And what about a severance tax on bottled water? We discuss issues for the week ahead
By Tim Redmond
APRIL 6, 2015 – The New York Times is the only publication I’ve seen that is raising the critical question about the drought, the one nobody wants to talk about – and it was Kevin Starr, of all people, who put it in stark terms:
“Mother Nature didn’t intend for 40 million people to live here.”
In California, growth is God. The state has prospered by adding more and more industry, more and more people, more and more water-intensive suburban development, more and more water-intensive agriculture – more of everything. And we are predicting and basing our planning on the same assumptions: There will be 280,000 more people in San Francisco by 2040, 1.1 million more in the Bay Area. Tech companies will continue to expand here, creating vast numbers of jobs.
Of course, for people who currently own land, that’s a wonderful thing – the more people you cram into a small space, the more every square inch is worth and the richer the landlords get. But the Times asks a serious question:
Can California (and San Francisco, and the Bay Area) keep growing if there’s no water?
The Guv, who was once among the people who questioned the need for constant growth, is no longer there – but he understands the problem:
“For over 10,000 years, people lived in California, but the number of those people were never more than 300,000 or 400,000,” Mr. Brown said. “Now we are embarked upon an experiment that no one has ever tried: 38 million people, with 32 million vehicles, living at the level of comfort that we all strive to attain. This will require adjustment. This will require learning.”
It might require more than that. It might require us to question what the actual carrying capacity of the state is, and whether we should continue to worship at the altar of constant growth.
Particularly growth that isn’t sustainable — growth that attracts not struggling immigrants from around the world, who California has always welcomed (and should and will), but people who come here from other parts of the US to take high-paid jobs, expecting big houses, private cars, corporate campuses with lush landscaping, private buses, swimming pools, and the other things that rich Americans demand and that create a huge environmental footprint.
And growth in ridiculous farming practices that make a lot of money for agribusiness but have no place in a a state that is, for the most part, naturally arid.
I remember years ago talking to Sim Van Der Ryn, the visionary architect who once ran Jerry Brown’s Office of Appropriate Technology (that was First Time Jerry). We were talking about real estate development and growth in San Francisco, and he asked the crucial question about capitalism:
“Why do we need a perpetually adolescent economy?”
In a state with no water, it’s at least worth discussing, no?
And since we’re talking about water, here’s an element that the governor didn’t discuss: Private companies like Nestle are taking vast amounts of water (50 million gallons a year) out of state aquifiers – and then putting it in plastic bottles and selling it to us for about 1,000 times what it cost.
There are protests over this, but Nestle, of course, says it’s doing nothing illegal.
Let’s take a step back here and talk about what’s going on, because we’ve had the same discussion in the past about another valuable liquid hidden beneath the surface of California.
Nestle doesn’t own the water in the rivers or underneath the ground in the state. By federal law, no private entity can own a river. The water you draw from an aquifer is below all of our property, not just the small square where you stick a pipe.
In every other state that produces oil, that concept has led to an oil-severance tax, a fee that companies pay for pulling petroleum out from under the state’s land. California has never had a tax on oil production at the wellhead, but it’s been tried many times.
The same concept could apply to water, right? You take water that belongs to all of us, you bottle it and sell it – and we, the people of California, ought to get a cut. How about a 50-cents a gallon water-severance tax on commercial outfits that take water from the state and sell it for profit? That’s what, $25 million a year?
Something for the state Leg to think about in this permanent drought era.
(Oh, and BTW, as you are taking your short shower: It takes 4,000 gallons of water to make a hamburger. So if you don’t eat beef, you can save a lot more water than you will be avoiding hygiene.)
The power of the mayor of San Francisco to remove a city official for misconduct is broad and sweeping, going beyond anything that exists at the state or federal level. We saw that with the Ross Mirkarimi affair.
So what about Mel Murphy?
Mirkarimi was never close to the mayor. Murphy is the mayor’s pal. But the city attorney is now suing Murphy for violating city law, the exact laws that he was supposed to uphold when he was on the Building Inspection Commission. Now he’s on the Port Commission. But if what Mirkarimi did was “official misconduct” (even though he wasn’t in the office at issue when it happened), you could certainly make the same claim about Murphy.
Of course, we don’t need to go through the whole painful process again; if the mayor called on Murphy to resign, I suspect the guy would go.
Just how much corruption does the Lee administration tolerate?
Since we’re all about saving water these days, I bet there are going to be more and more agencies pushing for synthetic turf to replace natural grass on playing fields. (You can’t play golf on synthetic turf, but you can water golf courses — and soccer fields — with recycled gray water; not sure why this isn’t a big part part of the solution).
At any rate, synthetic turf is made, in many cases, with what we call “crumb rubber,” which is essentially ground up car tires. Car tires have a lot of toxics in them; so does crumb rubber. And there is growing evidence that it might be a health hazard.
It’s also a big business, and a convenient way to get rid of all those old car tires that nobody can figure out how to use.
So a bill in the state Legislature that would call for an in-depth study on the health effects of crumb rubber – and impose a moratorium on any more use of the stuff for playing fields until 2018, when presumably the study will be done – is going to get opposition.
The author, Sen. Bob Wieckowski of Fremont, asks:
“Why are so many schools and local governments using turf fields made from waste tires when health concerns are increasing and alternative turf field materials are 30-40 degrees cooler than waste tire fields? Why is California subsidizing waste tire fields and playgrounds given the health concerns?”
The bill goes to Senate Appropriations Monday/13, at 10am.
