The Sacramento Valley: California's Great Exception?

The Sacramento River Watershed Program has released a fascinating online report on suburban sprawl and the demise of agriculture in the Sacramento Valley. It appears to be a work in progress, and the "best management practices" identified for governments to cope with sprawl are nothing new. But there is plenty of interesting information and analysis packed into the presentation. The GIS layer maps that accompany the text are especially noteworthy.

One of the more interesting observations related to the suburbanization and exurbanization of the Sacramento Valley concerns the availability of water. In most of the state, the availability of water is one of the principal checks on unrestrained sprawl. Not so in the Sacramento Valley, according to the authors:

Below the Delta and the federal and state pumping plants, water is the principal limiting factor for exurban sprawl. This is not the case for the Sacramento Valley and much of the Sierra foothills in the Sacramento Watershed. The groundwater basin in the Sacramento Valley recharges readily from the normally abundant rainfall in Northern California. In only a few areas has groundwater depletion become problematic, like in eastern Sacramento County where urban and medium density suburbs were allowed to develop solely reliant on groundwater pumping. Very likely, all the areas zoned for low density rural residential development have sufficient groundwater supplies.

Abundant groundwater resources are the exception in California, where most development has depended on guarantees of imported water. Thus, when making predictions about the build-out of the Sacramento Watershed, it is not prudent to look at the patterns from Southern California where local water supplies were the limiting factor, or the Bay Area, where confined geography have restricted exurban rural residential growth. Other areas of the nation may provide more accurate models for the potential of exurban build-out in the Sacramento Watershed.

Groundwater-fed development will also differ from development in regions that rely on surface water (including state or federal project water) in another important aspect. While surface water diversions are highly regulated and governed by a complex system of water rights and contractual obligations, comprehensive regulation of groundwater use in California is much less developed. Where the state plays an active role in overseeing the use of the state's rivers, streams, and reservoirs, the regulation of groundwater extraction is mostly a local matter. The jurisdictions charged with regulating groundwater uses are also those most directly embroiled in local disputes about land use and development. The state has little direct power to ensure the sustainable use of groundwater resources.

A Water Koan

How do you build your way to preservation and population control?

California's dual water projects are generally hailed as the foundation of both large-scale agriculture in the Central Valley and the massive growth of Southern California. Farmers and southern California land speculators were among the strongest proponents for construction of the system of reservoirs and conveyance facilities that crisscross the state. It goes without saying that federal and state subsidy of these twin water works was crucial to the growth of the economy and population of the state's arid and desert regions.

There is, however, a tantalizing alternative explanation for the motives of at least one key player in the construction of the State Water Project. Marc Reisner’s fabulous Cadillac Desert cites an oral history interview of former Gov. Edmund Brown, Sr., regarding his motives for tirelessly championing the construction of the State Water Project:

...Brown suggested another motive that had made him, a northern California by birth, want so badly to build a project which would send a lot of northern California’s water southward:

“Some of my advisers came to me and said, ‘Now governor, don’t bring the water to the people, let the people go to the water. That’s a desert down there. Ecologically, it can’t sustain the number of people that will come if you bring the water project in there.’

“I weighed this very, very thoughtfully before I started going all out for the water project. Some of my advisers said to me, ‘Yes, but people are going to come to southern California anyway.’ Somebody said, ‘Well, send them up to northern California.’ I knew I wouldn’t be governor forever. I didn’t think I’d ever come down to southern California, and I said to myself, ‘I don’t want all these people to go to northern California’.”

So you like the relatively sparse population and agreeable climate of Northern California? Thank Pat Brown for having the foresight to divert the sprawl to the expendable regions of the Southland...

