The Gen Z Water Dealmaker: Part 2

Antonia Cereijido  00:00

[music in] I'm Antonia Cereijido. You're listening to Imperfect Paradise from LAist Studios, the show about hidden worlds and messy realities. Last time on Imperfect Paradise, The Gen Z Water Dealmaker, we took you inside the drama of a high stakes climate change negotiation on the Colorado River.

Chuck Collum  00:19

It's painful to live within the means of the river. That's the future.

Tom Buschatzke  00:25

If there's no water, there's no water for everybody.

John Entsminger  00:27

A messy compromise that will be judged harshly by history.

Antonia Cereijido  00:33

And we learned that the negotiations are coming down to a disagreement between two groups led respectively by Colorado and California.

Becky Mitchell  00:41

The one person that you cannot negotiate with is Mother Nature. She will win every time.

JB Hamby  00:49

That is the wrong approach.

Antonia Cereijido  00:57

In this episode, how California's JB Hamby rose to become the youngest lead negotiator ever on the Colorado River during the most consequential negotiations to date.

John Hawk  01:08

So there's a 22 year old youngster talkin' about water law. I mean, how unusual is that?

Antonia Cereijido  01:15

And how the place where JB grew up, a desert farming area that uses more water than anywhere else on the river, shaped him as a negotiator.

JB Hamby  01:24

If there is no water, there is no Imperial Valley. And if we want to be able to protect our community, we have to protect the river.

Antonia Cereijido  01:30

That's coming up on part two of Imperfect Paradise, The Gen Z Water Dealmaker. Correspondent Emily Guerin takes it from here. [music out]

Emily Guerin  01:44

As a negotiator on the Colorado River, you spend a lot of time in hotels, drinking hotel lobby coffee out of paper cups and sitting in drab conference rooms. One of JB Hamby's first meetings as lead negotiator for California was in an airport hotel in Colorado.

JB Hamby  02:00

Aurora, Colorado, near Denver, near the airport at the Woolley Hotel.

Emily Guerin  02:05

It was January 2023. JB had just been elected to the position of lead negotiator a few weeks earlier by his peers in the water world of Southern California. They were impressed by his knowledge of Colorado River history and law and unbothered by his age. He'd just gotten back from a meeting with the other lead negotiators in Las Vegas, and he thought everyone was getting along pretty well.

JB Hamby  02:26

And the idea of this meeting was to, as at least we thought in California, was to continue those discussions that we had been having in Las Vegas and come up with some sort of consensus or compromise. Turns out [music in] that was not what the other states had in mind.

Emily Guerin  02:27

In January 2023, things were getting worse on the Colorado River. Lake Mead and the bathtub ring were back in national news.

Various Newscasters  02:49

[audio clips] "It's a crisis on the Colorado." "Rapid climate change and an unprecedented mega drought have plummeted water levels at the two lakes that fuel the river to the lowest level in decades." "The nation's largest reservoirs are rapidly retreating. Iconic dams could stop producing power." "That is what's known as dead pool, where the water will no longer pass through the dam." [music out]

Emily Guerin  03:13

The previous summer, the federal government had warned the seven states along the river that they'd need to slash their use dramatically, and pretty much immediately to keep the reservoirs from hitting dead pool. That's what the negotiators were at the Woolley Hotel to talk about.

JB Hamby  03:28

Apparently, they had been there meeting like the day before, in other rooms, and there was a lot happening that California was not a party to, not aware of, not invited to participate in.

Emily Guerin  03:38

Negotiators from the other six states presented JB with a proposal that would force California to make drastic cuts to its water use. More than any other state.

JB Hamby  03:48

So this was all a lot to take in rather quickly.

Emily Guerin  03:52

Did it feel like, like an ambush?

JB Hamby  03:54

Yeah and it was, frankly.

Emily Guerin  03:59

[music in] Why didn't you know about it?

JB Hamby  04:01

The state of the basins' relationships were frayed and completely broken at that point. And then adding, you know, fuel to the fire was the fact that the river was going to potentially collapse. It was easier to turn on each other than to turn to make these difficult things happen.

Emily Guerin  04:19

And California is like the obvious enemy.

JB Hamby  04:22

California's big. Its rights are bigger than anyone else, and its rights are also more protected than anybody else. And California is an easy pariah for people, you know, [EG: Yeah.] to make.

