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Design, synthesis and agency
An abstract just written for a conference in Amman, Jordan called Conservation of Architecture, Urban Areas, Nature & Landscape: Towards a Sustainable Survival of Cultural Landscape:
Design, synthesis and agency: Mediating the production of real estate, artificial ecosystems and water in the California Delta
John Bass
Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
Problems of resource scarcity are emerging as major political and existential issues in all parts of the world. The mythical playground of California is no exception. The state faces increasingly difficult tensions between its desire to continue growing and the limited resources it has available to fuel that growth. This is especially true regarding the resource of fresh water for its thirsty metropolitan and agricultural regions.
The geographical epicenter of this scarcity-induced tension is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, about 100 kilometers northeast of San Francisco, and the largest fresh water estuary on the west coast of North America. The Delta was a tidal estuary that was reclaimed from 1850 to 1900. The Delta’s highly organic soils have since subsided, and most of the Delta’s poldered land now sits at 25-30 feet below surrounding rivers.
Over the last one hundred years the state grew, and its caretakers explored places that could provide the fresh water to support that growth. Logically, the Delta’s fragile, flood-prone islands and meandering rivers and sloughs became the nexus of the state’s complex and extensive water storage and redistribution infrastructure. Ever-increasing demands for the Delta’s fresh water have helped to bring its ecosystem to the brink of collapse and threaten to literally and politically inundate its unique historical settlements, manmade islands and place-specific infrastructures.
The state’s legislative response to the tension between environmental crisis and water supply an objective to achieve the “co-equal” goals of restoring the Delta’s ecosystem and securing the water supply for the state’s urban and agricultural water consumers. Habitat restoration and water supply securitization, yes—but nowhere in this legislation, passed in November of 2009, is there an expressed objective to conserve the Delta’s unique physical and cultural landscape.
The presentation will describe several scales of speculative proposal that folds into the “co-equal” goals this third goal to conserve this unique and valuable area. An overview will describe the state’s water issues vis-a-vis the Delta and the various policy and engineering proposals that have been put forth to address these issues. These include changes to the Delta’s land management practices and a number of systemic and site-specific infrastructural interventions.
Illustrated with a number of speculative and polemical design proposals, it will be argued that while these land use and management practices and engineering artifacts are too narrowly conceived on a singular functional focus, they provide the basic framework for design synthesis.
Drawing a distinction between preservation as a method of fixing in time and place a beloved artifact and conservation as a method of caring for a living, changing one, the approach inherently acknowledges that fundamental physical changes are inevitable in the Delta, and explores ways that the Delta’s many latent resources might be developed to subsidize those changes and conserve essential cultural, historical, and human aspects of this place.
For more information, please visit http://www.deltanationalpark.org/intro/
Thematic keywords:
Landscape scale conservation
Ecosystem restoration
Environmental conservation and conflict resolution
Leaving now for a month-long visit to Chandigarh, India. Working on a book on the tensions between those who believe that that city, as a monumental relic of modernism, needs to be preserved, and those who see it a growing city that needs to change if it is to avoid becoming a tourist-first place. Hopefully there will be an occasional encounter with extraordinary and ordinary water moments. One extraordinary one, the stepwell (reservoir) above, at 10 stories deep, the deepest in India.
Will blog as time allows. Happy summer to everyone!
Professor Glibert’s departure
What should one take away from Professor Glibert’s decision to publish her nitrate conclusions on the Delta and subsequent resignation from the Delta NAS panel?
That her methods were poor or her conclusions incorrect? No one knows, but chances are that Glibert’s take that nitrates are big local and regional contributors to the Delta’s ecosystem problems will hold water.
(Please take note that the DNP chooses not to characterize her conclusions as “nitrates are The Primary Problem” until we read this in something she has written.)
That some of her research was funded by vested interests? Well, we do know that, but really, who’s isn’t, here, except for the “research” of local interests? And are they scientists?
That she is now a criminal, committing the crime of publishing ahead and outside the deliberations of her NAS panel colleagues? Only she knows her motives.
What the DNP takes away at present is that Prof. Glibert acted with insufficient respect to her Delta NAS colleagues or regard to their charge and process.
At present we have little information and no idea why she chose to do this.
The DNP doubts that Glibert just wanted to give everyone a new reason to be suspicious. So what was it?
