Blue Revolution Part 2

At the very least, we could shift the nature of subsidies to stave off more water losses. Many small and midsize farmers canat convert to precision irrigation and other water-saving technologies, because their margins are so small. Helping farmers use less is often a wiser investment than building new supply projects that goad them to use more.

In the twenty-first century, local, state, and federal governments have upped incentives to help farmers pay for new technologies that slash water use. After the sinkhole scourge, the Southwest Florida Water Management District paid three-fourths the cost for any upgrade that would cut a farmas pumping in half. Farmers lined up to install tailwater-recovery ponds, which collect excess irrigation and rainwater for reuse, soil-moisture probes and weather stations to prevent overwatering, and other technologies.

But nationwide, funding for these programs is a drop in the bucket compared with traditional agricultural and irrigation subsidies. And one sector that is a particular drain on water is getting a particular boost from the government.

In 1925, Henry Ford told the New York Times that ethanol would be athe fuel of the future.a His Model T was designed to run on gasoline, ethanol, or both. But ethanol would be the best bet for America long term, he believed: aThere is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. Thereas enough alcohol in one yearas yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.a34 The point was crucial to Ford because Midwestern family farms like the one he grew up on in Michigan were facing an economic crisis that would soon worsen in the Great Depression. He promoted ethanol as a way to boost markets for American corn. Black-and-white photographs from the 1930s show Nebraskans fueling their Fords at corn-ethanol blend stations, juicy ears of maize painted on the tall fuel pumps. Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were among those who joined Ford in calling for homegrown fuel. But ethanol ended up on the historic road not taken after some dramatic twists and turns driven in part by cheaper petroleum prices. In any case, it did not turn out to be the panacea Ford imagined.35 Nor is it quite the elixir hoped to cure the nationas current dependence on petroleuma"at least not when made from corn. When oil prices spiked in 2007, along with violence and uncertainty in the Middle East, Congress overhauled U.S. energy policy with the Energy Independence and Security Act. The original aim was to cut petroleum subsidies to encourage private investment in alternative fuels. But the well of government largesse proved impossible to cap: Congress illogically kept the petroleum subsidies and created huge new ones for biofuels to help reduce our oil dependence. Ultimately, Congress settled on a strategy to improve fuel efficiency in our cars and require a higher percentage of biofuels in our tanks. The act calls for a nearly fivefold increase in U.S. ethanol production, to 117 billion litersa"thatas almost 31 billion gallonsa"by 2022. By 2015, nearly half of that is supposed to come from corn ethanol.

The ramp-up has serious unintended consequences for Americaas freshwater. Demand for corn has pushed crops beyond relatively rainy states such as Kentucky, Ohio, and Iowa, where it grows with little to no irrigation. Now, the ethanol craze has farmers planting more corn in states such as California, Colorado, and Nebraskaa"where it needs a lot of water, and where water resources are some of the most threatened in the country.

Scientists always knew corn ethanol would be a thirsty proposition. They estimated that between 263 and 784 liters of water would be required to grow and convert corn for each liter of fuel. But in the driest western states, researchers have found the water usage needs to be much higher than they projected, as much as 2,138 liters of water for one liter of ethanol.36 The drain on aquifers is only part of the problem. Of the agricultural water that does return to nature, roughly 30 percent is contaminated with nutrients, soil particles, pesticides, minerals, and salts picked up on the farm.37 Midwestern cornfields send large amounts of fertilizer into streams that meet up with the Mississippi as it flows to the Gulf of Mexico. As they make their way into the Gulf, the nutrients feed giant algae blooms that suck up oxygen as they decompose, wiping out sea life. The result is Gulf hypoxia, occurring in a widening dead zone that at times is as large as Ma.s.sachusetts.38 All of this makes biofuels little more sustainable than petroleuma"aat least not in the way we practice row-crop agriculture to produce the feedstocks for bioethanol and biodiesel in the United States today,a says Jerald Schnoor, an environmental-engineering professor at the University of Iowa.39 Nearly thirty years ago, Schnoor was one of the first scientists to model the impacts of acid rain on aquatic ecosystemsa"and the solutions that helped clean up the nationas watersheds. Heas convinced that the models for sustainable biofuels are out there, too: they include munic.i.p.al and yard wastes, wheat straw and other nonedible parts of grain crops, woody trees like poplars or willows, and perennials such as sweet sorghum and switchgra.s.s. Perennials have long roots that hold soils in place and tap deep sources of watera"meaning they require little to no irrigation. They are more resilient than the annuals we rely on for agricultural crops. Switchgra.s.s was once one of the most ubiquitous prairie plants on the Great Plains. Schnoor envisions a day when it dominates the prairies once more, creating fuels as it enhances bird habitat, improves water quality, and captures carbon in the soils.40 A water ethic for agriculture means this sort of holistic thinkinga"about where to grow which crops, their water demands, their impact on soils, their fit with local ecosystems. At least thatas how Aldo Leopold envisioned it.

