Downloaded from YTS.MX
In many ways, the growth problems
and the conservation problems of California
are the same kind of problems that our country faces.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[Dramatic music plays]
We surmount these growth problems
only if we work together.
It is a pleasure for me to permit us
to look at this valley and others like it
across the country where we can see the greenest
and most richest earth producing the greatest
and richest crops in the country.
And then a mile away see the same earth
and see it brown and dusty and useless and all because
there's water in one place and there isn't in another.
[Wind howling]
[Narrator] Water supply issues are among the most important
and least understood issues around the world.
Satellite images captured over the last few decades
indicate that our freshwater supplies are rapidly changing.
Dry areas are getting drier, as wet areas are getting wetter.
Some are at risk of losing access
to the water we need to survive.
It took 200,000 years for the world's population
to reach 1 billion.
In the last 200 years, it has expanded to 7.7 billion.
As human populations explode, many places are already
seeing their demand for water outstrip supply.
It's a worldwide phenomenon.
It's why China's building dams in the Tibetan plateau,
so they won't have to send water to Cambodia, Laos.
It's just played out here
in a different venue and different set of circumstances.
It's the same game.
Get me water first.
The hell with the other people.
[Peter gleick] Water is a big problem. There's conflict over water.
There's violent conflict over access to water worldwide.
We have the reality of climate change,
which is fundamentally a water issue.
As humans take more water out of the natural environment,
the ecosystems on which we also depend
are increasingly suffering.
We're seeing our fisheries die.
We're seeing our rivers dry up.
We're seeing our wetlands disappear
and the birds that migrate thousands of miles every year
that depend on those ecosystems perish as well.
We have to figure out a way to provide water for human uses,
but also for the natural ecosystems that depend
on the same water resources.
[John herrick] It's hard to explain why California,
as a supposed leader in,
many, many things in the world, can't address these issues.
California in particular has really overallocated
our supplies for a long time.
[Dante nomellini] There's no basic ethic in water.
Unless you're strong enough
to stop them from doing things, they just do it.
[Doug obegi] Power matters.
And you know, I think one of the central themes of Chinatown
is that, you know, the powerful get to take what they want.
Water is so valuable that you're going to fight over it.
You're going to fight for every last drop. Everybody is.
The water wars is the reference to everybody fighting each other
to keep their share or take someone else's share.
And it gets a little bitter and nasty sometimes.
California is not unique in its water challenges.
We are unique perhaps in the sense
that we have the money, we have the institutions,
we have the brainpower to solve our water problems
and we haven't solved them yet.
But if we can't solve them here,
it will be difficult to think about
how we will solve water challenges around the world.
[Waves crashing]
[Insects buzzing]
[Narrator] The drought from 2012 to 2016
was California's worst on record.
The state of California is resorting
to drastic measures tonight to combat its severe drought.
[Narrator] Op-eds in the la. Times questioned if people
would soon run out of water.
Homes and businesses were asked
to significantly cut back their water use.
We're in a historic drought
and that demands unprecedented action.
It's for that reason that I'm issuing an executive order
mandating substantial water reduction across our state.
The mandatory rules are designed to reduce water use by 25%.
[Narrator] Homeowners pulled out their lawns
and replaced them with artificial turf.
[Charley Wilson] I'm here today to show you and we've got some
of the graphics behind me, the new character, lawn dude,
something that we think will be appealing
to a variety of customers.
[Narrator] Drought shaming became a popular form of vigilantism.
[Newscaster] Mikey barnum wrote, "way to hose down your entire sidewalk... twice."
Are you okay with being called a water snitch?
I am. I totally am.
[Narrator] Meanwhile, the media narrative was that agriculture
was suffering across the state.
California farmers are losing
billions of dollars every year that we have this drought.
While that's happening,
the acreage of nut crops is skyrocketing.
These crops are tremendously valuable on the export markets.
The San Joaquin valley is now the nut supplier to the world.
And so we're delivering water
that belongs to the California public
and that is needed by the fish and wildlife
and water quality that we rely on
to the San Joaquin valley to grow a lot of crops
that are being exported out of the country
to China, the middle east, et cetera.
[Char Miller] When Jerry brown went up onto the mountain top
to declare California in the worst drought
in along, longtime and asked people
to change their behaviors, there was a caveat.
Urbanites were supposed to change their behavior,
but the central valley agricultural districts
were not, they were voluntary.
We were required.
And that tells you everything about the power of ag.
Because after all, ag uses 80% of all water in California
and Nevada and Arizona and every other state,
and they're going to hold that water
because the law says they can.
[Juliet Christian-Smith] We've had the highest grossing agricultural years on record
during this drought and during the last drought.
And that kind of money buys influence.
It buys lawyers, lobbying firms.
[Mike Hudson] We could never flush our toilets again.
And never let the water run again
while we're brushing the teeth for what,
for 4% of water savings
on all that water that we're saving
has already been sold to the irrigators
so that they can grow their export crops
and ship them to Europe or China and make a buck on it.
And that drop of water that you save
by not flushing your toilet or by shutting down the water
while you are brushing your teeth,
it didn't amount to nothing.
[Narrator] During the drought, the governor's
water restrictions applied only
to communities, not to agriculture.
Many believed the drought put a spotlight on destructive
government policies, prioritizing
agricultural conglomerates over its citizens.
For half a century, we've been managing water resources
in the state of California in a very unsustainable way.
[Birds chirping]
[Narrator] Trillions of gallons of water
from the snowpack of the Sierra nevadas
travel down streams and rivers
to support life in California.
The state sees an influx
of a truly incredible amount of water.
[Peter gleick] Before there was a big population in California,
before we had our 40 million people
and an enormous economy, we had two great rivers.
The Sacramento river and the San Joaquin river.
And they flow together to create the California
Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, sort of
the heart of California's rich environment,
but also the heart of our water system.
And the water of those two rivers forms the delta
and then they flow out into San Francisco bay
and then out under the golden gate.
[Richard white] When Americans come to California,
the California delta is probably
the most mysterious landscape in the state.
If you look at the old land survey maps,
they survey the rest of the state
and the delta remains this blank spot.
They don't even draw township lines.
The reason they can't draw the lines is
they can't get into it.
It's going to be heavily tule land.