Was it simply innocent/naive impatience? Absolute belief? Selfishness? A deaf political ear? All of the above?
We remain curious to hear Glibert’s account.
The era of remediative technology
Southern California water interests had a good decade this week.
First, Professor Patricia Glibert, an ecologist on the Delta NAS panel, concludes that nitrates from Sacramento’s waste water are the root cause of the decline of the Delta smelt. From Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times:
The [Prof. Glibert’s] paper says the way to start fixing the Delta is to reduce the nutrient discharges from the Sacramento sewer system.
“Until such reductions occur, other measures, including regulation of water pumping or manipulations of salinity, as has been the current strategy, will
likely show little beneficial effect,” the paper concludes. “Without such action, the recovery of the endangered pelagic fish species is unlikely at best.”
Then, Judge Wanger finds that claims of harm afforded the smelt (and salmon, etc.) from water exportation are guesstimations. Again, from Mr. Taugher, citing Wanger’s decision:
“The exact restrictions imposed, which are inflicting material harm to humans and the human environment, are not supported by the record,” he wrote in a 134-page ruling. “Rather, they are product of guesstimations and attempts to try to achieve ‘equity,’ rendering it impossible to determine whether the (Delta pumping restrictions) are adequately protective, too protective, or not protective enough.”
These two artifacts, one scientific, the other legal, are new and significant. They of course will be used by water interests to further their claims on Delta water.
Fairly or unfairly, they will also be undermined by claims of bias (who is paying for this study by Glibert? ACWA! Aha!).
The DNP has long acknowledged that local Delta urban and agricultural interests are in part responsible for the Delta’s ecosystem problems. We published this diagram, the product of research in the Peak Water studio, in early March.
The problem with both the local and the southern water interest communities is that they resort to polarizing and divisive strategies to hold their political ground.
Monitor and meter groundwater pumping in Kern County or Westlands? Over my dead libertarian body.
That locally produced and dumped nitrates could be a significant factor of ecosystem degradation? Impossible! I recycle.
Take a minute and try and contemplate the vast quantities of nitrate that are produced not only by city folk but also in the form of fertilizer and animal waste by agriculture.
It’s not hard to believe that nitrates may just be the single biggest contributor to the problem(s) Prof. Glibert points out.
The real problem, though, is a political, not scientific, one. No one interest will ever budge, because the facts will never support the idea that there is a “root cause” location or culprit to the Delta’s myriad problems.
California has Prop 13 and all of its descendants, fiscally straitjacketing the state and making it nearly impossible for responsible people to deal with any of these complicated issues. It’s indulgent, and very risky, really, to think that the state can simply wait until that indisputable culprit is found. The state will only find itself.
Read Wanger’s statement - that’s what he is saying: All of these guesstimations are “attempts to try to achieve ‘equity,’ rendering it impossible to determine whether the (Delta pumping restrictions) are adequately protective, too protective, or not protective enough.”
Pretty much makes sense, but it is going to be interesting to see what the actual mechanics of his decision are. Wanger has delayed this part of his findings. The DNP urges him to retain the status quo, since his ruling seems to be that he has no idea what should be done.
Having no idea ourselves is why the DNP really liked this editorial in today’s Sacramento Bee. After pointing out that is way premature to point the finger at the Sacramento sewer system for the Delta’s woes (did Prof. Glibert even say or write this, or is that Taugher’s take?), the editorial goes on to suggest that
Instead of heading down this confrontational path, water exporters and Sacramento sanitation would be wise to focus their resources on speeding up a $1 billion upgrade of a treatment plant that eventually will be needed. If it helps the Delta, all sides should be willing to help. That would be far more productive than continuing with the current pattern of finger-pointing and scientific cherry-picking.
Exactly. Sooner or later, Californians will understand that they have no choice but to lead the way in ushering the Era of Remediative Technology. Why not turn what Californians invent into the next big intellectual and industrial age?
At the other end of California’s water supply chain, Orange County has many mitigative technologies integrated into its infrastructure:
Up north, at the source of water, there is every reason to require Sacramento, Lodi, Stockton, Tracy and other communities build new infrastructure that will discharge water back into the Delta that is as clean as the water taken out of it.
In a nutshell, Westlands relapses
The DNP preferred Westlands’ lateral thinking from a couple months back.
Back then, WWD’s perhaps hundreds of people were exploring alternative development options for its toxic but productive real estate.
