Catalyst: California August 11, 2015

 

Felicia: Yeah, I thought that was great, I had trouble deciding as I went back and forth to the three breakout groups I could to get to and each one was better than the next, it was great. I heard what my colleagues talked about but also it really was amazing to have folks talk about other areas and how much we can learn from each other. I also love coming into a very thoughtful conversation that we had gotten to in the early part about set for purpose water, how.. we really have some thoughts, some decisions to make about how to more efficiently use water. Now I have water but for green house guest purposes and that the idea of treating everything to Kristine (inaudible), so we can dump on our lawns and flush our toilets may not be the way to go but I think if we keep an eye on moving forward we are going to be able to enter an arena of experimentation and action on moving forward on how to solve our problems. Is there anything I heard which are remarkable amount of optimism that I’m very appreciative of it, it started with Kevin right in the beginning of the talk that I’ve been through the conversation are very a “I can do” and I need to figure out how to come together and solve for all the things that all Californian and all people need which includes ecosystem and agriculture and urban needs and right by thinking more creatively about water and so a whole series of those conversations and it really mean here what I like to call the coalition of the willing of people who want to move forward or sustain and stay, so I thank you setting this table, even though there are challenges, even a very thoughtful young woman from [02:53:46.16] who felt it was a shower note because people don’t trust government, of course people don’t trust government, I’m afraid of government, I think for us part of it is trying to make good on that, promise but I thought her insight and thoughtfulness made my day, so thank you all very much for including me in.

Carl: Great, well thank you for joining us it’s been a terrific couple of hours here. We keep asking will El Niño save the day and we’re asking that because people are asking us and I guess we’ll all discuss that next week and answer the question. So again, we really hope you’ll join us next week and invite your colleagues to find out really what’s next for California and the nation. And as we heard earlier too, what happens in California is an indicator for what’s happening in other parts of the world. Big conversations about valuing water. Big conversations about climate change. We’ll also have another round of special guests, that will include Martin Adams, from L.A. Water and Power, Michael Anderson who’s the Climatologist with the California Department of Water Resources, Richard Luthy who’s Director of the Reinventing the Nations Urban Water Infrastructure Research Group, another big issue nationally, Molly Peterson, Environment Reporter from Southern California Public Radio and we’ll also be joined by Sandra Postel, Director of the Global Water Policy Project, so a terrific line up for next Tuesday and really hope you’ll join us.

Elizabeth: Yeah, one of the things that really concerns me is that we’re not yet really talking about unsafe water management. It sounded in many of the conversations like we were talking about large scale, infrastructural, responses and solutions. When a lot of our solutions whether we’re on the residential, commercial or institutional scale are going to be onsite water management which is slowly and I want it emphasize slowly but surely making its way up through the system, you know, San Francisco has been working on a number of large bed incorporate onsite water management as one of the tools for water supply, water conservation and then for managing storm water and I’m really hoping that in the ongoing conversations in this group and in general, that people will start thinking a lot more that rainwater and greywaters capacity, I always like to say the less that rains the more we need to harvest rain water. And so, I’m really hoping that this will enter into the conversation a lot more.

Jack: Yes, you know, I completely agree with Elizabeth than in part because I have (inaudible) business but I’ve seen the challenges in educating people water is invisible, it comes out of the faucet and it goes down the drain and so, radical but I feel from being in the systems business that decades have centralized water distribution as in part let you (inaudible) around water after seeing and I’ve seen the aha moments of children that are doing water budgets for their school gardens and utilizing system and really taking rain fall be able to retool their relationship with water, so I’m going to agree that it can be impart. Some of the decentralized tools of repurposing waste water and storm water and rain water to be able to add to that education component. Thanks very much.

John: Okay, really just to reiterate the water harvesting for the rain water. We’ve been doing it county wide in Pennsylvania for the last 5 years. Lots down to 3,000 sq. ft. have to have a water plan to reduce, detain rain water primarily but it’s perfectly applicable just for a water capture out there and increase the residential water. It takes a long time I sat through 2 years of conferences on a monthly basis so we’re able to put it together or just stand on one county and to be (inaudible) has been working at for probably, I think they’re about recorder’s of the way through the state now that have done. So it is a good idea.

 