aThere are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm,a Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac, which recounts many of his own farming experiences at his Wisconsin River property. aOne is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.a41 Leopold had both great affinity for farmers and great concerns about the agricultural practices of his time. Just as he drafted Americaas ecological conscience, Leopold articulated the wisdom of sustainable agriculture before its time.42 Then and now, agriculture missed the acomplex web of living relationshipsa that Leopold considered key to the land ethic, says farmer-philosopher Fred Kirschenmann. Leopoldas web included not only water but also soil, climate, biodiversity, husbandry, and much else. aYet we still manage farms as if all of their parts, including water, are separate ent.i.ties,a Kirschenmann says.43 A distinguished fellow at Iowa State Universityas Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Kirschenmann converted his familyas North Dakota farm to organic in the 1970s. It was a natural outgrowth of his fatheras teaching. His parents began their life together farming in 1930, during the Dust Bowl. They understood that the devastation was not solely about the lack of water but also about the way the land had been used. Rain scarcity was the immediate cause, but farming methods had devastated the soil. aAs a result, my father became a radical conservationist, and from the time I was five years old, I can remember him admonishing me to atake care of the land,aa Kirschenmann says. aAs far as he was concerned, that was the most important moral duty imposed on any farmera"not only for the sake of the land but also for the economic survival of the farmer.a44 That moral duty was the same articulated by Leopold in his call for aextension of the social conscience from people to land.a It was no coincidence that Leopoldas land ethic also emerged in the wake of the agricultural disaster of the Dust Bowl. Yet he predicted that agriculture would have the toughest time embracing the ethic, given the lack of economic value attached to ecosystems and because ascientific agriculture was actively developed before ecology was born.a45 Kirschenmann says his farmas conversion took a lot of tweaking, still ongoing. But in the first decade, he hit on a crop rotation that controlled weeds, recycled nutrients, reduced disease, and, perhaps most important, improved the soils. In 1988, when North Dakota was. .h.i.t with one of the worst droughts in its history, Kirschenmannas land absorbed and retained enough moisture to sustain his crops. His fields produced a decent harvest, while conventional fields around him dried up and yielded nothing.46 Despite those results, he doesnat consider his farm resilient enough for a future with less water, higher fuel costs, and the rising numbers of extreme weather events that climate scientists predict for the Midwest. In the short term, Kirschenmann is increasing the perennial gra.s.ses and legumes in his crop rotations. Someday, he hopes to be able to convert annual grains to perennialsa"the dream of an increasing number of farmers and scientists who are worried about the impacts of agriculture on water, land, and energy resources.

Writing in the journal Science in 2010, soil scientists from Washington State University and the Land Inst.i.tute of Kansas said a transition from annuals to perennial grainsa"that is, grains that regrow each year, rather than having to be replanteda"awould be one of the largest innovations in the 10,000-year history of agriculture.a Perennial grainsa"which at this point exist only in experimental strainsa"have longer growing seasons than annual crops and deeper roots that reduce erosion and build up soils. They require far less fertilizer and herbicides. Reaching 10 to 12 feet below the surface, their roots can better tap into water as they create paths for rainfall to recharge aquifers. Annual grains can lose five times the water of perennial crops and thirty-five times the nitratea"a valuable plant nutrient that pollutes drinking water when it flows off fields. The authors said it could take as long as twenty years before the experimental perennial grains are ready for prime time. However, breakthroughs could come sooner with more research and investment into their breeding.47 Also still in the laboratory are the technologies that could break down cellulose in switchgra.s.s and other perennials to turn them into starch and sugar for fermentation into biofuels. That makes the nationas research funding and its universities key accelerators for the blue revolution. Unfortunately, some agricultural research is putting on the brakes instead.

One Nation, Under Sod When you talk to farmers about water policy, they like to make two points: One, we need to eat. Two, keeping food supply in the United States is a matter of national security; itas not a good idea to become overreliant on the rest of the globe for food, any more than we should depend on other nations for oil. Both points are true. But here is another truth: farmers in Florida pa.s.sed a poignant milestone in 2000. As of that year, oranges were no longer Floridaas top crop. The number-one crop in the Sunshine State for the past decade has been landscape materials, primarily sod and shrubbery.48 The stateas license plates, instead of that iconic image of two plump oranges, should sport a square of green turfgra.s.s.

Sod and shrubs are not food, of course. Nor are they matters of national security. But they are thirsty commodities that go on to require a lifetime of irrigation. Sod is a high-value crop, with about 400,000 acres in production over all fifty states and an annual value of more than $3 billion.49 Growers harvest it with a mechanical slicer that cuts thatched 16a - 24a rectangles, or 24a - 60a rolls of gra.s.s, from the earth, along with a layer of soil. They pile it onto pallets and truck the heavy heaps to Home Depot and Loweas, where itas sold to patch and expand Americaas 63,240 square miles of gra.s.s. Thirsty cotton may be the fabric of our lives, but sod is the fabric of our landscapes, from highway medians to mini-estates.

