California WaterBlog

By Jay Lund

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“Rite” noun:
1. a religious or other solemn ceremony or act.
2. a social custom, practice, or conventional act.

California has complex and hallowed water rites.  Here are some:

1. Claim other water users are engaged in a “water grab” (when you grabbed it first).
   • Correlative rite 1.1: Declare a “water war”.
2. Insist climate change will require actions you wanted even without climate change.
3. Blame water use by others for your water scarcity.
   • Correlative rite 3.1: Insist that others stole your water.
   • Correlative rite 3.2: Claim that your group’s water woes are caused by others.
4. Insist California’s water rights are unfair, because you should get more.
5. Insist that State or Federal authorities at some time in history promised you more water, and you want it now.
6. Assert your water use has extraordinary importance to people and ecosystems, even if this is implausible.
7. Expect impossible operational capabilities for water forecasters, modelers, and project operators.
   • Correlative rite 7.1: Blame the CalSim model for being unable to justify your advocacy position.
8. Insist on the “need” for State and Federal subsidies, but without regulations.
   • Correlative rite 8.1: Ask for one-time state and federal money, into the indefinite future.
   • Correlative rite 8.2: Ignore that water bond funds come largely from water ratepayer taxes and diminished state services to ratepayers.
9. “Thirst in time, thirst in right.”  Old industries have senior rights in water and land. New industries struggle with institutions established for older industries to gather needed land and water from older industries. The process can be slow, expensive, and awkward. Economic transitions from mining to agriculture to cities and their industries in the west have brought economic progress but also a long turbulent wake from awkward transitions. 

Perhaps Western water rhetoric might become more concise by referring to these now-numbered rites.

About the Author

Jay Lund is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Vice Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California – Davis.