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Water Development: People before the water or water before the people?

Posted by: Maven on August 2, 2007 at 7:46 am

I have been reading David Carle’s book, “Water and the California Dream”, which discusses how California’s water development and consequent population growth has occurred. There is a quote in the Introduction which really has had me thinking, is it the population growth that drives the need for more water projects, or is it that the water projects allow the population to grow This is an interesting point to contemplate as we all have heard by now that population projections show that California, in the year 2050, is going to have 25 million more people than we have now. Or so they say.

Mr. Carle points out that population projections are not inevitable, but are a matter of choice, and the biggest beneficiaries of water projects are the few large landholders and developers who have directed California’s development. From the book:

There will be a time, before long, when California voters again hear startling warnings of imminent water shortages and are asked to approve money for yet another water transfer. Will the additional water assure supplies for the present population Or will it allow unimpeded growth to continue until, once again, demand outreaches supply ….

Each decade of the twentieth century brought its own pioneers, as successive water development irrigated new waves of population growth. With the people came smog and traffic gridlock, suburban sprawl, and urban crowding, extinctions and endangered species, tocis wetlands and paved-over orchards.

This was brought to mind as I read this editorial from the LA Times:

Projections by the state’s Department of Finance forecast a California that will be virtually unrecognizable from the fairly idyllic place that once captured the world’s imagination. A state already struggling to maintain even its most basic obligations to its current population faces collapse under the weight of such an epic influx of people.

The good news is we’re not there yet.

The bad news is that since the DOF’s projections were released earlier this month, the reaction from civic leaders across the state has been to study how best California can accommodate this population surge, not even considering whether the state should try to prevent it from happening. Relentless population growth and the rampant development that it fuels have become such powerful dynamics in California that the state’s leaders apparently can’t envision any alternative other than to live with it.

The article points out that most leaders and politicians don’t want to confront population growth and the detrimental effect it can have on our quality of life:

And it’s that refusal to seriously consider California’s population growth that has brought the state to where it finds itself today: facing an infrastructure that is crumbling, social services stretched to capacity and a looming water crisis stemming from severe drought conditions.

If this refusal to consider the core impacts of population growth continues for much longer, California may become, within a few decades, a place where basic survival has long supplanted quality of life concerns.

This in fact is the day-to-day reality in many, many places around the globe already.

To read the rest of this thought-provoking article, click here.

Aqua Blog Maven has read plenty of books on California’s water development. My list of recommended reading – in no particular order:

“Cadillac Desert”, by Marc Reisner
“Water and the California Dream”, by David Carle
“Water and Power”, by William L. Kahrl
“The Water Seekers”, by Remi Nadeau
“Salt Dreams”, by William deBuys & Joan Myers

This list is by no means complete as there is still much on the Aqua Blog Maven’s bookshelf to be read, and many more to be bought. There are a few I started reading and found too, well, boring. The list above are those that I have read and enjoyed. Next up: “The Great Thirst”, by Norris Hundley, Jr. and “A River No More” by Philip L. Fradkin.

My favorite so far “Salt Dreams”. I read it once, which inspired me to visit the Imperial Valley & Salton Sea area earlier this year.

August 2, 2007 · Filed Under Development & Population

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