Selective Libertarians

There is an interesting piece on California water law in, of all places, the most recent online edition of Edible Sacramento. The piece, by someone named Mike Madison, is a pretty sane overview of the crazy state of the law in California. I still find it bizarre to hear California farmers pushing for unregulated markets in anything. Madison, to his credit, seems fine with some kinds of government involvement, but he draws the line at subsidies for thirsty crops like corn:

Most thoughtful farmers welcome government regulation of agriculture; that is, regulation of environmental protection, public health and safety, quality standards, accurate labeling, resource conservation, and fair employment practices. We know how crazy our neighbors are, and regulation protects us from their follies. It also gives the rest of the world confidence in California's agricultural products. What is inappropriate is government regulation of markets which, left alone, regulate themselves far more efficiently than any scheme hatched by a bureaucrat. Get rid of the corn and ethanol subsidies, which were created merely to purchase votes in Iowa, and we would quickly stop wasting California's precious water on corn.

It's hard to disagree with the gist of his argument. But I'm not sure if I really believe that any farmers, thoughtful or not, welcome government regulation of agriculture. I haven't seen a whole lot of farmers challenging the Farm Bureau when it clings to the notion the "nonpoint source" water pollution, the primary source of which is fertilizer and pesticide runoff from agricultural fields, should be exempt from regulation. Most farmers are content to continue to stonewall the state's efforts to gather even the most basic information about where these pollutants originate.

Furthermore, while I agree that corn and ethanol subsidies are a cynical boondoggle, it is striking to hear such free-market libertarian arguments leveled in the interest of farmers in a state so dependent on government subsidized water. Not surprisingly, Mr. Madison carves out an exception to his laissez faire philosophy for water:

If free markets are efficient for distributing crops, why not set up a free market for California water? This idea has zealous proponents, but it is inappropriate for a vital necessity such as water. Free markets are good at setting prices for discretionary items; they are less good at allocating resources; and they are dismal at allocating scarce, critical resources in a society with large inequalities of wealth.

Free markets are also dismal at permitting agriculture to flourish in semi-arid or desertlike climates in the Central Valley. The fallacy of a "free market" in water isn't simply a function of the fact that water is a "scarce, critical resource." The problem is that, from its very origin, the "commodity" of California water is a product of government subsidy, thanks to two major water projects sponsored by the state and federal governments. Without the highly regulated water system, you wouldn't just have inefficiency, you'd have little to no agriculture at all. All the asparagus in the world won't pay for the energy and management resources consumed by California's water projects.

State and national taxpayers have, wittingly or unwittingly, already decided to underwrite California agricultural production. With that support comes regulation, to ensure that the government's involvement doesn't inadvertently undermine the many other aspects of the "public interest" that we rely on government to protect. The notion of a "free market" in California water isn't just a bad idea; it's an impossible idea.

Stake Through the Heart of Auburn Dam

The most durable public works project never built is, at long last, history. The State Water Resources Control Board has scheduled a hearing on the revocation of the Bureau of Reclamation water rights intended for use at the non-existent Auburn Dam.


Auburn Dam was originally conceived in the 1970s, in the twilight of the great dam building era. But issues like cost, concerns about earthquake safety and environmental impacts, and doubts about its necessity for flood control or water supply dogged the project from its inception. Nevertheless, the project was resurrected repeatedly by politicians with some local support. They claimed that the project would provide needed flood protection, water supply, and/or power for northern California. The fact that construction would mean millions of federal dollars pouring into the foothills didn't hurt the popularity of the cause with local politicians either. Republican Rico Oller tried briefly to have the project funded with state money. The lately disgraced John Doolittle built a career around advocacy for Auburn Dam. When Doolittle recently decided to retire in the wake of a corruption scandal and federal investigation, it was probably inevitable that his favorite pork barrel project would follow him into retirement.


USBR had previously allowed the American River to return to its original bed, effectively abandoning its attempt to build the dam. But rescission of the water rights is an even stronger indicator that the project is, at long last, dead. Rest in Peace, Auburn Dam. You won't be missed.