Emily Guerin  04:35

Ultimately, JB rejected that deal. But he knew that to make any progress, he'd have to show that California was willing to do its part to keep the river from collapsing. Specifically, the people in California that use the most water: farmers in the Imperial Valley. They use 70% of the state's allotment. But I didn't understand how difficult that would be and how deeply JB's own views of water have been shaped by growing up there, until I visited for myself. That's coming up on Imperfect Paradise after a break. [music out] [break]

Emily Guerin  05:16

You're listening to Imperfect Paradise, The Gen Z Water Dealmaker. I'm Emily Guerin.

Emily Guerin  05:22

When I met up with JB in the Imperial Valley this winter, he was wearing jeans, a button down and a grey fleece vest. He looked sharp and alert, even though he'd been up late working.

Emily Guerin  05:32

[driving ambi] Yeah. Would you like a granola bar? [JBH: I'm alright. Thank you.] Okay.

Emily Guerin  05:38

The plan was to do the "IV loop," as JB called it. We'd drive around for hours hitting the major water landmarks of the Imperial Valley, and then the personal ones from his life. On the day of our drive, something very unusual was happening.

Emily Guerin  05:52

Oh! Tell me about the rain. Like when it rains here, is that good? Or is it bad?

JB Hamby  05:59

So we're getting a Pineapple Express hitting... [duck under]

Emily Guerin  06:02

JB started doing this thing that I didn't yet realize was a pattern. Instead of answering my question directly, he'd give me a technical explanation of the topic. Kinda like talking to a college professor.

JB Hamby  06:13

...We're getting dribs and drabs here and there for like one day.

Emily Guerin  06:18

But how do people here feel about rain?

JB Hamby  06:19

So farmers would rather we not have any rain. It's disruptive to their operations. They get their rain from a canal and they would prefer it not to come from the sky.

Emily Guerin  06:30

[music in] The Imperial Valley sits in a low flat desert that runs north from the California-Mexico border to a giant salt lake called the Salton Sea. Tall, dry mountains sit on either side of the valley. Beyond them to the west lies San Diego. To the east, Arizona. Winters here are perfect and summers are hell.

JB Hamby  06:51

If you've ever opened the door to an oven and sort of stuck your head in there and felt the, the rush of hot air blowing out, that's what it is.

Emily Guerin  07:02

But if you just add water, the Imperial Valley becomes one of the most productive farming regions in the country. The All American Canal- yes, that's actually its name- brings in 100% of the valley's water from the Colorado River about 60 miles away. From there the water eventually flows into smaller canals with tidy horticultural names.

JB Hamby  07:23

So you have the Nectarine, the Nutmeg, Nettle, Narcissus, Marigold, Mayflower, Malva, Munion, Myrtle, Mullein, Maple... [duck under]

Emily Guerin  07:32

Water leaves these canals and floods the fields which are leveled perfectly flat with lasers, so the water stinks into the dirt evenly. [music out] We pass the towns of Imperial and Calipatria. The valley is full of these jingoistic names. They're little monuments to the mindset of the people who transformed this place from what they considered a wasteland into a garden.

JB Hamby  07:54

[driving ambi] So this is my grandparents' house here on the right hand side. So they have a little, small modest home that they built. So there's 80 acres of sugar beets there.

Emily Guerin  08:07

Although JB's not a farmer, growing up around agriculture has shaped the way he thinks- about water, about land, about sacrifice and risk. JB's great grandfather arrived in the Imperial Valley during the Great Depression, an economic refugee from West Texas. He dug ditches and then got into beekeeping, primarily for pollinating crops, not making honey. JB's grandfather did bees too, and he dabbled in vegetables.

JB Hamby  08:34

The roads are named after individual families who lived or farmed in these individual areas.

Emily Guerin  08:41

Do you guys have a road?

JB Hamby  08:42

No, we don't. Haven't hit the big leagues to have a road.

Emily Guerin  08:47

[music in] Imperial County is a wildly unequal place. It's by far the poorest county in Southern California, and wealth here is concentrated in the hands of two dozen or so mostly white farming families. And when I say farming families, I'm really talking about agribusiness- companies that make millions of dollars each year, cultivate tens of thousands of acres and employ thousands of people, mostly migrant workers from Mexico who get paid less than $20 an hour. [music out] JB's family is not one of those families.

