“Elizabeth Moody, age nineteen and very beautiful, accompanied her Uncle, Dr. Walter C. Lowdermilk and family on an official trip for the United States government, using their personal car and paying their own expenses, to study old Roman lands for the benefit of the US soil conservation service, and American farmers to find out what could be [learned] of the agricultural successes and failures of the past.” – Forward to Lowdermilk’s niece’s diary.
December 30—Friday—arrived in Tunis, North Africa at 7:30 a.m. after a rising and falling night. The ways were lined with ragged Arabs and Negroes, all of whom wore red skullcaps with long black silk tassels. I shall get one. Mr. Kelly, an old friend of the Wagner’s met us at the boat and helped us to get through the customs and find a good hotel. The Arab men were sitting on the sidewalks sunning themselves and gossiping (all ragged and dirty) and a tea or coffee vendor was passing one cup around and refilling it for each person. Mohammedan women dressed in white flowing robes, but with heavy black veils, passed swiftly and silently. We found good rooms at the Claridge Hotel. It was freezing outside, tile floors inside didn’t help warm the rooms any. After lunch Aunt Inez and I went to bed with a hot water bottle and slept, took baths then dressed for dinner, to which Mr. and Mrs. Kelly came. Mrs. Kelly is beautiful and good as she is lovely, I am sure. Mr. Kelly is very humorous. They used to be missionaries and now are doing YMC a work. Mr. Kelly says the Mohammedan women are likely to where the veils and that the little girls can hardly wait until they are old enough to start. The men’s foil their women. Their fortune is in their jewelry. It is the young men that are getting the women to unveil. They can’t afford to have more than one wife. We sat around talking until after 11, and I was frozen from my feet up. They left and I popped into a hot bath and then to bed.
Walter Lowdermilk was recruited by Rexford Tugwell in 1933 to serve as the second-in-command of the new Soil Erosion Service, later called the Soil Conservation Service. In 1938, he was tasked with studying how soil affects human life and well-being. He spent two years exploring lands once ruled by the Romans to find answers. This is his report on what he discovered in Italy. —
Since ancient times the people of Italy, from one generation to another, have had to snatch the soil from the fury of destructive floods rushing off the precipitous mountains, or rain eroding cultivated hillsides by unbelievable labor in terracing, or from marshes infested with malaria.
The struggle against the marshes and malaria dates back to ancient times. It is known that Appius Claudius, at the end of the Fourth Century B.C. was one of the first to attempt reclamation of these marsh lands through which runs the famous Appian Way to Rome. Then Julius Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, Theodorio, and later on a number of Popes, particularly Pope Pius the Sixth, all had set their hands to the task but without success.
In spite of all the land reclamation efforts of the centuries the present Government of Italy found itself confronted with barren, marshy, depopulated districts scattered here and there in almost every region of Italy. The forty-three million inhabitants of Italy had occupied all available lands. They had terraced steep hills and mountains for cultivation. Their towns and cities were precariously perched on the steep cliffs, or tucked away in the deep folds of interior mountain ranges. From these lands an average of 353 people per square mile, as against 50 per square mile in the United States, must secure food and sustenance from the soil. The only available areas suitable for colonization were the barren wastes of the marsh lands and the large estates of rich land owners (sic) which were largely used for grazing.
With the unification of Italy, reclamation was felt to be a national problem, and from 1870 on, various laws were passed which proved insufficient for the problem. It remained for the “Mussolini law” of December, 1928, to coordinate all phases of reclamation, and initiate a tremendous effort for the complete recovery of all lands of Italy for the sake of a better economic, hygienic and social future for the nation. During these past ten years, under the stimulus of the Fascist regime, successful reclamation and colonization of barren and marsh lands has surpassed that accomplished through all preceeding (sic) centuries.
The Fascist Regime maintains that land should belong to the people and be occupied in such a manner as to provide food and occupation for the greatest number; and has devoted its greatest energies and efforts to reclamation and colonization. It recognizes that rural society is a reservoir of strength without which the cities would decline by fossilizing, growing old, and losing their population. It emphasizes that maintenance and fertility of soils is all Important; for the production of essential foods is a pillar in the economic structure of the nation, which must not be allowed to fall.
This policy of making lands available for the people was initiated at the close of the World War when the King of Italy transferred the Crown Lands to a National Association of Ex-Service men, and when the Government voted funds to the amount of sixty million dollars for the reclamation of lands to be occupied by ex-soldiers and their families.
The reclamation of the Pontine Marshes and notable other areas are the work of this Association. Private land owners are urged to work in cooperation with the Government in the reclamation and colonization of lands which are deemed best for the welfare of the nation. However, if land owners refuse to cooperate, their lands are expropriated. With a definite policy and suitable laws for its execution, Tas-cist Italy has accomplished some magnificent examples of reclamation of waste lands. She has thus provided new homes and lands for her peoples, and created an entirely new Province out of the former ill-famed, fever infested Pontine Marshes.
It is said that the remains of sixteen cities, all pre-dating Roman occupation, were found in these Pontine Marshes, proving that this malaria infested, uninhabitable area once sustained a numerous population. The geologic processes which transformed the area are evident. The soils on the plains are largely derived from volcanic ash. The mountains also were doubtless equally covered with this material at the time of eruptions. Volcanic ash erodes and washes rapidly when stripped of vegetation. The precipitous mountains, rising abruptly from the Pontine plains, are now gleaming white as snow, showing the now bare surfaces of limestone rock.
It is very probable that, with the rapid rise in population after the founding of Rome in the 8th Century B.C induced the clearing of that vegetation on these mountains for cultivation or by grazing of herds. The steep gradients, combined with heavy rainfall, would permit rapid erosion of the volcanic ash soils from the slopes. This mass of material filled up drainage channels and silt was carried out to the sea, where the erosional debris was sorted. The waves piled up the sands in dunes along the shore; this ridge of shore dunes served as a dyke against the drainage of the area. Each rainy season impounded its mountain flood waters against this barrier of dunes. Undrained pockets, and the fifteen thousand acres slightly below sea level, formed marshy lakes; only small islands of higher lands remained for grazing. These belonged largely to the great landed estates. Land use was very primitive in form and was used chiefly for pasture. The occasional laborers, recruited from the neighboring mountains, were killed off or driven away for months at a time, by the deadly forms of malarial fevers infesting the swamps. The little city of Ninfa, the Pompeii of the Middle Ages, reveals its walls, its forsaken squares covered with flowers and wild plants – its population was completely annihilated or driven out by the deadly mosquito.
Mussolini’s speech at the inauguration of the new Province of Littoria[1], created from the newly populated Pontine Marshes, is significant of the spirit in which the problem was attacked:
“Only three years ago, there stretched around us the deadly marshes. We have waged a very hard battle. We had to face nature, material difficulties, and the skepticism and moral cowardice of those who doubted the victory. For us Fascists, the fight itself is more important than the victory, because when a battle is begun with an iron will, it is unfailingly crowned with success”. All the precautions and preparations for a major battle were coordinated in this attack to reclaim the Pontine Marshes, and destroy the deadly enemy entrenched there. Machinery and all necessary equipment were assembled in a camp outside the battle zone.
