On the public record

I see this quote everywhere; today’s example is from here.

California’s drought is especially worrisome because the state produces about one-half of the country’s fruits, vegetables and nuts. It is the No.1 agricultural state in the U.S.

The valuable information that never accompanies this quote is: how much of California’s irrigated acreage does it take to produce half the country’s truck crops? How much acreage would have to be fallowed in drought before any of those fruit, vegetables and nuts are lost to U.S. consumers?

Here are some tables from U.C. Davis’s Agricultural Issues Center that give a rough idea. (For the rest of what I put here, I’ll concede rounding and back-of-the-envelope estimates. If I am wrong by five or ten percent, it’ll still give us a sense of proportion.) This is 2011 data. Straight off the top, about 15% of California’s agricultural produce is shipped to the rest of the world. (http://giannini.ucop.edu/CalAgBook/Chap3.pdf, pg 62, says 16% to 19% in the 90’s). But Table 1 says 14%. Let’s say 15% so the math is easy. There are roughly 9 million irrigated acres in CA.

9m acres * 0.15 = 1,350,000 acres of production exported

If more than a million irrigated acres went out of production, the U.S. could still have all of the fruits, vegetables and nuts it now consumes.

If we start looking at different crops, I find the drought less and less worrisome. Back to Table 1, which says that 0.64 of all almonds produced go to overseas markets.

800,000 acres of almonds * 0.64 = 512,000 acres of almonds exported.

If 500,000 acres of almonds went out of production, the ag sector would lose quite a bit of money. But the U.S. would lose not a single almond that it currently eats. Table 3 shows you where those almonds go. A third of them go to Europe. I am sure that if California could not provide Europe with almonds, Spain, Turkey and Iran would be delighted to help them out. I am also sure that if Europe could consume no almonds at all, it would not be the Siege of Leningrad. People have gone without almonds for their entire lives and still found meaning in their existence.

Table 1 says that half of pistachios and walnuts are sent overseas (55%); Table 3 says they go to Europe and China. Combined acreage of pistachios (250,000 acres) and walnuts (about 250,000) is 500,000 acres. We could lose half of that (back down to 250,000 acres) without endangering the U.S. supply.

Let’s do grapes! 850,000 acres of grapes; 0.27 exported out of the country (Table 1), one third of those to Canada (Table 3).

850,000 acres of grapes * 0.27 = approx 230,000 acres of grape exported.
230,000 acres of grapes * 3 af/acre = little more than 0.6MAF.

It would not go down in the annals of human tragedies if Canadians got no more Californian wines. This would not give me a single second’s worry about food security.

A third of dried beans grown in California and half of the rice grown in California are exported. You know what? I think that’s great! Those are important food staples that provide direct protein and calories to humans. I am not anti-everything ag. But if we are growing 750,000 acres of nuts for the rest of the world, then we’re shipping 2.25MAF/year of water away in the form of pleasant snacks. Fuck that.

I am the most parochial person you know, and were it up to me, I wouldn’t be providing lettuce to places east of the Sierras either. Y’all have the entire Great Plains to work with; I am sure you could figure something out if California decided we’d rather have our ecosystems than send you cheap blueberries. I understand that my views are in the minority. But rough estimates are enough to convey that irrigated acreage in California (9 million acres) has perhaps 1.5 million to 2 million acres of slack before important food crops for human consumption in the U.S. are threatened.

ADDED: For perspective, the regulars at UC Davis say:

Still, statewide overdraft is estimated diversely to average between 500,000 acre-feet a year to more than 1.5 million acre-feet a year

We send more water embedded in almonds, walnuts and pistachios overseas than we overdraft from the San Joaquin Valley aquifers every year.

Wow. This is a surprisingly crappy answer to a common question in Sacramento.

Why conserve water when it all flows back to the river?

The answer is not gobbledy-gook about the hydrologic cycle. There are two parts to a better answer.

The letter writer describes indoor water use, which he perceives as a more-or-less closed system (river, pipes to him, use by him in sinks and showers and washing maching and toilet, back into pipes to the regional sanitation plant, treatment, back into river). No conspicuous loss at any point.

For residential indoor use, there are two good reasons to conserve. First, this year, we have so little water stored uphill of us that we need to make what we’ve got in Folsom Lake last through to the next rainy season. It could really run out in August. We conserve now to stretch supplies longer in time. Second, even if diverting through the homes and humans of Sacramento caused no loss, that water re-enters the system downstream, at the treatment plant. We don’t have a way to pump it back up to us. It might not be lost to the next downstream person, but it is lost to our use in the dry months to come. (Also, it takes energy to move it and use it and treat it twice, and fish are left with a tiny muddy trickle in the parts of the American and Sacramento Rivers between the Sacramento city pumps and the regional sanitation plant.)

