Like everyone else, I’m real anxious about whether we’ll get enough rain this winter.
Dr. Lund’s list of curiosities about water management is interesting. I’ve wondered about the State and Fed’s role diminishing, especially as the legislature and the agencies explicitly set their water management approach as ‘supporting integrated regional water management’. I worry about that some, since I believe that local governments generally don’t have the luxury to do anything more than work in their immediate self-interest and compete with their neighbors for “growth” and its accompanying new tax revenue, which will always require additional water sources. By the way, I read Robert Self’s book American Babylon: race and the struggle for postwar Oakland over my vacation in a tropical paradise. It was a fantastic discussion of the California promise to keep taxes low by continuously shifting the collective burden onto new growth. A little dry, but you should totally read it (it also mentioned race and stuff). Anyway, if “the locals” are going to be making most water management decisions in the future, I would still want the state to set regulatory boundaries that prevent both a race to the bottom between neighboring jurisdictions and perpetually relying on growth to fund government.
To my mind, the most politically important of his points on water management was the paragraph on how people immediately work to optimize whatever system exists, and capture the benefits from it. Which is sorta great, butcept that no matter how sucky a system is overall, there will be groups that really genuinely depend on some aspect of it staying exactly the same. “We bought this house in a floodplain and now you have to fix that levee forever.” They aren’t wrong; they have a legit reliance interest. But there would be people with a legit reliance interest no matter what the system is, because people love to optimize. So the existence of a section of society that genuinely needs things to stay as they are can’t be the only reason that a new policy gets blocked.
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I didn’t agree with Pia Lopez’s reasoning on the Peripheral Canal, but I thought she hit one of the most important issues squarely.
You can bet on this: Southern California water users are not going to spend billions on a peripheral canal if it only gives them the amount of water they’re already getting. They want to maximize water exports south of the Delta. More water, not just “reliable” water.
This is a tricky point. I think two contradictory things. First, I believe that water policy elites do understand they’d be paying billions for reliability and not additional water. The savvy lobbyists for the Peripheral Canal get this; they aren’t being personal hypocrites as they make their case for the Peripheral Canal and BDCP. Second, I have no idea whether they can sell that concept to their ratepayers. Ratepayers don’t even seem to like paying for local O&M, preferring instead to let their systems fall into disrepair and deferred maintenance. Can they really get behind paying lots more so that their supply is at much less risk from earthquake and sea level rise? I don’t know.
Which brings me to another point. To my mind, the thing that could convince SoCal users to pay billions for reliability is to calculate the costs of a disruption. Which would be a great piece of a full cost-benefit analysis of a Peripheral Canal. Which might also reveal that while SoCal cities might be talked into paying more for the water they get now, the costs of a Peripheral Canal could price water out of agriculture’s range. All of these things would be interesting! As far as I understand his argument, Dr. Michael thinks a full cost-benefit analysis of the Peripheral Canal would reveal that it wouldn’t be worth it to the water recipients. My own guess is that it would, but I don’t know that. So I’m joining him in saying that one should be done.
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Governor Brown’s State of the State sounds to me like a clear signal that he intends to back a Peripheral Canal. Since I’m in favor of someone making an arbitrary decision on that, I’m not especially sympathetic to the local politicians saying that he is ramming things through without enough study. But I do wonder that all the coded political reactions came out today. Honestly, what did people think it meant that the Governor’s budget includes 135 new positions for DWR to complete “preliminary engineering work” for BDCP. Whatever could all that staff be needed for?
On the public record 
A full, a very completely full, cost-benefit analysis, extended as far as New Mexico and Colorado, needs to be done since California’s water infrastructure, thirst and myth, has so irretrievably erased local, even state-based, control.
At the December 15 Delta Stewardship Council meeting, Dr. Gilbert from University of Texas (who was there reviewing the DPC Economic Sustainability Plan, but was also on the DRMS peer review panel) stated that his calculations based on the DRMS results were the 100-year present value of expected costs from disruptions was about $2 billion. He specifically said you can’t justify spending over $10 billion on a canal because of the earthquake risk alone. (I would have to go to the tape for the exact quote.)
The context of his comment was interesting, because he was criticizing our argument that seismic upgrades to levees would improve water supply reliability. His argument was that the ESA restrictions were a lot more important to water supplies than earthquake risk.
“I’m in favor of someone making an arbitrary decision on that”
REALLY ?
ar·bi·trar·y/ˈärbiˌtrerē/
Adjective: 1.Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2.(of power or a ruling body) Unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.
au·to·crat (ôt-krt)
n. 1. A ruler having unlimited power; a despot.
2. A person with unlimited power or authority: a corporate autocrat.
What an unfortunate choice of words.
That’s just what we need, a corporate autocrat deciding our future.
Government by the 1% for the 1%.
I’m in favor of an informed and conscious decision.
Not having a cost/benefit analysis contributes to an atmosphere of distrust and leads one to wonder what there is to hide.
Our legislature, not requiring an up or down vote, is pure cowardice.
Since I’m here, I’ll respond real quick. I meant “arbitrary”. The state can withstand having a Peripheral Canal and it can adjust to not having a Peripheral Canal. I prefer one, but even more than that, I’d like it settled and us moving forward to respond to either decision. Hovering, like we are now, is the worst possible option.
I liked the plot of ‘costs with hassle’. You’ve mentioned that one of the kinds of wealth we’ve gotten used to is not having to think about it, plan ahead, etc. So true!