Statement:

 Water flows and words flow.

Water is tactile and words are tactile.

Water installation, Stanford University

#2

Water

Stanford Law Library, installation #3

Water! Water$ Water? ©  Holly Crawford,  1992.

 

Water:

Average annual rain and snow fall in California: 200 million acre-feet.

One acre-foot is 326,000gallons,

A family of four uses approximately 1 acre-foot a year.

 

One bale of alfalfa hay uses 8,000 gallons of water and  4 to 5 crops are grown a year.

One bale of alfalfa hay cost $10.

 

“Water: the liquid that descends from the clouds as rain forms streams, lakes, and seas, and is a major constituent of all living matter and that it is orderless, tasteless, very slightly compressible liquid oxide of hydrogen H2O which appears bluish in thick layers, freezes at 0˚ and boils at 100˚ C, has a maximum density at 4˚ and a high specific heat, is feebly ionized to hydrogen and hydroxyl ions, and is a poor conductor of electricity and a good solvent….” Webster’s Dictionary

 

Water in the State (California) was first allocated to mining, then to agriculture. As San Francisco and Los Angeles grew they had enough votes and money to get the water they wanted for their present needs, and for the growth they anticipated. The growing environmental concerns of the 60s and 70s raised pressures to allow water to remain were it falls. The drought and increased population in the State has brought greater attention in the last several years to how much water we have; who gets it and why. This project deals with some of these issues.

 

 

“ I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling

 down falling

down

Poi s’asconse nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon-O swallow

swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitain ‘a la tour

abolie

These fragments I have shores

against my ruins

Why then lle fit you. Heironymo’s mad

againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

           Shantih shantih shantih” (1)—T.S. Elliot

The Wasteland, last lines, 1922.

 

 

(1)   Notes on The Wasteland by Elliot,  “‘Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata’ (Give, Sympathise, Control). Shantih, repeated here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. “ ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is our equivalent to this word.’”

 

 

Early in the history of the state of California hydroelectric mining was moving entire rivers and  bringing down  mountains. The first urban-farmer alliance in California was formed to oppose this, and in 1884 the Nineth U.S. Circuit Court in San Francisco issued an injunction that stopped the entire hydraulic mining industry; the grounds were that the operations were destroying the navigability of the Sacramento and Feather Rivers. This urban-farmer alliance later produced the Central Valley Project in the 1930s and the State Water Project in the 1960s.

 

After World War II, there was the beginning of a shift in values that culminated in the environmental legislation if the late 60s and 70s. The greater affluence of the middle and upper classes and the shift from rural to urban produced a perceived sense of loss; alienation from nature was translated into an environmental movement.

 

The present economic climate is bring this environmental legislation under renewed scrutiny and attack. It is being suggested that it is too expensive, or there are other uses of the money that should be considered, such as education, health, and balancing the budget.

 

Before federal and state government relieved municipalities of the burden of funding water projects, voters in both San Francisco and Los Angeles approved bonds for water project.  Los Angeles built the Owens Valley aqueduct in 1905, in the 40s expanding it to Mono Lake. Los Angeles was receiving 80% of its water from these two sources until the latest rounds of drought and court decisions in favor of Owens Valley and Mono Lake. In 1923, San Francisco obtained  federal approval  for the damming of  the Tuolumne River  on the west side of Yosemite; this is known as the Hetch Hetchy Project. (The East Bay receives most of its water from the Mokelumne River.)

 

In 1928, the voters in a state wide election approved the Central Valley Project, but before the State could sell bonds the market crashed, so the State asked the federal government to pay for the project.  The federal government  paid it,  and now controls it.  The water from this project does not go any further south than Fresno. In the thirties, to reassure voters in the north that they could use their water if they needed it., the legislation passed a ‘water of origin’ bill. If the counties were the water comes from ever need it, they can in theory get it back.

 

At present three-fourth of the State resides in the south and three-fourths of the water is in the north, but the population is starting to move north. Sacramento and Fresno are two of the fastest growing regions in the State and nation. In the near future the ‘water of origin’ doctrine will become an issue again.

 

Over the years the State has tired several times to take back control of the Central Valley Project from the federal government, but the price was always too high. Governor Wilson has asked for state control of the project once again. For several years, the Central Valley Project has been under attack by the urban south, seeking water. It has also been a target for reform since the time of President Carter, for two reasons. The farmers who receive their water from the project do so at greatly reduced rates, subsidized by the taxpayers and giving them a competitive advantage over farmers in other states who do not receive subsidized water. Also, only farms of 160 acres or less could receive water from the a federal land reclamation project; the acreage limit  has been revised twice in the last fifteen years, and it has been reported that most of the farmers in California who receive federally subsidized water have been and are in violation of the federal law.