Carl:  This has just been terrific and for the great facilitation but this is really a global conversation in California inaudible a lot we can learn and again that’s what we’ll be doing next week and the weeks to come. We’ll be comparing and looking at what we can learn from California and what California can learn from the world. But I really need to offer special thanks to our guests for sharing their time and expertise today and in addition to all of the thought leaders who participated on the calls, Felicia Marcus, Nadine Bailey, Steven Gregory, Kevin Klowden, Bob Wilkinson and of course to the Circle of Blue Team here behind the scenes, we’ve had quite a team monitoring social media and taking your questions and setting us up for next week. So on the team Laura Herd has been our Catalyst Producer today, Brett Walton, our reporter in the field, of course Keith Schneider, Matt Welch, Aubrey Parker, Jordan Bates, Kaye LaFond, Miranda Cawley and Connor Bebb, everybody’s been working hard here and I also want to thank all of our partners in producing this, the Milken Institute, The Pacific Institute and the Stockholm International Water Institute and World Water Week, there’ll be your host on the 25th and you’ll be hearing more from them in the next week or so as well. School Global Trust Fund, thank you for reaching out for us and the driving the global conversation and U. S. Water Alliance, The University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling and our good friends at the Law Firm Center China Environment Forum. And special thanks to American Public Media, Southern California Public Radio and to our home station where we’re sitting right now Interlochen Public Radio and lastly to the MaestroConference Team, Brian, Ben, Charlie and Aubrey. The technology that makes us very cool conversation possible and then some urgent conversation. And we hope to see you and even more colleagues again here next week, Tuesday, August 18th for an even deeper exploration and what comes next for California and the nation. Please follow the results online, you’ll see results from this call and the past once and then of course results as we go down the line here at circleofblue.org and h2ocatalyst.org, that’s our sub site for these calls.

So until then, I’m J Carl Ganter at Circle of Blue and thanks for joining us.

Catalyst: California August 11, 2015

Martin: I’ll start with this, that one of things I see that’s not working is we’ve it seems to me that our policies that are created in response to the drought which I think is some sense and to define what our focus and our focus is trying to have sustainable water for, you know, in perpetuity, a sustainability being a perpetual not 20 years or whatever and it just seems to me that the policies that we’ve implement mainly I think because but they’re so reactive don’t necessarily lead to the outcome that we’re actually trying to accomplish. For example a straight percentage of the reduction on water use from municipalities, that will reduce the incentive to actually conserve… to implement and spend on water conservation. Cause if I say, I can spend a lot of money to save water and then I’m not able to use it because I’m require to reduce my percentage use It doesn’t matter that I have a use for it, I’m just mandated a certain percentage reduction. So why do I have to do invest a bunch of money in saving, you know, additional water when I’ve not able to use that. I have no return on investment.

Unknown Male1: Yes, that’s very true, and that’s one of the key factors that people do not understand that water and money are intricately related. And so all the discussions about water and water savings but anything around water needs to create financial value as what people are getting. So we really appreciate your comments. There’s no financial incentive. Nobody’s really going to sense it later.

Jack: Martin, this is Jack Burton speaking, do you also think that sort of speaks to the dichotomous nature of how the business model of the utility is set up and the challenge of being able to, you know, expand infrastructure or deal with this changes and at the same time needing to sell water but then on the other hand needing to create this culture of conservation

Martin: Yeah of course, the idea that could be overcome if I’m creating conservations in order to provide water for additional customers. So in other words the water that I’m conserving is going to serve the additional uses that provided additional revenue and economic growth over time. The problem is so you have to set.. we first of all lack .. you know when we talk about what’s the amount of water for you know minimal use. We have to set some idea of what we’re talking about in terms of uses, in other words I would love to know have a regulation based on Science and agreed to by all that said here is the agreed upon per capita use for human consumption. Now I’m able to set a standard and say: here’s how much water, you know, a certain user should be using for human consumption, now I can go and say that the next level of water is landscaping or some other use, you can tier that, you can start to say you’re using someone else’s water so you can set rates that actually have a significance in terms of how many in the use and I can built a portfolio and set about straight percentage reduction .. I can built a portfolio of water that I can use for economic development and manage that water that way if I’m just going to have a mandated percentage decrease, I’m not getting to go save spend a billion of dollars to create new water in my portfolio just to be told, hey By the way now someone else is going to use that and benefit from that investment.

Unknown Male 1: It make sense, it make sense. So comes down to all agree first on the value of water that’s the big problem.

Martin: We set emotional value on it but we’re not willing to set objective economic value on it, and one of the reasons is because our concern about social equity. Well you’ll said a certain amount that says hey, this is how much is reasonable for human consumption that will answer somewhat you still got to answer the question about so are we good for indefinite population growth?

Unknown Male 1: Well, it just have to admit Israel and Denmark, Israel being the number one [unintelligible] people of all by Denmark and while you have this nations who have citizens who consider themselves water citizens where you have water law, we have a water economy, you’ll see that that water prices are the highest but these are the nations that function and they have a water surplus and then highest conservation rate so all comes down to fixing a proper price to water.

Jack: Agreed. So the first challenge is, this is Jack, the first challenge is actually get the public to understand that they’re paying that’s incredibly subsidize price for water and then try to ease people into what would be the real price of it ?

Unknown Male 1: No, the first challenge is as it came out in the webinar is to educate the public because we have moral literacy and we have financial literacy. So people first of all have to understand and practice to appreciate and manage water wisely. By nature that’s only going to happen once people run out of water and as Benjamin Franklin said in 1746, when the tap runs dry, we know the value of water. So this is the process you can try proactively, but unfortunately also has to be fortified you know by nature crisis and scarcity and lack of water for people to realize the true value of water.