Instead of venturing slowly, with small groups of workers, into the domains of the enemy, thirty thousand men were assembled. The housing quarters for this army had been built in sections, with each door and window well screened. When all was in readiness a day was set to advance, and night found the workers well within enemy territory, housed in insect proof dwellings. Each building wasin charg e of an officer to whom all inmates daily reported before work, and in the officer’s presence, each swallowed the large portion of quinine allotted him. Work was feverishly rapid, but ceased entirely before sun-down so that the men were all in barracks, behind screens, before the deadly winged messengers flew out in search of their evening meals. There were several varieties, the most vicious of which caused death within a few hours. With the first symptoms, patients were rushed from the marshes to hospitals behind the lines.
The rapidity with which this campaign progressed is amazing. The first work began in November 1931 with the clearing of about six hundred acres of swamp forests, which mere converted into charcoal, two months later, drainage was sufficiently complete for the construction of the reinforced concrete farm houses on the first area. In June work was begun on the new city of Littoria and in December, six months later, all public building, and housing sufficient for eight thousand persons, had been completed.
Littoria, as well as each of the other new towns on the reclaimed marsh lands, is a model city, selected from competitive architectural designs; with parks and wide streets providing ample parking space for future autoists. The ultra-modern dwellings and apartment houses are built of reinforced concrete, painted on the outside. The city Hall is magnificent with its marble stairs and Council Chambers, carved furniture, and floors pared with red and black marble. The misery of the past is recalled by a huge and appealing painting in the reception hall; the father has been stricken in the field with fever and is dying; the children are weeping while the mother, with uplifted arms, looks Imploringly heavenward with an unforgettable expression of hopelessness and sorrow; in the background is the small farm house and beyond it, the marsh lands. The poverty and tragedy is a striking contrast to the hygienic, permanent cities which have sprung so suddenly from the former deadly marshes.
With the completion of the Littoria section, work was pressed forward, and within two and one-half years the the (sic) one hundred and eighty-two thousand acres of Pontine Marshes had been reclaimed, and became the nucleus of this new Province of Italy. Although in number it is the 93rd Province, settlement was so immediate that it ranks 79th in population and 61st for density, Since this reclamation work had been largely accomplished by the National Ex-Service Men’s Association, in cooperation with the neighboring communes and land owners, the new area was settled chiefly by ex-service men and their families, from densely populated areas around Venetia.
To reclaim the first one hundred and four thousand acres, it was necessary to build two hundred and sixty miles of roads, move five million seven hundred fifty-nine thousand two hundred and fifty cubic yards of soil and build one thousand and ninety-seven miles of canals. The huge Mussolini Canal and several smaller ones, skirt the lower slope of the precipitous mountains and carry all mountain flood waters direly across the plains to the ocean. Waters are collected by fifteen pumping stations run by power from the mountains twenty-five miles away. There had Just been a heavy rain, and when we visited Mazzocchio,the largest of the stations, draining twenty thousand acres, four of the seven pumps were working, lifting two thousand six hundred twenty-five gallons per second twelve to fifteen feet to the higher canals which carry waters out to the sea. Floating grass mowers are constantly on duty, cutting the water vegetation to keep canals open and prevent infestation by mosquitoes.
It is an interesting landscape of concrete tile roofed farm houses, painted cream, light blue, tan, orange or white – stretching to distant horizons. The colors vary according to the time each section was completed, and whether ownership of land belongs to the National Ex-Service Men’s Association, or to the communes that formerly held grazing rights in the marshes. The houses are outwardly attractive, of Mediterranean architectural design. Each home contains three bedrooms, storeroom and kitchen, which is the family meeting place, and serves as living room for entertaining guests. An arched porch, under one of the bedrooms, provides a delightful workshop or protection from the sun. Tach home is supplied with a good well, about twenty feet deep, and an outside oven for the baking of bread. For some reason these are not in connection with the house, but some yards away. American women would resent the necessity of walking in rain or hot sun to bake and watch the bread, which is the chief article of diet here. Each home is equipped with a shed for fifty or sixty chickens and a family pig or two. The average number in these farm families is said to be ten or eleven. There are usually four or five children, two parents, a grandparent or two,
and frequently a married son and his family. Thus some households may run as high as sixteen.
There is a model community city, similar to but smaller than Llttoria, for every two hundred farms. Here are located schools, churches, stores, a theater, civic buildings, and gas stations – all built in harmonious architectural designs, from public funds of the same corporation or association which reclaims the land. Children from these two hundred farms either walk or ride bicycles on the well built highways to their school center. Education is free through primary grades. This is considered sufficient except for the exceptional farm child.
It is indeed a remarkable and astonishing achievement. Seven years prior to our visit, this area was composed of deadly marshes, impassable to man and beast alike; the water buffalo alone was able to survive. We drove for an entire day, over fine roads, seeing thousands of permanent concrete farm houses, and visiting model towns of distinctive architecture. Pumping stations and the vast network of canals, at various levels, were being tested by the recent heavy rains, and all were working efficiently. It commands admiration for the rapid, successful accomplishment of a task which had defied the engineering knowledge of centuries past.
The Government body which directs and controls the entire program of reclamation and colonization, is the under-Secretaryship for Integral Land Reclamation, and is dependent on the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests. The Undersecretary is aided by a group of executive and consultative bodies.
The Italian Fascist method is to setup in every area to be reclaimed, one or more corporations of owners. Their task is the maintenance and expedition of reclamation work. These are composed of representatives of the Government, representatives of private land owners in the area to be reclaimed, and corporation officials. There are in existence in Italy, about seventeen hundred corporations and trusts or juristic persons, that control a total of about forty-two million five hundred thousand acres. The most powerful corporation is the National Association of Ex-Service men, which, under the president of the council, has the power to purchase tracts of land, and where necessary, use compulsion to force private land owners to sell or cooperate with the reclamation scheme. The areas to be reclaimed, whether marshes or large estates of private land owners, are taken over by the corporation and prepared for intensive agriculture, and divided into small holdings for individual farm families.
During the past fourteen years, the Fascist Regime, through the medium of these corporations, has carried out, more or less completed, work on twelve million seven hundred sixty-seven thousand three hundred forty-two acres, of which five million, five hundred fourteen thousand acres are almost or entirely completed. This is more than five times the amount of reclamation accomplished during the fifty-two years from 1870 to 1922.
As to expenditure during this period approximately three hundred sixty-three million dollars have been spent on public works of which about two hundred seventy million dollars belong to the Fascist Era. An additional amount of approximately one hundred twenty-four million dollars has been granted for improvements to private landed properties. Thus more than one-third the total expenditure has been made to assist private land owners in the development or colonization of their lands.