Part of the $80 billion U.S. landscaping industry, the sod profession touts a product as green as it looks.50 Turfgra.s.s helps reduce soil erosion. It captures stormwater runoff. It helps recharge aquifers. It absorbs carbon. The industry uses research results from remote-sensing expert Cristina Milesi at California State University, Monterey Bay to show that Americaas turfgra.s.s could store thirty-six billion pounds of carbon a year. But Milesi says emissions from lawn mowers sputtering to and fro across the nationas gra.s.s, along with energy to pump water for irrigation, make the overall benefit small.51 If virtual-water calculations considered future demand as well as the water it takes to make commodities, sodas footprint would grow to the nineteen trillion gallons of water a year Milesi calculates. Thatas more than three times the irrigation demands of all the corn in the country.52 No doubt, turfgra.s.s has its place in American culture: it feels good on bare feet; itas just right for kicking a ball; it smells good when you cut it. All those things are worth some of our water supply. But surely not 19 trillion gallons. Around the nation, some cities and real estate developers are reenvisioning green-carpeted landscapes and replacing sod with beautiful native gra.s.ses. They are leaving or restoring large swaths of urban s.p.a.ce to forest and wetlands, eliminating irrigation and speeding groundwater recharge. Yet some leaders trying to steer their communities onto an ethical water path have found themselves up against an unlikely barrier: their own public research universities.

In 1862, the federal Morrill Act established land-grant universities to bring advanced practical research to Americans who didnat have access to higher education. Over time, Congress also asked these colleges to build networks of experiment stations and sent extension agents into rural areas to bring research to farmers. In recent years, university extension has turned its attention to the environmental challenges facing communities, from climate change to pressures on freshwater.

But research funding and personnel directed to the new path remain only a fraction of that devoted to the old. And in some instances, agricultural researchers have worked against local communities trying to change their water fortunes. In 2005, researchers at the Texas Cooperative Extension arm of Texas A&M University, working with the Turf Gra.s.s Producers of Texas, disputed San Antonioas decision to ban some gra.s.ses, including the widely used St. Augustine variety. At the University of Florida in recent years, researchers with the Inst.i.tute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, which is partially funded by the turf industry, have recommended an increase in suggested fertilizer-application guidelines at the same time local governments around the state have been trying to enact ordinances to reduce nitrogen runoff into local waterways.53 Meanwhile at the University of California at Davis, agricultural economist Steven Blank calls agolf courses, nurseries, and turf farmsa the only truly sustainable sector in American agriculturea"because it will supply the greenery for city living and playing in our increasingly urban future.54 The nationas tapped-out aquifers and shrinking rivers are part of Blankas argument that most farming in America will come to its natural end. In his book The End of Agriculture in the American Portfolio, he predicts a time when the United States will import nearly all its food from other countries. Costs for land and labor, he writes, will become too high for American farmers to compete with their global counterparts. Depletion of the High Plains Aquifer and others will give farmers in key regions ano choice but to leave agriculture.a.5.5 Blank says we shouldnat lament his ultraurban vision of the future, grudgingly shared by a growing number of people in conventional agriculture, in which rural areas with open s.p.a.ces will be transformed into residential developments for an increasingly affluent population. Communities of interest will replace physical communities, as telecommuters work thousands of miles from their offices.56 Of course, just like the dire visions of a parched American future in which weave overdrawn every aquifer and river in the land, it doesnat have to be this way. And by the looks of our newfound love for local farms and food, it wonat be.

Inside the city limits of Milwaukee, farmer and MacArthur Fellowship winner Will Allen grows food for thousands of urbanites on two acres at his nonprofit farm, Growing Power. Six greenhouses grow twelve thousand pots of herbs, salad mix, beet greens, arugula, mustards, and sprouts. Interspersed among the plants are hydroponic systems growing tilapia, perch, and a variety of salad greens along with bins of wriggler wormsa"the key to the farmas rich soil. The small plot also houses chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, and bees. The whole system demands less water than either irrigated agriculture or the urban-scapes the farm replaced, because its water needs are met via rainwater catchment and recycling systems that keep water flowing in a loop in which fish ponds fertilize plants and plants clean up fish ponds.

Allen is among a new breed of American farmers who embody Thomas Jeffersonas vision of the yeoman spanning rural and urban life, growing food to enrich local communities and keep the nation self-sufficient. In 2010, private entrepreneurs began to launch commercial rollouts for Allenas aquaculture/agriculture model in other parts of the country.

