Summer Reading: Thirst for Growth

Anyone who has seen the movie Chinatown has some idea how much ethical misconduct went into the ongoing battles over water in California. Those who want to get down to the nitty gritty of it will enjoy Robert Gottlieb and Margaret Fitzsimmon's Thirst for Growth: Water Agencies as Hidden Government in California (Univ. of Arizona Press, 1991).

The most important words in the title are "growth" and "hidden." It was the desire for growth that brought development-oriented business people into the government work of determining where and how water would be delivered. And it was the lack of transparency that allowed them to do this. Conflicts of interest required a lack of transparency to bring the desired benefits.

Growth-oriented policies are hard to stop, especially when they are hidden and, therefore, not publicly debated. Growth becomes an assumption rather than a policy. The only limit was money (and now environmental concerns), but when the money comes in the form of subsidies, often through taxes, it is hard for the public to see, even when it is footing the bill.

One way local interests managed to get around local opposition was to work at the state and federal levels, seeking state and federal subsidies and the reconciliation of competing claims by state and federal agencies. On p. 3 the authors wrote:

Federal intervention neither centralized policy decisions nor established the priority of the national agenda; the choices that framed the activities and set the purpose of water development remained locally rooted. ... At the heart of the vast nexus stood the local water agency. This relationship between local and federal agency was later duplicated between local and state agency...

Besides local governments and water agencies, other local and regional organizations seeking growth became involved in the process, including chambers of commerce, the Committee of 25, the Central City Association, and the California Business Roundtable. In fact, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) was formed on the basis of a report by a committee of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, whose representatives dominated the MWD board for many years.

This would seem reasonable if Los Angeles needed Colorado River water, but it did not. It was a totally surplus source of water, intended to create a regional boom that would benefit Los Angeles businesses at the expense of city residents who would not benefit nearly as much, if at all.

For example, one developer established a local water district to supply his developments. This water district and others created a water users association, which annexed to the MWD to supplement groundwater sources, which were at present more than sufficient. The developer became the association's representative to the MWD and, eventually, chair of the MWD, all the time pushing for unimpeded growth.

The MWD became much more than a water district. It became a huge construction agency and a powerful lobbyist for developers and other commercial interests. Policy was oriented totally toward the growth of infrastructure, and never toward the management of water demand or effects on the environment.

For those interested in the details of how commercial interests can influence and manipulate government policies and bodies at the local and regional, as well as state and federal, levels, Thirst for Growth is a must read.

This story is also told in Norris Hundley, Jr.'s The Great Thirst (2001) and Steven P. Erie's Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California (2006)

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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