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On job cuts, long-term planning, and quarterly profits.
The more Hurricanes Helene and Milton we get, the harder it is to ignore the need.
High winds down power lines. But high waters flood substations — and those are much harder to fix.
New research casts doubt on a popular climate solution.
A social scientist explains how people react to disasters like what’s unfolding on the East Coast.
How do people respond to wildfire smoke? This has become an increasingly pressing question for social scientists, with massive wildfires in California in recent years and much of the East Coast this week engulfed in smoke from fires in Canada.
To better understand the issue, I called up social scientist Francisca Santana, who will be take up a role as an assistant professor of environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington this fall. She studies how people respond and adapt to extreme weather and environmental change, including wildfires. Part of that research was a paper written with David J.X. Gonzalez and Gabrielle Wong-Parodi based on interviews with people in Northern California who were exposed to large fires from 2018 to 2020.
While New York City was engulfed by smoke on Wednesday, I asked Santana about how people gather information about wildfires, how the torrent of digital data affects how people respond, and how masking evolved from a wildfire response to a COVID-19 response. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and readability.
My research has mostly focused on folks in the West in California. In the early days of catastrophic wildfires, there weren’t a lot of formal sources of information. We observed that people were really relying on one another, relying on their social contacts, their friends and family to kind of process this risk and understand what to do next.
In recent years, there are now more and more resources out there: more reporting in the media and more official sources from the states and EPA. It gives people guidance on how to behave, how to protect themselves from wildfire smoke.
It’s probably a mix of both using those sources that provide an Air Quality Index, or AQI, and using those social contexts to then translate, “Okay, well, what does that really mean for my life? The AQi is over 150. I’m noticing a lot of people in my neighborhood aren't going out for runs. So maybe I won’t do that either.”
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There’s a pre-COVID and post-COVID story. Before COVID, wildfires and wildfire smoke were quite severe in some places in the West. We observed and talked to folks who were using masks, sometimes N95 masks, to protect their lungs from wildfire smoke.
After the outbreak of the pandemic, some people found the transition to wearing a mask during COVID quite easy, because they had already been wearing them for wildfires. As wildfire smoke continues to be an issue, they may continue to mask. It’s sort of like getting into the habit or having the resources to wear a mask and feeling comfortable with that behavior.
Whereas I think for other folks there is a little bit of a backlash. Wearing masks during COVID was an experience that some people were very ready to stop doing. There may be a little bit of resistance to wearing a mask for wildfire smoke.
[Wildfire smoke] is very disruptive to one’s daily life and routine, especially if a person has habits related to going outside: going on walks, recreating in certain ways. And that can, over time, have a really negative toll on a person’s ability to cope with stress. It removes that regular outlet. A lot of folks have to exercise and socialize with friends and family.
A lot of folks talked about cabin fever, being isolated and cooped up. And that for some time really did overlap and intersect with the pandemic and the inability that folks had to socialize indoors. If they were, you know, abiding by social distancing maybe they weren’t getting together with friends and family in their homes and then wildfire smoke created a situation where they were unable to do that outdoors.
I would say it has that effect on one’s daily life and ability to cope. And I would say there’s also a component that I’ve observed with some folks who have also lived in areas where there are frequent wildfires. So if you live in a wildfire risky area and also have been exposed to smoke, smoke can trigger memories of a fire being nearby.
The smoke can really interfere with one’s ability to cope. It really adds that extra stressor into into your day. There’s a set of concerns and worries that you have to make decisions about that are often very precise. I’ve observed a lot of people will check the air quality multiple times a day. The idea is that they’re trying to decide exactly what moments they can go outside and do the thing they’ve been waiting to do. That kind of hyper vigilance is another layer of stress.
The upsides are pretty major. If someone in your neighborhood has an outdoor air quality monitor, a Purple air monitor, you can have a very real time sense of exactly what the air quality is in your neighborhood. A lot of folks use that to determine what time they may walk their dogs, for example. I think that’s really good, because there can be pretty dramatic shifts throughout the day based on wind and the patterns of the smoke moving. So that’s a huge upside.
Also people use that information to find places to go to “escape the smoke.” If you look at the whole map of California, you might see, “oh, there’s an area by the coast that is not inundated with smoke.” So that could be a good place to go for the afternoon on a Saturday. I think that really provides an outlet for folks who might be feeling very trapped by the smoke, and who also have real health concerns related to asthma and respiratory issues looking for a place to temporarily evacuate to.
But if you’re in a place that’s inundated with smoke, and there really aren’t many changes that are substantial, it can be a really consuming and distracting to check constantly for changes in the smoke and air quality. I certainly have heard people talk about that. When the smoke becomes bad enough checking the air quality is something they’re compelled to do every five, 10, 15 minutes. It can really affect your productivity.