Jack: Yes education is the first step but they were great point made this. Not just water education. One of the biggest problems that we have both way we’re talking about elected officials, appointed or the public is that there’s a lack of understanding of financial and economics and so when you saw you start to try to connect the cost of water with the value of water what it takes to get there, you know, you tried to talk about the liability is differed maintenance, people understand accrued liability so it’s right now I think there’s a lack of.. in the public understanding and awareness, both in the sense of the value of water but also in terms of public does not understand that finance and economics I mean understand what the most.. water .. saying, water on the rights the value of the entire built environment.

Unknown Male 1: Very true, very true.

Martin: lose water and your businesses have no value, your homes have no value, all of the money you spend on it infrastructure has no value, well, almost no value it has some limited residual values but it’s actual value that we place on it now is lost in substantial amount, if you lose water.

Unknown Male 1: Very true. And in 2015 we’re going to have because of the water scarcity, we’re going to have 45% of global GDP which is drawn at 73 trillion impacted by water scarcity. It’s 45% of Global GDP

Elizabeth Cassidy: This is Elizabeth Cassidy one of the things I think that would be really helpful in both education and in a practical solution is teaching both ourselves public and water agencies about water budgets. And then people go through here’s how I spend my water in my house. Here’s how we spend our water in our water agency. In California, one of the things that’s happening is that Water Agencies are taking this opportunity to enliven rights that they had but just never used I’ll just take the case of Dispe Municipal Water District here in the bay area. And they are now accessing water from a new source, [unintelligible] water transfer and they’re not just using that water for customers, but they’re actually selling that water to other agencies. in order to make up for the loss of income. and so, looking at what water is coming in, and literally how are we spending that water. And I think that if you teach people to do that in their own home, then they get the sense that water is of value. They start looking I’m going to take it one more level they start looking at what is the best water to use for that end use. So say they’re doing their landscape, well is potable water full of chlorine really the best water to use for their landscape? No it’s rainwater, it’s grey water. And then you start attaching your water budget to the best water sources. Which enables a greater diversification of water sources on a local level.

Unknown Male 1: That is true but the..

Brett: I wish we actually attached metrics to how we used our water, so we would look at all of our economics in terms of for example State of California, and say here’s our total water portfolio and here’s the GDP per acre foot for this economic activity, and we start to look at how we invest our water in terms of the return on that investment as a limited resource.

Elizabeth: One other thing that I wanted to add to that. So I notice that in this conversation we’re not talking about water at all for the ecosystem. So we’re talking about water only as it is needed by humans. And another part of the water budget is keeping enough water in the rivers, in the ground, to support the ecosystem that is continuing to produce that water. So we have this you just like sort of like quarter terms in economics. We have quarter terms in water and we’re not really looking at well if we continue to take 80% of the river out, out of the river, out of the watershed. What is it going to do to the watershed ultimately? So great we have water for now but will that water shed still have the capacity to continue to produce water, even if we only care about us, we don’t care about a number of species on the planet. We’re undercutting ourselves by not taking care of the water that we’re the watersheds that we’re depending upon. Until our water budgets have to expand not just for human consumption and human use but for the maintenance and health of the watershed.

Brett: Exactly agreed.

Unknown Male 1: I need to backtrack quickly because you are leaving something out of the equation. I’m from Unknown Male 1y. In Unknown Male 1y everything is metered. The only way to create efficiency is if you know what you actually consume. So you need to first have laws in place that provide for proper metering and monitoring of the water, otherwise you cannot really implement efficiency. So that’s the first thing. So I live in Santa Monica for example, and it’s a six unit building I’m living in, and not one of the 6 units has separate metering. So the landlord has to foot the bill. So if I just want to be vicious, and run the shower for 48 hours, there’s nothing the landlord can do. So this needs to change first and every water outlet needs to be metered by law.

Elizabeth: I could not agree more and I as a public educator about water conservation and water use where I always start it by asking people first where their water comes from and second how much water they use everyday. Because it is amazing.. amazing how few people can tell you how many gallons they use. Even though it’s right there on their water bill, for those of us who are metered. And that bit of information, just like anything, if you don’t meter what you use, how will you ever know that you’re saving? I mean that I think that’s a it’s unfortunately a really obvious but unused form of education.

Brett: It does have an interesting and complication to it. Because they we’re working on a law to do exactly that in California, the complication is already you know as a mutual agency that we have I mean, our meter of accuracy is that is important to us because is the media aware that it actually builds less not more and so we’re monitoring and tracking trying to make sure it’s accurate and doing what it’s supposed to do for revenue purposes but when you start to install meters on private systems which they would be on an apartment, now the landlord is responsible, or someone’s responsible for making sure that meter is accurate. And so you have we already get complaints about inaccuracies you know, as municipalities now you’ve multiplied that by a factor of I don’t know, a hundred or a thousand maybe more meters and who’s going to be responsible to make sure those are accurate and that they’re actually doing what they’re suppose we doing in the reading what they’re supposed to be reading in. You’ll get a lot of issues that way and when you start to require that you have to have, okay, so now it’s going to have to be someone who’s going to regulate that in and what sort of bureaucracy inside of a bureaucracy would be required to regulate that ad infinitum. So, I’m not saying it’s not a good idea, I’m just saying that sometimes the best made plans are fraught with unintended consequences.

