Imperfect Paradise: The Gen Z Water Dealmaker: Part 3

Antonia Cereijido: [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, how 28-year old JB Hamby became California's youngest lead negotiator ever on the Colorado River.

JB Hamby:  I find it unpleasant to feel like I'm not being purposeful and I'm not accomplishing something. Like, that bothers me.

Antonia Cereijido: In this episode, how did JB go from Mr. “Let’s Keep the Water Here in the Imperial Valley,”

JB Hamby:  Quote, the fact is, is that we were here first. We established a right to this.

Antonia Cereijido: To Mr. “Everyone Needs to Cut Back Our Water Usage.”

JB Hamby: [principals panel] 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.

Antonia Cereijido: And we jump back into the current negotiations between the seven states over who should cut back their water usage and by how much. Will the negotiators be able to reach a deal by the March deadline?

John Entsminger: If Lake Mead reaches dead pool, California, Arizona, and Mexico will be cut off entirely because water simply can't escape from Lake Mead.

Becky Mitchell:  We can't do this the way that we're doing it anymore.

John Hawk: We know we must cut, but we don't want to cut equal with everybody else.

Antonia Cereijido: That’s coming up on part 3 of Imperfect Paradise: The Gen Z Water Dealmaker. LAist Correspondent Emily Guerin takes it from here. [music out]

Emily Guerin: When JB Hamby first got into water politics in 2020, he had a very specific message. He had just been elected to the Imperial Irrigation District Board. And he made a promise to his constituents: This is our water. We are NOT selling it to cities. I recently went down kind of a wormhole watching a bunch of his campaign videos and speeches and TV news appearances, and this message is shockingly consistent.

JB Hamby: [audio clips] “You don't sell water, you fight to protect it.” “Every year we're sending billions of gallons of our water to grow San Diego and L.A.” “They want to grab more and more, taking our water away from where it belongs, with us.” “Don't let San Diego suck our valley dry. Keep our water here. Vote JB for IID by November 3rd.”

Emily Guerin: [music in] California’s farmers and ranchers have long been suspicious that cities are trying to take water from rural areas. It's what San Francisco did when the city turned a spectacular mountain valley into a reservoir for drinking water. It's what Los Angeles did to the Owens Valley -- which was the subject of the movie “Chinatown.”

“Chinatown” Audio Clip: “Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.”

Emily Guerin: And it's what San Diego did when it bought water from the Imperial Valley in the early 2000s. The deal was signed when JB was in the first grade, and it took like a decade for people in the Imperial Valley to come to terms with it. [music fades out]

Emily Guerin: Do you remember your dad talking about it or, like, how did you learn about it as a kid?

JB Hamby: So, during that whole 10 year period, it was something constantly in the newspapers, constantly being talked about with different family, friends, and other folks you hang around in the community, and it was deeply controversial.

Emily Guerin: This deal -- plus all the other California lore -- created the impression in young JB’s mind that cities were the main threat to the Imperial Valley’s future.

JB Hamby: Particularly at that time, seeing, you know, nearly 20 percent of the amount of water that our community needs to survive and exist, going other places didn't leave a good taste in anyone's mouths.

Emily Guerin: And so when he decided to run for the board of the Imperial Irrigation District, he made this fear central to his campaign. But then, about a year and a half into his first term as a board member, he went to a series of meetings that changed his perspective. [music in] They took place in early summer, 2022, which JB now calls “the summer of discontent.” Conditions on the river had suddenly gotten a lot worse, and the Bureau of Reclamation -- the federal agency in charge of the Colorado River -- they invited about 40 people from the Lower Basin states to a Marriott hotel in San Diego. JB wasn't yet the lead negotiator from California, but he was there to represent the Imperial Irrigation District. They all sat around a giant U-shaped table. California on one side, Nevada and Arizona on the other, the feds in the center, and they watched a series of scary PowerPoints that showed how bad things could get on the river. [music out]

JB Hamby:  There's histograms and spaghetti charts and acronyms and all kinds of things that were very foreign and unfamiliar to me. I'm being thrown into the middle of it, and trying to just grasp what's happening. And so that was very challenging and difficult, but I had bought this yellow notebook just to contain all of my notes. And so I'm writing 30, 40 pages in a day just to be able to grasp all of this stuff. So that was –

Emily Guerin: Did your hand hurt?

