Don't scoff at California too hard. We in Arkansas are not all that different.
Granted, we don't grow rice or golf greens in a desert. But we used up easy-to-get-to groundwater in east Arkansas. We drained it over the decades for crop irrigation. The fact we dried out those aquifers in a state that gets as much rain as we do doesn't reflect well on our stewardship. Still, finger-pointing aside, the pressure to make up for that dwindling supply by releasing more water down the White River from Beaver Lake will grow every year.
Northwest Arkansas as we know it simply wouldn't exist without Beaver Lake. We're a major food processing center. You can't process food without washing it. The fact the lake also provides our drinking water is important, sure, but there'd be nobody here to turn on the taps if there weren't jobs.
Someday, it'll snow on the peaks again and California will have water. But we'd be fools to ever be as dependent on that state for food again. Four out of five U.S.-grown carrots come from California and more than nine out of 10 strawberries, for instance. Some of that could move here.
Whether Arkansas grows more rice or starts growing apples on an industrial scale again, the strain on our water supply will only increase. We won't need nearly as much irrigation as California, but we'll need more than we have now.
Ideally, we'll figure out a way to use much more of this state's rainfall. There are good options besides building more large lakes, such as reuse of runoff.
No option will be cheap, but the alternative is the California approach: Do nothing and wait for nature and our patterns of water use to collide. Nature will win. Every once in a while, nature reminds everyone who's boss. That should teach everybody something, not just the ones being schooled the hardest. "It is said that only a fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise man from the mistakes of others," said Otto von Bismarck, notable German hard-case.
The first thing we should learn from the California drought is that the state water plan is a very big deal. I admit it doesn't make the most exciting newspaper reading. Still, the plan is something that actually matters. The state Natural Resources Commission is going to set hearings for this summer. Watch for the dates.
The bigger lesson from California is there's no such thing as simple solutions. I used to cover Arkansas row crop agriculture and was disgusted that California was a major rice-growing state, our biggest competitor. Only years later did I bother to learn that most of California's rice is grown in what used to be a swamp.
California still has some water left. Much of what's left, though, isn't where it's needed.
Related to that "no simple solutions" rule is the fact that finger pointing and political scapegoating don't help. The biggest fight in California right now appears to be between environmentalists and farmers. Each one accuses the other of being the problem. Forty percent of California's water is used for agriculture. Another 50 percent is used to maintain river levels for fish, scenic rivers and other environmental purposes. You read that right. Everything else -- mostly the things directly used by people -- accounts for 10 percent. There's not been a whole lot of cooperation on the common problem between the two biggest players. Each has a simple solution: Gut the other one.
We have a key advantage over California. Our state is whole lot more like England than California is, and most American water laws are based on English Common Law. As Wired explains, English Common Law uses a system called "riparian law: You are allowed to use a reasonable amount of any tributary, creek, stream, or river that abuts or bisects your land. This worked great in rainy England, veined with waterways. 'That type of system of makes no sense in California," says Thompson, 'because there is a lot of land through which no river or stream passes.' If you want water to run through your land in California, you have to dig a path for it yourself."
Digging a path was ridiculously easy, too, Wired writes: "In 1901, the mayor of San Francisco used this law to claim the Tuolumne River by posting a note on a tree."
Post a note claiming water on somebody's tree in Arkansas and see what you get.
Commentary on 06/20/2015