The Fascist Regime believes in the fundamental importance for the nation’s welfare, of private ownership of land, but makes the transformation of estates for colonization compulsory, and insists on the cooperation of small land owners in an area to be reclaimed. The private owner may transform his estate for colonization at his om expense if he wishes, or he may borrow money from the state and then sell a portion of the lands for repayment – or he may receive assistance from the State. If he refuses, his lands may be expropriated. Considerations of private loss or gain are not taken into account in determining the advisability of the work. A private owner may not wish to invest his capitol(sic) in the transforming of his estate from pasture into agricultural lands for intensive cultivation.
The nation, on the other hand, in its unity and continuity, will be rewarded for the immediate financial sacrifice by the increase in wealth for the whole nation – and the private citizen has the advantage of belonging to a stronger social order. While private owners must comply with certain responsibilities such as the upkeep of minor roads and the preparation of the land for cultivation – drainage, main roads and certain other features are designated as public works and are paid for by the state.
When nearing Rome, we were astonished to see vast uninhabited areas, being newly broken up into farms, and planted to grain. There were dozens of plows at work, drawn by six or eight gray oxen with long horns more terrifying in appearance than the old-time long horns of the Texas range. It was found that these lands had belonged for centuries to a huge estate, used for grazing, which the new regime had forced open for cultivation and colonization.
The agrarian schemes to be initiated on the reclaimed territories, were found to be best carried out by peasant families who have long been associated with a special type of work, and have their own interest in the production.
Fascist Italy, has and is, setting her national lands in order for permanent agricultural production and has placed tens of thousands of her people on newly reclaimed lands. The development of such large regions of agricultural lands, and new cities to serve them, created demands for so much labor that the unemployed who have been put to work reclaiming these areas have been absorbed into permanent positions. These works have served a three-fold purpose – they provided immediate employment for tens of thousands of unemployed during the years of depression – provided agricultural lands and homes for overflowing populations – and created an inestimable wealth for the nation as a whole.
W. C. Lowdermilk
Figure 1. The ill-famed fever-infested Pontine Marshes which defied reclamation for more than 2,000 years and which covered more than 181,000 acres have been reclaimed as fertile and productive farms with five small cities to serve them. Before reclamation, it was so impossible to survey these marshes that three men went together on horseback so as to rescue each other when floundering. Some of the lands were 15 feet below sea level and dunes along the coast prevented drainage of higher lands.Figure 2. The large well-built Mussolini canal carries the rain waters which rush off the denuded mountains direct to the ocean, across the Pontine area, some of which is below sea level. December 1938. W.C.L.Figure 3. The local rain waters are collected at fourteen pumping stations which raise the water to a sufficient level for it to flow out to the sea by its own power. The farm houses are all built of reinforced concrete, built to last a thousand years. December 1938. W.C.L.Figure 4. Littoria under construction. From a land of desolation and disease, Pontine marshes were transformed within a period of two and a half years to a vast fertile farming area with more than 4,000 reinforced concrete houses located on farms and five towns to serve them with schools and churches and all public buildings. Littoria, the largest town, was completed within six months from the time the cornerstone was laid. All towns laid out with distinctive types of architecture.
[1] Now called Latina, the province was named after Littoria, the capital city founded by Benito Mussolini on June 30, 1932, as part of a major fascist-era reclamation project. The name “Littoria” derived from the fascio littorio, a symbol of the Italian Fascist Party and it is a call back to ancient Rome. Roman fasces is a bundle of rods tied around an axe, symbolizing authority, unity, and power. -NB
Lowdermilk admired Il Duce’s leadership and positive attitude. He mentioned to Malca Chall in the California Oral History Project, “This was a chance to make something beneficial for my country.” Many progressives viewed fascism as a modern and bold approach to governance that involved strong government action and national progress, aligning with their goals of social reform and planning. This was not an outlier opinion many found this ideology intriguing. Even Will Rogers, the popular humorist, remarked, “I’m pretty high on that bird,” and endorsed dictatorship if led by the “right dictator.” Government action, that is force at the end of a gun, for the people’s benefit, like land renewal, is necessary—what could be more important than protecting the earth for humanity?
Lowdermilk’s 1938 Buick pulled into Italy on December 7, 1938. I’ll let the niece, Elizabeth Moody introduce herself:
“Elizabeth Moody, age nineteen and very beautiful, accompanied her Uncle, Dr. Walter C. Lowdermilk and family on an official trip for the United States government, using their personal car and paying their own expenses, to study old Roman lands for the benefit of the US soil conservation service, and American farmers to find out what could be [learned] of the agricultural successes and failures of the past.“
This is transcribed from the journal she kept on the trip:
Wednesday, December 7—we’re in Italy at last, a dictator’s country and Duce printed on all walls numerous times. We were lucky and had no trouble crossing the border because of the special passports and none of the baggage was either examined were touched. We were most surprised at the beauty and cleanliness of the Italian Riviera. Many date palms and terraces of bright flowers. Nothing is out of place, no stone or leaf. The coastline is very rocky and mountainous and our road went up and down and around and around. All the slopes were terraced, besides being of stone and many of them higher than the plot of ground was wide. Through many of the stone walls along the highway grapevines were planted in little holes and seemingly thriving well. Of course many olive trees. At the restaurant where we had lunch we were the only ones in a perfectly huge place. (It isn’t the season on the Italian Riviera.) Uncle has established us in excellent hotels in Italy so far. We have coupons for dinner, lodging and breakfast in the class B hotels which are really better than we needed to take. Here in Elizabetta overlooking the city (Rapallo) and sea below, we are most comfortable stations for the night and have just a most delicious dinner. The highways of Italy bordered with cacti, trees (Pine or Palm) and then flowers, while neat and clean, or marred by the unsightliness of many ugly signs and advertisements. One certainly sees Duce printed all over the place on walls and buildings about six Duce’s to a wall. Mussolini’s picture also decorates walls.
December 8, Thursday–Started out this morning up through the hills and mountains of terraced steps of olive trees and grapevines. We wound up, up, up and then hairpinned back-and-forth down into the valley. In the distance rose range after range of blue mountains, very rugged and barren, one of which was a volcano with the cone still in evidence. Every place we go our car is of great interest. Little children and old men alike stand around and peer inside and talk about the Americans. It’s a strange sensation to be such a show. As we passed many salute us in Duce style with the raised right hand.
