Cannibal Water, Part 2

So what is "Cannibal Water"? Cannibal Water is water that when diverted, pumped, used, or disposed of after use, destroys the system itself.

Gartrell et al. describe "System Water" as the portion of water going to the ecosystem that is "required to protect the quality of diversions by farms and cities that rely on exports from the Delta or use water locally." (PPIC 2017) What would happen if people started diverting System Water? Salinity would intrude into the Delta, and diversions for agriculture, municipal, and industrial purposes would have to be shut down. The underground parallel is overpumping of an aquifer, allowing salinity intrusion, which then prevents the use of that aquifer.

The water diverted that would result in these negative effects is Cannibal Water, since it consists of water diverters destroying themselves by using water that destroys the system upon which they depend.


There are many examples of this.

Overpumping of groundwater not only can allow salinity to intrude and pollute an aquifer, but it can also destroy the aquifer's storage capacity as the ground settles. This settling also can cause subsidence. That subsidence can cause many problems, but some of the most far-reaching are when a canal subsides, impairing the ability for the canal to deliver water. This has happened along the Friant-Kern Canal and the Delta-Mendota Canal, impacting water users far beyond the overpumper's local aquifer. It is absolutely ridiculous that such overpumping has been allowed--anyone can bring a nuisance lawsuit if the state fails to enforce its responsibilities. But water users haven't been very effective at policing each other, so Prop 3 on the November ballot actually proposes to bail out water users and fix the Friant-Kern Canal with our tax dollars. It is apparently easier to get every citizen to pay instead of getting those responsible to pay. The overpumpers who were enriched while diverting Cannibal Water and the water users who benefit from the operation of that canal should be the ones paying to fix this system. But California has a long history of subsidizing the richest water users, and this time the November ballot proposes to sell bonds and mortgage our children's future to bail out people that got rich off of destroying their own water system. We should send the money to schools until we see canal operators having bake sales to fix their canals.

We should send the money to schools until we see canal operators having bake sales to fix their canals.

The Oroville Dam spillway is one of the most expensive examples of Cannibal Water. While ignoring pleas to build and maintain safe spillways at Oroville Dam, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) used the poorly-built and poorly-maintained structure to extract huge quantities of water from the Feather River over the last 50 years. This reckless Cannibal Water use has endangered the dam itself, thousands of people downstream, and resulted in repairs costing over $1 billion. Not to mention the negative effects on the downstream aquatic ecosystems.

There are many other aging, poorly-built dams that provide risky Cannibal Water to the dam owners when operated at maximum capacity. In fact, during the Oroville crisis, DWR diverted record amounts of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Running the pumps at maximum capacity for a record number of days (over 10,000 cfs for 23 days) caused the Clifton Court Forebay (CCF) gates to be undermined by erosion. CCF had never diverted over 10,000 cfs (daily average flow) before. This cannibalization of the structure diverting the water caused a shutdown of the State Water Project pumps for 32 days while repairs were made--the third longest shutdown in the project's history (the extreme-wet years of 1998 and 1983 had longer shutdowns).

The systems upon which we depend include ecosystems. Examples of water use destroying ecosystems are depressingly numerous. When excessive water diversions have negative impacts on humans, clearly we have Cannibal Water. We can't forget that this includes situations like when people can't catch fish anymore (anywhere there is an endangered fish), can't float down rivers (San Joaquin River), can't enjoy watching birds (Walker Lake, Nevada), can't drink or swim in clean water (polluted aquifers and rivers), or can't even find water (Porterville wells). We have laws intended to protect beneficial uses from Cannibal Water users, unfortunately they are rarely enforced. The rich and powerful get our water, and the rest of us get screwed.

So what about the failure to use water destroying the systems upon which we depend?

For example, if you don't fill a reservoir enough, you might end up with water quality problems. This isn't Cannibal Water (however, delivering water to users instead of maintaining a needed cold water pool for fish is Cannibal Water, since by using that water you are destroying the cold water fishery). I'd argue that this is a problem of poor design, and we shouldn't be building reservoirs on rivers and streams--or even storing water above ground in many areas, since we have huge aquifer space available that isn't susceptible to the water quality problems that plague surface reservoirs. California's water systems should be designed for California, and California has long dry periods and long droughts alternating with floods. If your reservoir has recurring water quality problems, that is an indication that it either shouldn't be there, or it should be managed differently.

Another example of non-use of water causing a problem: if you don't irrigate, your crops might die. Again, this isn't Cannibal Water, because the water isn't there and wasn't used (is it Ghost Water?). Sure, we need water for things, and not using water results in not getting those things. But that is different. The human imagination is limitless, and thus Ghost Water is infinite. If Westlands annexed the moon, it wouldn't mean we need to deliver water there. But for some reason, if someone tries to irrigate salinized desert land, we feel compelled to continue delivering water there, even if it is clearly an unreasonable use of water.

If Westlands annexed the moon, it wouldn't mean we need to deliver water there.

If we irrigated all the arable land in California, we'd destroy the entire state while doing it. And we've already started down that path, thanks to unwise old laws and weak state regulators. Before deciding to maintain an overextended system, we need to make sure we are shrinking that system to a sustainable size, and the trade-offs of maintaining that system are reasonable. The current push for building new dams and repairing subsided canals ignores the fact that these facilities are causing great harm, and the Cannibal Water they produce is a poor investment.

If only California water users followed the law, we wouldn't have so many fights over water. But water users are always pushing for more, and ignoring or trying to weaken the laws that protect us all. The current federal administration and congressional pushes to do illegal things are just another example of how lawless those in power are.

So what if raising Shasta Dam is illegal under state law? Well, Republicans have started pre-construction activities anyway, wasting our tax dollars on a pet project that can't be built without flooding a river protected under the State Wild & Scenic Rivers Act.

Want to build a large new dam on a river with no water rights left, declared "fully appropriated" by the state--a river that goes dry because all the water is already spoken for? Well, Republicans funnel money toward that dead-end project, because appealing to the pro-dam culture of the Fresno area is how they get re-elected, even if the project is an expensive boondoggle that will never happen and will violate all sorts of state laws.

We have to vote out these lawless Republicans who are bankrupting us and destroying the systems that sustain us. When are the true, fiscally conservative Republicans going to take their party back? Republicans are now so radical--you have to admit that ignoring science and logical thinking is pretty radical--the true conservative party is the Democrats. This is starting to look like a long-term shift--we now have radical Republicans and conservative Democrats.

Part 3: How do you wean water users off of cheap, addictive Cannibal Water?