It's hard to say, depends on the time of day
whether it's going to be land or water.
It's absolutely immense.
It's full of mosquitoes.
It's a place you just can get lost in.
You can travel through it if you know the way through the sloughs,
but it's constantly changing.
Some of the early sailing ships would find so much fresh water
flowing out the bay, out the golden gate into the ocean
that they could draw fresh water in the middle of the ocean.
Today, that's not the reality.
Today, because of human demands on the delta,
we take so much water out of the Sacramento
and the San Joaquin rivers and out of the delta itself,
that the natural flow has been dramatically reduced.
[Narrator] Today, California has the largest
and most complicated water system in the world
because massive cities and agricultural corporations
were built away from fresh water.
Building more than 1400 dams
across the state, the largest conveyance system
to move water from the north where it is more plentiful
to the central valley in the south
where the demand is highest.
[Bettina boxall] We have an incredible plumbing system.
I mean, it's really a remarkable engineering feat regardless of,
you know, what you think of it from a philosophical standpoint,
from a practical standpoint, you have to admire it.
[Felicia Marcus] It was developed before more modern
environmental sensibilities, and as a result of that,
we've simply taken more water out of the ecosystem
than any ecosystem anywhere has been able to survive.
It's very likely that in the not too distant future,
we'll be at the river's end.
[Narrator] The California bay delta is located
east of San Francisco bay.
It is the largest inland estuary on the west coast.
This means California's major rivers
meet the pacific ocean here
and it serves as a crucial habitat
for about 500 different plant and animal species.
However, since the delta is flush with fresh water,
it also serves as the hub
of California's water infrastructure.
Two-thirds of the state's residents
get water from the delta,
including the residents of Los Angeles, San Diego,
silicon valley, San Francisco, and the San Joaquin valley.
Three quarters of californians don't know where the delta is,
and for most people, the water that comes out of their tap
comes out of a black box.
It rains some place, and then there's a big black box
and you turn on your tap and water comes out.
It is that ignorance, that lack of knowledge
about where our water come from and the effects that that has
on the delta and communities there and salmon fishermen
that really aids and abets what has happened over
the last several generations in terms of the decline
of the delta and our native fish and wildlife.
[Engine rumbling]
[Footsteps through muck]
Water from all the rivers
that flow out of the Sierra Nevada,
north and south, flows into the central valley
all flow here and then the water
for 20 million people at least leaves here, goes south.
This provides water for the entire state.
I mean it's a, it's a remarkable place.
The bay delta is the big story in California.
I think it is emblematic of lots
of stories like it across the planet,
not just in the United States,
particularly in the anthropocene,
this world in which the human beings have
so dramatically shaped nature that we're now having to think
about how we exist within nature if we want to exist at all.
[Narrator] Caught between the competing interests
of cities, agriculture, and the environment,
the delta has become the battleground
of California's latest water wars.
[Dog barking]
[Rogene Reynolds] But where are you are is the far south delta.
This is the San Joaquin river.
This is old river. It goes to the pumps by Tracy.
And this is reclamation district 544.
This is undine road and this is here.
This is where we live. We're just on 2 acres right here.
The delta is an estuary.
It is a beautiful patchwork quilt
of farms and waterways.
Most of our families have been out here
since the late 1880s or the early 1900s.
Family farming here is production agriculture,
but on a small scale,
smaller than the southern San Joaquin valley.
The delta is quiet, the delta is productive.
It's home to a lot of people
who are committed to keeping it as beautiful as it is.
It's home.
[Narrator] The delta naturally flows to the pacific ocean,
but as more fresh water is diverted from the delta,
salty ocean water is sucked in.
Water diversions are hurting the ecosystems
and economies of the delta.
It really is an existential problem for us.
We either get to live here with good water
or we end up having to leave.
We being, I'm talking about the farming community.
We have to leave because the salt has ruined the land.
[Brett baker] That's it. That's what all the fuss is about.
But this is our, this is absolutely our lifeline.
This is what sustains us.
If somebody comes up to you and says, "give me your wallet,"
and you might laugh them off, but if they come back
with a knife, they come back with a gun
and say, "hey, give me your wallet,"
you know, it's an entirely different situation
and we feel very much in that sort of a situation
where our livelihoods, our way of lives,
what we know what we feel are
is rightfully ours is being threatened
because somebody stands to make a buck from it.
25 million californians are getting
some of their drinking water from here.
They get it from the Colorado river.
They get it from elsewhere.
It's not everything to anybody, but it's something to everybody.
If you look at all the fish overall,
populations across the board have dropped in in my lifetime
and I think if you look at the amount of water
that's been exported from the delta,
they correlate almost perfectly.
[Narrator] Family farmers who call the bay delta home
farm responsibly to protect native fish
and wildlife, but they cannot stem
the tide of water diversions.
Fish and wildlife in the delta are disappearing daily.
The delta is really a microcosm of a lot of other problems.
We've got six endangered species
in the delta and of course globally
we're in an extinction crisis, but here,
in the backyard of San Francisco in the heart of a state
that prides itself on being, you know,
the center of environmentalism.
We have six endangered species in this ecosystem.
Delta smelt, iongfin smelt, spring run chinook salmon,
winter run chinook salmon, green sturgeon and migratory
rainbow trout, which are called central valley steelhead.
Those six species have very different ecological needs
and very different behaviors, and the fact that all of them
are on the precipice of disappearing
from an ecosystem that they've inhabited for millennia
really speaks to the damage that we've done to this ecosystem.
But it's under constant, constant political pressure
and tension to try to move more of those water resources
year-round, drought or no drought,
into the central valley mainly.
And then into southern California.
It's a little hard to understand why we're completely screwing up
this western environment and lavishing these subsidies
so that very successful corporations can grow
a highly profitable crop and ship it overseas
without paying mitigation for the impacts they are causing.
[Julie Zimmerman] The fall run chinook salmon
are spawning right now, so chinook salmon
are also known as king salmon.
They're the biggest of all the salmon species.
I think they're hanging on, but in most places they're
hanging on by a thread and if you remove the hatcheries,
they would probably blink out in some fairly short time period.
[Narrator] California takes so much water
out of the environment that if it weren't for fish
hatcheries north of the delta, salmon would go extinct.
