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, 'K1I;"';~1~~r~~~;~~J;.~~f;~~~~4~~'f:.T'':-''~:I!,;((Z1;~r.~:Z.Li.;';:~:.::':::-.'~.~;j SUDMAN: You're got a certain philosophy that's expressed in your books. What is moth'at- ing you to make this argument.' REISNER: I'm a nature lover. a river lover, a waterfowl lover, a fisherman. I would like to see as few rivers dammed as possible. I'd like to see more wetlands, not fewer wetlands in Califor- nia. It's very imponant to me that we preserve as much as we possibly can of the nalUral splen- dor that brought me to California. And since water is the end all of existence out here, and things have been going against nature very badly for the last 150 years, I'm trying to come up with some way that we can maintain a rich, prosperous civilization without wrecking the natural environment. SUDMAN: Do you consider yourself an ellvi- ronmentalist? REISNER: I am an environmen!alist, no ques- tion about it. But also Ilike to think of myself as somebody who may not practice common sense but at least knows it when he sees it, and I frankly think the way we allocate. misallocate, subsidize, over-subsidize, and restrict the transfer of water makes less and less sense both in economic and environmentaltenns. . . SUDMAN: In your arguments for water marketing and transfers of water around California, you'I'e singled out four crops. Why these four? REISNER: Well, because they use so much water. If everybody in urban California saved 50 percen! of the water they now use, the savings would be rather minuscule compared to coming up with a wa'y to encourage, successfully encourage, people growing those four crops to save, say. 10 percen!. Founeen million acre-feet of water are used on those four crops. It offends me that we give three times more water to cows than we give to people in California, that we're having to make major, major sacrifices in the urban areas when, until this year. really, the fanners were not asked to do that. I also consider it unfair that we pay so much more for water than the fanners who get it subsidized. I'm not suggesting that agricultural water should be as expensive as urban water. I don't think it should. I believe in subsidies to a degree, but I think federally-supplied agricultural water is grossly over-subsidized. SUDMAN: Let's examine the subsidy for rice. Rice, you say. is a doubly-subsidized crop. NO......lllis year, rice is not a surplus crop and therefore not doubly-subsidi:ed. What about the rice production itself. (two-thirds of the crop) which is used in lire United States? REISNER: Well. my argumen! about any of this stuff is always influenced by what makes environmen!al and economic sense. And to me, to grow acrop as thirsty as rice in a semi-arid land means you're doing major damage to natural resources such as salmon and wild rivers. Should we subsidize that? I'm not saying abolish the rice crop. I would like to see incentives for rice fanners to use less water. I would like to see perhaps less rice acreage. I think if we had a free market water system, these problems would work themselves out, but we are essentially propping up--with enonnous subsidies--an overly large rice crop in California. SUDMAN: You say thatfarmers are subsidi:ed by thefederal gOl'ern- ment. While they do havefederal contracts now, a lot of that water was their own water. It belonged to farmers and irrigation companies and was essentially free 10 them ,like a property right. They had appropria- tive and riparian rights to that water. They traded with the federal government and got contracts to have regulated water when tile Bureau built Slrasta. When we talk about subsidi:ed .....ater. that originally was their water. REISNER: Yes, but the dam was an enonnous gift even to those fanners because it regulates the flow of a huge flood-prone river. My beef is really not so much with those guys who essentially were entrepreneurs who went out and did it in the old-Fashioned way. II's with the taxpayers being forced to subsidize the Iion's share of the cost of water for the Bureau of Reclamation's customers. "Instead of subsidizing water, subsidize conservation. Do it to the hilt." SUDMAN: One reason thai tlrefarmers say they grow rice is tlrat some of the soil in the Sacramento Valley is tight clay soil; they' re not able to grow other crops. And so you hal'e areas like Colusa County where 39 percent of the gross rel'enues in the county are related to the rice industry. If they didn't have that they might end up like BUlle County, declaring bankruptcy because the county has many retired people and people on welfare. What happens 10 Colusa County iffarmers don't grow rice ? REISNER: There's no gain without pain. And what aboulthe fisher- men who've lost their livelihoods or had them threatened by the ca- lamitous decline in the salmon fishery, which is largely the water diveners' fault? We've robbed Peter to pay Paul. I'm not suggesting that the rice industry be declared frivolous. an industry that we