Unknown Male 1: Electricity is metered, so you know water is just another utility, I don’t see that as challenge.

Jake: That’s what I’m afraid of that they’ll make it the city’s responsibility and we are already having trouble. See the thing is that electricity is managed a different way as managed by a commission and did just say how much their cost is and they add a percentage to it and that’s how their rates are set.

Unknown Female: Yeah I don’t have a diseased attitude, I actually really feel like that this is our time to shine, you know, I really feel that we’re at push comes to shove and you know, the sense of it does feel that there’s an spot light on this area in particular, I feel that we have incredible opportunity to you, you know, tackle the issues that we’re facing because you’re right, this is a microcosm of, you know, a microcosmic example of what we are dealing with globally and I think that we have an incredible opportunity to set an example. I just, you know, I just to go to these meetings and I see what’s being said and I kind of, you know, that will sometimes dampen my enthusiasm but the thing, you know, I’m one of many people on this area that’s ready for this for the climb. I want to call it a fight. I’m ready for it.

Brett: Well you sound fairly young, how many other young people, young leaders are involved down there to say, okay, let’s not you know. You all can fight about this but let’s solve this and I mean.. [interrupted – end of Breakout]

Catalyst: California August 11, 2015

Bob: So, [unintelligible] California kind of situation Southern California, you know, there was a comment in the opening in water usage in Southern California. About half of Southern California’s water is actually local water. There’s a tremendous amount of rain water harvesting, that’s already going on an Urban Southern California, this is basically the 3 major water sheds of Los Angeles and San Gabriel [unintelligible] water sheds but all the way[unintelligible] when you [unintelligible] down to the Mexican border about half is local water. About a quarter is state water, project water being pumped from the delta down the valley over the mountains although of course in the last couple of years that has been reduced dramatically and then about a quarter is Colorado River water coming in through the metropolitan’s Colorado River aqueduct. So, I’m getting a disconnected sign here, and this is quite distracting (timestamp for engineering escalation [01:06:15.23]) but I’m just going to keep going. So, what does that mean, it turns out that every water agency at least that I’m aware of is working diligently now with billions of dollars in investments going into local water supply development that would be efficiency improvement firsts [unintelligible] and rain water harvesting and water recycling everything from inter___ reuse to the standard purple pipe kind of systems. And in a couple of cases including environment community going the [unintelligible] desal in our case for the second time, the first time [unintelligible-interrupted escalating for mic status tags [01:06:54.07] We got other people talking on the line? I don’t know who’s doing the technical but it’s there. If they could sort that out that would be nice. So this investments from the water agencies (mumbles [01:07:07.00] – [01:10:00.05])systems are moving very dramatically in the direction of local water supply development and trying to reduce reliance and the draw on the big irrigation systems and in this case the state water project and the Colorado river aqueduct. So that’s interesting the implications for drought resilience and building a more robust system and also from the standpoint of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. In most cases even with the additional treatments for water recycling the amount of energy used relative to the amount used to import water over the ocean by our nation is quite a bit less. so we’re getting multiple benefits here from some of the new strategies. But the other interesting thing is that most of this is being financed by local money. The work capital for the last decade where the investment is in water infrastructure. Almost all of it is coming out of local agencies [interrupted [01:08:21.10] Ok, we’re getting people talking on the line here and the state contribution is the maxed in the least from the federal government so if you think of the big powerful federal government and the big money, actually those days are long gone. Investment really is at the political level. And that makes the big difference I was talking about. Institutions, as part of the topic for today and decision making but it really is as I see it going to be a rate based future. That is, water rates, local fees, taxes are going to be the primary mechanism for financing the technologies and the approaches we take to manage a resilient and reliable water system, and what that means is that people need to be convinced that those investments are getting the results they’re looking for in the appropriate..but they’re the people [unintelligible] at this point in California anyway, Northern California as well as Southern California, Bay area is actually much more similar to Southern California than many realized. What’s going on in Silicon Valley right now with water recycling and the ground water management look at the Silicon Water Agency which is not connected to the state infrastructure the state water project [unintelligible] system and on down to Marin County. Same story with the aggressive efficiency and recycling and so forth. Lots of lessons to be learned in terms of rethinking how we use water, how much is there, understanding the limits [unintelligible] that cuts into the pricing as well. The institutions managing these resources clearly are faced with the conundrum people expect high quality water with high reliability and they expect it delivered yesterday, no problems and it’s no longer a world where that is possible the rate structures are going to need to reflect the cost, the true cost including the environmental cost of managing water systems. So this is how of the big one’s I wanted to throw out there.