This has decimated the fishing communities
surrounding San Francisco bay.
[Larry Collins] Here's how bad it is.
If you come over here and look, this represents somebody fishing
for four days all up and down the marin coast for four days.
This is what they caught.
Seven fish.
They're beautiful, they're tasty, they're delicious.
But...
I've done those four days for 250 fish not that long ago.
That's what happens when you take
the water out of the equation.
The numbers get so low that you can't make a living.
When I started fishing, there was 5,000
salmon boats in California.
Now there's about 300 left.
You know, families, families and families lost their livelihoods.
Guys are blowing their brains out.
You know, I can tell a million stories about guys
that, you know, because fishermen
don't just fish for a living.
Fishing is who we are.
It's not like you can, you know, retrain us
to go do something else any more than you can retrain
a farmer or retrain somebody that had been doing
that four or five generations, you know?
So the salmon
that spawn in the watershed and then migrate
through the estuary, go out into the ocean
where they feed orca whales and marine mammals
and bird life and other fish.
The decline in salmon production from the central valley
is evident in this starvation
really of orca whales in the ocean.
And that's just one example.
The estuaries are really this nursery for things
in the near shore ocean environment.
And when we decimate the delta and the rest of the estuary,
we're really harming those resources as well.
[Narrator] The thirst for water from the delta cannot be quenched.
The demand from large cities
and agriculture corporations south of the delta
is growing.
Lawyers, p.R. Agencies,
and former high-ranking government officials
are employed to take as much water
as possible from the delta.
It's all about the money honey or the water.
And yeah, James Dean has that quote, you know
why they robbed banks, right?
Cause that's where the money is.
My grandfather told me, my grandfather told me
a couple things about water.
He said, "there may come a day son,
when you'll have to go sit on that pump with a shotgun."
[Water dripping]
[Walt gray] California's water war is heating up.
The governor just unveiled
a new 14 billion plan to build two tunnels
underneath the delta, transferring water
from northern California to southern California.
The governor says his plan will create a reliable water supply
and still maintain a healthy ecosystem in the delta.
This proposal balances the concerns of those
who live and work on the delta,
those who rely on it for water and those who appreciate
its beauty, its fish, waterfowl and wildlife.
[Newscaster] Breaking news. Now the metropolitan water district has approved
nearly 11 billion dollars in funding.
[Narrator] When Jerry brown was governor of California,
he proposed a new method of water conveyance
from the delta known as the water fix or twin tunnels.
[Interviewer] Do you have a stance on the twin tunnels project?
Can we turn off the camera for a second?
Is that possible?
[Interviewer] If you feel comfortable talking about it,
we hear lots of different opinions about the twin tunnels project.
I'm not allowed to talk about it.
- You're not allowed? - Yeah.
Is westlands a supporter of the project?
The simple answer to that question is yes.
Earlier plan of the delta, I found out my house
was going to be a location of a, what they call a muck pond,
which is essentially a 300 acre pond full of about
20 feet full of mud that came out of the tunnels.
I found out about it first in the newspaper.
[Narrator] The tunnels project
is one of the most controversial in California's history.
The project was proposed to fix a variety of complex issues,
one of which is to reduce the environmental impacts
of the powerful pumps in the south delta.
Currently we have giant pumps in the south delta
that just pull water across the delta
from the Sacramento river, which is very damaging.
It disrupts the migration of fish.
It makes the lower San Joaquin river run backwards
and it destroys millions of fish each year at these pumps.
One of the bypasses, one of the fixes,
another technical fix is to bore these two tunnels
underneath the delta, move water through.
And so you can let the river maybe become
more like a river it once was if that's the case,
despite the billions that would be spent on it.
The question we'll have to ask is whether it's worth the cost
to do it that way,
[narrator] But the project is seen by many as destructive.
The creation of these tunnels or mismanagement of these tunnels
could spell the end of the delta as we know it.
[Rogene Reynolds] The water supply up here in the delta is limited,
but they've over-pumped that supply
and the issue of the tunnels
is that they will have an even deeper straw
into the delta and we will have no control
over how much finally gets taken out of here.
The system is broken.
The question is what do we do about it?
And the idea that we would find a new point of diversion higher
up on the Sacramento river and then make that facility
so huge that it could take the entire flow of the river
is pretty scary, to people like me.
The twin tunnels are posed as this dual solution that can
make southern California happy by delivering more water
to southern California, but supposedly they're
also going to help rescue the environment of the delta.
People with very good reason have a great deal of skepticism
that it will help the environment of the delta.
Hey, hey, ho, ho, the tunnel's gotta go!
[Protestor] We need to become more water independent
and stop destroying the very sensitive delta,
stop destroying the way of the American Indians, fisheries.
We have to stop destroying
our native habitat and let us support
local water projects and local jobs
here in la. And orange county.
- Thank you. - Alright.
The bigger issue is that we just take
too much fresh water out of the ecosystem,
so we need to let more flow down
from the rivers out into the bay
and the tunnels do nothing to mitigate that.
You know, we don't want to turn the delta into lake erie
and have it shut down because it's not suitable to drink
and your dog dies if it goes swimming in it.
But that's what's going to happen
if they operate this the way they plan to.
That led us to where we are now, they think they can
build these tunnels and just take water out of northern California.
You can drive greyhound buses through these.
This was way larger than I guess the English channel,
you know, so we're talking about major traffic going down
these tunnels or all the water in northern California.
But they're sold as an environmental remedy
by taking the water out higher up
than dumping it down the aqueduct.
Later on, you will actually be able to regulate
the flows in the delta better than you can now,
and environmental considerations help San Francisco bay.
But there's another consideration,
a lot of the drinking water in northern California,
especially around the bay area, comes from the delta.
So if you have salt intrusion there,
you're screwing up the sources of drinking water.
So you're really pitting now two major urban areas,
San Francisco and Los Angeles, and you're pitting together two
agricultural areas, the delta and the San Joaquin valley.
So you have huge players on both sides coming into battle.
And it is a story, as you well know,
with twists and turns that nobody can ever predict.
Every time you think you know what will happen,
the twin tunnels had been defeated.
It rises up again.
It is unkillable in one sense,
at least so far what will happen on
that is something I would never predict on film
because I would be wrong within 24 hours
the way things are turning out.