JB Hamby  09:21

Farming is really gambling at a very large scale. You're playing markets and you're playing the weather Russian roulette game. Sometimes you have just years and years and years of struggle and you're just losing money. And then you just have just a, just banner year that saves you for like a whole decade.

Emily Guerin  09:41

JB says his father Mark's farming business began to struggle in the late 1990s. It never really recovered.

JB Hamby  09:47

My dad did all kinds of produce. And then NAFTA basically just destroyed a lot of that stuff. Like asparagus for my parents wedding. It was a very simple affair. They dressed it all up with asparagus ferns because my dad was growing asparagus at the time. And since then, there's like zero asparagus grown in Imperial Valley anymore. It's all done in Mexico.

Emily Guerin  10:10

JB and his younger brother Loren are the first generation of Hamby's not to work in agriculture.

JB Hamby  10:16

As my dad's professor at school said, There's three ways to make money in farming. You can inherit it, you can marry it, or you can do both. And, um, inheritance wasn't in the cards for me, nor marrying into it.

Emily Guerin  10:31

[music in] People who work in agriculture tolerate uncertainty to an extent I've always found fascinating. I once did a whole story about the psychology of it when I lived in North Dakota. In North Dakota, farmers grow crops with rain, and they live in fear of droughts and late frosts. In the Imperial Valley, it almost never rains, and it definitely never snows. Water here is controlled and predictable, and farmers want it to stay that way, especially given all the factors they can't control, like commodity prices, free trade deals, and now, climate change. JB's job as lead negotiator is twofold. He has to reach a deal on behalf of California with the six other Colorado River states to keep the river from collapsing, but he also has to make sure California cities and farms have enough water to continue to exist. [music out]

Emily Guerin  11:29

When you were little, how much time did you spend doing like farming related things? And what were those things?

JB Hamby  11:36

I got into 4-H, I think in seventh grade or so. It's- Think of Boy Scouts, but for agriculture.

Emily Guerin  11:45

It was the day after our road trip, and we were sitting in JB's office at the Imperial Irrigation District. He's got a standing desk, lots of old photos of dams and a hundred year old map he found in an attic. His full name is on the door- John Brooks Hamby. He started going by JB when he got into politics, because he thought it sounded more grown up than Brooks. I could tell he'd selected his anecdotes carefully, mindful of what he thought they said about him. This 4-H story was one of them.

JB Hamby  12:14

I did a lamb one year. I usually did though, chickens all the way through.

Emily Guerin  12:19

JB raised chickens. [music in] When he talked about the kids who raised pigs, or sheep, or heifers, he seemed kind of disdainful. He told me that all a kid had to do to win the pig competition at the annual 4-H livestock fair was to make it look pretty, maybe whack it with a cane to get it to walk around in a circle. You didn't even have to raise the pig yourself. You could go out and buy a nice looking one. But to have a winning chicken, you had to become kind of an encyclopedia. [music out]

Trina Hamby  12:48

One of the interesting things about showing chickens is that you have to know a lot of the breeds.

Emily Guerin  12:53

This is JB's mom, Trina Hamby, who I'd spoken with earlier that day. She also brought up the chicken story, unprompted.

Trina Hamby  13:00

It's more of knowing the educational part of it. And showing them, I always thought it was a little bit secondary. So you can have a really nice bird, but if the judge comes up and asks you, Well, what's this breed? And what's unique about that breed? Well, you have to know it. So there's a big book called, he'll remember, Standards of Perfection. So he got that for Christmas in ninth grade. [laughs]

JB Hamby  13:26

So there's this book called the "American Standard of Perfection." [EG: Mm hm.] And so it's a book that has all the little facts about every chicken breed and variety that there is, and so you get quizzed on that. You get quizzed on the anatomy of a chicken.

Emily Guerin  13:39

And what animal, did your brother do 4-H?

JB Hamby  13:41

He did pigs. Yeah.

Emily Guerin  13:43

[music in] In high school, JB and his friends took every AP class possible and asked their school to add more. He ran cross country because you were only competing with yourself. He did mock trial and made it to state three years in a row. He graduated in the top four of his class and was one of the speakers at his graduation.

Emily Guerin  14:03

What's the story of the speech?