While Allen turns abandoned factories into fish farms, farmer turned land planner Matthew aQuinta Redmond, in Golden, Colorado, is taking on both industrial irrigation and the lawn. Redmond wants to replace stretches of sod with community farms that use less water as they feed local residents and supply restaurants. Where golf courses border subdivisions, Redmond sees borders of herbs and gourmet lettuce; sand traps become kale traps. Where parking lots surround office buildings, Redmond envisions vegetable-crop lots. Workers on break from their cubicles can pull weeds or just enjoy the scenery. aWhen you do it really well, agriculture is stunningly beautiful,a says Redmond. aThatas why property values in Sonoma are so high.a57 One of Redmondas companies, TSR Agristruction, is part landscape-design firm, part community farm. Homeowners and landowners hire Redmond to build gardens or farms, for personal use or to join his community-agriculture program, which harvests the produce year-round for sale to local restaurants. Redmond uses geographic-information-system technologies to a.n.a.lyze demand for produce by census track. He figures out how many calories each track would consume, and how many plants are needed to grow those calories. He waters with satellite-controlled computer systems that monitor moisture and drip-irrigate in forty-eight zones. In the first couple of years, the company has turned a profit and repaid landowners between $3,000 and $4,000 per acre per year. But the owners seem happiest with the beautification of their land, and with the fact that they no longer have landscape-maintenance costs.

Longer term, Redmond wants to develop former industrial croplands into agricultural-urban communities, a concept he calls Agriburbia. His first project, proposed for Milliken, Colorado, aims to replace 520 acres of flood-irrigated cropland with a community that weaves farming and urban life together rather than setting them up for collision. About 150 acres are slated for civic farmland, another 100 for privately owned crops. The original farm earned about $350,000 in annual revenue, Redmond says, and he estimates that the Agriburbia design will net agricultural revenues in excess of $1 milliona"with a third of the annual water use, thanks to recycled water and efficient irrigation.

Fred Kirschenmann, at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, says urban and suburban agriculture is poised to spread quickly across the nation as Americans look for new ways to avoid the steep water, energy, and pollution costs of industrial agriculture. aSmall-scale farmers have found ways to produce incredible amounts of food on limited acreage for local populations,a he says.58 Heas been working with Columbia Universityas Urban Design Lab to a.n.a.lyze how much food might be grown within a 200-mile radius of New York City. Even the most optimistic locavore enthusiasts have a.s.sumed metro areas that large could never home-grow enough food for populations in the millions. The a.n.a.lysis found otherwise. When you include all the sod, seven million acres are available for farming around the city. aIam increasingly thinking that urban agriculture is really going to surprise us,a Kirschenmann says.

One hundred years ago, visionaries like William Smythe were saying the same about the potential for small farmers to feed their local communities and further the cause of democracy. Industrial agriculture usurped those ideas, taking advantage of Americansa love for farmers to steer irrigation benefits in a much different direction. Then and now, rhetoric over water and farms does not exactly match the reality.

In spring 2009, the plight of farm workers in Californiaas Central Valley suddenly became as widely known as it had been during the Dust Bowl seventy years beforea"at least for an Internet moment. In 1939, the public had devoured two books, one nonfiction and one fiction, exposing the wretched existence of migrant farm workers in the place many Americans considered a cornucopia of goodness. The agrarian mythology surrounding the fertile Central Valley gave way to the reality of industrial agriculture as Factories in the Field, by lawyer turned labor activist Carey McWilliams, and The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, rose on best-seller lists. To try to clean up their tarnished image, growers commissioned narratives of their owna"with t.i.tles like Plums of Plenty and Grapes of Gladness. But popular sentiment lay with the plight of the farm workers, especially Steinbeckas Joad family members and their sorrowful search for the American dream.59 Indeed, the dream denied tends to arouse American outrage. And on a dry April day during his final term, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped into the narrative to inspire some national outrage over water. Standing in front of the half-empty San Luis Reservoir, built in 1962 to store water for the fedsa Central Valley Project, he painted a Dust Bowla"grim picture of Central Valleyas storied farming economy. He spoke of lost jobs and suffering farm families. And he blamed it on water. aFarmers are leaving their land unused because they canat count on water,a Schwarzenegger bellowed. aFarm workers are losing their jobs because crops are not being planted.

aIn towns across our Central Valley, our unemployment is skyrocketing,a he added. a[Californiaas] unemployment rate now is 11.2 percent, and this is absolutely unacceptable.a60 Schwarzeneggeras speech topped off a four-day March for Water along the dusty highways of the Central Valley organized by the California Latino Water Coalition. As California suffered in its third year of drought (and as the residents of Granite Bay kept topping off their grottoes), federal water managers had slowed the pumps that send water south to farmers through the Central Valley Project in an effort to protect migrating salmon and other fish in the Sacramentoa"San Joaquin Delta.