JB Hamby: Uh, I have a good pen that flows pretty well. It's a good fountain pen.

Emily Guerin: His takeaway from the feds was: You guys need to slash your water use by up to 4 million acre feet or the reservoirs will hit dead pool. [music in] This is a ridiculous amount of water. It's more than the entire states of Arizona and Nevada use from the river in one year, combined. And the feds were asking for these cuts pretty much immediately.

JB Hamby: And it was hard to just wrap your head around that.

Emily Guerin: Was it like silence or like were people talking?

JB Hamby: It was very tense for sure.

Emily Guerin: Were you thinking like this is insane or were you like- Is she faking? Like what were you thinking?

JB Hamby: It was just a lot to, a lot to digest. Really massive things being discussed.

Emily Guerin: The mood was icy. F-bombs were dropped. And this was when JB began to realize, city people were not coming for the Imperial Valley’s water. Climate change was. [music out]

JB Hamby: So I think what certainly happened in 2022 was a shock to the system and brought things really to realization. The river was on the precipice of collapsing and if there is no water, there is no Imperial Valley. And so we uniquely were threatened by the potential for the river to hit dead pool and to see the river crashing by people not working together.

Emily Guerin: A few months later, JB was elected to be the lead negotiator for California. And in early January 2023, he took his fountain pen and his yellow notebook to Aurora, Colorado, to the Wooley Hotel, to continue hashing out an emergency plan to radically slash water use as quickly as possible to keep reservoir levels from falling too far. That's when, in his telling, the other six states ganged up on California, presenting him with a plan that put much of the burden on his state.

JB Hamby: Basically the choice was either to just capitulate and sign on to something that was going to harm our state, or say No, and say We're committed to working together, but we are not going to sign on to this. And so, ultimately that's the direction I had to take. There was really no other option or choice.

Emily Guerin: The Internet interpreted this a little differently.

Western Water Girl: Y'all, I am telling you, it is poppin’ off in the Colorado River Basin this week. The entire river… [duck under]

Emily Guerin: This is how the Western Water Girl, who is my favorite water influencer -- yes, I have one, and yes, she's great -- described it on Instagram:

Western Water Girl: [fade up] Six of the seven states in the basin collectively submitted a proposal to the feds. But California was like, That's gonna be enough for me, dawg, and submitted their own proposal. So like, shout out to California for stopping an unprecedented effort towards collaboration in the basin while also shooting themselves in the foot. Great job.

JB Hamby: There was this onslaught of horrible, you know, press and then the six states put out their approach and there was just this endless slamming of California as this just negligent terrible, you know, what is California doing?

Emily Guerin: What was that like for you?

JB Hamby:  That was very unpleasant. And so I resolved myself at that point, never again will I allow this to happen. This is so bad.

Emily Guerin: [music in] JB's first big realization was that cities weren’t the enemy – climate change was. His second realization, which he had in January 2023, was that he needed allies. When he left that day, the lead negotiator from Arizona came up to him.

JB Hamby: Tom Buschatzke approached me, you know, as we're sort of heading out the door and said, Hey, would you like to get together just to sort of talk one on one? And I said, sure.

Emily Guerin: Tom and JB began talking about what they needed to do, immediately, to avoid dead pool. California and Arizona are the states that use the most Colorado River water, so they knew they needed to step up. Soon, they began talking to John Entsminger, the lead negotiator from Nevada. And eventually, the three of them met at a hotel in Burbank, and came up with a number they could all agree on. [music out]

JB Hamby: And then we went and had- Well, others had beers. I had an Arnold Palmer.

Emily Guerin: I had been thinking a lot about how much JB changed in such a short period of time. I wanted to know how he reconciled the way he used to talk, with the way he talks now. So I called him on the phone after one of our interviews.

Emily Guerin: Okay. Can you hear me?

JB Hamby: I can.

Emily Guerin: And he admitted to something that I think most people in his position would not.

