California isn’t the only state facing acute water scarcity.

As years of record drought have parched its land and crops, California’s efforts to get help from the federal government have been joined by Arizona, its nearly-as-thirsty neighbor to the east. The lobbying sandstorm the two have kicked up reflects their common interest in the Colorado River, a major source of water for the Western states and a resource that has been shrinking due to 15 years of drought conditions.

“It’s basically a crisis that has been in the making for quite some time,” Gary Libecap, a professor of corporate environmental management at the University of California Santa Barbara, told Opensecrets blog. “The flow is down, there’s just no question the problem is that demand has not responded commensurately.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent executive order calling for local water agencies and residents to cut water use will make a difference — but applies to users who account for just 20 percent of the state’s total water usage. Only a year’s worth of stored water is available if the dry spell continues and coming years bring similar misfortune.

“We are standing on dry grass, and we should be standing on five feet of snow,” Brown said when he announced the new restrictions. “We are in an historic drought.”

The state’s massive agricultural sector accounts for the other 80 percent of water usage there, and was spared Brown’s new mandatory cutbacks — even though producers have been able to boost profits, despite record water shortages, while actually expanding acreage devoted to some of their thirstier crops, like pistachios and almonds. Farms in Southern California get much of their water from the Colorado (in Northern California a watershed supplies the water, as Opensecrets.org and Southern California Public Radio noted last year), as do many western states, including Arizona.

A range of interests in both states — including at least one of the biggest water users in California, Roll Global, the parent company of Paramount Farms, a producer of almonds, pistachios, and Pom juice — have been lobbying on federal legislation that would try and fix the Colorado River problem and drought overall. Many of those lobbying interests spend several hundred thousand dollars each year to influence the federal government.

The long list of parties that lobbied the Emergency Drought Relief Act on the Senate side in 2014, where it was introduced by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein — a big recipient of agriculture industry dollars — included local governments like the City of Tucson, which had a total lobbying bill of $280,000 last year, and Sacramento County, which spent $140,000 and listed almost exclusively bills dealing with water supply on its reports. The legislation also got the attention of the Association of California Water Agencies, which spent more than $400,000 last year, almost all of it in connection with drought relief; utilities companies like the Salt River Project in Arizona, which paid out nearly $700,000 to lobby on water supply and other issues, and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District Project, whose lobbying — to the tune of $290,000 last year — focused almost exclusively on the drought crisis; and dairy companies like Land O’Lakes, for which the Western water crisis was a priority among the issues on which it spent $1.3 million lobbying. More nationally-known conservation groups like American Rivers Inc. and Defenders of Wildlife also weighed in.

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Many fewer companies lobbied similar legislation on the House side, and there, nearly all lobbying came from California — other than Berkshire Hathaway, which is Nebraska-based conglomerate with financial interests in both states.

“As we move forward in time with a potential continuation of the drought or even longer term impacts of climate change the average annual flows in the Colorado are going to be going down,” said David Modeer, general manager of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District Project. “As a result, we need to find ways in which we can build the sustainability of the flows in the Colorado.”

That would mean building up reservoirs, augmenting the water supply, or negotiating agreements between municipal water source providers like CAP and agricultural entities — many of which have higher priority water claims compared to municipalities. All of that costs money. The Central Arizona Project draws water from the Colorado near Lake Havasu in northern Arizona, and brings it down via canals to Phoenix and Tucson in the southeast of the state — a system that supplies 60 to 70 percent of the water used by Arizona cities, according to Modeer.

The bill passed unanimously in the Senate last year, but died in the House, where it was introduced by another California Democrat, Rep. Jim Costa. The agriculture industry, prominent in his district, is his top donor.

A spokesperson for Feinstein said she plans on re-introducing a similar bill this session.

Whatever the case, the water problem isn’t small fry. And efforts to fix it — and save a region that supplies a major share of the nation’s crops — are likely going to bring in a lot of dough. The real fix, though, is free. It even falls from the sky.



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