I won’t speculate beyond that in terms of the psychological effects. But I think it’s akin to the other way that our phones have us hooked. I think that real-time data can give you a sense of control that isn’t really there.
I would say that that’s a finding that has repeatedly popped up across a lot of my interview-based studies. People are using a combination of information from official sources, and then also observations from their social group. And also direction from their social group. There are sometimes individuals and communities that can distribute information and they make suggestions to their friends and family and they can really encourage certain types of behavior. And I think there are other individuals who may resist that based on all sorts of things.
How do responses change over time when people are repeatedly exposed to wildfires? Are they able to accumulate expertise and habits and resources that then make it much easier for them to protect themselves? Or is repeated exposure something that people maladapt to? They might have a response when it first happens and then perceive the threat to be less over time, because it can interfere so much with daily life. That can sometimes happen with folks. They just want to move on.
I’m really interested also in how responses to wildfire smoke exposure might interact with some of the other things that happened during fire seasons. In places like California and the West, for example, there have been power shut offs.
Often the communities that are most affected by those power shut-offs are communities that are simultaneously being affected by smoke, and maybe heat. How do people manage those threats when they happen all at once? If your power is off, how does that affect how you’re able to respond to smoke if you were relying on your air conditioner or air filter? What other sorts of adaptations might people choose to make when faced with those threats, and that could include moving from the area permanently.
I’m not not a biomedical scientist. I’m not a medical researcher. But part of being a social scientist is reading some of the latest science on the health impacts of wildfire smoke, and it’s scary. It’s potentially really dangerous. It’s dangerous for children and for folks with respiratory health issues, but it really is dangerous for everyone.
The science is still evolving but it definitely made me think more about having air filters in my home. I have multiple air filters. It definitely made me think about ensuring that my parents and my other family members also understand the risk and have air filters in their home.
It definitely spurred more diligence during these sorts of events and a responsibility that I feel to make sure that folks understand that the risks are real. And that if we’re going to live in a future where there will likely continue to be fires and smoke, it’s worth it, if you’re able, to invest in some of these more comprehensive strategies like having an air filter in your home. I definitely think I’m more motivated and more aware.
Read more about the wildfire smoke engulfing the eastern United States:
The Smoke Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better
The East Coast’s Wildfire Smoke Is On Par With the West’s Worst Days
How to Prepare for Wildfire Smoke, According to Doctors at Harvard
Wildfire Smoke Is a Wheezy Throwback for New York City
The East Coast Has Been Smokier Than the West Coast This Year
An interview with Dave White, a water expert at Arizona State University, about what a breakthrough along the Colorado River really means
Arizona, California, and Nevada announced a deal on Monday to reduce the amount of Colorado River water they use, ahead of a bigger overhaul planned for 2026. The agreement is crucial, likely keeping the river from reaching dangerously low levels that would have put water supplies for major cities and agricultural regions at risk. But Colorado River water policy is often knotty and confusing, and it can be difficult to wrap one’s head around just what kind of impact deals like this can have.
To that end, I called up Dave White, the director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University and chair of the City of Phoenix’s Water/Wastewater Rate Advisory Committee. He explained how things work now, what the deal means, and how he’d like to see things change in the future — particularly in 2026, when the current set of water allocation rules expire and are replaced. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
There are more than 100 years of law policy agreements, which we collectively call the law of the river. But the most relevant is an agreement called the 2007 Interim Operating Guidelines for the Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. That’s the long name, but we typically call it the 2007 agreement.
That agreement created a set of rules that, as the name indicates, helped to guide the operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. And along with subsequent agreements, particularly the drought contingency plans in 2019, it has guided the management of the reservoir system on the Colorado River and set forth the allocations managing the flow to the lower basin states.
Right now we’re in the time period between when the interim guidelines were established in 2007, updated with drought contingency plans in 2019, and when we’ll hit a deadline for a new set of operating guidelines in 2026. And so all of this is trying to manage the risk from the reduced water supply on the Colorado River and to help reestablish a balance in the supply-demand equation of water in an era of megadrought, climate change, and high agricultural demand and increasing municipal demand.
The first thing that’s important for folks to realize is that this is a proposal. What was announced was essentially an agreement among the lower basin states — California, Nevada and Arizona — to propose a plan to reduce demand in those states. It will need to go through additional steps to identify more specifics, and then this proposal ultimately will need to be adopted by the seven affected states and then endorsed by the Bureau of Reclamation.