JB Hamby: So there's something called, and I think we are all susceptible of this, the Dunning-Kruger effect, [EG laughs] which is where the-

Emily Guerin: I'm only laughing because, I mean, from what I know of you, this feels peak JB to look up an academic theory to describe something personal.

JB Hamby: [laughs] I like that. Yeah. So the idea is, that the less knowledge you really have about something, the more confident you are, [EG: I see.] and there gets to be a point where the more you learn, the more humble and informed you become about something. And then at some point, your confidence goes back up again.

Emily Guerin: [music in] In the summer of 2023, JB, now humbled, informed and friends with Arizona, watched as the federal government and the Upper Basin agreed to the plan that he and the other Lower Basin states had hashed out at the hotel in Burbank. Essentially, farmers and some tribes in California and Arizona were going to get paid billions of dollars to save enough water over the next three years to avoid dead pool. It was a short-term fix. [music changes] Now that they'd dealt with the emergency, it was time to turn to the real hard work -- figuring out what needed to be done to keep the river from crashing in the long term, after the current rules to manage the river expire in 2026. JB was going to need to convince people in California to slash their use, while also convincing the other states to take on some of the pain. And he would start to see the Upper Basin, specifically Colorado’s lead negotiator, Becky Mitchell, as his main obstacle to coming up with a deal.

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

Becky Mitchell: We can't do this the way that we're doing it anymore.

Emily Guerin: That's after a break, on Imperfect Paradise. [music out] [break]

Emily Guerin: You're listening to Imperfect Paradise: The Gen Z Water Dealmaker. I'm Emily Guerin. [music in] A few weeks after I came back from CRWUA, the big water conference in Las Vegas that I went to last December, I finally talked to Becky Mitchell, the lead negotiator from Colorado. We were on Zoom from our respective homes. Hers in Colorado, mine in California.

Emily Guerin: So I wanted to ask you about the principals panel.

Emily Guerin: The principals panel was when all seven lead negotiators were on stage at the same time.

Emily Guerin: Cause I've just been thinking a lot about what you said and what other people said and sort of like being in the room during that panel. [music out] You have a different style than the other negotiators. Like I think you, you know, you raised your voice on the panel, you were very assertive. I assume that's strategic, and I guess I just wanted to ask about it because I was wondering if you ever, like, worry about how it comes off, especially as the only woman up there, and just how you think about the way you deliver things and how that fits into your strategy as a negotiator.

Becky Mitchell: I'm the only woman? No, I'm just kidding. I know.

Emily Guerin: I'm telling you that for the first time?

Becky Mitchell: [laughs] No…

Emily Guerin: Becky, did you, did you know? Did you look around?

Emily Guerin: Can I just say -- I really hate how I asked this question. But I felt like I needed to ask it because of all the negotiators, Becky comes off, to me, as the most confrontational. And it was something almost everyone I interviewed commented on, too. So the part of me that roots for women in power was a little bit worried about her.

Emily Guerin: And maybe that's me projecting. I was just like, because I've also been in, I don't know, when you're in like male dominated spaces, I always worry about that too. I'm like, Oh God, like, am I just a woman getting mad right now? Like what's happening?

Becky Mitchell:  Well, and it's interesting because I don't know if I love this being the topic but-

Emily Guerin: Sure we can move on after this.

Becky Mitchell: No, no, no. It's okay. Because I think it's appropriate to talk about. I think it's important to recognize how you are perceived. [music in] There is a piece of it that's obviously strategic. I need to emphasize what needs to be emphasized, what needs to be heard. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think we could do better than what we are doing. And the parts that we don't get right will be judged harshly.

Emily Guerin: One thing I had realized at the CRWUA conference is that Becky has really high expectations for what she wants these negotiations to accomplish. She thinks the current set of guidelines that govern the river have failed. She judges them harshly. Because that deal – negotiated back in 2007 – is what allowed the big reservoirs to fall dangerously low. Back then, climate science hadn't really made its way into policy yet. I mean, California had just passed the country’s first climate law one year earlier. And so the negotiators struggled with how to convince people to take big enough cuts. Also – they just did not anticipate how much worse it was going to get. This is why Becky’s so adamant about getting it right this time.

