UC Davis experts: Water supply and flooding

The following University of California, Davis, faculty will be available to comment on aspects of California's water issues. If you need assistance on similar topics, please contact Sylvia Wright, News Service, (530) 752-7704, swright@ucdavis.edu; Claudia Morain, News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu; or Julia Ann Easley, News Service, (530) 752-8248, jaeasley@ucdavis.edu.

Legal and social issues

Water rights and policy
Water wars and related social issues
California's water history
Politics and technology
Why organizations won't plan for disasters

SUPPLY, FLOODS AND FISH

Flood risks for California

UC Davis geologist Jeffrey Mount is a watershed expert and a vocal critic of urban flood "management" that relies upon costly and fallible levees, channels and dams, such as those built to protect Sacramento. "New Orleans lost the battle with the inevitable; the same will eventually occur here in Sacramento," says Mount, director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. He is a former member of the State Reclamation Board, which is charged with controlling flooding along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Contact: Jeffrey Mount, Geology, (530) 752-7092, jfmount@ucdavis.edu.

Water supplies and delivery systems

Jay Lund, professor of civil and environmental engineering, can talk about water policy and the relationship between water supply in Northern California and its delivery to the south. He wrote CALVIN (California Value Integrated Network), a computer model that analyzes state water supplies and delivery systems, and projects impacts of changes in the systems, such as a prolonged drought, levee breaks in the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta or the removal of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Contact: Jay Lund, Civil and Environmental Engineering, (530) 752-5671, jrlund@ucdavis.edu.

Future of fish

UC Davis Professor Peter Moyle, the foremost expert on native fishes of California, can discuss their declines and the environmental impacts that are responsible, such as water diversions. Moyle advises state and national policymakers on the conservation of fish, amphibians and watersheds. He was a member of the blue-ribbon scientific panel asked by the Bush administration to assess the Klamath Basin situation after federal agencies cut off irrigation water to farmers in 2001. He teaches basic courses in ichthyology, wildlife conservation and watershed ecology. Peter Moyle, Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, (530) 752-6355, pbmoyle@ucdavis.edu.

LEGAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Water rights and policy

Harrison "Hap" Dunning, a professor emeritus of law at UC Davis, can comment on public rights to water resources, the doctrine of public trust and instream flows. He is author of the public rights portion of the leading national treatise on water law, "Waters and Water Rights," and he has written numerous articles on water law, particularly with regard to the public-trust doctrine. He is a member of the board of directors of the Water Education Foundation and the Bay Institute of San Francisco. Dunning says a lot of California's water infrastructure was planned and built between the 1920s and 1940s with very little attention paid to environmental consequences. "Today our values are quite different," he said. "There's much more attention to the environmental consequences of water projects. So a lot of today's struggle is trying to recalibrate the system to take account of today's environmental values." Contact: Harrison "Hap" Dunning, School of Law, (530) 756-7244 or cell (530) 979-1600, hcdunning@ucdavis.edu.

Water wars and related social issues

UC Davis sociologist John Walton can talk about the history and issues behind water as it relates to the state's growth and the social rebellions it has produced. An expert on the political economy of development, Walton can also give a detailed history of how Los Angeles secured water sources from the Owens Valley. He is the author of "Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture and Rebellion in California" (1992), which received an award from the California Historical Society. Contact: John Walton, Sociology, (831) 659-1519, jtwalton@ucdavis.edu.

California's water history

UC Davis historian Louis Warren can talk about 19th and 20th century California water history and put it into context with Western environmental history. He teaches about 20th century California history: immigration, environmental issues and demographic impacts. A specialist in environmental history, Warren can talk about the state's general water background, such as the origins of the San Francisco and Los Angeles aqueducts and the draining of Tulare Lake in the San Joaquin Valley. Warren, the UC Davis W. Turrentine Jackson Chair in Western U.S. History, wrote "Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show" (2005) and "The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America" (1997), which won the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Non-fiction Book from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center. Contact: Louis Warren, History, (530) 752-1633, lswarren@ucdavis.edu.

Politics and technology

UC Davis sociologist Patrick Carroll, who studies the influences of technology and science on government decision-making, is now focused on the Peripheral Canal proposal and the influence of the California Bay-Delta Authority. Even though he is at the beginning of this multiyear project, Carroll would be a good source to talk about the delta in a larger context, since he recently completed a new book, "Science, Culture and Modern State Formation," due out next summer. In it, he explores similar issues with his home country of Ireland under the occupation of Great Britain. Besides the sociology department, Carroll is affiliated with the Science and Technology Studies Program. Contact: Patrick Carroll, Sociology, (530) 752-5388, pcarroll@ucdavis.edu.

Why organizations won't plan for disasters

Organizational sociologist Tom Beamish studies how organizations and institutions deal with disasters. Beamish, an associate professor of sociology, can talk about how organizations -- governmental, commercial and social -- respond to human-induced disasters. He says many disasters reflect long-term problems actively ignored or simply not seen by the organizations charged with protecting the public. "These organizations are generally reactive," he says. "Being proactive requires making difficult choices over funding and priorities, choosing among the risks, and overcoming a basic inertia in organizational routines." Beamish wrote "Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis" (2002). Contact: Tom Beamish, Sociology, (530) 754-6897, tdbeamish@ucdavis.edu.

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Last updated Feb. 27, 2006