What the proposal does is lay out a framework to reduce water demand in the lower basin by about 3 million acre feet. And for context, one acre foot is about 325,000 gallons of water, or the amount of water used by two to four homes in the western United States per year. That reduction would be taken across multiple sectors: agriculture, tribal communities, and some municipal or urban users, most notably the Metropolitan Water District of California, which is the Los Angeles area.
The idea is to reduce demand through voluntary conservation. And then part of the package is compensation for some of that voluntary conservation in the form of funding from the federal government through the Inflation Reduction Act to the tune of about $1.2 billion. That is an absolutely critical part of the of the story: the Inflation Reduction Act has really enabled this breakthrough, because of the federal funding for those voluntary conservation measures.
Another critical part of the story was that recently the Bureau of Reclamation released what’s called a draft environmental impact statement, and it presented a couple of alternatives to the states for consideration. Those proposals gave us kind of a federal government’s perspective on the framework moving forward. It was essentially a classic negotiating tactic, where the Bureau of Reclamation said, “look, you states have yet to reach a consensus agreement, so we’re going to lay out a plan,” and, as is often the case, everybody was unhappy with parts of that plan.
That helped to stimulate additional negotiations and bring California, in particular, more to the table. So it’s a very important moment in time because it represents a turning point in multi-year negotiations between the states. Importantly, it lays out a path forward for a consensus agreement that is driven by the states as opposed to being imposed upon them by the federal government. So, we’re talking about a breakthrough in negotiations that led to a three-state proposal.
Well, that’s what we’re waiting to see. We don’t have all of those details yet.
Legally, the Bureau of Reclamation needs to go through this process, weigh the different alternatives, evaluate it, identify what they would call a preferred alternative, and then ultimately make a determination. But the Bureau of Reclamation has certainly indicated there’s initial support for this proposal and that the funding would be made available.
We don’t know who specifically would receive how much of that funding but we do know that it will be agriculturalists (essentially farmers and ranchers), some municipalities such as the Metropolitan Water District of California, and some Native American communities.
We are still engaged in what I would call incremental adaptation. This is adapting to the rapidly changing conditions that are presented by this 22-year-long drought, the so-called megadrought in the region. We are also adapting to the impacts of climate change. If you go back, you know, the 2007 agreement was an incremental update to deal with a very significant risk of shortage on the Colorado River system in 2000 to 2005. We had the drought contingency planning process in 2019 that was another incremental adaptation at that time that was meant to get us to 2026, when the current guidelines expire. Environmental conditions continue to rapidly change, while the demand side continues to stay high. And while we’ve made a number of efficiency gains and voluntary reductions, the river is simply over-allocated for the flow that we have seen, especially since the turn of the millennium.
So we’ve been engaging in a series of incremental adaptations. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a very smart strategy as you move along, right? You’re incrementally adapting your policy to reflect the changing environmental and social conditions. This is another important incremental adaptation that will hopefully allow us to keep working towards the 2026 guidelines.
What I and many others argue is that we need a more transformative adaptation, we need a more significant restructuring. Now, it’s difficult to do that right now in the midst of a very short-term risk. But eventually, between now and 2026, we need to address some of the structural imbalance, or deficit, in the river. We have over-allocated the river in this era of increasing drought and climate change.
We’ve got to restructure the demand over the course of the next several years, and that’s going to require more transformational kinds of changes. But I also want to point out that’s not limited to reducing demand, right? You can do that through dramatic increases in efficiency. We can produce the same units of product, whether that be food or microchips or homes or businesses, with significantly less water.
The most effective strategy is efficiency. It’s the cheapest. It does not require significantly new infrastructure or new water augmentation. And there are lots of good stories out there, in creating more efficiencies and creating more flexible policies and more adaptability within the way that we manage water. We’ve got to sort of wring every cool new approach we can out of the system.
One that I think is really important is that the city of Phoenix and several of its regional partners in central Arizona are in the planning stages of moving towards an advanced water-purification process. What that means is it would allow the cities to pool their wastewater resources, their effluent, and then be able to treat that water through advanced water purification so we can reuse that water for municipal use. We call that direct, potable reuse of the water.
Central Arizona is incredibly efficient, we reuse about 90% of all the wastewater that we produce in the central Arizona region for power production, for urban irrigation, for agriculture, etc. But we can actually reuse that water to support households and businesses. We can then use that water again. Some of it is consumed by people, but basically cycling the water through the city as many times as possible reduces the need for new raw water.
So the current proposal that’s in the process of being developed by the City of Phoenix Water Services Department is for advanced water purification that, according to the current estimates, would produce about 60,000 gallons of water a day for City of Phoenix residents from wastewater. And so, that’s one way we can be much more efficient in recycling and reusing our water.
