Book Review: Dorothy Green's Water Management: Avoiding Crisis in California

California has enough water - enough to last into the next generation and beyond. It just needs to be managed more wisely. That's the central thesis of a new book by Dorothy Green, long-time Los Angeles water policy activist.

Water Management: Avoiding Crisis in California (University of California Press, 2007, 324 pages) is both an encyclopedic and highly readable storehouse of information about how water is currently managed in California, and a forward-looking prescription of management policy changes needed to avert a water shortage crisis. Although the book's focus is on Southern California, the needed water management reforms are addressed from a statewide perspective.

Photo courtesy Joshua Green Author Dorothy Green

The book starts out with a comprehensive description of the water supply sources, both local and imported, that have made possible California's tremendous population and economic growth of the last 100 years. Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive description of the local and statewide water management agencies that make water allocation and water investment decisions, while Chapter 4 provides an analogous description of agencies that regulate the quality of our drinking water.

Chapter 3, which discusses water use efficiency, lays the groundwork for the book's primary thesis, which is elaborated in the book's concluding chapter: efficient use of the state's abundant water resources can meet the region's and the state's needs without massive new investments in dams, canals, and desalination facilities.

The main elements of more efficient water use include increased water conservation, conjunctive use of ground and surface water resources, capture and use of flood waters and surface water runoff, reclamation and reuse of wastewater, and transfer of conserved agricultural water to urban water users. As recently concluded in a study by Oakland-based Pacific Institute, a third of indoor water use could be conserved with existing technology that is cost-effective, while half of outdoor use could be saved by minimizing lawns and instead planting California-friendly landscaping. As much as 90% of wastewater could be treated and purified for reuse, while stormwater capture is in its infancy.

Although the pathway to improved water use efficiency can be readily envisioned, there are many legal, political, and institutional obstacles along the way, not the least of which is the unwillingness of water agency officials to change their way of doing business and admit they don't have the water to support new development unless they make substantial progress in advancing water use efficiency. These impediments are thoroughly explored in the book's concluding chapter, which ends with a 16-point statement of principles for a sustainable statewide water policy. (These principles have been adopted by the California Water Impact Network and can be accessed at its website, www.c-win.org.)

Author Dorothy Green has been a leading light in the battle for an intelligent and responsible water policy in California for more than three decades. She has played a key role in articulating the importance of public participation in water resource decision making. And she has been instrumental in the establishment of several major organizations to promote that objective, including Heal the Bay, the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, POWER (Public Officials for Water and Environmental Reform), the annual California Water Policy Conference, and the California Water Impact Network. This book is one more accomplishment in her long career of 'telling it as it is and should be' in fighting for the public's interest in California's water policy.

Additional information about the book, including quotes from other reviews, can be found at www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10611.html.

Meet Dorothy Green on March 19

The Conservation Committee of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club will host a presentation by Dorothy Green at its monthly meeting at the Chapter Office at Suite 320, 3435 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles at 7:30 pm, Wednesday, March 19. A reception in her honor will precede the meeting beginning at 6:30 pm, and copies of her book will be available for purchase and signature at the meeting. Parking is available beneath the building; enter from the west side on Mariposa Street, take a parking ticket to open the parking gate, and obtain a validation sticker at the meeting.