Moving Forward on Water Policy

Which region of the United States is most urbanized? the Northeast? Mid Atlantic? the South? Midwest? Great Plains? Southwest? West? If you guessed the West, you are right. Our home territory of wide open spaces and still some open range, is indeed the most urbanized region of the United States. Over 90% of Westerners live in urban areas; compared to 80%+ in most of the rest of the country. As the rapidly growing West becomes more urbanized, the demands on water in this largely arid region are shifting and conflicts over the uses set in place over the past 100 years ago by Congress's various Reclamation and Grazing acts are clashing with grwoing demands from urban areas, new silicon based industries, and renewed demand for healthy rivers and their ecosystems. Despite the current concern over the price of gasoline -- just now re-approaching the inflation adjusted prices of the early 1980s -- water is rapidly replacing oil as the premier worldwide resource battleground of the 21st century

If the 20th century was the hydraulic century, the "Age of Dams" as Marc Reisner liked to say, what will be the moniker of the 21st century? Will it be the "Age of Restoration" where we restore and reclaim rivers, grasslands, forests and deserts and their associated wildlife and protect human health from our backyards to the polar regions? During the Age of Dams society's around the world, led by the United States' Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers, channelized, irrigated, encased in concrete and generally flaunted our power to redirect water, use and discharge tens of thousands of chemicals, while thoroughly changing ecosystems without regard to long term consequences. As PBS dramatically showcased last night in the special "Journey to Planet Earth" those consequences are so far reaching that humans and large mammals in the least developed areas of earth, our polar regions, now routinely show toxic accumulations in breast milk and fatty tissues of some of the worst pollutants generated thousands of miles away including mercury, lead, pesticides, PCBs, fire retardents, and other pervasive and persistent chemicals.

What is the connection of these airborne pollutants which precipitate out in the cold air of the poles to the age of dams? The loss of the the world's fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, is perhaps the most dramatic example. Once one of the world's most productivne fisheries the Aral sea has nearly disappeared due to Soviet era diversions of its upstream rivers to massive irrigation projects for cotton. The diverted river waters, laced with fertilizers and pesticides over 100,000 square miles, created two ecological and human health disasters simultaneously over the past forty years. The irrigated lands have become so laced with salts and agricultural chemicals that their irrigated productivity is rapidly being reduced to zero and the former bed of the Aral Sea itself is now a desert of stranded boats, industrial poisons and salt flats. The peoples of the region are afficted with epidemic rates of TB, birth defects and year one infant mortality rates up to 10 percent. The sand storms which now regularly sweep the formerly water and vegetation covered lands carry DDT and many other toxics to the lungs of every resident in the multi-country region as well as to the Arctic. As the sea continues to shrink, islands which housed the former Soviet Union's most deadly biochemical warfare experiments are now exposed to the elements and the dangers of experimntal toxins becoming widely dispersed are increasing.

Here in the United States, analogous situations are developing in the lower Colorado basin as the industrial agriculture fed Salton Sea of southern California slowly becomes more saline and poisonous with agricultural runoff from the Imperial Valley. Cut off by canals and dams from its historic wet to dry cycles as the geologically unique below sea level half of the Colorado River delta, the Salton Sea is kept wet buy toxic runoff from the industrial ag fields of the Imperial Valley. Every drop of Colorado River water diverted from the Imperial Valley to urban uses in San Diego under the terms of a new agreement is water that will no longer keep the Salton Sea from fulfilling its geologic role and drying up from the relentless sun of the desert region -- and potentially creating our own 'Aral desert' generating toxic sandsotrms for the peoples of Palm Beach, San Diego, Los Angeles and ultimately northern reaches of Alaska and Canada.

The Salton Sea conundrum makes it hard to conceive of an area of the United States that more clearly demonstrates the horrendous tradeoffs of the last 100 years of water policy in the West. (Though the lost and endagered salmon runs of the Northwest are close, and the toxic nightmares of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Umatilla Chemical Weapons Depot have their own disastrous consequences. Radioactive clams for dinner anyone?)

Yet it is in the Colorado river basin, that Gordian Knot of water in the West, where the drought is also inducing hope for the future of rivers, humans and water. It is here where the consquences of water shortages are rapidly producing opportunities for positive change. the ongoing drought has revealed the wonders of Glen Canyon once again, energized environmental organizations and produced new alliances with tourism businesses, tribal organizations, and diverse residents and lovers of the region. The drought has forced policy makers and water users to focus on the paradox of two huge reservoirs behind the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams simultaneously maximizing evaporative and seepage losses while the region grapples with increased human populations, urban demands for more water and the recovery of native species, historic sites, native sacred sites and wild places uncovered by the drought. Check out our Colorado River on this website for more on the emerging visions of the region and hope for the future.

Dam Removals

The Spring 2005 issue of Wisconsin Rivers newsletter has a great cover story by Dams Program manager Helen Sarakinos on the Restoration of Big Spring Creek. Big Srping creek gained international attention five years ago when it was the focus of a plan by the Perrier corporation to put a bottling plant int eh headwaters of the creek. as Sarakinos reports "Local citizens vociferously opposed , citing mounting evidence that what Perrier took from the ground for profit was going to affect what flowed into the river for everyone else to use." Perrier was forced to wthdraw their proposal and now the River Alliance reports that local landowner led a public process to decide what to do with the old disabled hydropower dam on his property. The article is a fascinating story of hope and river restoration bringing a community together.

Oregon Politics

Oregon, like many states, is still struggling with the after effects of the recesssion, drastic rises in health care costs, dramatic shifts in federal tax burdens from corporations and the wealthy to the backs of the middle class, the worst unemployment rate in the country in the city of Portland, and a split legislature gridlocked in partisanship over educational spending. Actually, the partisan split over educational funding is only over K-12 funding. There is, and has been a de facto legilsative agreement that restoring funding for the university system is at the bottom of the priority list. Gotta love this place.

In the midst of these important policy issues, there has been a general agreement that Oregon and specifically the Portland area are at a competitive business disadvabntage because of the lack of a 'major research university'. Meanwhile Portland State University, the largest in the Oregon University system, is systematically being defunded across the few graduate programs it has in the top ranks nationally. In the College of Urban and Public Affairs, where I teach part time in the Hatfield School of Government graduate program) which contains the top 5 ranked Urban Studies program and a top 25 ranked Pubilic Adminstration and Policy program, accounting changes and assorted other budget cutbacks have cut off graduate assistantships from students well into completing their Ph. D. studies and made it much harder to recruit the best new recruits because of a near total lack of fellowship and assistantship funding. Meanwhile legislators are fooling with proposals like merging PSU and OHSU without serious looks at real structural and funding problems and solutions for PSU and the Oregon University System as a whole. Wouldn't it be great if Oregon's Governor and PSU's President would enter the public discourse on PSU's lack of funding? Building PSU into a major research university is relatively simple. It would take three ingredients: commitment, public leadership, and funding. Like I said, one has to love this place.

Postscript: While we are on the topic of eductational changes and mergers, legislators interested in boosting higher education in Oregon would do well to take another crack at eliminating PSU's antquated quarter system. Built around long gone desires to structure the teaching schedule around student's who wanted to get hom at critical times to help with spring plantings and fall harvests, the 10 week terms, combined with large classes are a serious impediment to mastery of fundamental skills like writing. Lewis and Clark and most other schools long ago shifted to semesters and it is time that the Oregon University System once again consider, and this time complete, a move to semesters. Not only would it save an increment of administrative costs, it would tremendously improve the teaching and learning environment.