Steven: Hey, Bob we’re getting some questions now on the screen here and you were talking about water rates and one of the things that’s interesting about water rates in California right now is, you know, several agencies have tried what to known is to tiered pricing where, you know, individual water users get a certain water budget and have to go over that budget, they’re charged a higher rate for the excess water that they use that in a, in a one city, Capistrano, they’re was say a legal challenge to that and in fact that tiered pricing scheme lost in court primarily because there’s a state law that basically requires, you know, a pricing to basically reflect the cost of providing service. I’m just wondering as we move forward as California moves forward, how are we going to get past that, that obstacle of, you know, it’s a proposition of 47 for folks who don’t know it was a voter initiative that basically required utilities public utilities could not charge more for service than cost of providing that service. But how can you get around that obstacle that prop 47 has placed in the path of tiered pricing?

Bob: I think you’re talking about prop 18 actually.

Steven: My mistake.

Bob: Yeah, and now actually constitutional amendment in California, so they were dealing with not just a law but a constitutional provision. What it calls for is a reflection of actual cost you know what’s being charged, so it does not say that in the Capistrano district it does not say that tiered rate structures are illegal or inappropriate. It says that the entity developing the charges needs to tie them to actual cost. So in some ways, in an interesting twist this is perhaps useful and agencies essentially sharpening their pencils and reading the book reflect the increased marginal cost of the increased extra cost it takes, you know, if people would like to use water with abandon they’ve got to go out and get it. Building that lease outline and operating, buying some more water on a water market or building more expensive infrastructure is going to cost more than its [unintelligible]. I got a problem though, from the social equity stand point your strong sense that having a so called lifeline rate a low cost amount of water that certain amount to make sure that everyone has access to a basic amount of water that one would need. That cannot be subsidized according to the interpretation [unintelligible] so there are a lot of discussions about that make sure to take care of that dimension. In fact, that’s a relatively small amount of water in the large scheme so we’ve got many tiers above that. But there is a strong move to change the proposition to which a constitutional change I think or some efforts as well some legal changes without changing the constitution and it strikes me that that is in order because the pricing tool, in order to send a clear price signal that helps you understand the value of water is that important.

Steven: Well exactly, then that kind of goes to another question that’s been posted on that’s screen in the breakout room, and that going to goes this issue of water being over appropriated in California, in other words, even during the wet years some would argue that, you know, that California has over subscribed it’s available water and I’m wondering how do we change that and be, I mean where do price signals, maybe fall into efforts to change that?

Bob: Well, I would argue that every nature system have been overallocated for a long time. You know, we saw some of the early cases, the ___ case in Monterey was a good example and the courts and the state board openly decided that yes, the water rights that Los Angeles holds are not.. they still retain the water rights but there are limits to the exercise of those water rights in the public press document. We’ve got overdraft of ground water systems and asking the question of the rates of pumping we don’t’ know exactly how much cause we don’t measure and report that information cuz I believe we should, work clearly over drafting ground water at a very unsustainable level we have over appropriated most of the surface systems so the Colorado River does not reach see it hasn’t for a long time, even now [unintelligible] And, you know, San Joaquin River and Klamath was the second largest river in California, whether it’s sand for about 50 miles. We’ve got a lot of systems that have been over exploited to the point where became really a restoration of flows and systems if you could affect something like sustainable machine for ground water and surface water extractions.. I actually think that it’s quite possible to restore the ground water systems but it’s going to take sometime and it matters sustainability. They key is that to have good information on the resource, and then have the policy tools in place to be able to manage within the limits of the resource so that [unintelligible].

Steven: But Bob, do you feel that the timing of the state’s efforts to get a handle on the ground water situation that the law that was passed last summer was sort of putting on place the framework to get more information about, you know, how much ground water is in the ground? How much is being pumped, you know, pushes for the final implementation of the plan I think up until 2025, maybe later. And, you know, in the meantime, you know, it seems like the status quo will be allowed to continue the ground water pumping will be allowed to continue, is there disconnect there and the need to get this information that you’ve been talking about and the long timeline is that this law has laid out?

Bob: Well, in my view, yes. I think this way too long a time frame. We’ll meet move much more quickly. We are going to pay the price for waiting to resolve things. We have very expensive impacts already in terms of infrastructure that is being impacted. Roads and Canals and rats for plans subsidence So we really need to up the game in my view. It does not diminish the strong effort from part of our folks to push through the first significant ground water management law. But there’s still fierce opposition there still is today to even talking about how much [unintelligible] and I do think we need to shift and in a sense that is important than necessary to have goo information on the table to be able to manage. We are only a 2.3 Trillion Dollar economy. We’re only one of the top 10 of the world. You’d think that with water being fundamentally important resource in the economy, that at the scale that we’re operating, it’s the equivalent of a major nation state that [unintelligible] figure out a way to actually measure and manage resources to [unintelligible]

Steven: Yes, and actually to that question I think we have time for just one other question, in this portion of the breakout Bob but you mentioned obviously the size of the California economy, and yet many folks would argue that our water laws are archaic, that they basically were set up at a time that they couldn’t foresee the growth of the economy as it is today. And I think Australia was able to remake its water rights? If I remember correctly, how can California do something similar? What do you think?