This afternoon we passed through Pisa, a city older than Rome, and there passed through the old city gate to visit the Leaning Tower, one of the seven wonders of the world. There is a huge cathedral in the same block as the tower but we did not go there. All of us climbed to the tip-top and had a wonderful view over the cultivated valley. The sensation one received in climbing the tower is the oddest. I was dizzy and reeling when I reached the top, and after Uncle took our pictures I was very glad to come down and reach level ground. It took some time to get back my equilibrium. We drove through several pine nut forests where the trees are trimmed of their branches except the very top. It gives a very smooth and round effect and very artistic and lovely. We wanted to spend the night at Grossette, but it was St. Augustine’s feast day, and a big banquet was scheduled in the hotel and it had no room for us. That kind of stumped us for there was no hotel listed on the road between Grossette and Civitvichia, a distance of about 65 miles and winding roads, and at night with many bicyclists popping up without lights on, Uncle didn’t want to try it—also we would miss supper and we only had fruit for lunch. So we decided to turn off the main highway (via Aurelia which was the old Roman road from Rome to France) in about 20 miles and stay at Orbatello on the seacoast. That little city behind it city wall turned out to be very much of a naval base and all of us were under close observation. Whether they thought us spies or had never seen a big car or Americans before I don’t know, but we were certainly stared at and talked about. The hotel wasn’t so hot. It was a C and we were supposed to be in be, but it was the best we could do. We could hardly make the waiters understand and we were and they were all balled up. We were supposed to have fish cut fresh in the Mediterranean, but somehow it never showed up. Anyway the apples were the only good part of the meal.
December 9, Friday—all night long the crowds milled through the streets noisily and every hour some nearby bells sounded the hour. My sleep was little. We only had one blanket on the bed and it was with great difficulty we made the manager know we wanted another, so we rather froze too.
We were off early. The sky was gray and overcast, but we were happy, for soon we would be in Rome and have mail and news from home. We always get lost trying to find the embassy and this was no exception. On Main Street corners old Roman fountains spray water into pools below or statues decorate, and often one comes upon an old ruin. The embassy recommended us to the Anglo-American Hotel nearby in which we found lovely rooms overlooking a park below with a gurgling fountain to lull us to sleep each night. After a late lunch (and it was now raining) and I took a bath which certainly felt good and wrote until dinner. For lunch we had several miles of the most delicious spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese. After dinner, Mac, Aunt Inez and I went to the only English speaking theater in town to see Louise Rainer in “Toy Wife,” which was very well acted throughout. But we got lost in getting there and got into some theater where a play was being presented. If we can’t make the Italians understand English we usually can try French and understand. I never saw such a high-class crowd in a movie theater. No one there was cheap or tawdry, but the price was high, 16 lire or 80 cents our money.
December 10, Saturday—school all morning until lunch after which Mac, Wester, Billy and I started off for the American Express, to see the town, and shop. Billy was dying to see “Test Pilot” again and so he set off by himself about 3:30. After Mac had finished his business, the three of us jammed ourselves into an old-fashioned carriage drawn by horse and had a wonderful time driving over the cobblestone streets and through a lovely park filled with Roman statuary. Little boys in uniforms and with guns were marching around in drilling we passed several hundred of them—Mussolini’s youths. Wester and I left Mac and went shopping for I didn’t have one whole pair of stockings to my name, and I had no Christmas present for Babe or Patty. I found compacts of leather nicer here than in France and so chose them, several filigree gold bracelets and made $7.00 look sick. Dressed for dinner and then Mac took Aunt Inez, Uncle Walter and myself to the opera to see “Tannhauser.” We had excellent seats to see and hear although they were not classy. We were above for balconies of boxes in the center gallery. There was no room for our legs anywhere, but the beautiful music made up for our discomfort, the choruses were magnificent. It almost seemed to me that their work was better than the soloists, but I suppose that was because they weren’t Jenny Lind’s or Carusos. The lighting was excellent and the stage sets and costumes most lavish. The music is my favorite I think. I don’t know of anything I love more or that thrills me more than the Pilgrim’s Chorus. Poor Mac, all curled up in a ball and most uncomfortable, drifted off to sleep for several minutes but he didn’t miss anything important like “Song of the Evening Star” as Mother did when she went to the opera to sleep. It wasn’t over until 12 though. There was the most beautiful huge crystal chandelier in the center of the ceiling which reflected all the colors of the rainbow, with smaller chandeliers all around it and paintings of Romans decorating the ceilings and walls. All of us came home in a horse and carriage and Mac and I cut up an apple to feed the horse, but he had such a hard time chewing all of it that we gave the last quarter to the driver to give to the horse, but the driver ate it himself. Bed with beautiful music still running through my mind.
As you can see, Elizabeth Moody was a lively writer with an eye to detail.
An internet search did not reveal any more information on her.
“Our relations to the earth are more than economic; they are moral. We are custodians of the bountiful land, its waters, its plant and animal life, its hidden riches, and perhaps most important of all, its soils….” – Walter Clay Lowdermilk (1888-1974)
“We don’t need powdered milk; we need Lowdermilk.” – Mordechai Bentov, Israeli Minister of Development (1955-1961)
Before Israel became a nation, before drip irrigation and before desert agriculture became commonplace, one American soil scientist drove 30,000 miles across a collapsing world to answer a deceptively simple question: were these lands ruined by climate—or by human neglect?
The answer mattered to America. By the late 1930s the question was no abstraction. The Dust Bowl had blackened the American sky. Rome’s former granaries lay eroded. North Africa’s terraces had collapsed into dust. If food was the currency of nations, he liked to say, soil was the capital. Without that capital North Africa and the Levant were bankrupt.
To find out, Walter Clay Lowdermilk set out to examine the regions that had once fed empires—the Levant, where agriculture began, and North Africa, Rome’s breadbasket. In the shadow of a Second World War, he loaded his wife, Inez; their two children, Billy and Winnifred; his niece Elizabeth; his secretary Cleveland McKnight; and eventually even an incontinent puppy named Maktub (It is written) into a 1938 Buick. Over nearly two years they visited 3 continents, 17 countries, 124 sites, and traveled more than 30,000 miles.
The others might be looking for interesting scenery. He, the Assistant Chief of the Soil Conservation Service was interested in proof.
At fifty, Lowdermilk kept a schedule that exhausted men half his age, leaving at dawn and returning long after dark.
He may be the most influential man you have never heard of—unless you are Israeli.
While surveying British-controlled Palestine under the League of Nations Mandate, found Palestine to be like much of what he had seen in North Africa, “A sad commentary on man’s stewardship of the earth.” The only bright spots were the kibbutzim staffed by Jewish Zionists, most of whom had never farmed before their arrivals. Green oases blossomed in and around each kibbutz, which were often placed on the poorest of soils.
After Palestine, the Lowdermilks worked among the cedars above Beirut writing reports for H.H. Bennett, chief of the Soil Conservation Service. There, Inez read a newspaper report: a small, aging “one-funnel” Greek freighter carrying 655 Czechoslovakian Jews had sent an SOS. Fleeing Hitler, the refugees had been denied entry to Palestine. The ship was towed into Beirut so it could be cleared of vermin.
Inez went to the harbor.
Later she wrote of what she saw: 160 people crammed into each hold, stacked six tiers high on wooden shelves lined with straw. No light. No stairways. Toilets installed only after pleading. Water hauled up by bucket for washing or flushing. For eleven weeks they had drifted in summer heat. Many had developed scurvy.