The March for Water brought hundreds of farm workers, farmers, and local elected officials together to protest the water cutbacks and to call for easing environmental protections for threatened species such as the Delta smelt.61 As the crowd chanted, aWe need water, we need water,a Schwarzenegger seemed to be channeling McWilliams and Steinbeck. He twice invoked the name of labor leader Csar Chvez as he used the plight of farm workers to highlight the importance of water for agriculture: Csar Chvez knew the power of a good marcha"he led by example and he never stopped trying until he found a way. And this is exactly what we are going to do. We never will stop until we find a way, find a way together here, because this is the right thing to do, because we need water, we need water, we need water, we need water.62 But the governoras remarks were problematic. For one, the union founded by Chvez, the United Farm Workers of America, did not partic.i.p.ate in or support the march. aIn reality, this is not a farm worker march,a said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the 27,000-member organization. aThis is a farmer march orchestrated and financed by growers.a63 Moreover, the New York Times reported that amany of the protesters were paid by their employers to march in lieu of harvesting crops.a64 Helping the Latino Water Coalition with its gra.s.sroots action was Burson-Marsteller, the global public relations giant known for its ability to generate news coverage. It also has a knack for spinning corporate interests in the voices of everyday people. Burson-Marsteller organized the purported citizens group National Smokers Alliance in the early 1990s to protest antismoking lawsa"on behalf of the Phillip Morris tobacco company.65 As it turns out, the jobs and unemployment crises Schwarzenegger talked about had little to do with watera"or even with agriculture, according to state economic data. In spring 2009, the state was ground zero for the national recession. The major cause of Californiaas downturn was a two-thirds decline in construction activity, which led to a loss of almost 400,000 construction jobs and another 200,000 jobs in finance and real estate, says Stephen Levy, director and senior economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, in Palo Alto. During the drought and water crisis that coincided with the recession, awe didnat see real disruptions in agricultural exports or production or the job side,a Levy says. aNothing like you see when you go from building 200,000 homes to building 40,000 homes.a66 No doubt, workers were hurting in the Central Valley. The unemployment rate in Merced County, where Schwarzenegger spoke, was 22 percent that spring.67 But local and state economists alike blamed the moribund housing market and high foreclosure rates rather than agricultural job losses. In fact, Merced County ended the year pulling in the third-highest agricultural revenues in its history despite water rationing. If not for low milk prices, it might have been the highest.68 Not unlike Burson-Marstelleras smokersa rights campaign of a decade before, which attempted to crush the indoor smoking bans being launched in California, the workersa rights rhetoric was more about money and politics than about farms and farm workers. Schwarzenegger and the Latino Water Coalition were championing the $11 billion water bonda"the one that promised to restore the Sacramentoa"San Joaquin Delta and ensure reliable supply for all of Californiaas water users. It needed two-thirds approval of the state a.s.sembly to be placed on a statewide ballot. The stateas agricultural lobby was adesperatea to see it pa.s.s.69 Burson-Marsteller landed impressive media saturation of the farm worker story, by outlets from 60 Minutes to Sean Hannity. And Schwarzenegger did muscle the water bond through the state a.s.sembly. Political compromise that it was, the bill contained its share of pork. a.s.semblyman Chuck DeVore, a Republican from Irvine, recalled the sausage making of one particularly torturous all-night session as supporters tried to line up votes. Leaders aadded about $100 million an hour as we played Letas Make a Deal,a he says.70 But a few months before it was to appear on the November 2010 ballot, Schwarzenegger and other supporters decided to delay the $11 billion question until 2012, ato avoid jeopardizing its pa.s.sage.a They worried that Californiaas financial crisisa"a $20 billion hole in the state budgeta"would make it a tough sell to voters.71 Schwarzenegger deserves a lot of credit for his administrationas intense focus on water during his second term, and for his determination to fix the Delta. But the man dubbed Governor Green for helping rewrite Americaas energy screenplay was taking his cues from industrial irrigators when it came to water for agriculture. His invoking of Csar Chvez must have had the labor leader rolling in his grave at the nearby United Farm Workers headquarters in Keene.

While Schwarzenegger was the one who wanted to leave office with a water legacy, Florida governor Charlie Crist was the one who may have done so. In his last term, Crist orchestrated a buyout of former Everglades marshland south of Lake Okeechobee, owned and farmed for decades by the U.S. Sugar Corporation. Floridaas economic crisis shrunk the original deal, but in 2010, the South Florida Water Management District completed the purchase of forty-two square miles of sugar property for $200 million, with an option to buy five times more land if the economy turns.72 The land buy did not make everyone happy. U.S. Sugaras main compet.i.tors in the Glades, the Fanjul family of Florida Crystals Corporation, were furiousa"and they got Floridaas growing Tea Party boiling, too. It also may have helped Crist lose the first election of his career, his bid for U.S. Senate in 2010. But it was the right decision for the Everglades. Buying up farmlands in those parts of the nation where water can no longer survive agricultural practices will be far cheaper in the long run than the consequences of not doing so.

The blue revolution does not turn away from agriculture; it is a water ethic for agriculture. Farming and water have a lot in common. We have an emotional attachment to each. We are physically and aesthetically drawn to farms, as we are to water. We value both of them in ways that defy economics. We appreciate the regional imprint of peach orchards off Interstate 75 in Georgia and cornfields off Interstate 80 in Nebraska. We relax at the break of green from rice plants peeking out of their paddies on the drive to the Sacramento International Airport. Floridians who moved to Plant City did so in part to live among the bucolic green swaths of strawberry farms that ended up causing them so much trouble.