Bob: I [unintelligible] Australian models directly political [unintelligible] whipped out quite a lot spent time in there. There are big differences between the Federal role and state role there and the tradition on the ground. So I think we have to deal with our own reality in California. Truth is, in 1848 you know, we picked up the Spanish law, the Pueblo Water Rights. That was our first water doctrine. Then we created a brand new one the next year in the Gold Mines, under the appropriate doctrine, and then in 1850 we created a state, and we adopted ___ rights from the English common law suing, and in the states for less than 2 years we picked up 3 water doctrines and have been fighting over it vigorously. Since we created the state. None of them really are logic, are legal logic for a sustainable water management system. They really aren’t. they were designed for different purposes. For clarifying who had rights to what on Federal territory before we were even a state and so forth, so I do think it probably is time to do a serious rethink of what is a legal framing that makes sense. In the meantime, much as we have over allocation on paper of water rights; that’s ___ more water than is really there. And so we’re really setting up for allocation sites that could be from an economic standpoint, from an equity standpoint not necessarily very fair either. I don’t have the answer. But I do think that it probably is time to take a hard look at a legal framework for water management that works better from the standpoint of sustainability as well equity.

Steven: Exactly. And I wonder how easy a process that would be in other words, the current legal framework has been in place for close to 100 years. There are a lot of vested interests in maintaining that legal framework. I mean how feasible is it to have folks that down rationally and try to hammer out a more equitable distribution of the water pie?

Bob: Well, I think it’s been so unfeasible for so long that it’s essentially of the table, and for the last 6 months I’ve been asking people from various quarters leading figures in the water battles in California, their thoughts on the water rights issue, take a serious look at water rights, and the answer is just a instead of “no way, we’re not going there” it’s “you know, we’d need to protect these senior rights and stuff off but yes they’d probably need to talk about it. I think we’re inching toward a dialogue in California it could be quite healthy to really figure out what do we need to do and what do we need to know to be able to manage water differently. It’s going to be the [unintelligible: “foreign doc of noturnis”] no question. And maybe that’s the way it works I mean that’s our system and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Put all the information on the table and get people to sort it out. But it probably would get quite ugly, hopefully we’d figure out ways to do it that are not so ugly. I do think Felicia and her colleagues on the board are doing a tremendous job in trying to steer through this and it is taking people that have an ear for all sides and they’re trying to think about the equities. To guide a dialogue to try to get in to actually changing [unintelligible] for which it’s not so far.

Steven: You know you I mean you mentioned a couple of times, equity a couple of times. Is the water board the sole arbiter of equity in California, or should that be a larger dialogue?

Bob: Well of course, we will structure they are quasi judicial and then it goes on to the courts, and the courts, they get ultimate arbitral… interpreting the law, when it comes to politics people can stare and write that political dialogue.

Catalyst: California August 11, 2015

Brett: Hey, this is Brett Walton of Circle of Blue here, Felicia are you on the phone?

Felicia: I am.

Brett: Excellent, you can go ahead and start, I think everyone is in the room now.