 

In the early 60s the State Water Project was approved by the voters, and funded. It is 444 miles long and brings water to the central valley and south. The Southern California Metropolitan Water District, until recently, did not need or take its allocation from the  State Water Project. Instead, it sold water to farmers in Kern County at a price much lower than the Southern California Metropolitan Water District had to pay the state to maintain its contracted allocation.

 

California uses 80% of its water or agriculture. During this drought, agricultural economists have singles out cotton, rice, alfalfa, and hay as the four biggest water using crops, but they are not large cash crops. These crops use more than a third of all the water used in the state. It is estimated that less than 2% of the agricultural products in the state are grown on drip irrigation. It was reported that they water lost in evaporation in one year by flooding fields to grow rice is 800,000 acre-feet, and would meet the  water needs of Los Angeles for a year.

 

During this drought, farmers receiving water from the State and Central Valley Projects have had their water allocations reduced by as much as 50%. Farmers who can do so then pump ground water to irrigate. Many artesian wells have gone dry and aquifers are being pumped faster than they are being replaced.

 

Not all farmers in California receive federally subsidized water, but most farmers receive some form of subsidy, if only from the local water districts which favor agriculture with a lower price than householders pay. The explanation generally given is that this is an effective method to control urban growth.

 

Water in southern California comes from five sources:

 

1. The California Water Project, which  brings water from the Sierras as  well as north Sacramento through a system of rivers and aqueducts through the Central Valley past Bakersfield to Southern  California.  This project supplies water to the Water Districts of California, who in turn distribute it to local governmental entities.

 

2. The Owens Valley aqueduct supplies 80% of the water to the City of Los Angeles, carrying that water to Los Angeles form the Owens Valley and Mono Lake.  The aqueduct opened in 1905  to the Owens valley, and was extended in the 40s to Mono Lake.  It was used to transport water from 450 square miles which Los Angeles had purchased in the Owens Valley, together with underlying water rights; and drained  a large lake in the Owens Valley which is now dry, as well as draining a good part of Mono Lake. Now, the water is being pumped form the groundwater aquifer under Owens Valley, and drained from Mono Lake, which  is partly  being replenished by the seasonal Sierra runoff.

 

3. Colorado River water is an important source for San Diego, and supplies some water to San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.

 

4. Groundwater is being pumped from various locations in southern California; the City of El Monte, for example relies heavily on this source, but in general it supplies a small part of the water consumed. 

 

The aquifers in Orange County and Riverside have become polluted.

 

5. Some of the sparse rainfall in Southern California is captured  and used, but this    

       is not a large part of the water consumed.

 

       The rights to California’s water are allocated by a wide range of governmental agencies, including state government agencies, local water districts and departments of water and power, and federal government agencies, as well as the court of the federal and state governments. Water quality issues are also decided by a similar maze of bodies established by federal, state, county, and municipal  governments.

 

Flowers, wildlife, or California-grown rice, cotton, and alfalfa? Or  is there enough water for all these if we dam all the rivers in the state or bring in from Alaska? If we decide we can afford to pipe it in from Alaska, who will receive it?

"Yes, as everyone knows, mediation and water are wedded forever...Why did the Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image her saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the images of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."--Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851).

 

The nation's water programs are plagued with outdated laws, windfall profits, inconsistent policies, according to a National  Water Commission's report. The report criticizes irrigation, flood control and waterway efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Soil Conservation Service. Calls for coordination of programs.

 

$25 billion is allocated to the clean up and control of water polluction by the Clean Water Act, passed by both the Senate and the House.

 

Stringent new restrictions are imposed on municipal  and industrial waste discharges into the Pacific Ocean by California's State Water Resources Control Board.

 

Massive pumping of ground water form the Owens Valley by Los Angeles is turning the Valley into a desert, according to  residents of the valley, who seek a court injunction to stop the pumping under Owens Valley requests injunction against Los Angeles under the Environmental Quality Act. Los Angeles Water and Power owns 450 sqaure miles about the aquifer from which it is pumping, having bought the land and the water rights.

 

The U.S. agrees to improve the quality of water flowing into Mexico from the Colorado River. Mexico had complained that the irrigation works in southern Arizona was causing a high saline content in the river crossing the border. This was damaging crops and fishing in Mexico. Mexico had been negotiating with the United States for ten years and was going to sue the United States in the International Court.

 

"For all the gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well bred man than agriculture." --Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officius, book 1 ch. 42., trans Cryus R. Edmonds (1873)

 

 

The Federal Endangered Species Act is enacted.

One and a half million species have been named by biologist estimate that between five and thirty million are as yet unnamed. Water is the most basic need of all the named and unnamed species.