These refugees were trying to reach the homeland promised in the Balfour Declaration. British authorities, wary of Arab unrest and dependent on Middle Eastern oil, refused to let them land. Palestine had been roiled by revolt since 1936. London would not risk further upheaval. The British were not the only government denying entry to Jews fleeing Hitler. That June the United States government had denied entry to the 937 Jewish refugees aboard the passenger ship MS St. Louis. The ship returned to Europe. Tragically, 254 of these were eventually murdered in the Holocaust.
Inez brought Walter to the docks.
“What is happening to the Jewish people is terrible,” she told him. “It is long past due for Christians to give the Jews a new deal.” When they returned to America, she said, she would tell anyone who would listen what Hitler was doing—and how Britain was locking the doors of the Jews’ ancestral home.
The encounter changed him. For years Lowdermilk had studied soil erosion. Now he saw another kind of erosion: erosion of humanity. Here were people barred from soil they believed was theirs. If soil could determine the fate of civilizations, it might also determine the fate of a nation not yet born.
Both Inez and Walter Lowdermilk belonged to a generation that believed prosperity could be scientifically engineered. Born in 1888, he grew up in an America intoxicated with reform and scientific optimism. Darwin had redrawn the map of life; just as Adam Smith had redrawn the map of society. Many believed the future could be managed, improved—even perfected. Lowdermilk absorbed that faith early.[1] At one point, young Walter wondered how he can become a great man. Inez Marks would later provide the answer.
After serving in the First World War with the Army’s Lumberjack Regiment, he joined the young U.S. Forest Service in Missoula, Montana. In 1922, while building a reputation as a research officer, he proposed to Inez Marks, a missionary home on furlough from Sichuan. She agreed—on one condition: he would return to China with her. She told him he could help end famine there. It was, her father quipped, “a marriage made in Heaven—because there wasn’t enough time for it to happen on earth.”
In Nanjing, Lowdermilk taught forestry as part of the China International Famine Relief Commission’s effort to make relief “scientific.” The river carried the pulverized remains of hillsides tilled bare.
When he traced the silt to its source, he found gullies carved into loess as soft as flour. Crops grew on exposed slopes. Trees clung only to temple groves. The contrast was unmistakable. Where forests stood, soil held. Where trees fell, land bled into rivers.
There he formed the conviction that would define his life: soil mismanaged is civilization undone. “[U]nless the farmer is prosperous, no one is prosperous,” he would say.
He and Inez might have stayed in China for the rest of their lives except the experiment ended abruptly on March 20, 1927, during the Nanjing Incident. Revolutionary troops entered the city shouting, “Kill the foreign devils.” A man beside Lowdermilk was shot and killed; a rifle was raised toward him. He escaped with his life.
The lesson was indelible. Political instability, hunger, and land mismanagement were intertwined.
The Lowdermilks returned to America penniless and shaken. Back in California, Lowdermilk resumed his work. At the University of California’s Forest Experiment Station he earned a doctorate and began pioneering research in soil conservation. His work drew the attention of Rexford Tugwell, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, who recruited him to Washington to help establish what became the Soil Erosion Service under Hugh Bennett.
By the late 1930s, the Dust Bowl had demonstrated that even modern nations could exhaust their land. Someone proposed a comprehensive survey of territories once ruled by Rome—regions that had flourished agriculturally before sliding into decline. Lowdermilk seized the opportunity. If food was the currency of nations, he liked to say, soil was the capital. To squander it was a crime against both humanity and nature.
On August 10, 1938, the Lowdermilks boarded the S.S. Manhattan and began their three continent odyssey. They examined abandoned terraces, ruined aqueducts, overgrazed hillsides, and river valleys stripped of topsoil. They also saw signs of renewal—proof that disciplined stewardship could restore damaged landscapes.
When they returned home, Walter and Inez secluded themselves for six months in their basement and wrote with urgency. The result, published in 1942 as Palestine, Land of Promise, electrified Zionists worldwide. It challenged the British claim that the country could not absorb more immigrants. Lowdermilk argued that through coordinated water management, erosion control, and regional planning—what he called a Jordan Valley Authority, modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority—Palestine could sustain millions more people.
The future of a homeland, he insisted, would be decided in watersheds.
Lowdermilk believed that restored soil would yield more than crops. Protect the land, manage the water, prevent famine—and allow people to live in harmony with nature and with one another. The land, he was certain, could be redeemed by science and stewardship.
Whether human conflict could be redeemed as well was another matter.
History would test that faith in ways he did not foresee.
It appears we are witnessing the crumbling of the green movement, as we know it. Dr. James Lovelock, who postulated the ‘Gaia hypothesis’ of earth operating as a self-regulating organism, is the latest to stray, if not exactly leave the faith. The list non-orthodox greens grows continually and now includes Mark Lynas, the author of The God Species and Stewart Brand, the author of the iconic Whole Earth Catalog. Perhaps the first to change his mind and leave the Greens was Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace. He felt those in the environmental movement had made their point,“[W]hen a majority of people decide they agree with you it is probably time to stop hitting them over the head with a stick and sit down and talk to them about finding solutions to our environmental problems,” he says.
Greens have always been fractious; they hate compromise. Former Greenpeace director Paul Watson berated Patrick Moore in an email: “you’re a corporate whore, Pat, an eco-Judas, a lowlife bottom-sucking parasite…” And, Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist took a pie in the face from then true believer, Mark Lynas.
At the heart of the disagreement sits the use of technology. “There is a battle underway for the soul of environmentalism,” writes freelance journalist Keith Kloor, “It is a battle between traditionalists and modernists. Who prevails is likely to be determined by whose vision for the future is chosen by a new generation of environmentalists.”
Traditionalist Greens say, “Stop!” Technology is the Problem. The Worldwatch Institute says we should not simply stop growing our economies, but we must actually contract: “The rapidly warming Earth and the collapse of ecosystem services show that economic ‘degrowth’ in overdeveloped countries is essential and urgent…. Degrowth can be achieved through policies to discourage overconsumption, raising taxes, shortening work hours, and ‘informalizing’ certain sectors of the economy.” The goal, Rik Scarce writes in his book “Eco-Warriors,” is to arrive at “a steady-state relationship with all of nature’s creations, wherein human attitudes and actions dominate no one and no one thing. Their alternative seeks to guarantee life, liberty, evolution, and happiness for humans and non-humans alike.”
Modernist Greens say that technology has a role in making the world greener and more livable for all creatures, including humans. Stewart Brand says “If Greens don’t embrace science and technology” they risk becoming irrelevant.
The modernists are in favor of cities, people, and technology (including genetically engineered food).
Cities, people, and technology are…good? What is happening? Has the world gone crazy?
Perhaps the world is crazy. (Not exactly a news flash now, is it?)
As you know, I have argued on these pages that people, cities, technology, and economic growth have not only improved our lives here in the United States, but have improved the environment. Economic growth using non-renewables has overall been beneficial. The author of “The Rational Optimist,” Matt Ridley notes that technology takes less land and uses materials other species do not want:
“[E]conomic development leads to a switch to using resources that no other species needs or wants…. Contrast Haiti, which relies on biomass (wood) for cooking and industry, with its much (literally) greener neighbour the Dominican Republic, which subsidises propane for cooking to save forest…. [E]conomic growth leads to a more sparing use of the most important of all resources – land.”