Dry Anxiety

The most recent edition of High Country News features a chilling science fiction feature by Paolo Bacigalupi—a short story set in the Mad Maxian Southwest during an extended drought in which California enforces its superior rights to the Colorado River at the expense of towns and farmers in Arizona:

Lolo tops another mesa and stares down at the familiar landscape of an eviscerated town, its curving streets and subdivision cul-de-sacs all sitting silent in the sun. At the very edge of the empty town, one-acre ranchettes and snazzy five-thousand-square-foot houses with dead-stick trees and dust-hill landscaping fringe a brown tumbleweed golf course. The sandtraps don’t even show any more.

When California put its first calls on the river, no one really worried. A couple of towns went begging for water. Some idiot newcomers with bad water rights stopped grazing their horses, and that was it. A few years later, people started showering real fast. And a few after that, they showered once a week. And then people started using the buckets. By then, everyone had stopped joking about how "hot" it was. It didn’t really matter how "hot" it was. The problem wasn’t lack of water or an excess of heat, not really. The problem was that 4.4 million acre-feet of water were supposed to go down the river to California. There was water; they just couldn’t touch it.

Bacigalupi makes wonderful use of the apocalyptic conflict potential inherent in the oversettlement of the Southwest. He also recognizes the narrative value of the paradoxical water law regime that governs the Colorado River Basin. Arizona, a desert state fed by a large river, slakes the thirst of its farmers and cities largely thanks to the Central Arizona Project (CAP). CAP is a massive irrigation project authorized by federal legislation in 1968 that made possible both the intensification of agriculture and the explosion in population that have sustained the state’s economy for the past few decades. But the legislation authorizing CAP also clarified that the project’s rights on the Colorado were inferior to the rights of its downstream neighbors in California.

California's rights to 4.4 million acre-feet of the Colorado were first established in 1928 by the Boulder Canyon Project Act, the federal legislation that also authorized construction of Hoover Dam. By virtue of California's seniority, Arizona can only draw water after California has its share. Consequently, every year, thousands of acre feet of water flow out of Lake Mead and into Arizona that are already earmarked for use on the fields and lawns of California.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about the fact that Arizona must take into account the needs of California when it diverts water from the river. Water consumers the world over are well aware that water management is collaborative. What makes the situation on the Colorado so explosive is that the allocations of water among the states were made based on estimates that vastly exaggerated the average amount of water that falls on the Colorado River Basin. In fact, federal statutes and treaties currently make promises to the states and to Mexico that exceed the estimated 14.6 million acre feet of water that flows down the Colorado average year. To make matters worse, suburbs continue to sprout in the desert. As water demand increases, the population becomes increasingly reliant on a water source that, in the long term, is most likely not nearly as reliable as we would hope.

Arizona’s nightmare, and the inspiration for Bacigalupi’s story, is that the overallocation of the Colorado River will eventually require holders of junior rights (the CAP for instance) to refrain from using water destined for senior rights holders (in California, for example). The scenario is not entirely fanciful. Nevada and Arizona charge that California is already using more than its allotted share of the river, and both states fear that they will never be able to get full use of the water allotted to them. In the event of a serious, prolonged drought that results in a call by senior water rights holders, CAP-supplied development in Arizona is precariously poised on the edge of extinction.

Conservation measures can certainly reduce tension along the Colorado. But there is no doubt that a prolonged shortage of water on the Colorado would be a disaster, and that the consequences of a catastrophic drought would fall on Arizona before California. And although recent accords between the Colorado Basin states have also significantly reduced anxieties along the river, the fact that the reservoirs on the river are drying up makes it difficult to be entirely optimistic about the future of the region. Desalination plants and conservation projects (like the proposed lining of the All-American canal) may reduce California’s demand on the river and ease the prospects of a ‘call’ on the Colorado. Still, growth on the peripheries of Phoenix and Las Vegas is built on a supposition of the availability of Colorado River water, and that supposition may be the result of overly optimistic projections of the regular flow of the river.