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Rick Hazlett, Stephen M. Pauley M.D. ’62 Professor of
Environmental Studies and Professor of Geology
"Engineering Sustainability for California’s Future—A Bottom line
Perspective"
It’s a great honor to be invited to speak to you folks today, Mr. President,
Trustees, faculty, staff, honored guests and most important of all, students of
Pomona College.
I was an undergraduate geology major at Occidental College, about 30 miles west
of here. I should have known what the future had in store for me. My frosh year
I watched Pomona beat Oxy something like “70-to-nothing” in a fall quarter
football game. I assure you, I am no longer bitter about this.
The summer of my junior year I volunteered to be a research assistant at the
Volcano Observatory, perched on the rim of Kilauea Crater on the Big Island of
Hawaii. There, at about noon on the 19th of July, 1974, I had the transformative
experience of my life, delivered by the most effective teacher of them all,
Nature herself. Standing nearly alone on a bare plain of pumice, back to the
wind, I watched the ground at my feet slowly split open like a scene out of a
Hollywood thriller. The dusty rootlets of native ohelo berry and pukiawe bushes
stretched tight and snapped in a widening fissure, accompanied by a discharge of
hot air, then a lazy emission of steam strengthening over the next few minutes
to the force of a screaming jet engine. Boy, did that make me back off! Molten
lava followed. It flew out of the Earth in head-sized globules the color of
blood. Suddenly many geological concepts I’d studied at Oxy about a thing called
magma, the Earth’s core, and states of stress in the crust--resonated. I was
yanked from abstraction into reality. But the impressions left by this
experience could not really be learned gutwise in school. I now perceived that
Destruction is often a Yin and Yang affair. A centuries-old forest full of
precious native birdlife, one of my favorite picnic spots, died in this
eruption. I watched it go during the evening. But the calamity created a new
landscape too—an opportunity for new life. Indeed, without such violence, the
gentle beauty of Hawaii would not exist.
The other impression was this—that Nature really does call the shots. The
notion, implanted by three years of education on an urbanocentric campus, that
people could ever permanently tame Nature to become the stage on which our human
drama unfolds, was in the sharpest way overturned. Best think we are the molding
clay, not the masters of Nature. The Hawaiian chant for volcanic eruptions
celebrates the Fire Goddess Pele--” E Pele e, ke akua o ka pohaku eneana, ele
ele ka’u mai. “Oh Pele, goddess of the Burning Stones, let awe possess me.” And
it has ever since.
I mention this recollection because we too, in our age, are awakening to an
awesome display of Nature, albeit environmental rather than volcanic, forcing us
to reorient ourselves culturally and socially to a world that will never look
the same again. That we are the agents for the lopsided destruction taking place
in the surrounding world makes the matter all the more personal. Tim Flannery’s
text The Weathermakers concludes that we must achieve “sustainability”—a
reckoning with our consumptive ways—to avoid causing collapse in the planet’s
natural ecology more widespread than that of a large volcanic eruption—and
frighteningly more enduring.
“Sustainability,” however, is a word much like “freedom,” or “cool” for which
there is no consensus or even definitional specificity. What does it mean?
According to the 1987 Bruntland Report, released by the United Nations, it is “a
lifestyle lived today that does not subtract from the ability of future
generations to live in the same way.” But how do we lead such a lifestyle, and
is it really a lifestyle any of us in our private wishes would happily choose?
If the answer is “no,” then can we in good conscience live with what our
selfishness means for the future? That is a moral question that quickly makes
sustainability a topic of ethics, values, and literature.
This much, at least, can be said: Each one of us, wherever we live, is tied to a
local region or area-specific network of resources which must be respected to
achieve sustainability. You can guess what these resources are—they are the same
as they have been throughout most of human history: low-energy access to
building material; food; and fresh, clean water--largely contingent, if we want
to live in a sedentary way, upon a stable climate. The area-specific demands of
sustainability are fundamentally antithetical to proponents of our current form
of globalization—a Wal-Mart development strategy characterized by absentee
management and increasingly fuel consumptive supply streams, owing to intensive
concentration of specialized production.
As an example of how achieving sustainability must first and foremost be
approached on a local or regional level, consider this question. What does it
take to achieve sustainability in California? The political organism we call
California lives on a lifeblood of water, plus the energy required to supply it
to 35 million residents. Seventy-five percent of these residents live in the
thirsty south. But of the 78 million acre-feet of water that flows down our
streams and rivers every year, 75 percent is naturally restricted to the far
north, on the remote redwood coast and in the Sacramento River watershed. (An
acre-foot, for you uninitiated, is the amount of water it would take to cover an
area some 200 feet square on each side to a depth of one foot). We need that
water if we plan to live in Southern California for more than a few months.
