Water, again

Santa Rosa Mountains - part of the San Andreas fault runs here. Barrows' office overlooks this range.

Okay, it might seem as though I'm obsessed with the topic of water. But southern California considers itself the center of the Universe for so very many reasons, and water for the masses is just part of the deal out here. As Mark Twain said, 'Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.' Anyone from the western and southwestern states can tell you that.

I've been writing about water on and off for the past two years, and have been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Cameron Barrows, who is head of the Conservation Biology department at University of California-Palm Desert. He's also a teacher and lecturer and researcher and writer of articles.

Cameron Barrows’ office at UCR-Palm Desert looks across toward the shadow hills, really the San Andreas fault. In the foreground is the unfinished landscape of the UCR PD campus, its development all but halted because of California state funding issues. In the midground, Interstate 10 which runs all the way to Los Angeles, and finally ends in Santa Monica at the Pacific Ocean. Directly across the 10 is a yellow eyesore, square with a red tiled roof, that is called The Classic Club, so named because it was to be the new home of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic golf tournament. Pros played the course one, maybe two years and hated it. Too windy. Interstate 10 goes straight over the San Gorgonio pass, through which some of the strongest and most consistent winds in the nation blow – the pass is lined with wind farms, chargers in perfect formation, arms swinging.

On the other side of the ugly resort and golf course is acreage that looks desolate, empty. The expanse stretches all the way to the fault, up the mountains, beyond. It’s one of last dune ecosystems in the Coachella Valley, set aside in the 1980s when the debate over That-Damn-Lizard started and ended with a preserve being formed. That damn lizard is the fringe-toed lizard, an endangered species. In fact, you can hardly kick a rock in California without hitting an endangered species. Funny – that hasn’t kept developers at bay. But developers had to give in on the fringe toed lizard preserve, because environmental groups had protested enough to halt any further development of the valley. Even Lowell Weeks, at that time head of the Coachella Valley Water District had to concede, and this is the man who, legend has it, said, “There’s only one person more powerful in the Coachella Valley than I and that’s God, and that’s only advisory.” Oh, there’s never a shortage of hubris in this world.

At any rate, I spoke with Cameron Barrows the other day about the state of water in the valley. We had spoken a couple years ago, as well, when I first started writing an article that will now be published in the Los Angeles journal Slake. Cameron is a big bear of a guy, bearded, sandy-haired, spectacled. He exudes the aura of being grounded, comfortable in his skin. He doesn’t speak loud, so when he’s lecturing you have to listen up. In his office there is a photograph of him and his wife, Katie, when they look like they’re about 16. Both are adorable. I met Cameron when I started in the creative writing Masters program at UCR-Palm Desert. He offered the staff a tour of the dunes; later, he offered a tour of the palm oases on the fault. Later still, there was a tour of the Boyd Deep Canyon Preserve, where only researchers get to hang out. Cameron was the in, and I wasn’t able to go. Don’t know if I ever will get to go, now, since the staff at the campus has been decreased and the traditional graduate program has been converted to a low-residency model, so there’s a lower demand for things like that. But in his role as head of the conservation biology department at UCR-Palm Desert, he’s the guy to do it.

Anyway, I found it ironic – or fitting – or something – that his office overlooks the habitat that he researches. The building sits in the Sonoran Desert, and from his window he can see the Santa Rosa mountains, home to parts of the San Andreas fault system and the San Jacinto Mountains, really part of the Baja California range.  He points in various directions and says, “those mountains are essentially northern Baja California, and those mountains out there are essentially southern Sierra Nevada; that’s the Mojave Desert; this is the Sonoran Desert; that right over there is the Coast – and they all come together in one place which is the Coachella Valley. So you have this amazing biodiversity compared to other desert areas. Sand dunes amplify that because of their nature of being sort of islands, and like islands everywhere, they tend to have a lot of unique species associated with them. So you have that. But because we are at the edge of the Sonoran Desert and the Mojave Desert, we are ending up with these really dramatic issues associated with climate change and we’re dealing with water issues associated with what people are doing for the most part, but also with what could be happening with regard to climate change – the more erratic water supply that we should expect in the future.”

There you have it. That’s the story of California. All these different ecosystems butting up against each other, desert floors giving way to 10,000 foot mountains an elevation change that accommodates up to five different systems from arid desert to arctic alpine, everything from lizards and tortoises to big horn sheep. And lots and lots and lots of fucking golf courses. And communities that thrive because of a resort economy and the influx of snowbirds from November through April.

It’s an odd place, worthy of a love-hate relationship, I think.