[Narrator] Then in 2019 Gavin newson was sworn in as
the next governor of California.
I do not support the water fix as currently configured,
meaning I do not support the twin tunnels.
We can, however, build on the important work
that's already been done and that's why I do
support a single tunnel.
[Wind blowing]
So this is our war room.
This is where we have our monthly water agency meetings.
We've got all kinds of wonderful
color maps of the delta about every which way
you could draw it and we have the most
recent rendition of the delta water fix.
It might've still been called bdcp at that point in time
and it looks very familiar
to this 1965 rendition
of the hypothesized plan
for a peripheral canal so you can see not much
has changed in their minds and we're still fighting over
some of the same issues that have been fought over
and will continue to be fought over for generations, lifetimes.
[Narrator] The tunnels project has been around
in various forms for over half a century.
In the 1940s it was the peripheral canal.
In the past decade it has gone through
numerous names and proposals.
Newsom's single tunnel plan
is not half the size of the twin tunnels.
A single tunnel would be much larger than
one of the two tunnels.
For many, this distinction just serves
to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.
The water fix is a good case study
for the problems of both California water and the delta.
And that's because it's the most recent iteration
of that ongoing water fight,
the wars that we've been talking about.
Those who need water are supposed to be bound
by restrictions that say you can have water,
but it has to be surplus to the other areas.
The amount of surplus when it's available
and the amount they can take is insufficient for their needs.
And so they have to keep trying and they've been trying
for 50 years to get additional water
through I'll say any means necessary.
I describe it as a dog that kills chickens,
this institution, which is really guided in major part
by metropolitan water district of southern California.
And we look like chickens.
That dog is not a terrible dog, but he's a chicken-killing dog.
[Narrator] The tunnel project will almost
certainly be paid for by a powerful organization
in southern California known as the metropolitan water district.
Yeah. Metropolitan is a water wholesaler
which means we provide water
to the cities that provide water to people.
We represent six counties,
ventura county, Los Angeles, San Diego, orange county,
parts of riverside and San Bernardino.
What's pretty amazing about that six-county area
is there is 19 million people in there.
One out of every two californians,
or looking at it another way,
one on every 16 Americans lives in southern California
and our mission is to provide water to them.
Metropolitan staff has supported this project for the last decade.
This project is a necessity for the state of California.
The metropolitan water district
is certainly the 800-pound gorilla
in California water politics.
They're rich. They can buy all the,
all the influence and all, all the talent they want.
Their business model is based on selling
imported water from the delta
and if they can shore up and make that more reliable
or increase the amount of water they're willing to do it.
[Narrator] Those who fear the tunnels point to history.
Southern California has a terrible track record.
We tend to flow water towards money
regardless of whether it's uphill or downhill.
It really doesn't matter. It's going to go
to where the capital is located.
So, yes, L.A. has prospered mightily
because of the la. Aqueduct, the state water project
and the Colorado river aqueduct.
But that has also despoiled landscapes
and limited the possibilities of the places
from which that water has come.
[Narrator] Many in the delta believe that if you want to
understand their story, you have to know
the story of the Owens valley,
the story that inspired the film Chinatown.
Gonna it be a lot of irate citizens
when they find out they're paying for water,
- they're not going to get. - That's all taken care of.
See Mr. Gittes, you bring the water to la.
Or you bring la. To the water.
The Owens valley case is,
is sadly the precursor to where we are now.
And there was a slight lull between that and the modern day
destruction of various areas.
But nothing's changed.
It's the same fight.
It's the same arguments.
And in my view it's the same avoidance of the law.
[Narrator] The Owens valley, like the delta,
gets its water from the Sierra Nevada mountains.
It is located about 250 miles directly north of Los Angeles
and over 200 miles east of monterey.
As ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote, "there once were men capable
of inhabiting a river without disrupting
the Harmony of its life."
For centuries, the Harmony of the Owens valley was preserved
by the paiute native Americans.
Our people have existed
within this location for time immemorial we say.
Because of all the resources available to us
here in this valley, unlike our brothers and sisters
to the north of us and to the south of us
who really had to travel very long distances
to be able to get what they needed,
we had it right here within the Owens valley.
As settlers came up,
they looked at this land and,
and they saw land that was open.
Their thought is land is for humans, water is for humans.
Therefore I'm going to make my peace
and began taking hold of land within the valley.
You know, I say putting up fences,
blocking access and no longer then
was the valley able to provide
for the tribal people as it once did.
And what that meant to our people is starvation.
[Narrator] As ranchers moved in to take the water-rich lands,
native Americans were evicted from the Owens valley
in a bloody conquest with great loss of life.
But the ranchers didn't have long to enjoy their spoils.
Los Angeles was rapidly expanding
at the beginning of the 20th century.
City planners realized that for Los Angeles
to sustain its growth, it would need to secure
an additional source of water.
And Mulholland and Fred eaton and all of these really
interesting water engineers, water buffaloes,
you might call them, started stalking the land,
literally trying to find out where water was
that they could purchase.
Fred eaton and Mulholland and others began to recognize
that one of the key places, one of the key environments
was the eastern Sierra,
not that far from Los Angeles
where the fabulous river, the Owens river
that flows through that region.
It had an agricultural industry and orchard industry.
The native peoples had already been taken out
through various warfares and expeditions,
so there's not going to be that resistance.
Proved to be, from a Los Angeles point of view, easy pickings.
Mulholland sells this project which is going to be
very expensive to Los Angeles by telling Los Angeles,
"if you don't take this water, you won't need it."
By that, he means that in fact, if you don't get this water,
Los Angeles will not expand.
[Narrator] Frederick eaton, former mayor of Los Angeles
went out to the Owens valley with j.B. Lippincott
of the U.S. reclamation service.
Because eaton and lippincott
told ranchers they were working together
to create a friendly federal irrigation project,
most ranchers agreed to sell their land for what seemed
above market value.
And so he starts sopping up this area and buying water rights.
He doesn't tell anybody what it's for.
And ultimately Los Angeles
will purchase his right and other's right
and they won't tell them what it's for.
[Narrator] Meanwhile, L.A.-based land speculators
with secret insider knowledge bought up land
in the San Fernando valley,
the area intended to be the end
of the Owens valley aqueduct to Los Angeles.