Is economic growth and technology a wonder cure? A panacea that works with no side effects? No. But, then everything has its upsides and downsides. If we humans continue to move from rural to urban (cities are denser), drill and mine for our energy rather than grow it, continue to wring more food and fiber from each acre, and develop incentives for conserving water and our fisheries, we will yet leave a better place for our (and Nature’s) children and grandchildren.
Matt Ridley sums it up well:
“Seven billion people going back to nature would be a disaster for nature.”
“If Greens don’t embrace science and technology and jump ahead to a leading role in both, they may follow the Reds into oblivion.” Brand, Stewart. Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary · “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
Assadourian, Erik. “The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries.” Worldwatch Institute, STATE OF THE WORLD 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity
Never let a crisis go to waste, even, or especially, if it’s a manufactured one. It’s “plastics versus our planet,” California Environmental Protection Agency secretary Yana Garcia tells the camera. Secretary Garcia invoked the memory of the first Earth Day commemoration to announce California’s new regulations on . In doing so, she mixed politics with science.
This #EarthMonth🌎, we're focused on the plastics pollution crisis. The 1st Earth Day was created in response to oil spills + toxic waste impacting communities + our planet. 54 years later, CA is working to implement the nation's most ambitious plastic pollution reduction agenda. pic.twitter.com/gTn8rydIsy
— Secretary Yana Garcia (@CalEPASecretary) April 2, 2024
Wearing a nylon jacket, Cal-EPA Secretary Yana Garcia came out into the courtyard of the Cal-EPA building complex to warn us of the dangers of “plastics pollution crisis.” As I noted in “It’s a plastic world. Part 1” plastics are ubiquitous and nanoplastics have been detected in our arteries. That Ms. Garcia somewhat ironically wears a plastic jacket, holds a plastic microphone while being video recorded by, most likely, a camera made at least partially of plastic, illustrates that plastic products are so much a part of life that we are oblivious to them.
On March 8, 2024 California’s Governor released this statement:
SACRAMENTO – California today took another step in implementing the nation’s most comprehensive measure to tackle the rise in plastic waste polluting our communities and ecosystems.Plastic waste is a major contributor to climate and trash pollution, with less than 9% of plastic recycled in California and the rest of the U.S.
“For too long, plastic polluters have passed the buck on the growing burden of plastic waste contaminating the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat,” said Governor Newsom. “California is leading the way to hold producers responsible, drive sustainable innovation and green jobs, and support the most impacted communities. We have to act now, with urgency, to give our kids a future without plastic pollution.”
We have seen this movie before. The ending just too hard to take.
Moreover, banning plastic bags can have unexpected, inconvenient results. A new study shows California’s ban eliminates 40 million pounds of plastic annually. However, many banned bags would have been reused for trash, so consumption of trash bags went up by 12 million pounds, reducing the benefit. It also increased consumption of paper bags by twice the saved amount of plastic – 83 million pounds. This will lead to much larger emissions of CO₂.
Secretary Garcia’s agency, Cal-EPA, is tasked with writing regulations and enforcement of the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. Cal-EPA also writes and enforces California’s Proposition 65, The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, the law which places warning labels on coffee and baked bread. “California’s Proposition 65 list is a quintessential example of government bureaucracy gone berserk. It contains 900+ chemicals that the state declares are carcinogens or reproductive toxins. Anything that is made with, or contains any of these, now carries a ridiculous warning sticker.” American Council on Science and Health points to Prop 65, which is a political stunt more than anything, as one reason Americans have lost faith in science.
Given these bona fides, I expect little in the way of science to be employed in the Cal-EPA regulations. They are self-anointed experts. This is not science; it’s politics. It is forcing us to behave like obedient children.
California's progressive government has "The vision of the anointed": https://t.co/jgABn7IWZA
As Alabama’s state meteorologist testified to congress,
“’Science’ is not a set of facts but a process or method that sets out a way for us to discover information and which attempts to determine the level of confidence we might have in that information.”
What is missing in our scientific knowledge vis-à-vis plastics is harm. Political action short circuits most or all gathering of information, employing the precautionary principle and simply assuming harms. This politicization of science has lead many in our state and country to lose confidence in science. It seems that politics treats science as a religion to believed, when science is a culture of questioning all belief. Even where something has proved itself to be “true,” science looks for gaps in the thing.
Liberalism’s great contribution to civilization is the way it handles conflict….The liberal innovation was to set up society so as to mimic the greatest liberal system of them all, the evolution of life. Like evolutionary ecologies, liberal systems are centerless and self–regulating and allow no higher appeal than that of each to each in an open-ended, competitive public process (a game). Thus, a market game is an open-ended, decentralized process for allocating resources and legitimizing possession, a democracy game is an open-ended, decentralized process for legitimizing the use of force, and a science game is an open-ended, decentralized process for legitimizing belief. Much as creatures compete for food, so entrepreneurs compete for business, candidates for votes, and hypotheses for supporters. In biological evolution, no outcome is fixed or final—nor is it in capitalism, democracy, science. There is always another trade, another election, another hypothesis. In biological evolution, no species, however clever or complex, is spared the rigors of competition—nor are the participants in capitalism, democracy, science. No matter who you are, you must conduct your business in the currency of dollars, votes, or criticism—no special fiat, no personal authority.
Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (emphasis mine)
There are debates to be had in the public square about the costs (downsides) and benefits of plastics.
High-density polyethylene is a miracle of materials science. Despite weighing less than 5 grams, one bag can hold 17 pounds, well over 1,000 times its own weight. At about a penny apiece, the bags are cheap enough for stores to give away and sturdy enough to carry home two gallons of milk in the evening and still be up to the task of scooping Cujo’s poop the next morning.
Yet almost as soon as grocers started offering their customers the choice of “paper or plastic?” these modern marvels became a whipping boy for environmentalists, politicians, and other well-intentioned, ill-informed busybodies.
Plastic Bags Are Good for You What prohibitionists get wrong about one of modernity’s greatest inventions Katherine Mangu-Ward from the October 2015 issue of Reason magazine
Yet much research indicates that politicians and regulators are exceptionally bad at these types of analyses. In this case, rather than start with a null hypothesis that plastics are beneficial, they go by gut that plastic is a net harm and use state force to achieve their required result.
Science comes in various shades of grey, with the hues shifting as new information comes to light. Risks, and there always are some, have to be evaluated in relation to benefits.
Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University’s Office for Science & Society, “The Right Chemistry: Ban plastic bags? It’s not so simple” | Montreal Gazette
In my humble opinion, California’s actions are premature. They assume harm and that their “doing something” will help lessen what they see as a crisis. Mandates and regulations ought to be the port of last resort, with our present government, the default is to make it the first.