After all, 65 percent of your body is nothing more than H2O. If you weigh 150
pounds, you normally contain 12 gallons of water inside your skin. Each of your
brains, bright enough to have turned you into a Sagehen, is 95% water. You are,
in fact, a thinking water bag—an animated bota.
Hence, we have constructed the most impressive aqueduct systems on Earth to feed
and grow our hydrophilic society. Living in California requires that we maintain
this engineering marvel--and in the face of a climate that is characterized by
extreme swings in precipitation. In 1924, Nevada City in the Sierra Gold Rush
country, received only 20 inches of rainfall. But in 1997 it received over a
hundred. Rain gauges record as much as a 60 inch difference from year to year at
some localities, droughts like the one at present typically following deluges.
These are not the same forces of nature that people in Chicago or New Jersey
must contend with to sustain their lives. Apart from the fresh produce that we
send their way and periodic trips to Disneyland, why--when the chips are
down--should they care about us?
California’s water infrastructure grew in six big bursts, in each case
supporting a tidal wave of development having little concern for the future. The
Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913, takes water from the eastern Sierra
Nevada, providing it to 3,200,000 people within the city limits of Los Angeles.
Hydrologists estimate that LA now supports 8 times the population it could if
that Aqueduct had never been built. As its first engineer, William Mulholland
said, “Who brings the aqueduct brings the people!” Two similar conduits convey
water to San Francisco and the East Bay from the western slope of the Sierra.
The Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct gives San Francisco perhaps the purest fresh water of
any city in the world, quite in contrast to the mineral-laden brew we receive
from our taps here in Southern California. To build it required flooding a
beautifully glaciated valley inside Yosemite National Park, which some say broke
the heart of John Muir. He died shortly after the Congressional Baker Act
authorized the project. President Woodrow Wilson, a self-identified agent of God
having little understanding of the natural world, commented that domestic water
supply was the “highest use” of Hetch Hetchy Valley, never mind its parkland
status.
Claremont’s water comes from several sources. Much of it is simply pumped from
the Earth via College-owned wells—an admirable practice within limits. But our
community must also draw supply from the Colorado River. In fact, the Colorado
aqueduct and canals provide 12 percent of California’s developed water,
three-quarters of which goes to irrigate crops. Unfortunately, the aqueduct must
cross the San Andreas Fault to get here, a geological tear that can slip as much
as thirty feet in a single earthquake, shattering concrete, rupturing steal and
shutting off water to millions of people in a matter of a few minutes. The
newest reservoir in California, Diamond Valley Lake about 30 miles to the
southeast, was filled five years ago with 800,000 acre feet of emergency reserve
water—about a six month supply for us just in case the Big One strikes. Time
enough to affect repairs!
The rest comes via the State Water Project—SWAP--the chief distributor for the
whole State in fact. SWAP originates 600 miles to the north in 3 big reservoirs
and a natural lake. To reach us, the water first enters the Delta Area of the
Sacramento River from where it is pumped south through the western Central
Valley via the California Aqueduct. Reaching the 2000 foot tall barrier of the
Tehachapi Mountains, it enters the A.D. Edmonston Pumping Plant for transport
through 10 miles of tunnels and pipes across the range. Water is heavy. Try
carrying five gallons of it—forty pounds—in a backpack, as I’ve done to
replenish my desert wilderness camps. It takes enormous amounts of energy to
bring SWAP water over our local mountains; 3,000 kilowatt hours per acre foot,
two-and-a-half million acre feet a year. That is equivalent to the energy
consumption of over a million California residents. In fact, A.D. Edmonston is
the single largest consumer of electricity in California—the one engineering
facility upon which practically our entire economy and social cohesion depend.
To help power this monster, SWAP has built five hydroelectric plants along its
supply routes, generating clean, renewable energy. The closest to us is the
Devil Canyon Power Plant whose turbines are spun by water falling through
tunnels beneath the San Bernardino Mountains.
Together SWAP turbines generate 5.8-billion kilowatt hours per year; but it
turns out this is only about 75 percent of the total required to be energy
self-sufficient. The rest largely comes from a dirty coal-fired power plant near
Las Vegas, the coal mined out of scenic red rock country in northern Arizona and
southern Utah. To make this system completely carbon neutral and sustainable
would require, for example, increasing the number of wind turbines in the State
from the present 13,000 to nearly 20,000--Or, covering about one-and-a half
square miles with the newest type of parabolic trough solar collectors—expanding
current solar energy production in the Mojave Desert by 50 percent. To pump and
treat all the water needed in California by means of solar power alone would
require shading over 16 square miles with collectors. Moreover, because of
available sunshine and transmission line loss, this ambitious engineering
project would have to be built in or close to California, not in Chicago or New
Jersey.