This syndicate also worked hard
to pass the bond that would pay for the aqueduct.
Harrison Greg Otis, a central member of the syndicate
was publisher of the la. Times and used his power to publish
scare articles about a dire need for more water.
The tactic was successful
and a bond passed to begin construction
on the world's largest aqueduct,
designed to drain the Owens valley.
And suddenly from the Owens river valley point of view,
they had just been destroyed by la.
The locals began to panic.
There began to be some violence up here.
Three or 400 people drove down
from bishop and big pine and opened up the aqueduct
and dumped the entire flow of the aqueduct
back into the Owens river.
They just wanted Los Angeles to talk.
None of the negotiations went the way the locals wanted it.
And suddenly a few nights there were explosions
along the aqueduct where the wall
of the aqueduct was blown out.
So eventually by the mid-thirties,
Los Angeles did the final buyout.
About a fourth of the people moved away
because everything had changed.
And so even to this day, there's property
in each of these towns that are owned
by the city of Los Angeles.
They own the entire valley floor.
And so in most of the issues that deal with
water have L.A. next to them.
We called this place payahuunadii.
The name embodies this idea that water is present,
that water is flowing, that water is here.
It was vastly different than what someone
from Los Angeles driving up now would see out of their window.
[Narrator] In just 13 years of operation,
the Los Angeles aqueduct dried up Owens lake,
thereby creating the single largest source
of dust pollution in the United States.
The city of Los Angeles is used as a model.
The Los Angeles aqueduct is used as a model
to move resources from one to the next.
[Narrator] The Los Angeles department of water and power
did not tell residents of the Owens valley
that Frederick eaton was buying land
on the city's behalf, nor that those purchases
would end valley life as they knew it.
Now, the metropolitan water district
is not telling residents of the delta
why the organization is buying their land,
nor what those purchases mean for life in the delta.
It's an interesting question
as to why metropolitan water district
purchased islands in the delta.
The 10,000-plus residents who signed and sent
letters and comments are a small sampling
of the millions of people in the bay delta region
who oppose met's purchase of the delta islands.
[Newscaster] The metropolitan water district of southern California
voted Tuesday to purchase five islands, bouldin island,
bacon island, webb tract, most of Holland tract
and the western tip of chipps island.
It's probably true that the reason
they bought those islands is to make sure
that they could facilitate the building of the tunnels
because you need large areas to dump all the muck
they dig out, you need staging areas,
trucking, all sorts of things.
[Chuck baker] It has been
an ongoing conversation for the two of us really,
most of it has occurred on this porch
or in that living room right there.
They'd get these big pushes and each time we feel like
it's an assault on our lifestyle and our life
they want to take it, turn it back to nature
and ship the water down to the desert.
It doesn't make much sense to me.
You know, and I don't care how many arguments
they throw at me, they've just about ruined
all the fishing in the delta already by over-pumping.
I don't know what makes anybody
in their right mind think if they
take more water, that it'll get better,
regardless of the point they take it.
[Mike prather] The people that live in the city
that pride themselves on caring about people
and wanting clean air and clean water.
And do they, do they want to tolerate
people living out in these, these working landscapes.
The water titans are just out to,
to crush what's ever in the way
and to get as much water as they can.
And that's, that's what they talk about.
Often they'll be blunt enough to tell you.
Some of what the bay delta folks are arguing
is that this is simply an echo of earlier struggles
over water including the Owens river valley.
Los Angeles is implicated
without question in this struggle.
It's not the only player and it's not the only enemy.
[Birds chirping]
[John herrick] Delta farms, we have farms from, you know, five, 10 acres
to a couple of hundred acres and some have
over a thousand acres, but not contiguous.
But when you have the water going down the canals,
that encouraged large-scale operations.
It's almost a different world.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of acres.
Again, that doesn't make them wrong or bad,
but that just sort of increases the demand and the pressure
on people running those large-scale operations
to make sure that there's a return on the initial money.
So it's the big guy versus the little guy story
that's often times true.
[Narrator] California is the number one
food producer in the United States,
more than doubling the farming output
of the second and third states
on the list and topping all other agricultural
producing regions around the world.
California owes the success
to the production capacity of the central valley.
[Tom mcclintock] The central valley has one of the best growing seasons,
and land in the United States,
the only thing it lacked was water.
That's what the, our water projects in the 1950s,
60's and 70's brought, and it produced an
agricultural cornucopia that has not only supported
many, many jobs, but also produced
an abundant crop every year.
[Gary bobker] Agriculture is an important part of the self-image of California
and there's no question that it's an important and healthy
and should be an important part of our economy.
I think all of us are proud of the diversity of agriculture
in California, but I think that folks in agriculture
are also very good at selling that image.
[William bourdeau] It's kind of a big marketing campaign.
Everyone's trying to put out there
as growing food, wasting water.
I don't think it is, but let's make peace.
Let's let people make that decision on their own.
The place where agriculture
stands out of course is in its water use.
In California, the water that humans use
is about 80% used for agriculture
and about 20% for the rest of society.
But at the same time,
it's not a huge part of California's economy.
It's a 50 billion dollar a year industry
in a more than 2 trillion a year economy.
And you know, they're very, very good
at making the case that cutting
their water supplies will be devastating for,
for California agriculture, our food prices will rise.
People will go hungry and you know,
that's just really not the case.
So what really is happening
is not that we're running out of water
for California agriculture, it's that California agriculture
has been so successful that it's growing to the point
where it constantly wants to expand its irrigated acreage
to the point where it just is breaking the system.
[Narrator] Farming south of the delta is described by local author
Mark arax as the most industrialized
farming in the history of man.
California's top crop is not however fruits or vegetables.
It is almonds and it takes a gallon of water
to produce a single almond.
Over a million acres of almonds
are farmed in the central valley.
Each year, almond farms use 35 times more water
than the entire city of San Francisco.
The majority of these almonds are exported out of the country.
In fact, 80% of the world's
almond supply comes from California,
but the water to grow the world's almonds
is diverted from the delta at the expense
of native fish and wildlife.
We don't necessarily need pistachios.
We don't need almonds.
We don't need all of this land to be in production.