These intangibles are all the more reason to heed Aldo Leopoldas warning that agriculture not be governed awholly by economic self-interest.a73 Though California is the largest agricultural state in the nation, agriculture is no longer king in California. Technology and trade, tourism and entertainment are now kings. The farming sector accounts for only 4 percent of gross state product by even the most generous calculations. If you look at statewide employment, agricultureas impact is even smaller.74 Thereas no comparing the revenue and growth potential of rice paddies to iPads. Still, most of us would probably agree that rice is more important in the larger scope of life. No one wants to see the end of agriculture in the American portfolio, as the subt.i.tle of Steven Blankas book puts it. With political will, we could reduce subsidies to those agricultural operations that flout the water ethic, and support those farmers who embrace it. We could invest in sustainable agricultural research and practices in rural America while we build urban farming into metro areasa"reminding us all not only where food comes from but where water comes from, too.

As the March for Water made clear, however, heading down this new, blue path will require getting arounda"or winning overa"a pretty big obstacle: the politically powerful sectors of the American economy that make their living off the old.

Chapter 6. The Water-Industrial Complex.

Americans faced a bleak holiday season in 2008. Over the previous year, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression collapsed the value of their homes and toppled their most trusted financial inst.i.tutions. The stock market had crashed. Retirement savings had vaporized. By December, 1.9 million Americans had lost their jobs. Polls that month registered the largest decline in consumer confidence since researchers began taking the measurement in the 1950s.1 Even those families with steady incomes clamped down on Christmas spending.

The deepening economic crisis had cast a shadow over the historic election of Barack Obama as forty-fourth president of the United States. But many Americans remained hopeful about Obamaas call for change in the tone and direction of the country.2 That December, Obama and congressional leaders were already working on the president-electas foremost goal, an economic-recovery plan. The crux was government stimulus: a federal investment of hundreds of billions of dollars to both jump-start the economy and steer the country onto a more sustainable course.

Democrats and Republicans alike had for decades embraced economist John Maynard Keynesas post-Depression stimulus theory: when fear makes consumers and investors excessively cautious, government should step in to boost confidence, and public spending will keep factories humming until the aanimal spiritsa of people and investors return.3 Outgoing president George W. Bush deployed his brand a year earlier, with a $1,200 check for many American families. But Obama wanted a stimulus plan that would at once jolt the economy and transform it. For one, targeted spending could help green America. The idea was to make the United States much more efficient and move the power grid toward clean energy, creating thousands of green-collar jobs to put Americans back to work. The plan would spark private investment in clean power with subsidies for solar arrays, wind farms, and biofuels. It would funnel billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments for renewable-energy, ma.s.s-transit, and other green economic-development projects. They could hire workers to weatherize hundreds of thousands of homes, to install smart meters to monitor and reduce residential energy use.4 Obamaas stimulus plan held out the promise of both more jobs and less carbon. It was a unifying intention in the wake of a bitter election that pitted economy against environment with cries of aDrill, baby, drill!a reverberating at the Republican National Convention.5 But there were a couple problems with the president-electas eco-friendly plan: it ignored the number-one environmental concern of most Americansa"and one of the best possible solutions for reducing the nationas energy demand.

The winter that President Obama and his family moved into the White House, the Gallup organization released its annual poll on the environment. The 2009 results showed that for the first time, Americansa top four environmental concerns were all related to watera"from water pollution to freshwater supply. More respondents in the 2009 poll were aworried a great deala about the availability of freshwater for household use than in any previous year.6 In fact, concern about whether freshwater would continue to flow out of U.S. taps was greater than worries about climate change.7 California was grappling with the worst drought in modern history. Raleigh and Atlanta, both named by the Urban Land Inst.i.tute as top retirement cities for aging baby boomers, had come within weeks of depleting their sole drinking-water reservoirs. Las Vegasa"retirement hot-spot No. 5a"faced running dry within six years, Patricia Mulroy, chief of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told lawmakers that year.

But debate in Congress over the bill that became known as the American Recovery and Investment Act revealed how oblivious the nationas elected officials were to their const.i.tuentsa most pressing environmental concerna"and to the impact of water use on the energy grid. The enormous amount of U.S. power generationa"upward of 10 percent of the totala"spent pumping water, treating it, moving it around the nation, and treating it some more, means that investment in a blue revolution could have as much of an immediate impact on carbon emissions as any one new alternative energy source.

Yet, as Congress crafted the stimulus bill with an eye toward sustainability, it gave water barely a blink. Senators and representatives added to the bill until it was 1,100 pages long and $787 billion fat. They directed about $6 billion of that to water and wastewater projectsa"less than 1 percent.8 (Six billion dollars is a lot, but itas a fraction of Americaas annual water and wastewater spending, which totaled about $45 billion in 2008.)9 In the end, water got far less stimulus funding than virtually all other public works needs. Given the green shade of the bill, youad think that some of the $6 billion would go to programs for water efficiency, wetlands restoration, and green roofsa"investments that would steer America toward the blue revolution, saving trillions of gallons of water and creating tens of thousands of jobs. But that was not exactly how it worked out.