But we should have known that like any intelligent strategic thinker, Westlands understands the value of a multi-pronged strategy for making money or winning battles over geography and scarce resources.
As the Fresno Bee’s E.J. Schultz reports, Westlands has hired Craig Manson, University of the Pacific law professor and former assistant secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks under George W. Bush.
Quoting Schultz:
Manson worked in the Bush Interior Department from 2002-05 and pushed some policies that were harshly criticized by environmentalists. In 2003, for instance, the administration shrank plans to protect Central Valley vernal pools, citing economic reasons.
One of Manson’s underlings, Julie MacDonald, faced accusations from environmentalists that she bullied career scientists.
She was reprimanded by the Interior Department’s inspector general for leaking information to private groups, such as the California Farm Bureau Federation, and resigned in 2007.
The DNP agrees with Michael Campana about the implications of Manson’s hire.
Campana sits on the National Academy of Sciences’ Bay-Delta panel charged with producing independent, sound scientific analysis on the dynamic interplay of the Bay-Delta ecosystem and human impacts, including pollution and water export, on that ecosystem.
Clearly, Westlands is gearing up for their next round of litigation. Why wouldn’t they be? It is in their interest to do so, these perhaps hundreds of people who have no water rights but do have a great deal of political power.
Ironies abound here. The reason why Campana sits on the Delta NAS panel in the first place is because Sen. Feinstein agreed to help out friends and contributors the Resnicks, who didn’t like what the Endangered Species Act was likely to do to their pistachio and pomegranate profit margins.
And if the Resnicks have a moderate Democratic U.S. Senator in their corner, Westlands knows it doesn’t hurt to have the not-so-moderate right wing megaphone at your disposal:
Along with friends in high places and Fox News, litigating is a big part of the tool kit. How do they fund it, these perhaps hundreds of people who control an empire with huge unemployment rates in the small towns that dot their domain?
It helps of course to minimize the expense of putting local people to work. Despite all of the claims of hardship by folks like the Resnicks and the perhaps hundreds of Westlands litigants, keep in mind that they still have the money to pay lawyers millions of dollars a year to advocate their interests.
Manson’s annual salary will be $185,000. That number suggests he might be taking less than market rate for the pleasure of the task.
Despite Fox News’s coverage of an embattled farmer destroying his almond orchard because, he claimed, he had no water to irrigate the trees because of a little fish, California almond production was up 8.5% last year, to 1.53 billion pounds.
From the Agriculture Statistics Service:
The DNP has no idea whether Fox’s (almond) farmer, the Resnicks or Westlands came along for the state’s almond farming 8.5% growth joyride. We suspect they did. From the splash page of the Resnick’s Paramount Farms website:
For the powerful, enough is never enough. As water becomes ever scarcer in California, we hope civility will not.
$9.5M would be a bargain
News out that the Delta Stewardship Council has hired CH2MHill to develop the required comprehensive long-term management plan for California’s Delta.
On its website, the DSC also invites people to comment on the interim management plan that must be implemented until CH2MHill’s work is done and approved.
Restore the Delta has already expressed skepticism about the hire. RTD points out that the firm is already involved in the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan.
The DNP has not seen the short list of firms that CH2MHill beat out, but would be interested to know what they were. And of course, whether any of them would have been more acceptable to RTD. Kind of doubt it.
CH2MHill is getting $9.5M to do the work, charged with coming up with a plan to meet those “co-equal goals”:
State law calls for the Delta Plan to guide state and local actions in the Delta so that they further the coequal goals. According to the California Water Code, Section 85054: “Coequal goals” means the two goals of providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem. The coequal goals shall be achieved in a manner that protects and enhances the unique cultural, recreational, natural resource, and agricultural values of the Delta as an evolving place.
While that seems like a clear enough purpose, the devil is in the details. It is entirely unclear whether it is possible to meet these goals. If Hill is able to achieve these goals, then the state is getting a real bargain.
Keep in mind that “co-equal” goals are primarily of political utility.
Just today, as the Sacramento Bee’s Matt Weiser reports, the Corps of Engineers is considering imposing its national policy of tree-stripped levees for the Delta.
A treeless Delta landscape. So much for co-equal goals. The Delta is destined to become nothing more than a piece of plumbing if the risk-averse get their way.