And in many cases, some of these crops
can be replicated elsewhere.
And this won't be popular with farmers.
Farmers don't think that way.
They think themselves forced into it.
They think of promises made,
but these promises were made
because they solicited favors.
They lobbied congress very heavily to get these
and they have struck very good deals
and they want to keep those deals in place.
When you have the second longest river in the state
of California going dry because of upstream diversions
from the federal dam and other diversions,
that gives you an idea of the magnitude
of these exports and these diversions
and the effect of course, to the ecosystem.
This amazing bay delta ecosystem.
Agriculture and the San Joaquin valley
uses water from the San Joaquin river.
So much of the San Joaquin river that it actually goes dry,
but that amount of water has not been enough
for the San Joaquin valley.
And so they've also drained their aquifers to the point
where the surface of the earth actually is collapsing.
[Allan Clark] This well here was originally flush
with the top of this concrete.
This was where the dirt used to be flush here
and it has dropped that much.
It's actually more than that,
but lot of this casing has dropped with the ground.
That's a rate of sinking of about a foot per year
in English units.
So that's substantial.
But that amount of water has not been enough
for agriculture in the San Joaquin valley.
And so they have giant export pumps in the delta
that take water from the Sacramento system,
from the northern part of the state
and export it from the delta into the San Joaquin valley.
And even that has not been enough.
There's actually a tunnel
that brings water from the Trinity river
and that tunnel delivers water from the klamath watershed
into the Sacramento, down the Sacramento
into the delta, through the pumps to
the western San Joaquin valley.
So this is a voracious need for water for this one area
[narrator] Over the past century, family farms in the central valley,
like those in the delta, have gone out of business.
They have been replaced by vast agricultural corporations
whose water use outstrips that of surrounding communities.
Billions of dollars are made in the central valley
and much of it from overseas exports.
Consequently, agriculture here
is represented by powerful water districts.
These organizations not only support the tunnel project,
but are working to weaken environmental protections
to seize as much delta water as possible.
[Tom Birmingham] Westlands is sometimes identified as the largest
irrigation district in the country.
In terms of gross acreage, that's not accurate.
Imperial irrigation district in terms of gross acreage
is larger than westlands, but in terms of irrigable acres,
westlands is the largest irrigation district
in the United States.
Farmers in westlands are able to produce yields
that exceed yields anywhere else in the world.
But as water has become more expensive,
it's been necessary for farmers to look to higher-value crops.
And as a consequence, probably the most popular
crop today is almonds.
I don't have anything against westlands,
but if they weren't
creating this issue, it wouldn't be a problem.
So the westlands water district is the nation's largest
agricultural water district, covers about 600,000 acres.
So it's larger than Rhode Island.
Westlands water district is very large corporate
agricultural operations.
And it has been politically powerful for decades.
Westlands has made its name suing just about everybody.
They typically lose, but they spend millions
of dollars on some of the highest-priced lobbyists.
And you know, generally have the ear of politicians.
Westlands was created to get surplus water from the delta.
Their contract amount is more than twice the water
used by the 4 million people in the city of Los Angeles.
[Narrator] Harris farms, a typical westlands farm,
is the largest cattle ranch in the western United States.
But they don't only produce beef.
This agricultural corporation
is also one of the country's largest almond producers.
It's truly amazing how productive
this farmland is, where we're able
to grow more with less land, with less water, less resources.
It's truly incredible.
And we're growing safe, affordable,
nutritious food in abundance if allowed to, you know,
one of our constraining factors is our water supply.
It's how much the government decides to allocate us.
And over the last few years, those allocations have dwindled
for a variety of reasons, but primarily
for environmental purposes.
They typically get less water than they would like to get
simply because we've overallocated
the water in California, they've had to fight
for getting more reliable water.
They overdraft groundwater because they don't have
reliable surface supplies and they've put a lot of money
and effort into figuring out how to manage the political system
in a way that helps them improve their ability to get the water
when they want it and where they want it.
I'm Sarah wolf and this is my dad, Allan Clark.
[Allan Clark] There's never been enough water to go around
and the least we can do is manage what we have better
than we're doing now by sending most of it out to the ocean.
[Narrator] These disagreements around water in the delta have created
perhaps the greatest fault line in California water politics.
There is a misconception
that it's farmers versus fish
and that's not the situation at all.
Westlands, the same people that are trying
to get these twin tunnels built for the rate payers
to pay for them so they'd keep getting their free water.
We don't need almonds here.
They need money to make almonds to make more money.
That's why they're buying up
thousands of acres every year planting almonds.
We actually went to war right here in council
with the water resource lady.
She had said that they were sending 75%
of our fresh water that comes through the hills,
down to the delta, and it was being used as.
Our fresh water is being used as a salt water barrier
in order to protect a fish.
We had actually said yes to cutting the additional fish
flows and maintain flows that were essentially
to maintain what's known as salinity control
and had we not done those flows,
enough salt water would have intruded that it wouldn't have
been good for agriculture, urban use in the delta or for export.
Not that I was expecting a thank you note or anything,
but the dishonesty about it on the part of people
who should know better was really disappointing.
The delta smelt and where it fits into this discussion
is really a textbook example of a fairly cynical
but effective p.R. Campaign by the westlands water district
primarily and some other delta exporters.
They don't want to talk about salmon.
Well it's because their friends in the radical
environmental community have decided
that two-inch minnows are more important
than the people in my district.
Well, the truth is Mr. Speaker,
you'd have to have the brain of a three-inch fish
to believe that narrative.
Their p.R. Efforts are prolific.
They have a lot of allies in fox news
and other places that will come down
to westlands, you know, anytime.
Farmers in California,
they're losing their land, crops
and their livelihood, all because of a two-inch fish.
That Donald Trump statement a few weeks ago was in the heart
of the westlands water district and he was surrounded by leaders
of the westlands water district.
And I've heard this from other friends of mine in California
where they have farms up here and they don't get water.
I said, "oh, that's too bad.
Is it the drought?" "No, we have plenty of water.
I said, "what's wrong?" "Well, we shove it out to sea."
And I said, "why?"
And nobody even knows why.
The environmentalists don't know why.
Now they're trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.
[Gary bobker] People say, "who cares about the delta smelt?"