“Every government law, or regulation is a demand that someone do what he doesn’t want to do, refrain from doing what he does want to do, or pay for something he doesn’t want to pay for, and those demands are backed up by police with guns.”
Harry Browne
What might government do instead of using a stick? It might try incentivizing innovation. How about an X prize to the person(?) who can develop a market for cost effective recycling? Or who can return plastic to its component parts? If plastics are worth the panic, then focusing on single use plastic is focusing on less than one percent of the problem and bigger and better ideas are needed.
Micro- and nanoplastics, found in the plaque within our arteries, are born from the ubiquitous presence of plastics in our environment. They are raising eyebrows and heart rates among scientists and physicians, courtesy of a groundbreaking study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
This is how Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA at the American Council of Science and Health begins a very balanced view of the state of knowledge of what we know and what we don’t know plastics being found in our arteries. It is well worth your time to read the article.
There can be little doubt that our air, food, and water are contaminated with MNPs [micro and nanoplastics] and can be inhaled or ingested. There have been many studies of these particulates in “model organisms,” such as rodents and fish. MNPs might cause harm….But the key word is might; we simply do not know, as current researchers point out.
Of course, findings such as this has not stopped politicians and environmentalists from jumping to conclusions on how to address and fix what they are sure needs to be addressed and fixed by fiat and force.
Have no fear that California is anxious to be the first to leverage any possible moral panic into full blown regulations. California Senate Bill No. 1422 (2018) requires the State Water Board to:
(1) adopt a standard methodology to be used in the testing of drinking water for microplastics; (2) adopt requirements for four (4) years of testing and reporting of microplastics in drinking water, including public disclosure of those results; (3) consider issuing a notification level or other guidance to aid consumer interpretation of results; and (4) accredit qualified California laboratories to analyze microplastics.
You might think that California lawmakers are just being proactive…that they want to be on the forefront if MNPs (micro and nanoplastics) are indeed hazardous…that they are applying the precautionary principle to plastic pollution. You might think that.
Let’s assume that MNPs accumulate in our arteries, and that they do the same in other species. Let’s assume that plastics are a problem in the oceans, lakes, and streams, and that various forms of plastics kill non-target species by various means. These are not great leaps of imagination to assume that plastics can cause problems.
That said. Are plastics a net positive or a net negative?
I will be submitting a letter to California’s State Water Resources Control Board, since the “workshop” went way beyond time and it began to look like I would not get to speak until midnight, if at all.
My name is Norm Benson. I am a retired Cal-Fire forester, and until our water plant was purchased by a larger private company, I was the water master for the Crescent Bay Improvement Company’s water plant which served 24 connections. I am also a libertarian who prefers recommendations to regulations.
There is an adage: if something cannot go on forever it will stop.[1] The state legislature, not content with allowing the problem to be addressed by people and their water providers and wait for the increased storage passed by voters in 2014,[2] over time, yelled “We have to do something about our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen (and gentlewomen)! CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!” So, in 2018, they passed Assembly Bill (AB) 1668 and Senate Bill (SB) 606 which directed the California State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board or Board) to adopt standards for urban retail water suppliers (suppliers) for the efficient use of water and performance measures for commercial, industrial, and institutional (CII) water use.
WE’VE GOT TO PROTECT OUR PHONY-BALONEY JOBS!
Thus it is that we have, as a result of a five year effort by the Water Board, a draft regulation to Force Conservation to be a Way of Life.
Every regulation is a demand that someone do what he doesn’t want to do, refrain from doing what he does want to do, or pay for something he doesn’t want to pay for, and those demands are backed up by agents with guns.[3] The California State Water Board’s proposed regulation for “Making Conservation a California Way of Life” is no different. Chairman’s Joaquin Esquivel’s protestations notwithstanding, the velvet glove still covers the state’s iron fist.
Mandates are not magic bullets. Mandates get enforced with real bullets.
At its core, government is force. If California’s policymakers want to regulate society toward their vision of perfection, they are going to need ramp up government force. During my career with Cal-Fire, I enforced the state’s forest and fire laws. I can tell you firsthand, every enforcement action is a confrontation. And confrontations do not always end well. The more rules on the books, the more enforcement agents will interact with people who don’t share the vision of the regulator, and who resent constant harassment. This is especially true for a regulation that will cost twice the sum of its benefit.[4]
This proposed regulation is a very very very bad idea indeed. This regulation hits the trifecta for bad.
It will make water providers to Californians and visitors do something they do not want to do: more red tape, reporting to a regulatory agency, and acting as a surrogate enforcer for the state to comply with this regulation.
It will make Californians and visitors refrain from doing something they want to do, like laundry or bathing.
Both water users and water providers will be paying in money, time, and frustration to meet a standard that applies to only 10% of California’s water use. The remaining 90% goes to agriculture and fish.
Both my wife and I have allowed our water operator’s license lapse, since our water company has been bought by a larger private water company. I was the only paid employee, and I was part-time employee paid less than a fast-food worker. If our company were not purchased, and this regulation were to go into effect, we and our water company would give up and turn the task of providing water over to the state.
Some rules are obviously necessary. Everyone agreeing to drive on the right side of the road, for instance, is a sensible check on chaos of complete liberty to drive on the left, the right, or down the middle. The goal of government therefore is to provide just enough rules to allow the maximum amount of liberty with the minimum of chaos. Yet we now have too many rules that get frequently changed. This will, as James Madison wrote, “poison the blessings of liberty itself.[5]”
The presentations, given at the October 4, 2023 workshop, show that conservation takes lots of time, money, and communication. They are telling you that the point of diminishing returns has been hit. The low hanging fruit has been picked. The presentations also show that to meet the proposed regulations will require extensive and expensive work. Technical work that is expensive and hard to come by. It will undoubtedly hit disadvantaged communities hardest. For those who point to Los Angeles or other large metropolitan areas, let me say that finding licensed engineers to take one technical specialty to meet this board’s regulation is not just difficult, it is impossible where I live.
I will end by quoting from a 2012-piece Senator George McGovern wrote in the Wall Street Journal, he notes that ultimately consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape.
“[C]onsumers do have a choice when faced with higher prices. You may have to stay in a hotel while on vacation, but you can stay fewer days. You can eat in restaurants fewer times per month or forgo a number of services from car washes to shoeshines. Every such decision eventually results in job losses for someone. And often these are the people without the skills to help themselves — the people I’ve spent a lifetime trying to help….
“The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don’t have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often.”
I believe the bar has been set much too high. I hope the Water Board will reconsider this regulation which will disrupt the lives of visitors and the citizens of California while providing very little to zero benefit to them.
[2] In November 2014, California voters passed Proposition 1, the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act, which authorized $7.5 billion in general obligation bonds to fund ecosystems and watershed protection and restoration, water supply infrastructure projects, including surface and groundwater storage, and drinking water protection.
Proposition 1 included $2.7 billion for investments in water storage projects, which is being administered by the California Water Commission through the Water Storage Investment Program (WSIP). The WSIP funds projects that provide public benefits, such as ecosystem improvement, flood control, and recreation.