JB Hamby  14:05

I think I had some verses in there referencing [EG: Like Bible verses?] God and Jesus. Yes.

Emily Guerin  14:12

JB grew up going to a Presbyterian church. It had a stained glass window depicting a canal running through a field and the words, "Lord of the Harvest." He told me the emphasis was on order, on doing what's right, and on spending time studying the text of the Bible for guidance. He wanted to talk about that in his graduation speech, but his school said no. [music out] He did it anyway.

JB Hamby  14:35

[video audio clip] In coming before you today, I presented three drafts of my speech. All of them denied on the account of my desire to share my personal thoughts and inspiration to you, my Christian faith.

Emily Guerin  14:47

There's a video of the speech on YouTube, recorded by someone in the crowd. JB's on an outdoor stage, standing at a lectern in his cap and gown, several American flags billowing behind him.

JB Hamby  14:58

[video audio clip continues] Be strong and stand for your convictions and stand for what is right, what is ethical, what is moral and godly, no matter what is the cost to you. Thank you and may the God of the Bible bless you, each and every one of you.

Emily Guerin  15:12

[music in] JB never actually brought up his faith during the many hours we spent together, and he seemed a little uncomfortable whenever I did. But I think this story about his speech helps me understand something else about him. That even as a teenager, he had a strong internal sense of right and wrong. And he wasn't seeking approval or validation. As one of his college friends told me, JB does his own thing, and he has found confidence in that. That fall, 2014, JB headed off to Stanford. His mom, Trina, told me the Hambys made too much for a scholarship and too little to actually be able to afford the tuition. But that wasn't going to stop them.

Trina Hamby  15:56

My husband worked terribly hard for that.

Emily Guerin  15:59

Like, what did he have to do?

Trina Hamby  16:00

He found funding, you know, go out 'n' get some more land, figure out how to do it. Hopefully the crop comes in good.

Emily Guerin  16:09

JB's dad planted onions for seed, to put him through college, a precarious crop that takes a year and a half to be ready to harvest.

Trina Hamby  16:17

Makes for some sleepless nights.

Emily Guerin  16:19

So it was really important to him, to your husband?

Trina Hamby  16:21

Yes. Yes. [music out]

Emily Guerin  16:26

During JB's second year at Stanford, a group of anonymous student journalists discovered a loophole in federal law that would allow current students to be able to look at their admissions files. JB was curious.

JB Hamby  16:37

They would take you into this room of cubicles in this portable trailer that they had brought in. And then, so you sit there and there's an attorney, and they sit down with you, they hand you your file, and they say you can take notes with pencil, and you cannot take pictures, and you have 30 minutes tops.

Emily Guerin  16:56

So JB began reading his application.

JB Hamby  16:58

Little comments and statements here and there. One was like, Yikes to his math score on SAT, but he's totally a humanities kid, was one thing it said. And then in another place was, it did mention, you know how the saying goes, He's from one of those zip codes.

Emily Guerin  17:13

The poverty rate in the Imperial Valley is twice the state's average and the air is unhealthy to breathe due to smog, diesel truck emissions, and dust. Only 10% of adults here have a bachelor's degree, the lowest rate of any county in Southern California.

JB Hamby  17:28

Then pretty much, you know, understood what that meant, being from the Imperial Valley, Brawley in particular, the lack of opportunities, amenities, resources.

Emily Guerin  17:41

Did you feel like you didn't belong there?

JB Hamby  17:44

Um, no, not exactly. And I mean, there was this speech you get given in your first week or something there about imposter syndrome that, No, you are not an impostor. You are here because you were chosen.

Emily Guerin  17:57

But his mom, Trina, told me Stanford was different than he expected.

Trina Hamby  18:00

I remember when he went to Stanford, he said, You know what, Mom? It took like six months until I saw a white pickup truck, which white pickup trucks around here are very normal. I mean, all the folks that work in the ag business have typically white pickup trucks.

Emily Guerin  18:15

Did you miss home?

JB Hamby  18:17

Yeah, the, the more time spent away, you know, heartness makes the- or [EG: Distance.] distance makes the [laughs] heart grow fonder, for sure. And so I spent a lot of time being interested in history and [music in] digging up history, particularly about water, which is the sort of history and origins of Imperial Valley and becoming increasingly fascinated about that.