Becky Mitchell: We can't do this the way that we're doing it anymore. And pretending like it's okay when it's not, isn't helpful. And so, if anyone else had been able to kind of, get that point across, I probably would have taken us a little bit more of a back seat, but that wasn't the case. Everybody in that room needs to know that [music out] I can't look away and pretend that it's going to be okay going down the path of status quo.

Emily Guerin: Becky worries that the Lower Basin is making her out to be the bad guy. She called it “the narrative.”

Emily Guerin: You just mentioned that you think there's like a perceived narrative about-

Becky Mitchell: Of maybe, Colorado taking a hard stance, or the Upper Basin taking a hard stance. And I think we have a responsibility to somewhat be watching what's happening within the entire basin, especially when there continues to be a look upstream to solve a problem that we did not create. We have to be somewhat of a watchdog.

Emily Guerin: [music in] Becky feels like the Lower Basin created this crisis. And it’s unfair of them to “look upstream” to the Upper Basin for a solution. For the last 25 years, as the drought got worse and temperatures rose, California and Arizona had been pushing for deals that would allow them to keep using their full allocation of Colorado river water – or more. This is how the big reservoirs got so low. More water taken out than flows in. Meanwhile, the Upper Basin states have never come close to using their full Colorado River allocation. And until they do, Becky doesn't think they should have to commit to using any less.

Becky Mitchell: I know I am not favored by all, and that's okay. I am not here to get more people invited to my funeral. I'm here for Colorado and it's tough. It's not necessarily enjoyable for me. [music out]

Emily Guerin: The seven states had until mid-March to come up with the first draft of a plan that they could all agree with. And by the end of February, I was hearing whispers that it wasn't going to happen. The Upper and Lower Basins were just too far apart. So I called up JB, to see where things stood.

Emily Guerin: When is the last time you spoke with the Upper Basin folks?

JB Hamby: At a meeting last month in Denver.

Emily Guerin: So you guys haven't talked since then.

JB Hamby: No.

Emily Guerin: Do you feel like they've shifted their position in any meaningful way in the past month?

JB Hamby: So the fundamental issue at play here is- So the Lower Basin has made massive strides in saying we will own the structural deficit.

Emily Guerin: "We will own the structural deficit" -- this was that big announcement that JB and Tom from Arizona, had made together in Las Vegas in December. They were acknowledging that their states pulled too much water out of the river, and pledging to cut back, permanently.

JB Hamby: By one and a half million acre feet a year. That is an enormous amount. That's the amount that Mexico gets every year, or that’s five times the amount of water that Nevada gets in any given year. So that's huge.

Emily Guerin: Everyone agreed that this was great, even Becky Mitchell, although she told me she was still waiting to see where these cuts would actually come from. She wanted receipts. [music in] The big sticking point now between the basins was what to do if those cuts weren't enough, and climate change dried up the river even further.

Emily Guerin: What are you asking the Upper Basin to do if the river keeps shrinking?

JB Hamby:  If the river continues to shrink and these massive Lower Basin efforts are not enough, this needs to be a shared responsibility of both basins, moving forward. [music out]

Emily Guerin: JB was bothered by the way Becky Mitchell was talking publicly about the negotiation.

Emily Guerin: I've read in a couple different newspapers and then in my interview with Becky Mitchell, she said this thing a few times, like, I'm open to talking whenever. Vacations-

JB Hamby: Yeah, weekends, nights. Yeah, all that.

Emily Guerin:  What is that? What do you think about that?

JB Hamby: It's good rhetoric, right? It makes it sound like the Lower Basin is unwilling to have a conversation. It's just, it's not true.

Emily Guerin: By the way, I asked Becky Mitchell about the nights and weekends thing. She told me she was honestly just letting people know she was willing to meet and have hard conversations because, as she put it, “invites have been declined.” JB didn’t see it this way.

JB Hamby: [music in] Somebody described this as a MAGA style campaign of division. And I thought that was pretty good. I thought that was a good explanation. Light on facts, heavy on misinterpreting things, and lots of scapegoating.

Emily Guerin: So you're frustrated.