But the real answer is that most of the water used by Sacramentans is used outside (rule of thumb is that 70%-80% of residential use is outdoor). That isn’t a closed system. Some gets lost to evaporation and transpiration when it gets spread an inch thick over lawns on hot days. Some may trickle into groundwater and it isn’t clear when that gets back to rivers. I heard someone say that only 56% of outdoor water in the Sacramento region returns to rivers. That was hearsay and I can’t even remember the source, so make of it what you will. A good blogger would try to find you a number, but I think we can all agree that I am only a pale shadow of my former glory. Still, my answer is a lot better than an answer that missed two fundamental points (that we’re trying to make limited supplies last longer in time, and that most water use is outdoors, which is not a closed system).

I know we don’t do link+commentary anymore because that’s what Twitter is so good at. But here on the public record, we shall always kick it old school.

This purports to be a creative financing mechanism that greatly extends the money that can be used to build infrastructure. If I understand it right, it is securitized by future wastewater treatment rates, presumably higher to cover installing new capital. Wallets of the people of the state, taxes or fees. That’s all there is.

There’s nothing especially new in this report on dry landscapes from Press-Democrat in Santa Rosa. But the tone is more poetic than I’m used to in newspapers, and the comments go loony in ways that are new and funny to me.

The city of Sacramento is fundamentally unserious about water management. I deeply resent that I don’t have a meter and can’t know how much water I use at home.

There is little I love more than seeing agriculture turn on itself. You would have no idea that all of San Joaquin Valley ag isn’t Westlands from a CDFA hearing, but the eastern side of the Valley has different self-interests. The drought is bringing that out. Also, a Bakersfield voice saying that all those trees were a bad idea, looking straight at you, POMEGRANATE PISTACHIO PEOPLE.

This interview with writer Kim Stanley Robinson is lengthy; here’s the only part that’s directly relevant to us. Since we’re going to be fallowing 1-2 million acres anyway…

The Central Valley has been depopulated of its Serengeti’s worth of wild creatures, and that’s a disaster. But you could do amazing agriculture in the Central Valley and add wildlife corridors, where the two could coexist in a palimpsest, big agriculture and the Serengeti of North America, occupying the same space. And then it would be that much more interesting and beautiful. If you went out there to the edge of Davis now, you would see nothing in terms of animals. But if you went out there and it was filled with tule elk and all the rest of the animals and birds of the Central Valley biome, occasionally a bear would come down out of the hills

And a couple good books:
Don’t manage the new Central Valley Serengeti like Jon Mooallem describes in Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America Great, funny, troubling book.

I enjoyed Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars as well. A good story, although it may be rough for dog owners. Given my single-mindedness, the entire book was essentially set-up for one funny scene.

Head of the Drought Task Force said that a dozen or so small towns face running out of water in the next 60 days. The prospect of trucking water, or bringing in mobile desal plants, looms. Some of these towns may be very poor, and haven’t had the wealth to make their water supply resilient (second tank, line to a different source, pump lower in their reservoir to reach more volume). Some of them may simply not have other sources. Some of them, though, may have been living in denial about the risk of bad events. They may have had the wealth but been unwilling to pay higher rates.

Were it mine to do, I’d say that we, the people of the State, will help you once. Before a water truck arrives, you show us your new property tax assessment for water infrastructure that can withstand three dry years. The water trucks will arrive the day after you pass a rate structure that adequately funds your water reliability. We will not take your lack of water more seriously than you do. We will not truck water to you all summer without proof that you will not let this happen again. We don’t want to leave you with no aid at all if you don’t do this; we can post a few National Guard corps here to protect your empty homes against looters.

Communities that simply do not have the wealth to be resilient against climate variability pose a choice to the State. This drought is an example of the more variable climate future we expect. How long do we support people’s choices to live where they want if they don’t have the resources to provide for their water reliability? There are policy arguments for all sides, but it isn’t the kind of question that is pleasant to debate explicitly.