Emily Guerin  18:40

JB majored in American History and spent a lot of time studying the Colorado River. He did a project on the Colorado River Compact, the 1922 document that divided up the river between the seven states and Mexico. And he spent a lot of time in the archives and special collections, requesting boxes of documents. He learned about the power position the Imperial Valley has on the Colorado River, not only the most water, but the best access to it.

Emily Guerin  19:07

So you're like reading stuff in the archives, and you're seeing like Imperial referenced in these documents and you're like, Oh, I'm from [JBH: Yeah, it's-] there? Kind of thing?

JB Hamby  19:15

Yeah.

Emily Guerin  19:17

It became somewhat of an obsession.

JB Hamby  19:19

I went and did a Colorado River Basin trip just after graduating.

Emily Guerin  19:25

Like a road trip?

JB Hamby  19:26

Yeah. Did a road trip, visited basically all of the dams in the Colorado River Basin and spent several weeks just traveling the basin.

Emily Guerin  19:36

It was an unusual itinerary. He went to every public meeting about the Colorado River that he could find, from Sacramento to Salt Lake City to Steamboat Springs. His soundtrack was the Western water history book, "Cadillac Desert." He did visit some national parks, but only the ones that had dams inside them. [music out] When JB got back to the Imperial Valley, he had pretty much decided that he wanted to work on the Colorado River.

Emily Guerin  20:05

Okay, I have a theory I'm a try out on you. [JBH: Go for it.] You can tell me if this is totally psychological bogus, but at that point like Stanford people were like, He's from one of those zip codes. But when it comes to the Colorado River, Imperial Valley is not like one of those zip codes. It's like the kingpin. [JBH: Yeah.] Do you know what I mean? Do you think that-

JB Hamby  20:25

Water is king and here is its kingdom, as the early newspaper said about us.

Emily Guerin  20:29

Well, not even that, but like, you guys are the kings. Do you think that that like, factored in at all to your wanting to work in this? It's like, in the Colorado River world, Imperial Valley is not like one of those zip codes. It's like, the most important player.

JB Hamby  20:42

[music in] You can view us as the small, rural, isolated community with a lot of limitations and so on. And we don't make our way onto the map most of the time. But on the other hand, the Imperial Valley has this massive importance across seven states, two countries, millions of people and the future of this massive region of the American West and these broader impacts across the country, all from this little community here.

Emily Guerin  21:17

If you want to work in a world where the Imperial Valley has a lot of power, there's only one place to go, the board of the Imperial Irrigation District. IID as people call it, is the local utility that provides electricity and drinking water to the area. All of that water comes from the Colorado River. But the IID board also plays a huge role in California's negotiations with the six other states because if California is going to make a meaningful cut to its Colorado River use, it really has to come from the Imperial Valley. [music out] After a break, JB runs for this office.

JB Hamby  21:52

[music in] [audio clip] Protecting our water is a piece of cake. It just takes the right person. I'm JB Hamby and I'm running for IID Division 2 to keep our water here in our valley. [music out]

Emily Guerin  22:04

That's coming up on Imperfect Paradise. [break]

Emily Guerin  22:10

You're listening to Imperfect Paradise, The Gen Z Water Dealmaker. I'm Emily Guerin.

Emily Guerin  22:17

By the time JB brought up his list of what I would call New Year's resolutions, we'd already spent most of the day together driving around the Imperial Valley.

JB Hamby  22:25

[driving ambi] They're not resolutions. It's my 2024 bucket list.

Emily Guerin  22:29

We'd had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. He was now sipping a huge agua fresca in a styrofoam cup.

JB Hamby  22:35

It's basically instead of having just an inbox approach to the way you do things, responding to what is happening to you in this sort of passive way, instead trying to have this forward thinking approach where it's like, I want to accomplish these things.

Emily Guerin  22:51

I've literally never done that. I don't know why I've never done that. And there's like, part of me that's like allergic to it, and I don't think that's a good thing. I'm [JBH: Well-] just observing that reaction in myself.

JB Hamby  23:01

Make it to be something that's easy and somewhat pleasurable to do. Like I find it unpleasant to feel like I am not being purposeful and I'm not accomplishing something. Like, that bothers me. So the remedy to that is, think about what I want to do and then identify the steps to get there. At minimum, put it on a piece of paper and say, I want to get this done by such and such a day.