JB Hamby: Yeah. And the problem is what do you do when you're constantly willing to make compromises, but you're working with another side that isn't. What do you do? If you compromise more at some point, you're not serving those that you're supposed to represent very well.

Emily Guerin: So at this point- we're in late February- are the Lower Basin and the Upper Basin submitting separate plans?

JB Hamby: Yeah, that's where things are headed. I think no matter what we do, it's never good enough for the Upper Basin. And whatever they submit is probably going to be very offensive and galling to the Lower Basin.

Emily Guerin: Okay, so it sounds pretty entrenched.

JB Hamby: [laughs] Uh, it is, yeah, which is unfortunate. [music out]

Emily Guerin: On March 1st, I got a text from JB. "FYI, barrage of info next week." I responded with a double exclamation point. The rumors, it turned out, were true. There were two competing proposals of how to manage the river beyond 2026. One from the Lower Basin, and one from the Upper Basin. They scheduled their respective Zoom press conferences for the same morning -- one right after the other. The Lower went first.

AZ Press Person: [Zoom chime] This is a press briefing hosted by the Lower Basin states of the Colorado River to announce… [duck under]

Emily Guerin: As the video clicked on, I saw the three lead negotiators from Nevada, Arizona and California -- John Entsminger, Tom Buschatzke and JB -- sitting side by side at a table, wearing suits. They explained their idea to keep the reservoirs on the Colorado River from hitting dead pool- a series of triggers tied to how low the water dropped. When the reservoirs were mostly full, no one had to do anything.

John Entsminger: [fade up] We are in the no reduction zone.

Emily Guerin: Once they fall below 70%, the Lower Basin states would make cuts. That’s what’s happening now. If they fall below 38%, everyone -- all seven states -- would make cuts.

JB Hamby:  If we're getting down to the lowest elevations, that's the responsibility of the entire basin to protect the system.

Emily Guerin: Their plan was not a surprise. It was essentially what JB had told me on the phone and at CRWUA. We'll cut first, but once things get bad enough, everyone has to pitch in.

AZ Press Person: This now concludes this presentation. [Zoom bot] This meeting is no longer being recorded. [Zoom logoff sound]

Emily Guerin: I stood up, grabbed a drink of water, and seven minutes later, entered into the Upper Basin's Zoom press conference.

CO Press Person: As we all know it's currently March of 2024. We expect the negotiations will continue and the… [duck under]

Emily Guerin: Becky Mitchell wasn’t there. None of the Upper Basin’s lead negotiators were, which I found a little bit odd. But her staff explained that their proposal was essentially: you guys do everything, and we'll do nothing. The Lower Basin should make all the cuts, even when reservoirs dropped super low. Meanwhile, the Upper Basin would commit to nothing beyond the cuts they say they’re already taking. Also not a surprise to me, based on my last interview with Becky. But the reporters on the call jumped on this. A press person read the questions out loud from the chat.

CO Press Person: [fade up] Another question we perceived as why isn't the Upper Basin proposing to reduce our water uses? Are we saying that we're not obligated to make further cuts to address the effects of climate change on the river? And I'm wondering if you could talk through that as well. Thank you.

Amy Ostdiek: You know, this ties back to something I mentioned just a second ago about hydrologic shortage. I think… [duck under]

Emily Guerin: A staff member from the Upper Basin begins to explain, basically, that they’ve been taking cuts all along. When the little rivers and streams their farmers take water from dry up, they don’t use the water because it isn’t there.

Amy Ostdiek: [fade up] So one way to think about it is that when water's not available, we cannot use it. So a cut has already occurred.

Emily Guerin: The Upper Basin won’t be cutting any more beyond that.

CO Press Person:  I think this is a good time to wrap up. Thank you both, Emily and Amy, so much for, for doing this. I’ve shared a couple of links… [fade out]

Emily Guerin: Nothing had changed in months. We were back at the Paris casino, the basins meeting in two adjacent rooms, talking through the wall, unable to come to a consensus. [music in] I felt like I needed someone to help me make sense of what was happening -- or not happening. So I called up this woman Pat Mulroy. She's the former lead negotiator from Nevada. She's kind of a legend in the Colorado River Basin.