Mr. Isenberg asked Mr. Croyle, head of the Drought Task Force, what story Mr. Croyle intended to tell about the drought.  There is already tribalism in the regions, and this drought could intensify that, especially since Southern California prepared for this and has a sufficient buffer that it doesn’t need to ration this year.  I have been trying to think of storylines that are applicable statewide.  So far, I’ve got:

1.  You reap what you sow/you get out what you put in.

2.  Early preview.

I like “you get out what you put in” because building resilience requires upfront wealth and the cities that are hurting now haven’t been willing to do that so far.  Then, when people ask why Southern California gets to have nice things, the answer can be the same story:  they are getting out what they put in.  They invested in conservation and infrastructure ahead of time. There is a touch of shaming in that framework, which distracts people.  That might be a downside.

Another potentially useful storyline is that this is an early preview of what climate change will bring.  Now that we’ve lived it, what do we want to do?  This ignores the issue of how any individual place got to be in dire straights and moves the thinking towards the long run.  “Never mind about your lawn this year, this is the least of the change to come.”  Maybe it is more useful to have people thinking about the contrast between now and the future they want than the contrast between regions.

Thank you, ACWA. This summary of the head of the Drought Task Force’s testimony at yesterday’s Delta Stewardship Council is exactly what I needed. It is admirably thorough, and sets me up with the straight line I would have scripted if possible. The title of the ACWA post is: Unprecedented drought could bring unprecedented actions, officials say. That title applied to yesterday’s testimony reminded me of one of Chris Clarke’s complaints about Burning Man:

Faced with one of the last truly wild landscapes left in the US, their response is to build a city. This is not creativity: it is dreadful, dull conformity. Finding one of the last sublime remnants of the unpopulated West, they want nothing more than to pack it with tender urbanites in a glorified tailgate party. This is not an alternative way of life: it is standard American operating procedure.

What the drought director said yesterday is utterly, straight-down-the-line, conventional thinking for the State agencies. There is nothing “unprecedented” about the State’s drought actions. He pretty much distilled standard operating procedure with every statement.

Before I go on to demonstrate this, I should state some qualifiers. First, this is the State’s dude, implementing the State’s plan. If his own thought parallels State thinking, the administration got the right person for the job. My second set of doubts is that I don’t entirely know how the conventional State approach came to be such weak sauce. I don’t like writing to you with less than complete certainty, so it is only fair to tell you my doubts. There may be good reason that I don’t understand for this mish-mash, goal-less approach.

Maybe, the State is still at the far end of the pendulum swing from building single-purpose big concrete projects. Because this generation of civil servants witnessed the side-effects of big-ass concrete and water supply uber alles, we are still in a countercycle where everything, all projects and purposes must be gently nudged forward simultaneously. Maybe, with more years wisdom experience than I have, senior civil servants have developed learned helplessness seen that goals that get ahead of the public simply do not get done; instead they push incremental gains. Maybe they are playing a longer game than I currently understand and know that in the long run, we will advance further with namby-pamby piddly measures by muddling through, Lindblom-style. Maybe the advocacy against a strong State role for directing water policy is so strong and mean that all the State will ever publicly talk about is doing a study, offering money, offering contingent money or dicking around with other State agencies. Wait, that’s not a good reason for a mish-mash goal-less approach. But I am not completely sure that my swashbuckling extremes are actually the most effective in the long run. Part of me wonders if maybe the senior folks in the State agencies have the right of it. But with that difficult admission out of the way, I can now write a post about why every last word I heard yesterday was utterly, completely precedented.

Somehow, we have gotten to the point where there are exactly five things the State allows itself to do. The first four can be proposed aloud. The last goes unspoken. Here they are:

1. Conduct a study/gather data, with no mention of what comes after.
2. Offer money/help/resources.
3. Offer contingent money/help/resources.
4. Dick around with other State agencies. Directing local agencies to do something would be “interfering with local government”, so for the past few years and probably the next decade, our business is to “get out of silos” and “align State government.”
5. Allow the system to fail, but for the love of God, not with State fingerprints on it.

Those are the only options, and here’s what they look like in public.

[Drought Task Force head] Croyle said the state’s drought task force is in an “all hands on deck” mode, working with state, local and federal agencies to get out the conservation message to the general public and prepare for potentially far worse conditions later in the year.

Option 4.

He said agencies need to shift into a “mutual aid” environment to work together to address the crisis.
“This has got to be team ball…all of us at all levels of government working together,” said Croyle.

Option 4. I can practically see him interlacing his fingers now, to illustrate our aligned State selves.

Croyle added that state officials are already dialoguing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about addressing emergency situations should they arise

Option 4.

Among the possiiblitieis being discussed are mobile desalination plants, temporary water pipelines to move water where it is needed and the trucking of water to some communities.

Option 2, state funded assistance.