Felicia: Great! I think my first one was a little long, so this should be short. I am eager to get into the conversation because there’s so much going on, I really appreciated what my other colleagues had to say. The first thing I want to say, as a role is that we’ve been looking at this issue as administration since the drought was declared, we do a lot of action plans which I would direct people to, I would say California Water Action Plan. We have been in California Water Action Plan and then you can find it, you’ve got to put action in but basically in all of the above strategy meaning historically it seems in the water wonk world at least in the policy world there’s still a lot of dialogue that I would call the challenging ego system management rather that eco system management which is people talking past to each other, repeating themselves louder and slower sort of the equivalent, and so it’s not (Overlapping conversation 01:15:08.16 – can you guys hear what I’m hearing? 01:15:37.06) all of the above where everybody can see themselves which is how do we cope with, what climate change is going to bequeath us in terms of the lack of snow pack. How do we deal with the future looking just a few decades, start now? Our view is that, we’re all will be late so in that document, we’ve committed ourselves to conservation, recycling, stormwater capture, Desalinization as appropriate in circumstances, ecosystem management ahead of the curve restoring systems. Providing safe drinking water to all Californians which I’ve never seen on the list for a Governor, it is probably the most important thing they will ever do. Dealing with the real issues and the delta, dealing with storage as Nadine said; may have been big, small, above ground and below ground and that’s why we doubled down on getting ground water legislation passed last year which was a real accomplishment, we got to do flood control preparation and we got to prepare for droughts ahead of the curve. And we do all of those and we do that in a way that we try to figure out how to maximize water and most of its benefits out of every drop. We can absolutely make it because the way we use water now is fraught with conflict and terribly inefficient but we’ve got to get off our butts and do things together sort of figuring out how to get all the things that people need working together rather than allowing sort of the politics and discord to prevail. So, I think the drought has provided a real tension between those two where folks can either rise to the occasion or go in to their corners and over time moralizing into the dialogue stage. So I just wanted to start with that. And the question I have was do we all have the tools and information that needs to respond to this, what are lacking and what are the most important short term challenges. I have to start out on an optimistic note you know, on the one hand we definitely have more tools than ever, we’ve got more in the last couple of years than what we got in the last few decades. A lot of emergency authorities can be able to do emergency information orders a lot of authority to do enforcement that we never had so that our roles actually have some teeth and mean something. We’ve gotten more people from the administration and the legislature to deal with the drought and water rights implementation but also to set public trust flows that have been horribly late on, will get back to it in a minute. To do ground water monitoring, to deal with tracking regulation or with gas regulation generally where we got a tremendous amount of more authority and more people, to deal with enforcement in the [garbled] arena whether legal or illegal growth, we do have folks who are not complying with water right laws or water quality laws and it’s a combination of enforcement and education but really a big issue, particularly on the North Coast and parts of the Central Valley. With that said, while the tools and information we had are a lot better that last year, we frankly on the water rights side are still far behind virtually all of the Western States, we have a theoretical system and we’ve got permits and licenses for the Push 14 water rights holders [Inaudible 01:19:00.14] but we don’t have a regular information, we don’t have leader and we don’t have extreme gauges that are up to speed and so we’re doing a lot better this year than the last, but they are so long way to go to be much more precise with managing such a scarce resource and not just managing it but managing it in a transparent way where all can see which is something that the Australians really worked on heavily in the 90s which was something that put them in better stead to deal with their issues once they’re really focused. We also don’t really have a formal knowledge of groundwater surface water interconnections, we can regulate it under our traditional authorities to subterranean stream that we can figure it out otherwise it’s been trying to use somewhat unexercised tools or even just try to get the information about the level of groundwater pumping and light that are going on in most places. Now the Groundwater legislation will have help us, it is going to take three, five, maybe ten years to fully implement but it’s going to be a legacy piece of work which will give us kind of the information we need, more importantly locals, the information they need to actually manage those groundwater bases in the future because part of the reason why it’s not ten times worth, particularly in agriculture these years because people have been pumping groundwater any way they can get it and it’s been drying down those basins which is what you want in a drought but you got to pay that bank back so for the next drought. We also need a full on assessment of what fish and wildlife be to implement with full trust responsibilities. We finally in this administration got more people as did fish and wildlife to start prioritizing streams and doing work that we have an obligation to do since ’82, we’ve done it in some places in the _____ Delta where we are right now but we haven’t really done our public trust work the way we might like to because they haven’t had the capacity, now we are finally starting to get it and frankly if you want the system to work well with water rights, you need to adjudicate it or at least get closer to what other Western States have done to layout where everybody’s rights are, we could give each other and what you are going to do in a drought like this in advance so that you are not trying to do it on the fly in a conflict which is certainly not the ideal way to do it. In an ideal system which has public trust flows on all our major streams and we adjudicate all the rights to each other and know what to do in advance. As I said, last year we go out of emergency information authority and enforcement authority so we’re in a much better shape to do it this year than last but still we’re not where we need to be in the 21st century.

Brett: Where did all these changes come from?