Pat Mulroy: When I first started, I walked into my first CRUWA meeting, right? I had my badge on, it had my name, my title on it, and I sit down during a general session and this elderly gentleman comes up and he taps me on the shoulder and he says, Ma'am, the spouse's lounge is down the hall. And I said, I'll tell my husband.

Emily Guerin: Pat began working on the Colorado River in the early 1990s, and her career basically spans the period of time in which the river went from being totally fine to being totally in crisis. She was a negotiator back in the early 2000s, when climate science first began to influence how people thought about the river. Which made her the perfect person to help explain what was going wrong now. [music out] One thing she helped me understand was that Becky Mitchell being hardcore wasn't an anomaly. Colorado's lead negotiators have always been like that.

Pat Mulroy: Here's their mindset. Every major river system in the West starts in their backyard. Nobody else would exist if their water, which falls on their mountains, didn't find its way down. I mean, if there's a state that has no sense of humor around [laughter] its water allocation. It's Colorado.

Emily Guerin: Pat believed that the true sticking point in the negotiation was that Colorado had to give up the idea of someday using more water. This, she said, was the hard knot that, when you really got down to it, was the core of the disagreement.

Pat Mulroy: That will be bloody. [music in] And especially a state like Colorado where all water emanates from. I mean, it's gonna be such a bitter pill for them to swallow. I don't know if you're gonna get them there. I really don't.  Probably one of the valuable lessons I learned on the river is nobody's gonna change unless they absolutely have to and have no other choice but to.

Emily Guerin: But the conflict between the Lower and Upper Basins is not the only obstacle to coming up with a deal. [music out] That’s because the negotiators aren't just trying to sell their plan to the other states in the basin. They're trying to sell it in their home state, too. Here’s how Pat thought about it back in 2007, when she was tasked with selling the cuts she’d agreed to, to people back in Nevada.

Pat Mulroy: I've always said kiddingly, we came to an agreement and everyone went home and told their version of a lie. But it wasn't a lie, right? It was just a framing of the consequences to that state that would be politically acceptable.

Emily Guerin: And Pat had noticed a little line in the Lower Basin’s press release that made her think that JB Hamby hadn’t yet convinced farmers in the Imperial Valley.

Pat Mulroy: I think he has got to create a picture for the farmers in Imperial that under certain conditions, they are going to have to cut back on what they use in order to protect themselves. [music in] That's the conversation he has to have. This is, I don't care about anybody else, I'm doing this for us.

Emily Guerin: JB has to make these cuts politically acceptable back home. Because when he promises the other states that California is going to come through, he has to know for certain that Imperial Valley’s farmers are on board. And they are a notoriously difficult group to convince. The Imperial Irrigation District – where JB is a board member – they have a reputation for reversing their position at the last minute and blowing up deals. As one of their former board members said, “The IID is the elephant in the room on the Colorado River. And like the elephant, our memory and rage is long.”

Emily Guerin: After a break, JB versus the elephant. [music out] [break]

Emily Guerin: You're listening to Imperfect Paradise: the Gen Z Water Dealmaker. I'm Emily Guerin. JB’s job as the lead negotiator for California is actually more of a full time volunteer gig. It’s unpaid. His day job is as a board member for the Imperial Irrigation District. He got elected in 2020, when he was 24. He’s changed so much in that time, and one thing I wanted to know was: how do the people who helped him get elected feel about that? But I also wanted to know… How does JB do the thing that Pat Mulroy said he has to do- convince them to cut back their water use? So I called up John Hawk-

Emily Guerin: Can you still hear me okay?

John Hawk: I can. Yes.

Emily Guerin: Okay.

Emily Guerin: -the Imperial Valley farmer who mentored JB and donated to his campaign.

Emily Guerin: So when JB gets up on a stage, as he's done many times, and he says that California is going to commit to conserve X amount of water going forward permanently, what do you think about that?

John Hawk:  I think he's in a very ticklish situation. It's a very difficult situation to be in.

Emily Guerin: Like all Imperial Valley farmers, John is completely reliant on the Colorado River to grow crops. [music in] And when he talks about the river, it’s with wonder and awe.

