A Modest Proposal on Water

Californians have a history of thinking big when it comes to water. The pioneers did not just loll about in the dust, waiting for rain to fall in the right places. They headed to where the water was and grabbed it. They did this with big dams, long canals, deep wells--whatever it took.

The native attitude toward water was summed up neatly a half-century ago by a hard-hat at work on the huge Shasta Dam. Asked by an interviewer to describe his mission, the unnamed laborer looked up from his pneumatic drill and said: “Mister, I’m moving the rain.”

It takes a lot of transported rain, of course, to transform desert wastelands into cotton baronies and boundless cities, and rarely has there been enough, seemingly, to go around. As a result, Californians have endured a century of water wars. They also have developed a high tolerance for audacious plumbing proposals. This is a state where serious consideration has been given to such loopy notions as floating icebergs down from the Arctic and digging a ditch across two states to tap the Columbia River.

Against this current of California water tradition comes one Peter Gleick, a wiry young scholar with a plan. Gleick and his associates at a small think tank here have developed a shockingly modest proposal to keep California flush with water--even as its population grows to 50 million in the next quarter-century. It calls for no colossal dams, no wells that reach halfway to China, no icebergs. Nothing big at all.

“It seems too easy,” Gleick was saying Tuesday morning. “People keep telling me that: It seems too easy. I’m not exactly sure what they mean. I’ll have to think about that.”

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Gleick, dressed this day in a turtleneck, khakis and black sneakers, was seated in his office at the Pacific Institute. The 38-year-old is a native of Manhattan--the New York borough, not the Los Angeles beach town--which perhaps explains his puzzlement over reaction to his water study. Nobody has ever approached the California water dilemma quite like Gleick.

For starters, nobody has ever been so optimistic. The customary way to discuss California water is to become hysterical, to let fly with rhetorical haymakers. Seeking more dams and reservoirs, farmers and city builders invoke images of a new Dust Bowl. Environmentalists counter with passages from “Silent Spring.” And so forth.

Gleick and his colleagues take a calmer approach in their 113-page report, titled “California Water 2020.” The attempt, he said, was to be “positive,” to propose the “do-able.” The report concludes that--with some adjustments in consumption-- California could have plenty of water around in the year 2020. Farmers could keep farming. Manufacturers could keep manufacturing. Cities could keep growing. Environmentalists could not only maintain but improve rivers and marshes.

The needed water mainly would be squeezed from existing supplies. In addition to smarter planning, there would be widespread conversion to low-flow toilets, drought-resistant yard plants, drip irrigation systems, selective crop rotations, greater reliance on recycled “gray water,” and similar conservation techniques. Small stuff, but on a big scale. “No significant new supply infrastructures need be built,” the report suggests, “nor are any drastic advances in technology necessary. No ‘heroic,’ or extraordinary actions are required of any individual sector.”

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Gleick backs up his projections with plenty of data--too many numbers to re-crunch here. He is convinced the plan could succeed. And yet he conceded that nothing about California water is ever simple. Not the plumbing. Not the politics. Nothing. For example, while it is easy to recommend that farmers grow less cotton and more walnuts, persuading them to do so is a harder nut to crack. There’s more involved than water. Market forces, soil condition and other factors come into play.

Moreover, as the report itself states, the approach requires “a fundamental change in how we think about water in California. Rather than trying to find the water to meet some projection of future desires, it is time to plan for meeting present and future human and ecological needs with the water that is available. . . . This is an essential change, and will require some new thinking at the highest levels--a hydrologic perestroika .”

To end with optimism, however, there is a parallel in California history. A quarter- century ago, utilities were demanding that new power plants be built up and down the coast. Without them, the warning went, the state would go dark. The plants were never built. Instead, new power was found through such seemingly innocuous tools as double-paned windows and low-wattage bulbs. It was found through conservation, creating along the way a whole new mind-set about energy development. The same could happen with water. But it won’t be easy.