It's the fact is that delta smelt was probably
the most common fish in the San Francisco bay delta estuary.
So it was a hugely important part of the ecosystem,
intimately tied with the food chain.
Now this is probably the rarest fish in the ecosystem.
In the course of a half-century,
we've taken the most abundant fish in this ecosystem
and we've made it the rarest.
They've tried every, every means possible
to hoodwink the public into believing
that they really care about
two things at the same time, the health of the delta,
the health of fish and wildlife and getting all of the water
under their political control they can possibly get.
Those two things are inconsistent with one another.
They're inconsistent in the central valley.
They're inconsistent in,
in southern California and northern California.
Westland's employees or consultants
suddenly get hired by the administration
and deal with the issue with westlands
and then when that administration is over,
they come back and work for westlands again.
Now that's not illegal, but from the outside
sometimes that stinks a little bit.
[Narrator] The connections between westland's leadership
and the U.S. department of the interior are well documented.
Take for example, Jason peltier,
former westlands deputy general manager
and former deputy secretary for the department of the interior.
You're not going to piss me off, right?
This isn't something where we're starting out even Steven.
We've given an awful lot of money and water,
to the environment over the last 20 years.
And are we willing to give more? No!
God, I wish. I do not know why westlands
is such a target by,
Mr. Huffman or people in the environmental community.
There are some environmentalists
that they measure their success,
not by how healthy the fishery is
and how healthy the ecosystem is,
but how much they hurt westlands.
It's sick, it's sick. Sad.
[Narrator] After his role as westlands'
deputy general manager, Jason peltier became executive
director of the coalition for a sustainable delta.
Often regarded as a thinktank, tax documents indicate
that this coalition is run by high-ranking employees
of the wonderful company, the largest farm in California.
The wonderful company, which produces almonds,
pistachios, clementines and pomegranate juice,
typically uses more water each year than all the homes
in the entire city of Los Angeles.
I should say, some of the challenges
in the delta that we face in trying to improve
water management, improve the ecosystem
are, I mean one of the biggest in my mind
is the fact that we have 95% of the aquatic biota is invasive.
Whether it's aquatic weeds from South America
or 40,000 Asian clams.
They've done little to address the invasives in there
and little to understand them.
[Interviewer] I think people can be worried that
if the organization is funded by people in the delta
that they might be trying to find an excuse,
a different reason why there's decline.
I would sure love to understand why there's decline.
We understand, we've been told that our,
our water supply reliability is a function of the health
of the ecosystem in these fish populations.
I dare anyone to, to say we have the scientific proof
that this is the problem behind the fisheries.
There is no answer.
If we knew it, we'd fix it.
If it was simply more water, let's get on with it.
Let's get more water to the fish.
The science here is actually really clear.
It's really obvious that we cannot continue
to take half or more of the central valley's runoff
and divert it to agricultural and municipal uses
and still maintain the species
that have been here for millennia.
Jason peltier was in interior.
He left interior, came to work at westlands water district,
not because it's a revolving door,
but because Jason as a result
of his experience, was uniquely qualified
to help shape water policy
in California, and westlands took
advantage of his services just as metropolitan
water district took advantage of services of David Hayes.
A number of folks from the department of interior,
Jason peltier, have all come to work for westlands
and to lobby on their behalf and to sue on their behalf.
Today, westlands has no more powerful ally
than David bernhardt who has been nominated
as the interior secretary.
As I've discussed this week,
David bernhardt is no stranger to the department.
He's served twice before.
In fact, this body has confirmed him twice before.
His law firm earned more than 1.3 million dollars
from westlands for lobbying congress
to weaken environmental laws,
particularly endangered species act protections.
Now the trump administration under David bernhardt
is trying to greatly roll back our endangered species act
protections in the delta.
And if he's successful, it will mean the end
of delta smelts and the end of winter run chinook salmon.
[Narrator] Some argue that increasing westlands' water supply
from the delta would reduce rural poverty.
Another argument they made was that well, the,
the poorer communities that are near these big
irrigation districts would benefit.
[Narrator] Drought or no drought, the westlands' farm workers
have some of the worst living conditions in the country.
Oxfam found that westlands
was in the poorest congressional district in the u s.
Families of farm workers crowd together in shared homes,
while westlands farm owners often live outside
this poor congressional district.
Their tax money therefore goes elsewhere,
and farm workers do not have the schools
and other resources necessary to escape poverty.
They like to continue to be rich and they like to continue
to be successful, but they're doing it on
the backs of other communities.
They do it on the backs of the environment,
on the backs of immigrants,
on the backs of schoolchildren
because they clearly have the resources
to improve that life.
But what do they do? They put them all on a bus
and they send them to my office up here, a long bus ride.
Many didn't have water.
We had to go out and buy so they could rehydrate
and they couldn't quite explain
why they were in my office in Concord, California.
So that's, you know, that's their game.
That's their game. Send them up there
and they're just, they're pawns,
but they're pawns in the entire
agricultural structure in the central valley.
[Jt reager] Agriculture in California
prioritizes agriculture at almost any expense.
The water in California is a shared resource
that is a public resource that is not a private resource.
So the management of that water
is something that needs to be considered
in the public interest and we need to do a betterjob
of making sure that the water that we need
is going to be there for future generations.
People have said,
westlands never should have been farmed.
The lands in westlands never should have been farmed.
That may be correct, but that sound bite
isn't an answer to the problem that exists today.
Maybe the city of San Francisco shouldn't exist where it is
because it doesn't have adequate water to support its needs.
Maybe the city of Los Angeles shouldn't exist where it exists
because it certainly doesn't have regional water supplies
adequate to meet the demand for people in Los Angeles.
You know, that's ignoring the reality.
San Francisco does exist.
The city of Los Angeles exists.
So let's begin to have an honest dialogue
about how we're going to address these issues.
And maybe the solution is take lands
in westlands out of production.
But if that is the solution,
let's begin to address that question
and identify the ways
by which we are going to mitigate impacts
to communities based on that public policy decision.
[Rogene Reynolds] But I know what you're getting at is,
where is the will to solve the problem?
Where's the will come from?
Is it only come from the money?
I think there's a lot
of foolish things right now
that I see developing in terms
of a distrust of science.
People are slow to move unless they feel like
they're immediately affected.