John Hawk: For hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, that water was just wasted. It ran to the sea. And so when the early pioneers diverted water to come through Mexicali Valley, it made a huge difference. You could grow cantaloupes, you could grow lettuce, you could grow products that everybody needed. People worked and passed down their farms to their kids and their grandkids. You know, they went to a dance on Saturday night and rejoiced that they lived in a valley that was productive. So out of a desert, we have become an economy that has flourished ever since.

Emily Guerin: John’s attachment to place, to the promise of this place, is what makes it so difficult to convince people like him to use less water because they see that as threatening their entire way of life. I got the sense that John also thought Imperial Valley farmers used the water better than other places. Like they did more good with it. A lot of people in the Imperial Valley talk this way. [music out]

John Hawk: We send out a thousand boxes of lettuce per acre. We send out wheat, bread. We send out beef. We provide food, unbelievable amounts of food. We are one of the most productive areas in the world. We can produce it as inexpensive as anybody.

Emily Guerin: He's not wrong. The Imperial Valley generates more value per acre than almost anywhere else in the Colorado River Basin. And when it comes to who should cut back first, John has an easy answer: the latecomers – his term -- the people who began using the water after the Imperial Valley did.

John Hawk: Phoenix and areas like Tucson have other water sources. We have one source, and that's it. When our water gets cut, we're done.

Emily Guerin: Most big cities began using Colorado River water well after the Imperial Valley, and because of that, their legal access to the river is not as strong. That matters a lot to John.

John Hawk: The law of the river is pretty clear who gets cut first. We want everybody to take their cut according to their priority on the river. JB needs to understand that. And I think he does. And obviously he's in a tough situation.

Emily Guerin: But he also will say things like, you know, everyone has to cut back, every state, every user. And I'm assuming he's referring to Imperial Valley water users too, when he says that. How does he sell that idea locally?

John Hawk: Well, [laughs] he has, [music in] he has a few good friends and a lot of enemies. [laughs]

Emily Guerin: Oh, yeah?

John Hawk: Well, not necessarily enemies, but you know what? Everybody understands that we've got to all tighten our belt. We know we must cut, but we don't want to cut equal with everybody else.

Emily Guerin: At this point, I was reminded of something I read from this journalist in New Mexico who writes a pretty influential blog about the Colorado River. His name is John Fleck. Ten years ago, he wrote that: "Everyone on the Colorado River has a legitimate argument that they’ve already sacrificed, and that they have a legal entitlement to what’s left. If everyone digs in their heels on these points, the system will crash." I asked John Hawk about this.

Emily Guerin: [music changes] So it's interesting because I totally hear where you're coming from and it makes a lot of sense to me and it's written in the law and I get that. On the other hand, things are just fundamentally different now, in terms of how bad climate change is and how much the river's supposed to dry up, and so it's a different world. Do you know what I mean? I don't know, do you ever think that way about it? Like, you almost have to start from scratch?

John Hawk: I do, and I think that there are cycles, and I'm not a big climate change fan. I believe you have cycles, and obviously, uh, not everybody agrees with that. But we've seen cycles and had wet years, and then we've had dry years.

Emily Guerin: This “I’m not a big climate change fan” thing felt like a really big deal to me. Because if you don’t believe climate change has permanently reduced the amount of water in the river, then of course, you wouldn't think that drastic, permanent changes were necessary. And it made me wonder: what do you do with that? [music out] What JB does with that is he ignores it. He tells Imperial Valley farmers that whatever they believe, everyone else has decided climate change is real. The river is permanently drying up. He tells them that they have targets on their backs because of how much water they use, and that the best way to protect their water is to be willing to give some up, on their own terms. This has become his strategy to sell the idea of sharing pain to the Imperial Valley.

JB Hamby: What does it mean to protect your water? It's certainly the gut reaction many might have and certainly as you, we’re seeing in some other states, is to just fight, fight, fight to protect it. But you very well may be in a situation where you could lose that fight or you might lose part of that fight and you may have permanent consequences of that, permanent scars or injuries you will never recover from.

Emily Guerin: This is what he's learned since becoming California's lead negotiator. That you must bend to avoid breaking.