That’s all that’s from ACWA’s good summary of yesterday’s panel at the Delta Stewardship Council meeting, so let’s go to the drought proclamation and try those out. (I did that, and it led to a tedious list. Of the twenty items, we had seven studies, five handouts, one handout with requirements and three instances of “State alignment”. My classification didn’t hold up for three (maybe four) of the items.) Basically, if a bigwig state bureaucrat is talking in public, s/he is going to offer something out of those lists. The skilled ones do not go off-list and there’s no use trying to prompt something else, even with direct questions. The taboos against any options that would impose anything on local agencies, or suggest that the situation may have losers, or engage the state in a failure they don’t wish to be involved with are too strong.

Part of the reason the State response is so uninspiring is that the State vision is uninspiring. Far as I can tell, the State vision is to keep status quo going just a little longer. With a boring-ass vision like that, there’s nothing especially pressing to do. Yesterday, the Drought Task Force guy could have said “When I get done with this drought, every damn treatment plant in the state will have tertiary treatment and be hooked right back into the supply main.” He could have said “Every last farmer in this state is going to be there when the rains come back if I have to hand them fat stacks of cash to get through.” He could have said “There won’t be a lawn in this whole state when I’ve had my way with this drought.” But there’s no vision but “please more of status quo,” so he’s got nothing to say but “the State will work together.”

Appendix A:
I am using the Drought Task Force guy as synecdoche for the whole executive branch. I don’t know a thing about him personally, and assume he is nothing but bright, hardworking and skilled. I don’t mean to imply a thing about him personally. I might if he becomes a public figure or starts giving awesome interviews, but for the moment, he’s just a stand-in for the California executive agencies. My apologies, Mr. Drought Task Force, should you ever see this.)

Appendix B:
By the way, I don’t think it’ll be the same for Central Valley flood. I think there is a vision (some Peripheral Canal variant) and flood response will come with diggers and concrete trucks. There’s no way a Delta levee break would get the same vague response this drought is getting and that’s because the State has a vivid goal for that aspect of water policy.

A conscientious blogger would give a little italicized summary of each point in the Drought Proclamation, so you don’t have to go back and forth to read this. Unfortunately for you, after two years spent with Somali pirates, I disdain the niceties of civilization. You will have to rough it, as I did. I didn’t see much in the second half of the proclamation, so here are my not-especially-interesting impressions.

11 and 12. What I see here is the State getting ready to get involved in groundwater management. A report due by April 30th about basins with groundwater shortages and gaps in water monitoring? That report is sure to make recommendations. If I were an advocate rather than a scrupulously neutral bureaucrat, I would be pushing very hard on this opportunity.

13. If they have any sense at all, they would pay the Maven about a million dollars to design this and turn it over to CDFA staff.

14 and 15. Nice to see fish get a mention. I hope Fish and Wildlife are given the resources to do a good job assessing and managing the drought impacts on endangered species.

16. I don’t know much about this.

17. I don’t know much about this either. I have the faintest sense that it is tied to some nice work that DWR has done with JPL and NASA. But that’s as much as I know.

18. Yep.

19. This was such a hot political item in the last drought, because advocates for west side agriculture were trying to co-opt the image of farm laborers to get pumping restrictions from the biological opinions protecting smelt lifted. It baffled the emergency responders. They are very good at providing food services in emergencies, but it isn’t typical for the State to step in to help workers when a local industry fails. We all sort of agreed that we couldn’t complain too much about anything that helped people in Mendota, but it was clearly a political statement, not a usual way to respond to on-going local unemployment.

Since this isn’t a continuation of Schwarzenegger’s manipulations, I do wonder what the goal of this effort will be. Is it to help laborers in Mendota? They can be helped by giving them enough money to get out and giving their children ways to go to college. Is it to maintain a permanent local stock of laborers with forty percent unemployment that growers can draw from if the drought ends? Then they can maintain their own damn serfs, far as I’m concerned.

20. It is as difficult for the Drought Task Force to monitor the impacts of drought as it is for anyone behind a screen in Sacramento. My guess is that they’ll be reading the news closely, just like you. I do have some suggestions for Jerry, which I’ll make soon.

My overall impression of this Drought Proclamation is that it is a very strategic document. It leaves open a lot of opportunity for change, especially for groundwater management, drinking water and wildlife. I don’t think the authors of this know precisely where they want to go. If I were advocating, I’d seed local news stories with descriptions of a relevant impact, then point to those impacts, point to an item number here, and approach the Drought Task Force with the hoped-for solution.