Felicia: Where the changes come from? Legislature primarily. I think both in terms of authorities and in terms of staffing overtime, but adjudication is kind of a big deal, it took Colorado twenty years to do this, it took Idaho twenty seven, so you don’t do it lightly, there might be some way to do it in a shorter term we’re certainly resolving disputes between water right holders right now and those will be litigated for a number of years and set the stage but you got get started and make some of these decisions so that we can get it set in stone. The other issues, I would say the short term challenges really helping the communities that are running out of water – has got to be the number one priority. That is normally not a state role and it is very much a local role, water at the local level tends to be which is why our [Inaudible 01:22:39.17] nation regs were kind of a big deal in that we were the first state in the country to ever do that but we got thousands of water agencies particularly very small ones around the state and we really do need better funding sources and authorities to work with them. We’ve done a lot in the last year, I am very happy about that as legislation uses drinking water over to us and passed some trailer bill legislation, it even allowed us to consolidate some smaller entities that can’t do it on their own with water shortage and entities with some caveats on it but that will help a little bit but really until the legislature comes up with the funding source to help local communities we’re going to have a hard time and that sort of the next thing on back. We’ve got hundreds and millions of dollars in the bond to build capital projects which is phenomenal in the past. The bond itself which is, you know, that’s half billion a lot of it is for conservation, recycling poor communities’ drinking water and waste water etc. I mean it’s [unintelligible] because it is all the things I said in the action plan and until we get a long term and source which has to happen in the legislature, it’s going to be very hard because you can build the system and people won’t be able to operate or will not be able to loan money to people who can’t pay back so the human right to water bill that passed a couple of years ago still has a lot of implementation ahead of it. Conservation, recycling, storm water capture, I had to say, accelerate it go, go, go. Let’s seize that moment, see that change that Kevin mentioned in the beginning. I really do think for paradigm ship towards a more integrative water future but we’ve got to go, go, go and capture the moment and as I said earlier, we’ve got to make some of these decisions that have lingered for years or decades not just the page where just farmers but farmers versus farmers. Water right holder versus other water rights holders’ battle. So that’s gone on for decades just to break the log jam. And then finally I do think communication is one of the biggest challenges, I mean the world’s water today in many part of the state is full of confusion, misinformation and frankly disinformation in some accounts and so sometimes having a legitimate and important conversation, we need to be having about water gets cut off in a [Inaudible 01:25:08.04] Monty Python routine which is a waste of scarce human energy and we really do need to be getting people together to talk about real facts, data helps do that but also in a way where we find out we’re not just the win wins but where we define what’s important to people which is the combination of a healthy ecosystem with fish and salmon not just for the salmon fisherman but for all of us and who we are but also for appreciating agriculture and what it is important to the world and urban areas. We’ve done pretty well on conservation once we got passed that initial blame game where people where in, I always said it was something like a little bit could be worse saying things of getting in to something where people who are in the anger denial but then the blaming period whether it’s tracking or bottled water, new development of urban somewhat falls the economy water rights and environmental versus water users, that was as helpful as conversation. I’m seeing it happen in urban areas, I’m seeing it happen in the media, I’m seeing it happen infront of us where people spoke only of the extremes and the last big hearing we had, folks came in and said we know you need the water users, and folks saying, okay we know the fish are important and you need to help protect the fish but can you work on this detail that would make a really big difference for us and that was a huge breakthrough from what we normally do which is to hear hours and hours of people talking at the extremes and then we have to do the balancing ourselves. So the effect of that we can see is acknowledging that we’re all on this together and helping suggest that solutions and so with that gong, I will close and look forward to the conversation.

Brett: Thanks Felicia, we just have some questions here. Some of these are covered in your presentation, I’ll read the questions that you might not touch on, so one question here, what’s the role on the feasibility in developing water markets to improve water efficiency and getting water to areas where it is needed more? The question on values: How do you take the value of water into consideration when you’re talking about restriction being cut?

Felicia: Well, two things, I mean on water markets this water discussion about what the Australians did and the fact that pricing is really all over the lot. I think in the first instance to have more vibrant, markets we’ve got to have right settled and metering and measuring in quite part of what slows up, water trading is a lack of transparency and lack of certainty. When folks are trying to trade water what tends to take a long time is someone tends to believe the way you are, have to assess whether it’s real water or paper water and if folks have not chewed up their water rights in the case of controversy or come to us to get a license, it’s theoretical, so the value of water to people as they have may not really knew what they have until it adjudicated. So it’s hard to do the kind of full on marketing that what Australia did but it could make it though a lot faster if you just had better information and chewed up some of the rights. When it comes to the balancing, I have information that allows us to do it at more precision… I’ve seen agencies agonize in multiple conversations about how can they try and protect not just endangered fish and wildlife but not endangered fish like the commercial fisheries but we have to protect in trying to figure out how to maximize beneficial uses and I think this year well pretty much it’s been said, I can’t say what I think about it because it’s up on appeal to me, but it’s been portrayed as really on the knife’s edge. We lost an awful lot of Salmon fry last year when the temperature control plant for ________ didn’t work because it was way hotter than anybody had predicted and they have some temperature gauge issues and this year they have some temperature gauge issues again and we’re really crossing our fingers and hoping that we can make it through the summer without losing it an entire year class of salmon. So it’s really quite challenging. In Australia when they did it, it’s kind of simple, when you’re talking about air and gauge missions, they actually created all kinds of zones where trades could be done automatically and transparently and online. In other places where we have to go through two more steps to deal with this fear factor and if all of a sudden you went to markets or whole communities, economies would plummet as farmers decided they could make more money, all their water and then all of a sudden not only their workers but all the community retailers and others that depend on farm economy go kaput and so it is very complex but if we spent some time on it, we could probably come up with the way to enhance marketing without destroying whole communities.

Brett: We’re talking about the community issue and someone had asked about rural communities and how California doesn’t uhm [unintelligible] case of water have and water have not. You know the person who control [interrupted by Ben – “One minute to go”] water.

Felicia: Well, It’s a hugely important issue, and that’s why I’ve been happy to be a part of this administration for safe drinking water and human rights water up at the top of the list, the way we’ve done it is by prioritizing communities both through tool that I encourage people to look at to sort of map communities and try and prioritize disadvantaged communities funding sources, we certainly prioritize a hundred millions in the bond have prioritized it. We have tools to do deal with our communities. Ironically through the emergency money we’ve got to use to run to the rescue of communities that ran out of water, we’ve been able to help communities that have water but it was crap water that we didn’t have the tools to deal with before a drought, so it is absolutely our top priority. And we work with community groups like Community Water Center to make that happen.