Those kind of problems,
just like this one that grinds over years and years,
people turn their back on it.
- They get too busy. - They forget it.
Or, yeah, it rained last year,
so we don't need to talk about water for a while.
When people find out that I write about water,
their eyes always get big and they talk about Chinatown
and oh, are we running out of water?
And my standard response is no, we're not running out of water,
but we are running out of water to use it the way we did
in the 20th century and the 19th century,
which was thoughtlessly and wastefully.
And without any regard to the impact on the environment,
[Kate poole] We have clearly taken too much fresh water
out of these systems to support the native species
and the healthy functioning of the estuary.
And that's what the decline of the delta smelt
and some of these other species is telling us.
[Char Miller] Climate change is changing the conditions
of life on this planet and we need to be
more resilient, more nimble,
if we want to survive as a species.
And I think there's no stage bigger than the bay delta
to help us articulate what's going to make us more nimble,
what's gonna make our communities more just
and what's gonna make this planet
still habitable by human beings.
[Peter gleick] The good news is there are many solutions
for what we need to be doing.
We can build a portfolio for the 21st century
that includes large amounts of high-quality
treated wastewater that we used to throw away,
but that ought to be considered an asset now, not a liability.
We can capture more storm water
that we now lose to the oceans during wet periods
and we can use it to recharge our over-tapped aquifers.
[Kate poole] L.A.'s population has grown by over a million people
in the last couple of decades and its water use overall
has remained flat due to improvements
in water use efficiency.
Figuring out how to manage
the power dynamics, the political dynamics
is a much more difficult challenge for California
than new technology or building desalination plants
or figuring out how to grow crops differently.
The politics is really going to determine
much of California's water future.
[Narrator] Groups like the metropolitan water district
of southern California and the westlands water district
in the San Joaquin valley want to maximize use of water
from the delta for their own interests,
namely sending water down south.
Every interest group wants the delta
managed for their interests.
[Narrator] These same organizations also reject
the scientific consensus that there isn't enough water
flowing through the delta to support native ecosystems,
despite species being on the brink of extinction.
We also believe though that there is
sufficient water in the system
for the environment and for native fish.
[Narrator] Therefore, restoring any semblance
of the delta's native environment
has been incredibly challenging.
[Julie Zimmerman] We have this diversity of ecosystem types in California
and we just can't support that anymore,
the way we're managing it.
So that, you know, the bigger picture is,
are we okay with that as a society?
I think if you polled californians,
95% would say we would like
to have rivers with some fish in them in the future.
How you get there is the difficult part.
But first you have to understand that we may not have rivers
and we may not have fish, so do you want to do something?
And so California's water issues are really just a microcosm
for what we're seeing around the planet
and what we're able to monitor with satellite data.
For instance, on the India-Pakistan
border here, the indus river basin
is a heavily-stressed aquifer and this region of the country
gets groundwater pumped substantially.
So you know, a shared resource by two countries
that needs to be well-managed
in order to avoid political tensions.
So as population keeps growing, we have increasing demand.
There will not be enough water
to support every need and every want
at some point in the future.
And so the realization of that has not really hit
everyone yet fully.
Where does your water come from
is a basic question that everyone should be able
to answer, no matter where you live in the world.
And with that knowledge there will be a trickle-down effect.
I think that affects policy and therefore affects management.
If we can't deal with our water issues
in a place like California, how can we expect to deal
with our water issues in other places of the world?
I mean, in California we have everything
we need to be successful.
It's just about making the decision to do so.
And that really means prioritizing water.
And thinking about the future.
[Narrator] And so in California,
these issues are wrestled with before the state water
resources control board in the hopes of creating
a sustainable water future.
[Jon rosenfield] Our analysis today shows there's no evidence
that flows less than 50% or so.
We've seen a huge decline in the delta ecosystem
and these water quality standards that are supposed
to prevent a decline like that from happening
have not been updated in now 25 years.
The state water board did a very comprehensive analysis
of what it would take to restore healthy fish populations
and basically concluded that right now
we divert about half of the fresh water
out of the delta ecosystem and that to be healthy
we needed to restore about 75% flows.
[Felicia Marcus] The conflict is
intense as people see everything as a loss
either cause they're worrying
about fish and wildlife on the brink of extinction
or you're a farmer or a community leader
who's worried about the livelihood
of your family or your people.
We've tested the hypothesis that insufficient flow,
despite the evidence, will work.
It hasn't. We've tested the hypothesis
that doing more habitat without sufficient
flow regimes will work.
It hasn't, why don't we try testing the hypothesis
that the amount of flow that the scientific evidence
and your record suggests will work will work.
But the water quality control plan, because
it's a plan under some laws created by this bureaucracy
over many, many years, it doesn't get nearly the
attention giant tunnels that you could like roll
a small aircraft through the water quality control plan
will really define water quality conditions that support
clean water and fisheries and can potentially save
endangered species for decades to come.
There's a story I'm sure many people are familiar with
called "the giving tree" by shel silverstein.
The boy plays in the tree and eats its apples as a child
and the tree's very happy.
The boy sells the apples when he's a teen
to make a little bit of money and the tree's very happy.
He harvests the branches to build a house as a young man
and he cuts down the trunk in middle age to form,
create a canoe and the tree's always happy to be there for him.
And finally, as an old man,
he uses the stump of the tree to sit and think.
And this story is very divisive.
Some people see it as representing unconditional love,
that this tree gives everything to this boy,
whereas others see it as exploitation of nature.
In other words, is it about a giving tree or taking person?
And I think we need to ask that about our rivers.
Are they giving rivers?
Certainly they are. Are we taking people?
Yes, we are.
This outdated plan allows more than half
of water needed for the delta's
ecological health to be diverted away
largely for unsustainable industrial agriculture.
But if the state board takes action today,
nothing happens in 2019 except litigation,
there will be no on the ground projects.
There will be no additional flows.
If you think it's hard now, imagine a world 15, 20 years
from now with greater reliance
on diverting more water from our rivers
with climate change, making it harder and harder
to satisfy all of our needs.
The mighty bay delta estuary is a gem.
It is a treasure and it is worth saving.
Californians deserve more than just a stump to sit on.
[Birds chirping]
[Crickets chirping]