During the 2008 holidays, as congressional staffers worked on the stimulus bill, Mary Ann d.i.c.kinson and her staff at the Alliance for Water Efficiency put in long hours over the usually dead week between Christmas and New Yearas Day.10 d.i.c.kinson helped launch the Chicago-based nonprofit organization in 2007 after running successful utility-conservation programs in Connecticut and California. She is one of the few voices in the utility industry willing to say that the countryas approach to water is all wrong.

The conventional wisdom maintains that we can fix our water problems with more reservoirs and river pipelines, more diversions and desalination plants. But for d.i.c.kinson, these are last resortsa"meaning, we should resort to them only after an obvious step: stop wasting a drop of the water we already have. In the world of the water-industrial complex, this precept is tantamount to accusing the emperor of having no clothes. But d.i.c.kinsonas data is clear: efficiency can often net as much water as many infrastructure projects. And it saves a significant amount of money. Water efficiency costs between $450 and $1,600 for every million gallons it saves. Every other new water source costs a lot more. For example, desalination costs about $15,000 for the same million gallons.11 But hardly anyone is willing to admit d.i.c.kinsonas right, because of all the other reasons we favor edifices over efficiency: politicians want to bring home visible new projects. Engineering firms want to land them. Communities want the jobs they bring. And utilities want to sell more water. Check out any multimillion-dollar water project in the nation, and behind it you will find a powerful set of backers whose profits are directly proportional to its size.

So it went with the stimulus spigot. Utilities, engineering firms, and water managers created a cacophony for infrastructure funding. d.i.c.kinsonas was a relatively lonely voice for efficiency, despite powerful evidence that itas the wisest first-choice investment. An Alliance study found that a $10 billion infusion in efficiency projects would create 150,000 to 222,000 jobs and save between six and a half trillion and ten trillion gallons of water.12 d.i.c.kinson talked up full-house retrofits, citywide leak-detection programs, and other ideas that could bring jobs to communities and capture the same water at less cost than new plants. The Alliance sent a letter to the president in late December detailing the thousands of jobs, billions of dollars, and trillions of gallons of water the United States would save with a national plumbing-retrofit program.

The arguments were similar to those advocates were making for energy efficiency. Still, congressional staffers kept responding to d.i.c.kinson with the annoying new buzzword flying around Capitol Hill, the soon-to-be-clichd ashovel ready.a President Obama used the term, which refers to thousands of projects nationwide with planning complete and permitting approved, but no funding, as one of his favorite selling points for the stimulus package. He wanted projects that would bring jobs right away. Staffers told d.i.c.kinson to come back with shovel-ready deals. It was a head-scratching task; by their nature, efficiency projects would require no dirt dug. Nevertheless, d.i.c.kinson and her staff spent the final week of 2008 on phone, fax, and e-mail, begging for ready-to-go efficiency projects at water utilities across the country.

By January 1, they had collected 575 of them worth about $2 billion. The nonprofit organization American Rivers worked similarly to collect wetland restoration and green-roof proposals, calculating their potential for reducing water pollution as well as jobs created.

By the time Congress pa.s.sed the bill on February 11, 2009, lawmakers had agreed that 20 percent of the $6 billion in water funding should flow to green projects. d.i.c.kinson and her colleagues felt theyad made real progress. But then, it came time to spend the money.

Some was already spoken for despite the presidentas a.s.surances that the stimulus bill was pork free. As a Republican taking heat from the Tea Party for supporting the previous yearas bank bailout, U.S. senator Bob Bennett of Utah opposed the stimulus bill. But as the literal heir to Utahas largest federal water schemea"his father, onetime U.S. senator Wallace Bennett, fought to win pa.s.sage and initial appropriations for the Central Utah Project in the 1950sa"he was eager to land stimulus money to complete the six-decade-long pet project. Bennett managed to get a $50 million line item into the bill for the Central Utah Projecta"$41 million for a major infrastructure piece and the rest for environmental-mitigation efforts.13 Then, he voted against the bill, declaring, aThe only thing this bill will stimulate is the national debt.a14 Then, after it pa.s.sed, he took credit back in Utah for bringing his state aprojects that would create jobs.a15 In other cases, sheer bureaucratic inertia funneled the water funds to old-style infrastructure projects. The water money was doled out in what are known as State Revolving Funds, pots of cash that finance each stateas drinking-water and clean-water infrastructure improvements. In deciding how to spend the money, state regulators gave priority to large, supply-side projects requested by utilities, which has always been their role. When I asked a couple of these regulators why they didnat use the windfall to fund more of the progressive, demand-side proposals seeking funding in their states, they told me that would take too long. The only way to get the money out fast, they said, was to funnel it to utility projects, for which they already had a funding process in place. The result was that most of d.i.c.kinsonas 575 proposals were shut out. aAlmost all of the money went to infrastructure,a d.i.c.kinson says. aOut of $787 billion of stimulus money, maybe a few million went to water conservation or efficiency.