Aside from a shortfall in self-generated renewable electricity, there are other
challenges facing our life-support system. One is simply that people are
demanding more than it can supply, with the deficit growing over time. Every 5
years, the California Department of Water Resources updates its California Water
Plan. The latest data show that demand exceeds supply by 1.6 million acre feet
during an ordinary year—more than half of what Edmonston pumps. The visible
signs of this are persistently dropping reservoir levels, the drying up of
waterways and springs, overtapping of groundwater storage, and forced
conservation measures—a step called “wringing out the sponge.”
…“Wringing out the sponge”--What a mournful metaphor, I know, but paradoxically,
it’s a blessing in disguise. We’ve required this kick in the pants to begin
taking action toward achieving sustainability. Already it has led to reduced per
capita consumption and cost of water despite rising population. And life seems
no less pleasant for it. Our Metropolitan Water District, for instance, has
developed a program of giving away or exchanging low flush toilets to users,
which reduce water loss with each flush by as much as 70 percent. Nevertheless,
by 2020, the Department of Water Resources estimates there will be nearly 50
million Californians—four times more than when I arrived here as a child--with
yearly shortfalls in SWAP water increased 4-fold. How long can we keep wringing
the sponge before quality of life is compromised by rationing and restrictions?
Water pollution increases apace with demand. But here again, thinking about
sustainability has led to remarkable local innovation. Just a few miles south of
campus, dairy cattle have contributed so much nitrate to local groundwater that
their manure, the source of this poison, is now being trucked out of the valley.
You’ll catch a whiff of this excrement on certain days in the spring when the
wind blows unfavorably across Claremont. To clean up our aquifer, the Inland
Empire Utilities Agency has built a desalinization facility for extracting cow
waste contaminants. The agency uses methane from towering piles of cow poop to
power the operation—a neat closed-loop system. And artificial wetlands are being
constructed in Orange County to clean up contaminated surface waters—at little
or no energy cost.
In the end, though, all of this is requiring ever increasing amounts of
infrastructure and power to provide each customer a clean glass of water, and to
grow the food we eat. And this leads us finally to look at what this is doing to
the natural world. My greatest reservation about the Bruntland definition of
sustainability is that it does not explicitly mention the natural environment. I
much prefer Article 20 A of the German Basic Law Code: “… the State shall
protect the natural basis of life…mindful of its responsibility toward future
generations.”
SWAP combined with its predecessor, the Central Valley Project, has turned
California into one of Earth’s greatest extinction epicenters. There are more
species listed as threatened or endangered in California by the U.S. government
than any other state in the country. Ninety-five percent of California’s
original wetlands and 89 percent of its riparian woodlands are gone—dried up or
converted to irrigated agriculture and subdivisions supplied by State or Federal
water. The important Pacific Flyway—vital for millions of migrating wildfowl in
North America—is seriously imperiled. Except for rice production in the Delta
region it might have died out years ago. Some 1400 dams block our rivers and
streams, converting them into reservoirs, flooding over 600 miles of former
river channel in the Sierra Nevada alone. The dams impede fish migration, and by
release of cold, nutrient-depleted reservoir waters, create conditions
downstream intolerable for native species. Coho salmon, estimated to have
numbered a million in California’s waterways at the time of Statehood, now
number only about 5,000. That commercial fishery collapsed long ago. A rapid
warming of climate in the American Southwest can only turn this screw tighter.
I’ve no time to chat up specific solutions, or to put a necessary
socio-demographic spin on all of this. We are in a vexing regional situation
when it comes to sustainability, but one which it is certainly possible to
improve, putting on our thinking caps, watery brains and all. We must live in
Nature, and to do so sustainably requires as a baseline for action conscientious
systems engineering of a sort we have yet to implement—of a sort that considers
the whole environment so as to ensure its self-renewal, not simply the economic
needs of vastly overdeveloped dry land cities and a few agricultural water
pirates. Nature reminds who she really is from time to time, and also provides
us, in kindness and cruelty, the awesome guidelines for building a better
future.
Mr. President, Trustees, colleagues, and students, I submit to you that as we
enter a wonderfully interesting, revolutionary new world, Pomona College is
squarely placed in one of its most important, yet vulnerable locations. We now
are undertaking exciting steps to prepare our students for their role in this
world, through enhanced opportunity for environmental education. Class of 2011,
I hope that you embrace the rich options for meaningful life provided by these
circumstances. Welcome and thank you.
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