the Central Valley controlled the balance of political power. And MWD was happy to help out because it needed agribusiness’ help in pushing for construction of the Peripheral Canal. The result: Agriculture, in the middle of the worst drought in the state’s history, enjoyed a banner year, racking up record sales and actually expanding the amount of acreage under irrigation.

This year the Central Valley is threatened with cuts of 25% to 50% in its supplies from both state and federal water systems. But with agribusiness’ political influence waning and plans for the Peripheral Canal back on the shelf, those restrictions are more likely to stick this time around. And that’s appropriate because agriculture, the state’s largest water user, enjoys a lot more flexibility in the way it uses those supplies than most of the rest of the state.

If farmers have to make do with less water or lower-quality supplies, that might mean they have to pump more, or can decide to grow different crops, or in some instances may just alter their mix of federal subsidies. Other water-dependent industries, when faced with the same restrictions, might have no choice but to shut down.

What’s missing most of all this year are the rallying cries, the sense of common purpose and shared hardships that in 1977 made drought gardens the next best thing in the way of participatory patriotism since the victory gardens of World War II. Civic virtue in Marin in 1977 was something you could sniff as soon as you stepped through a friend’s front door. But under Gov. George Deukmejian, government isn’t much of a participatory activity any more, not even for the governor. This is a guy, after all, who started out in office by ordering the Department of Water Resources to scrape all those “Conserve Water” bumper strips off state cars because they offended his supporters in the agricultural community.

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that agribusiness still gets hysterical about suggestions that it could be doing more to conserve water. In the wake of the 1977 drought, one of the University of California’s ag schools quickly produced a study insisting that no significant savings were possible. Soon grants began to blossom for new research into ways of genetically altering the crops themselves so they would need less water. At a certain political level, the idea that it would be easier to change plants than practices of the people who grow them made a twisted kind of sense--legumes, after all, don’t vote.

Thirteen years later, that same agricultural resistance to conservation is still making the cities hop. The problem is that many of the injunctions to conserve, which municipalities are trotting out once again to impose upon their citizenry, make even less sense in relation to what actually happens to the state’s water supply:

Eighty-five percent of the water goes to agriculture. According to state estimates, 40% of the remainder goes to industrial, commercial and governmental uses. Roughly half of the 9% left that goes to residences is used outdoors. That means that only about 4% of all water deliveries (the numbers are lower in the metropolitan regions of Southern California) actually wind up being used in the home. And yet it’s there, where we live, that governments are still asking us to make the most personal kinds of sacrifices.

No matter what anyone thinks of the value of adopting an environmental ethic, this is by any measure a very small tail trying to wag an enormous and probably very wasteful dog. If nobody in California bathed or flushed their toilets for the next six months, it would hardly make as much difference as a just one very minor improvement in the efficiency of irrigation.

So why do we do it this way? In part because it does a little good--nobody wants to stand up for gutter flooders. In part, it makes us feel good, nobler, more in tune with the natural flow of things. And for the water agencies, it’s just good public relations to show that they are actively concerned, even if it is at our expense.

Beyond its practical benefits, promoting cutbacks in times of drought is good for keeping the faith in water development. It helps to build public support for future projects. And it renews the old myth on which the whole water system has been built--the idea that all these facilities have been built to serve people, thirsty people, and not the more impersonal, corporate entities that in fact benefit most from these supplies. If you believe the myth, then of course it makes sense that it should be people who suffer the most. But that’s not the way the system works.

None of this means that water officials should start cutting off supplies to the state’s economic base in order to let Los Angeles fill up all those swimming pools that Northern Californians love to hate. But it does seem that if the old stories were really true, if the water system was really built to benefit people, then we’d operate it in such a way as to ensure that people suffered last and least, rather than the other way round. Maybe this year we will.