Emily Guerin  23:26

The next day, he showed it to me.

JB Hamby  23:29

So, one's be content with the present moment. Two, enjoy all your experiences. Three, savor every moment. Four, be thankful for what you have and your experiences. And five, don't worry so much about the future.

Emily Guerin  23:38

Oh my god, JB. That's like, if you did that, you'd be like the Buddha.

Emily Guerin  23:42

JB is one of the most ambitious people I've ever met. [music in] And so it makes sense to me that he decided to run for public office the year after he graduated from college. JB was running against a 16 year incumbent, a prominent local lawyer and a perennial candidate. He was a year out of Stanford, with no name recognition. He needed help from someone with clout, a person who other people trusted, someone like John Hawk. [music out]

John Hawk  24:10

I'm a farmer. I own Horizon Farms and we farm about 3,600 acres of ground.

Emily Guerin  24:18

What do you grow?

John Hawk  24:19

We grow fresh vegetables. We grow a lot of lettuce, romaine, carrots, onions, things like that. We go dehy onions.

Emily Guerin  24:29

Is "dehy" dehydrated?

John Hawk  24:30

Dehydrated onions. Yes. They would be the Lipton soup type of things.

Emily Guerin  24:36

John Hawk is in fact sitting in the cab of his Ford F-150, looking out over an irrigated field of dehy onions as we talk. John met JB through JB's father.

John Hawk  24:46

So here's a 22 year old youngster talkin', you know, about water, water law, the law of the river, water contracts, court cases. How unusual is that? That is very unusual in my mind.

Emily Guerin  25:03

John Hawk is not only a farmer. He's also on the Imperial County Board of Supervisors, and he advises the IID on water and Colorado River issues. He's from one of those multi-generational Imperial Valley farming families. And John saw a lot of potential in JB.

John Hawk  25:20

I felt like a young man like that, I would hate to see him on the other side of the water issues. [laughs] I really would.

Emily Guerin  25:28

[music in] What do you mean?

John Hawk  25:30

I want him on our side. [laughs]

Emily Guerin  25:33

Why is that?

John Hawk  25:34

Because I think he has a real handle on the water issues. I think he's extremely bright. And I think he knows how to negotiate. He's a good man to have on our team.

Emily Guerin  25:50

So John mentored JB. He shot campaign videos of him standing in front of dams talking about water. He gave him money. He wrote glowing letters to the editor of the local newspaper that were published under headlines like: "Hats Off to Hamby, Says Hawk." JB had made the unusual decision early on to campaign on Colorado River issues, not power bills, as was the custom. He wanted to talk a lot about this deal that his opponent had approved 20 years earlier as an IID board member. The deal was to sell some of the Imperial Valley's water to San Diego, and it was super controversial. In fact, some of JB's earliest memories are of hearing family members complain about the deal. So JB made a video featuring a cake with blue frosting and icing that read "Imperial Valley's Water." [music out]

JB Hamby  26:38

[video audio clip] [music in] Imperial Valley has the largest water right on the entire Colorado River. That's pretty sweet. It used to be that the people of Imperial Valley enjoyed the whole cake. All of our water was used here, but it's not that way anymore. [duck under]

Emily Guerin  26:54

Hands that represent San Diego, L.A. and other cities, start grabbing chunks of the cake, taking and taking, until it's gone.

JB Hamby  27:01

[video audio clip continues] Protecting our water is a piece of cake. It just takes the right person. I'm JB Hamby, and I'm running for IID Division 2, to keep our water here in our valley, and put it to use here. [fade out] [music out]

Emily Guerin  27:13

So even though JB was a fresh face, he was really speaking the language of his elders. Specifically, he was speaking the language of people like John Hawk, who praised the folks who built Hoover Dam and "harnessed" the wild Colorado River, keeping its water from flowing out to sea and being "wasted."