JB Hamby: 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, you know, before me, worked hard to maintain? There is a balance that has to be reached where you maintain your position, but you have to be able to reach an agreement with others.

Emily Guerin: The whole time I've been reporting on these negotiations I've assumed the big showdown was between the Upper and Lower Basins, but there’s a quieter showdown happening in JB’s backyard. And I think his ability to navigate both showdowns is why he’s the man for this moment. Because when he's talking to the Upper Basin, or to reporters like me, he can be the guy who bootstrapped himself from Brawley to Stanford, and gets that climate change is an existential threat. But when he's back home, he can put on his silver belt buckle and go to church with guys like John Hawk and try to convince them that the best way to protect their way of life is to share the pain. I'm not convinced he's going to be able to convince them, but he'll probably come closer than anyone else. [music in] As of this moment, when we’re finishing this podcast, the Lower and Upper Basins remain divided. The tribes that use the Colorado River have their own proposal, as do the environmentalists. But they all still have time to reach an agreement. The guidelines don’t expire until the end of 2025. And if they don’t negotiate a seven state compromise by then, the federal government could decide for them. And if anyone is unhappy about that, they could sue, and it would end up in the Supreme Court. And if that happens, and the river continues to drop without an agreement about who needs to start making cuts, no one really knows what comes next. [music out]

Emily Guerin: So when you think about the like crisis, or like the thing you're really trying to avoid, like, what is that exactly?

Becky Mitchell: What I am really trying to avoid is the constant crisis mode.

Emily Guerin: Becky Mitchell told me that her worst case scenario would be a deal that continues the status quo, taking more water out of the river than we put in, the reservoirs constantly hovering near dead pool, everyone running around with their hair on fire.

Becky Mitchell: I think we do not make the best decisions when we continue to be in a place that is near the mud.

Emily Guerin: JB Hamby had a different answer.

Emily Guerin: What's your nightmare scenario with the post 2026 negotiations?

JB Hamby: Uh, litigation.

Emily Guerin: Supreme Court?

JB Hamby:  Yep. Having our future decided by nine black robes, or maybe a 5-4 decision, deciding things for us permanently with no way to adjust, amend, alter, edit. [music in] That would be a failure of us to be able to actually work things out ourselves. And it would produce such a degree of uncertainty. We would be funneling tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into lawyers and committing to conflict and trying to win. And that's one side loses, or the other side wins, or we both get a decision we don't like. No one comes out just glowing after something like that.

Emily Guerin: But recently, JB has been feeling a bit more optimistic. [music out] Side conversations have been happening between the Upper and Lower Basin states. And all seven lead negotiators will be meeting in person in May.

Emily Guerin: So how would you say you're feeling today as compared to a month ago?

JB Hamby: That's a awesome bit of progress, and that's certainly not what we were feeling a month ago, and there's hope if we're to have every one of the mind that that's the way to approach things.

Emily Guerin: [music in] I stopped reporting on the environment six years ago, largely because I got tired of the narrative: we understand the problem, we know how to fix it, but there’s no political will to do so. Every story – wildfires, air pollution, climate change – they all unfolded in the exact same way. But having spent these past few months deep in the negotiations over the Colorado River, I actually feel optimistic. The problem is specific. There’s an obvious deadline. Even the solution is pretty clear – use less water. And lots of people told me that for the first time, it feels like there is political will to figure out how to share the pain. [music out]

Antonia Cereijido: Imperfect Paradise correspondent, Emily Guerin. Listen to new episodes of the podcast every Wednesday or tune in on Sunday nights at 7 p.m. on LAist 89.3 or LAist.com.            

Antonia Cereijido: [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 this 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. Imperfect Paradise is a production of LAist Studios.

This podcast is powered by listeners like you donating as little as $5 a month. And we can only keep making more episodes like this one with your partnership. Support this show by donating now at: LAist.com/join.

LAist Studios operates within the homelands of the Gabrieleno Tongva people. We recognize the painful history of displacement, settler colonialism, and erasure of the People, their language, and their sovereignty. Visit LAist.com/land for more information. We encourage you to get curious about the land on which you live and work. [music out]