Reflections on Environmentalist Power

It’s sometimes easy for friends of California’s rivers to doubt their political power. The list of threats to California’s rivers is long — both arising from the choices of the past and from future circumstances and proposed dams and diversions that continue to sacrifice the state’s rivers. 

For some, that recognition might induce despair and abandonment of our self-imposed responsibilities to save our planetary ecosystems and our rivers closer to home. But…hold on a second. 

Edward Ring is a frequent blogger and author of books on the need to capture even more water from California’s rivers (although he does not rule out other perhaps less damaging water supply approaches). He recently penned some prose that caught my eye: 

“A few years ago I was involved in an effort to qualify a ballot initiative, the “Water Infrastructure Funding Act.” While we failed to gather sufficient signatures to get it onto the November 2022 state ballot, if it had been approved by voters, water scarcity in California would have been eliminated forever. Unfortunately, certain provisions in that measure attracted immediate, forceful opposition which put potential major supporters into an impossible position: Donate about $5 million to qualify the initiative, then spend another $50 million or so on a campaign for votes, and risk losing. 

The allegedly toxic provisions we’d included are no secret. The initiative named seawater desalination and surface reservoirs as among the projects eligible for funding, and was neutral on the Delta Tunnel. Any one of those three attracts apoplectic opposition from a critical mass of powerful players.” 

His proposed initiative was meant to fulfil a longtime dream of the state’s water agencies — ready access to nearly unlimited amounts of taxpayer money. 

Breaking the sometimes honored “beneficiaries pay” principle for state and federal water supply projects, the initiative would have set aside 2% of the state’s general fund for water projects until 5-million acre-feet of new supply could be reliably delivered to some in the state. That would mean a $4 billion dollar taxpayer subsidy for the most successful water agency supplicants in the state — and likely for many, many decades given the challenges of squeezing more water out of the state’s already heavily squeezed rivers. 

But hold on a second! Did he just call us “powerful players”? 

There is some truth in that (although perhaps not in all the assumptions of the initiative’s backers). While certainly not “omnipotent,” friends of California’s rivers have influenced some events, perhaps most obviously in 1973 and 1981 when much of California’s north coast rivers were slipped into the state and federal wild and scenic river systems — throwing a huge monkey wrench into state and federal plans to convert these rivers into nothing but reservoirs and their accompanying bathtub rings and delivering their rich waters to the south state. 

Over the last half century, we’ve scored other important victories: some small, some larger; some easy, some more difficult; some temporary, some more durable. We’ve lost some of our struggles too, and we will undoubtably lose more; but that is not, I submit, a reason to abandon our work. 

And although I am pretty confident that Mr. Ring did not intend to inspire us to continue our work, I think his remarks at least provide some succor to counteract our despair. We have made a difference in the past and can in the future. 

Thank you, Mr. Ring.