 

Voting for the Directors of the Tulare Water District Board may be based only on property rights, and not 'one man one vote,'  the Supreme Court decides 6-3, over the objections of Tulare residents who do not own property. The water board, as a special body, is elected by property holders only, who get one vote for every $100 valuation of his property. This is allowed one corporate holder 37,825 votes.

 

To alleviate the problem of the growing salt content of the Colorado River, the U.S. and Mexico sign the Colorado River Pact. The U.S. will build a &67 million desalting plant, and the largest in the world, in southern Arizona and a $36 million drainage system to dump extracted salt into the Gulf of California. Salt is an increasing problem in the Colorado River because irrigation use of water in the Upper Basin (Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming). That is, water is run off the fields where it irrigates the crops, and then drained back into the river, containing salt, fertilizer, pesticides and other impurities which it has picked up in the irrigated fields. Congressional approval is needed to allocate funds and approve the provisions of the pact.

 

 

"Once it was a far different place. Aborginal California, with 275,000 to 300,000 residents by current reckoning, was among the most densely populatedd areas in North America at the time of European contact, but the native peoples left scarely an imprint on the waterscape or landscape." --Norris Hundley Jr. The Great Thirst, Californian and Water, 1770s-1990s. University of California Press.

 

 

President Nixon signs the bill implementing the 1973  agreement between Mexico and the U.S. The bill authorized $155.5 million for the contruction of the desalting plant in Arizona and four control units, two iu Colorado, one in Utah and one in Nevada.

 

The Melones Dam may be constructed in California despite arguments made to the Supreme Court that the dam would flood a section of the Stanislaus River. Justice  Douglas dissented. The dam was approved in 1944 as part of the Central Valley Project. The Army Corp of Engineers started work on the construction of the nation's fourth highest dam. It will flood twenty-six miles of the Stanislaus River. This is north of Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada range.

 

Proposition 17 is on the ballot to try to stop the dam, but loses 53 to 43 percent.

 

Migration in California from other states began to greatly increase in 1970, the Census Bureau reports. Since 1970, California has attracted 648,000 of these people.

 

Cities in the West try different methods to limit their growth, but not too successfully.

 

A federal district court rules that the town of Petaluma, in northern California, could not limit growth by limiting the number building permits issued for new dwelling units.

 

Nixon reigns.

 

Ford becomes President.

 

Ford signs safe drinking water bill. Federal standards are set and will be administered by the FDA.

 

"But he looked upon the city, every side,

              Far and wide,

 

All the mountains topped with temples, all the

 glades,

          Colonnades,

All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and

then

All the men!"--Robert Browning

Love Among the Ruins, xi

 

 

 

Petaluma's plan to limit growth by only issuing 500 building permits i five years is approved by the 9th US District Court of Appeals, reversing a lower court which had invalidated the plan.

 

91 federal employees, primarly in the Bureau of Land Mangement and the Geological SUrvey, have interests in timber, farm or undeveloped lands which could represent personal conflicts of interest, according to the General Accounting office.

 

Ford signs bill authorizing $21.5 million for land acquistion around the Snake River. The bill estimates Hell Canyon perseve in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. This land would be incorporated into the Wild Scenic Rivers System. The bill bars authorization of one dam already approved for the area.

 

"The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture." --Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia (1833) XII, "That You Must Love Me and  Love My Dog"

 

 

"Drought threatens wine industry."

 

A section of the Owens Valley Aqueduct is blown up; reminiscent of the Owens Valley and Los Angeles water war in the 1920s.

 

Rainstorm ends in the "worst West Coast drought in more thatn seventy years. Since July 1, 1975, the official start of the rain year, only 0.59 inches had fallen on southern California. The dry spell cost an estimated $300 million in crop and livestock losses."

 

Plans for a coal-fired electric plant were "beaten to death by environmental interests," according to a spokesman for Southern California Edison, the principal partner (40%), who announced that project's cancellation. The plant would have cost $3.5 billion and produced 300 tons of air pollutants a day at its site on the Kaiparowits Plateau in Utah. Other partners in the canceled project were the San Diego Gas and Electric (23%) and Arizona Public Service Co. (18%).

 

Federal installations emitting air or water pollution need not obtain a state permit, even when the federal environmental law requires that the facility meet state standards, according to a Supreme Court ruling.

 

Federal courts cannot overrule state air pollution control plans on the grounds of lack of technological or economic feasiblility, the Supreme Court ruled in another case. Polluters seeking a variance must do so in state court and agencies.

 

The dam for the New Melones water project should not be filled with water until the Bureau of Reclamation shows a need for more irrigation water, according to the California Water Resources Control Board, challenging federal control of the dam.