As of October 2023, the WSIP has committed funding to eight projects that will collectively boost California’s water storage capacity by 2.77 million acre-feet. These projects are currently in various stages of development, and some are expected to be completed within the next few years.
[5] “The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?” – excerpt from James Madison, Federalist Paper #62, 1788
Dear members of the California Water Resources Control Board,
Everything I ever needed to know about rules, I learned in kindergarten: don’t hurt other people and don’t take stuff that doesn’t belong to you. Based on these simple principles, I want to convince you that your proposed conservation law, which will be another thorn in the regulatory thicket, is a bad idea. It addresses a 5 percent drop of California’s water usage and ignores the other 95 percent. It will neither make a significant dent in overall water consumption, nor cause Californians to respect the rule of law.
In 1788, James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #62, “The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is to-day can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?”
Some rules are obviously necessary. Everyone agreeing to drive on the right side of the road, for instance, is a sensible check on chaos of complete liberty to drive on the left, the right, or down the middle. The goal of government therefore is to provide just enough rules to allow the maximum amount of liberty with the minimum of chaos. Yet, too many rules that get frequently changed, “poisons the blessings of liberty itself.”
Mandates are not magic bullets. Mandates are enforced with real bullets.
At its core, government is force. It presumes its use of force is for the welfare of the citizens it serves. Yet, if California’s policymakers want to regulate society toward their vision of perfection, they are going to need enforcers. And the more regulatory requirements placed on the populace the more it needs enforcers to make sure these laws are met. And every enforcement action is a confrontation. And confrontations do not always end well. The more rules, the more enforcement agents will interact with people who don’t share that vision, and who resent the constant enforcement attempts.
As an example of a well-intentioned government regulation turning deadly consider this: The state of New York had a significant sin tax on cigarette packs as a health measure to lower smoking. The city of New York levied an additional tax, making an unpopular law even more so. It was so unpopular that more than half of cigarettes sold in New York were smuggled from neighboring states. Flagrantly disobeying a law that was, obviously, for the people’s own good, upset New York city officials. They sent out officers to send a message that this behavior would not be tolerated. Officers were assigned to track down shipments of smuggled cigarettes and often small-time street vendors, many of whom live on the edge of poverty. Small time vendors serving poor customers: these are people who need to be creative to make it through a day.[1] On July 17, 2014, a shop owner reported that a black man known for selling single cigarettes was near his store. Police then went to investigate. They stopped the man on a sidewalk on Staten Island and he told them, “Please just leave me alone.” This response was not the one Officer Daniel Pantaleo wanted to hear and he put Eric Garner into an illegal chokehold and murdered him for a health code violation.
I will end by quoting from a 2012 piece Senator George McGovern wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “’Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape.’ It is a simple concern that is nonetheless often ignored by legislators…..
“[C]onsumers do have a choice when faced with higher prices. You may have to stay in a hotel while on vacation, but you can stay fewer days. You can eat in restaurants fewer times per month or forgo a number of services from car washes to shoeshines. Every such decision eventually results in job losses for someone. And often these are the people without the skills to help themselves — the people I’ve spent a lifetime trying to help….
“The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don’t have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often.”
I am raising this question because I believe the Water Board does not consider it often enough. I hope the Water Board will reconsider this regulation which will disrupt the lives of the citizens of California while providing very little to zero benefit to them. If the Water Board passes this mandate, it will hurt other people by poisoning their liberty and taking their stuff.
[1] “US adults with low socioeconomic status generally have high prevalence of cigarette smoking in relationship to various sociodemographic characteristics, irrespective of sex.” Garrett BE, Martell BN, Caraballo RS, King BA. Socioeconomic Differences in Cigarette Smoking Among Sociodemographic Groups. Prev Chronic Dis 2019;16:180553. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd16.180553external icon
In a Los Angeles Times article in early September came this non-sequitur of a sentence, “The proposed regulation, dubbed “Making Conservation a California Way of Life,” would establish tailored goals for each urban retail water supplier in the state, providing them with more flexibility to account for local conditions, according to the State Water Resources Control Board.”
Regulations remove choice; they do not provide flexibility. Every regulation is a demand for someone to do something the person does not want to do, a demand not do the thing the person does want to do, or a demand to pay for something the person does not want to pay for, and each demand is backed up by agents with guns.
Every regulation is a demand for someone to do something the person does not want to do, a demand not do the thing the person does want to do, or a demand to pay for something the person does not want to pay for, and each demand is backed up by agents with guns.
According to the State Water Resource’s Control Board, “Making Conservation a California Way of Life is a new regulatory framework proposed by State Water Board staff that establishes individualized efficiency goals for each Urban Retail Water Supplier. These goals are based on the unique characteristics of the supplier’s service area and give suppliers the flexibility to implement locally appropriate solutions. Once implemented, these goals are expected to reduce urban water use by more than 400-thousand-acre feet by 2030, helping California adapt to the water supply impacts brought on by climate change.” If you read on further, they tell you “Urban Retail Water Suppliers are publicly and privately run agencies that deliver water to 95% of Californians.” So basically, everyone who pays a water bill will be affected.
“Once implemented, these goals are expected to reduce urban water use by more than 400-thousand-acre feet by 2030.”*
While the “more than 400-thousand-acre feet1” sounds impressive, it is merely a drop in the river. California’s urban water usage, according to the Public Policy Institute of California “On average, communities use 10%, agriculture uses 40% of water statewide, and the environment uses 50%.”2 That’s right, 90% goes to agriculture or the ocean, in essence. “The proportions vary depending on the region and whether the year is wet or dry.” Community (or “Urban Retail Water Supplier” in Water Board speak) water use is 7.44-8.24 million-acre feet per year, this is between 8 and 12 percent of water usage in the state.
If urban use is 7.44-8.24 million-acre feet per year and we only need to cut use by 400-thousand-acre feet,what’s the big deal? The big deal is we have hit the point of diminishing returns. The easy to do things have been done. In fact, now more efficiency in one realm means less efficiency or more waste in another.
And they keep ratcheting down the cuts. As the LA Times article observes, “In 2035, 18% of urban water users would live in areas required to reduce by 30% or more. By that time, suppliers serving more than half of urban water users would need to cut back by at least 10%. Suppliers could face fines of up to $1,000 a day for failing to meet targets, or as much as $10,000 a day during drought emergencies, according to the board.”
If you wish to tell the Water Board what you think of this idea, you can email them at commentletters@waterboards.ca.gov. Put “Comment Letter—Proposed Making Conservation a California Way of Life Regulation” in the subject line to facilitate timely identification and review of the comment.
One acre foot is one foot of water that would cover one acre. It is 325,851.4 US gallons ↩︎
“Our relations to the earth are more than economic; they are moral. We are custodians of the bountiful land, its waters, its plant and animal life, its hidden riches, and perhaps most important of all, its soils….” – Walter Clay Lowdermilk (1888-1974)
Nullius in Verba 