Lost Amid the Water People

A colleague of mine once wandered into the San Joaquin Valley in pursuit of a water policy story. He had been a well-rounded fellow, conversant in foreign affairs, music and the NBA. But his trip to the valley changed him. He returned a one-issue zealot, and the issue was water.

Acreage limitations, saline encroachment, double-dip subsidies, riparian law--he would deliver monologues on these subjects for hours. He carried a backpack filled with leaked Bureau of Reclamation memos, newspaper clippings, court papers, a growing pile of evidence to make his case that California farmers were collaborators in a vast conspiracy of greed. That I was skeptical, even bored, exasperated him.

“It’s all so simple,” he’d say, and then spend the rest of the night explaining why.

I tolerated my friend’s obsession. I knew what had happened to him. I had seen it before. Without even knowing it, he had been pulled into that strangest of California sects. He had joined the water people.

Water people come in all stripes--farmers, lawyers, urban developers, environmentalists, politicians, crusading journalists, duck hunters and dam-tenders. They disagree on almost everything, but they share an all-consuming interest in California water. Unlike the rest of us, water people actually know what is meant by “acre-foot.” They can tell you the exact number of winter-run salmon left on the Sacramento River and how much water is needed to grow a head of lettuce. True members of what some call the “hydraulic brotherhood” monitor the Sierra snowpack daily and subscribe to Water Strategist quarterly. They still get goose bumps every time they see “Chinatown.”

Some water people will admit their addiction. “I don’t know much about the world,” one told me. “I’ve spent the last 20 years in water.” They learn to hold their tongues at dinner parties, observing that most Californians grow heavy-eyed when talk turns to overdraft of the San Joaquin aquifer.

Water people initially are attracted to the issue by self-interest. As schoolchildren are taught, the history of California is the history of its water; the same can be said of its future. Each faction is convinced it knows the best use for water. Farmers talk about the food they grow. Cities talk about the jobs they create. Environmentalists talk about the species they save. Duck hunters talk about the ducks they shoot.

Subgroups complicate matters. San Joaquin Valley cotton farmers, for instance, will curse water-happy Sacramento Valley rice growers for turning public opinion against agriculture. The environmentalists who won’t be satisfied until every dam is destroyed snipe at those who seek compromise.

At some point, water people become captivated by the nuances of the game itself. I’ve heard California water politics described as “the world’s biggest Rubik’s Cube,” and also as a “ballet.” Lawsuits and legislation have replaced ditch-bank shootouts as the ultimate method of resolving disputes, which has cut down on bloodshed but unloosed in the world libraries full of impenetrable legalese.

The water people are masters of bluffs and feints, of hidden clauses in contracts and betrayed alliances, of back-room deals and well-timed news leaks. Things are never what they seem on the waterfront, and even the most experienced water people can get bushwhacked. The complexities of water politics are mind-bending.

“You either get chewed up or sucked in,” said Rodney Smith, editor of the Water Strategist.

A lot of us just find this stuff boring, too complicated to follow. Which is why most Californians ignore water as long as it keeps flowing from the kitchen tap.

Still, even rank amateurs can grasp the one constant rule of California water: No matter how much it rains, there will never be enough to satisfy everyone. The state seems calibrated to grow at a pace just ahead of its available resources. If we doubled the water supply tomorrow, we’d triple the demand for it by the next day.

This guarantees that the water people will be around for a long time, fighting it out. A farmer told me last week that the surest path to riches in California today was to obtain a law degree and develop a water litigation practice.

Which reminds me. Before I could bring in a deprogrammer, that old colleague who got bitten by the water bug left the newspaper business. He wrote a book and produced a television documentary about water. Now he’s enrolled in law school. If I was a farmer, I would not take this as good news.