 

"In other activities to protect the environment, Metropolitan contracted to have the Stephens' Kangaroo Rat, an endangered species native to western Riverside County, rounded up in areas slated for new water supply development and relocated to nearby lands that will become their new habitat." --The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Annual Report, 1991, page xxxv.

 

(The District paid a consultant $500,000 to trap the rats and relocate them, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.)

 

 

Moderate to extreme drought conditions persist in the West. (The driest year in California recorded history.)

 

Limits are imposed on the amount to ground water the City of Los Angeles may pump for the  450 sqaure miles of land Los Angeles owns in the Owens Valley. The limits are imposed by the California Court of Appeals in a suit brought by Owens Valley residents, contending that the pumping of ground water was turning the valley into a desert.

 

An emergency pipeline is built to carry water across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to Marin County. The pipeline is six miles long, took 47 days to build, and occupies one lane of the bridge. The pipe will carry "...eight million gallons of water a day to the county's 170,000 residents."  Most of the water being pumped through the pipeline  is available because the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California  gave up "half of its entitlement of water" from the State water project aqueduct.

 

Los Angeles institutes mandatory water rationing. The deadline for the installation of equipment to control pollution is postponed by a bill revising the Clean Water Act of 1972. The bill also authorized expenditure of $28.7 billion over the next five years for water pollution control, and provides that federal dredgin projects of wetlands would not require an environmental impact report, but an EPA permit.

 

"Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear-

And he shows them pearly white-

Just a jackknife is Macheath, dear-

And he keeps them out of sight."--Bertolt Brecht, The Three Penny Opera (1928)

 

 

Drought is declared over.

 

Quality standards for Delta water are set by the State Water Resources Control Board in the Water Right Decision 1485: Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Marsh. The Board was established in 1945 by the State Legislature and is responsible for overseeing water rigts and quality. Its decision focuses on the State Water Project's  and the Central Valley Project's water rights permits and operations.  The Board will require the two projects to maintain water quality in the Delta at levels that existed before the projects were constructed. The federal government challenges this decision in the courts on the grounds that the federal government is not accountable to state standards and obtains a ruling from the Supreme Court in California v. United States. The Court decides that a state can attach conditions to federal water rights as long as those standards do not conflict with "congressional legislative intent."

 

Private citizens may file a claim on federal lands where they discover valuable minerals. The Supreme Court holds that water is not a "valuable mineral'  as defined by federal mining law, so that citizens may not file claims for water rights on federal lands. The court also holds that Congress had given states and local communities the power to regulate water rights.

 

Carter proposes that Congress authorizes 26 new water projects at a total estimated cost of $720 million. The President asks Congress to authorize the total cost of the projects; construction would run into the mid-80s. Congress normally launches new projects "...with small down payments to be followed thereafter by substantial and increasing sums."

 

Congress passes a bill to fund 53 new water projects at a cost of $10.2 billion, including six that Carter thought had been killed in 1977 as unnecessary, and opts to fund the projects year by year, despite the Presidents' request that Congress fund projects in the entirety. The partial funding technique allows the bill to stay within the budgetary limits for this fiscal year.

 

Carter vetoes the bill. The House is 53 votes short of the two-thirds needed to override the Presidents veto, It is reported that House Democratic leadership was aligned against the President.

 

 

"Most people are on the world, not in it--have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them--undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."

 

"How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone in the mountain top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make--leaves and moss like marmots and birds, or tents or piles stones--all dwell in a house of one room--the world with the firmament for its roof--and are  sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track."--John Muir, John of the Mountain (1938)

 

 

The Army  Corps of Engineers begins to fill the Melones Dam. In an effort to stop this, Mark Debussy chains himself to the bedrock in the Stanislaus Canyon. Governor Brown urges President Carter to halt the filling of the dam. The Corps opens the flood gates and spills water from the dam. Congressional bill proposes to add the Stanislaus to the federal wild river system.

 

90% of the farmers using federal reclamation water are in compliance with the federal limit of 160 acres per family member, according to the Interior Department, whose report states that strict enforcement of the law would only be deterimental to the several hundred large farms, most of them in California. California agribusiness has mounted a campaign to repeal the law.

 

The Western Counsil of State Governments, while meeting in Nevada, challenges the federal government's claims to 68% of all western lands. Nevada leads the movement and calls it the "Sagebrush Revolt." Nevada is hoping to provoke a legal issue that would end up in the Supreme Court.  The federal government does nto care to make Western land an issue to resolved in the courts. Under the "sovereign immunity" doctrine a state is not permitted to sue the federal government unless the government agrees.

 

Odd and Even day gasoline rationing begins.

 

 

1990

 

1991

 

1992