I do think it gets to the need for greater public understanding and then, you know, individual and collective action. In single family residential households, for example, 50% or more, on average, of the water use is outside the home for things like residential landscaping and swimming pools. In the Phoenix area, we’ve seen a really significant trend in reducing water demand inside single family homes, thanks to technologies like low water-use toilets and more efficient washing machines and dishwashers and so on. The next frontier is getting more progressive with the way we manage residential landscaping water. And that's something that every individual household can do.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Las Vegas Regional Authority, has been really at the forefront of these kinds of strategies with turf buyback programs, incentivizing homeowners, and creating all sorts of both incentives and policies to reduce that outdoor residential demand. And that’s something where individual households can be empowered.
No, I really don’t. It’s about a sort of risk management in the short term, and then crafting new policy approaches and new management strategies over the long term. So I don’t think these get in the way of each other. The 2019 agreement essentially bought us some time, and this round of proposals and anticipated agreements will continue to buy us some time.
Do I think we need more adaptation, and more significant changes? Absolutely. But I would never criticize these incremental plans, because they’re absolutely necessary to manage short-term risk.
Without these actions, there was a plausible scenario where levels in the reservoirs could drop below the minimum power pool, meaning we wouldn’t be able to create power out of the Hoover Dam. In [the Bureau of Reclamation’s] 24-month studies, we began to see scenarios in which the lake levels dropped below the intakes, meaning we wouldn’t be able to deliver Colorado River water whatsoever to the states.
When you start to see these highly undesirable scenarios where you lose the ability to produce power, you potentially even lose the ability to deliver any water at all from the Colorado system to Arizona, California, or Nevada, you know you’ve got to act and engage in short-term risk management.
The risk that we’ve always seen is that you get some relief from the kind of very strong winter precipitation in the Rocky Mountains and in California that we had this year. But as a colleague says, we cannot let one good winter take the pressure off. I never want to root against good news, and the winter precipitation and the new proposal and potential agreements are good news. But you got to keep the pressure on and keep the emphasis on the long-term strategies.
[Laughs] Yes.
Well, I think you can look at it both ways. Yes, there was the intention that the 2019 plans would get us to 2026. Turns out the 2019 plans got us through 2022. That’s just the reality we’re in. Do I wish the 2019 plans would have gotten us to 2026? Yes. But without the 2019 plans, we would have been at risk of minimum power pool levels even earlier.
I was hopeful the 2007 plans would get us to 2026. But the reality is that the climate is changing, the drought has just been incredibly persistent. I mean, we now know from looking at reconstructions of the past climate that this 22-year period is the driest period in our region in the last 800 years for certain, and very likely in the last 1,200 years. That’s an exceptional period of drought. And so, by some measures, you know, it’s pretty remarkable what the water management community has done to manage the risk without significant disruption to the region. So in some ways, it’s a success story.
The single most important thing everyone recognizes is that we really need to chart a new path forward for agriculture. Particularly for agriculture in the lower basin, and even more specifically for non-food forage crops in the lower basin.
We still use two-thirds or more of our water in the lower basin for agriculture, and most of that is used for forage crops, like alfalfa, which feed livestock. So we very much need to restructure the agricultural sector in the lower basin and think about prioritization of certain types of agriculture in certain locations. And importantly, we need to work with agricultural communities, with landowners and businesses, to help them transition to a future that recognizes there’s less water available. And, you know, this is the challenge that we face: How do we make an intentional, thoughtful, supportive transition to a new, more efficient, and more appropriate type of agriculture in the West?
This region is in an amazing region to grow alfalfa if you have water. And so, there’s lots of rational choices that were made along the way. But in an era of significantly reduced water availability, it is simply not sustainable for us to continue to use that much of our available water for agriculture, and in particular for forage crops mostly to support cattle. And so this has to change.
I fully recognize, though, that these are private property rights, and there needs to be a process for this. We can’t just simply have a situation like what we saw in the Midwest where we just move all of our manufacturing overseas and abandon entire swaths of the country. We have to think about how we can help, whether it’s through compensation, community planning, capacity building, job transitions, etc. But that’s the biggest part of the solution. We need to be very thoughtful about that.
I think one of the key things we really need to get into the planning process [for 2026] is greater adaptability and greater flexibility so we’re able to respond to changing conditions. Under the current guidelines there is a priority rights process where we would have [hypothetically] seen the reduction of essentially all — 100% — of Arizona’s allocation of the Colorado River, before any of California’s rights were reduced. But it seems implausible to eliminate the Colorado River water supply to Phoenix, which is the fifth largest city in the country. These are the third rails of water politics. We have to rethink the way that these water allocation decisions are made, and we’ve got to be much more flexible, much more adaptable, and really think about how we can respond to climate and water conditions.