John Hawk  27:31

My gosh, you made a desert bloom out of nothing. [music in] We export melons, lettuce, asparagus, you name it. We ship it all over the world. And now you have people that live in the city saying why should they have the water? I mean, I could ask you, What would you think if you were a fifth generation farmer and you built your life here, built your home here, raised your families, and people write an article and say, "You shouldn't have that much water." What would you say? [music out]

Emily Guerin  28:10

JB Hamby is an Imperial Valley guy, a bolo tie wearing, chicken raising, church going farmer's son, whose views on water have been shaped by growing up in a place where water is wasted if it's not being used by people. And when he was running for IID, this helped voters trust him and set aside their doubts about his age and lack of experience. As one of his friends told me, not everyone knew who JB Hamby was, but everyone knows how important water is, even the local CBS station, KYMA.

TV Reporter  28:42

[audio clip] The Division 2 seat for the Imperial Irrigation District was one of the toughest races in the county with two candidates vying for the seat. JB Hamby is the projected winner.

JB Hamby  28:53

[audio clip] We didn't expect that at all, um, but we're really humbled and grateful by the returns.

Emily Guerin  28:58

JB took office in December 2020. He continued to talk about Imperial Valley's water the same way he had during his campaign. He gave really hardline quotes to newspaper reporters. I found a video of him at a board meeting in January 2021, reading one of them out loud.

JB Hamby  29:15

[video audio clip] Quote: "The fact is, is that we were here first. We established a right to this." And, quote: "It was their choice to build a Phoenix or Las Vegas in the middle of these bowls of sun in the middle of the most arid places in the country," unquote.

Emily Guerin  29:28

In other words, the Imperial Valley started using Colorado River water first and city people can shove it.

JB Hamby  29:35

[video audio clip continues] [music in] That quote to me and what I said there is religion, quite frankly, and that's the reason I ran for this board.

Emily Guerin  29:42

That meeting happened just over three years ago. That JB is quite different from the person I met in Las Vegas, who stood on stage in the champagne room to congratulate Imperial Valley farmers on saving water.

JB Hamby  29:57

So next up we have the Metropolitan Water District, the Imperial Irrigation District, and the San Diego County Water Authority.

Emily Guerin  30:04

Who called out Colorado for being unwilling to make cuts.

JB Hamby  30:08

There is no user, no state, no country, no basin that can stand up and say, We're out. This is a basin wide problem, but we're not part of it.

Emily Guerin  30:19

Who was admired by his counterpart in Arizona for being willing to share pain.

Tom Buschatzke  30:24

That's what I'm talking about. That's an example of his willingness to think progressively.

Emily Guerin  30:31

What happened to JB since becoming California's lead negotiator to get him to change his position so drastically [music out] and so quickly?

Antonia Cereijido  30:39

[music in] That was correspondent Emily Guerin. On our next episode of Imperfect Paradise, The Gen Z Water Dealmaker- How did JB go from arguing the Imperial Valley should never give up any of its water, to declaring that everyone must do their part?

Emily Guerin  30:59

How does he sell that idea locally?

John Hawk  31:02

Well, he has a few good friends and a lot of enemies.

JB Hamby  31:05

I still question myself every day, and I'm thinking did we give up too much? Did I do a disservice to our state? Am I giving up positions that others, who were here before me, worked hard to maintain?

Antonia Cereijido  31:18

And we jump back into the current negotiations, which are coming down to a very public battle between the Upper and Lower Basins.

JB Hamby  31:26

I think no matter what we do, it's never good enough for the Upper Basin.

Becky Mitchell  31:30

This is a shit job. [laughter] I mean, this is tough.

Antonia Cereijido  31:36

That's on the next episode of Imperfect Paradise, The Gen Z Water Dealmaker. Listen to new episodes of the podcast every Wednesday, or tune in on Sunday nights at 7pm on LAist 89.3 or LAist.com. [music out]

Antonia Cereijido  31:50

[theme music in] This episode of Imperfect Paradise was written and reported by Emily Guerin. I'm the show's host, Antonia Cereijido. Catherine Mailhouse is the executive producer of the show and our director of content development. Shana Naomi Krochmal is our vice president of podcasts. Meg Cramer is our editor. Minju Park is our producer. Jens Campbell is our production coordinator. Luke Runyon is our editorial advisor. Fact checking by Gabriel Dunatov. Mixing and theme music by E. Scott Kelly, with additional music by Andrew Eapen. Imperfect Paradise is a production of LAist Studios. This podcast is powered by listeners like you. Support the show by donating now at LAist.com/join. This podcast is supported by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. Additional support from the Water Desk at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado- Boulder. [music out]