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Backyard Water Policy?
California's water policy debates should be accessible and relevant to more of the state's diverse society concludes a new report from the Pacific Institute. According to the report, Our Water, Our Future: The Need for New Voices in California Water Policy (see Now in Print), today's major water policy discussions represent the concerns of environmentalists, large agribusiness and urban water agencies, while leaving out the voices of low-income and minority communities.
"Public water agencies need to include the general public in their decision-making, not just the primary stakeholders," says Santos Gomez, co-author of the report. "While CALFED is going to great lengths to inform the public and increase public awareness of the need for a Bay-Delta solution, its public education campaign is largely designed to influence policy-makers rather than get real public feedback."
However, some who have worked in public involvement say bringing members of low-income and minority communities to the table is a challenge. "Involving these communities is very important but very difficult," says the S. F. Estuary Project's Marcia Brockbank. "We have tried to get minority representation on our committees, but have not been very successful."
This is not to say that many low-income communities are not intensely interested in water issues. According to Luke Cole of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, poor, rural communities often have inadequate sewer systems and shallow wells that are susceptible to contamination. Cole cites several instances where poor communities have organized effectively to improve their water supply and quality.
"When we're talking about backyard issues you can get very good participation, but large-scale water policy is very remote and doesn't seem to have a direct effect on people's lives," says Brockbank. Torry Estrada of the Urban Habitat Program says that one obstacle to broader public involvement is that most community groups tend to focus on environmental issues such as neighborhood toxics sites that pose more immediate threats to communities. "The connection between water and community health issues really has not been made," he says.
The Pacific Institute's Gomez agrees. "Community leaders need to make the link between water and overall well-being," he says. "We need to engage community leadership in discussions on a regional or statewide basis. We may also need to consider the establishment of a statewide environmental justice coalition that makes water policy a priority."
CALFED's Judy Kelly says she thinks the agency probably could do more to target community leaders. "As a public process, CALFED has an obligation to reach out to all communities," she says, noting CALFED's primary documents are being translated into Spanish. She adds, however, that the programmatic nature of CALFED makes it difficult to answer questions about the exact effects decisions will have on specific local communities.
The report also cites the structure of public meetings themselves as an obstacle to involvement. "There are questions about how open and accessible meetings really are," says the Sierra Club's Jenna Olsen, citing location, language, and the intimidation factor as possible barriers. "The format for public meetings makes people feel like they have to be an expert in order to speak," she says.
The report is light on concrete recommendations for increasing public involvement. Gomez says this is because he and his colleagues have not yet had an opportunity to learn from the communities in question what kinds of strategies would be most useful. This winter, the Pacific Institute will collaborate with the Environmental Water Caucus to hold a series of regional meetings in low income communities to raise awareness of CALFED, CVPIA and water issues in general, and try to answer these questions
The lack of low-income and minority involvement in the CALFED process may be symptomatic of a larger problem. "It's not fair to say that these communities are not interested in water issues because CALFED's not on their horizon," says Cole. "CALFED's not on anybody's horizon. There are only really a handful of people in the state who know anything about it."
Contact: Santos Gomez (510)251-1600
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