aWhere did we in the last twenty years get so left behind?a she asks. aHow has energy efficiency progressed forward as a cause, as a source of billions of dollars in funding, and we havenat been able to do this with water?a Each year, the American Society of Civil Engineers puts out its highly publicized Report Card for American Infrastructure to expose the nationas crumbling, woefully underfunded waterworks, roads, and bridges. Americaas water-infrastructure needs are usually given the lowest gradea"a dismal D minus in the 2009 report. Water and wastewater also carry the highest price tag to fix: total investment needs of $255 billion.16 What the report never points out is that our water-management approach itself is part of the problem. In addition to new projects, utilities want billions of dollars to rebuild the nationas aging water lines, sewer mains, and treatment plants, many built more than a hundred years ago. True, these systems are leaking, collapsing, and overflowing. But often missing from the debate is the idea that rather than prop up failing systems, we should invest in new ways of living with water. Economist Valerie Nelson, director of the Ma.s.sachusetts-based Coalition for Alternative Wastewater Treatment, says our waterworks have reached the cla.s.sic run-to-failure moment, when it becomes more efficient to invest in something new than to repair the old. Itas like the tipping point at which itas not worth replacing the transmission in your clunker. Instead, you save every last dime for a new car, maybe even a hybrid.17 In the mid-1880s, the country began building pipes that carry clean water into cities, another set to carry wastewater out, and yet another to rid cities of stormwater. Sticking to this big-pipe approach is like holding on to your grandparentsa Buick Roadmaster from the 1950sa"and paying large repair bills to keep it running for thirteen-mile-a-gallon commutes in the modern city. aThe traditional, linear atake, make, wastea approach to managing water increasingly is proving unsustainable,a says Glen T. Daigger, president of the International Water a.s.sociation. He is also senior vice president and chief technology officer at CH2M Hill, the Colorado-based company that is consistently one of the top water-engineering firms in the nationa"where he has worked for more than three decades. Climate change and growing global population now have him calling on his own colleagues to change their mega-project approach.18 The old patha"finding a pristine new source of water, conveying it with pumps, using it once, cleaning it up, then flushing it awaya"has led us to insufficient water supplies, unsustainable consumption of energy to move water around and chemicals to treat it, dispersion of nutrients, particularly phosphorus, into our waters, and financially unstable utilities, Daigger argues.

But moving his colleagues from their concrete-pipes position has been difficult. Part of the reason is that Americaas failing water systems have taken water managers by surprise. The National Academy of Engineering, in Washington, D.C., recently recognized modern water and wastewater systems as one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century. Those 1800s systems saved lives by reducing exposure to pathogens and preventing flooding. aGiven the outstanding success,a Daigger says, awhy should we change?a19 Aside from the energy demands of water, the answer is population pressure. The U.S. population is expected to climb 50 percent, from the current figure of 310 million to about 450 million, by 2050.20 Essentially all of that increase is projected for urban areas. That fact makes cities sitting targets for increasing water scarcity and flood losses if they donat change. It gives them an unprecedented chance to remake their water fortunes if they do.

Some of the countryas most progressive engineers and local governments are leading the blue revolution, and waving for the rest to follow. An early shift in mind-set came with New York Cityas decision to acquire tens of thousands of acres of watershed land surrounding its Catskills drinking-water reservoirs, creating a natural water-treatment system that saved $6 billion in capital and maintenance costs for concrete conveyances. Boston saved hundreds of millions of dollars when it closed the door on a plan to pipe the Connecticut River for water supply and opened one on an efficiency program that has cut water use 43 percent since 1980. Indianapolis saved more than $300 million in sewage costs creating a system of wetlands, trees, and downspout disconnections to filter stormwater.

Next-generation technologies and designs have made bigger leaps. New subdivisions are being built with little or no imported water. New York Cityas Battery Park City has several new high-rises that treat stormwater runoff and wastewater and recycle it back into landscaping, cooling towers, and toilets. Officials in New York City, San Antonio, and a few other cities are offering incentives for these approaches because, says the Coalition for Alternative Wastewater Treatmentas Valerie Nelson, athey understand that each gallon of freshwater they donat need to pipe in, and each gallon of wastewater and stormwater they donat have to pipe out, reduces pressure on the cityas aging underground water and sewer systems.a21 In every case, the new, blue path has been much cheaper. This is another reason itas so difficult for the water-industrial complex to change course. The linear path has been lucrative for the utilities that sell the water, and the firms that design and build multimillion-dollar water projects. The financials are starting to change for utilities in water-scarce cities that see how every drop they save helps defer a much more expensive optiona"say, a desalination planta"in the future.

But at least for now, the firms that advise us on how to design our communitiesa water projectsa"often the same firms that end up with the contract to build thema"have a financial interest in the old path. The allusion to the military-industrial complex is not random. Over the past two decades, the water-supply industry has been transformed from locally owned firms to global conglomerates with billion-dollar revenues. Such consolidation is contrary to the highly local, decentralized solutions of the future. Water development has grown nearly as large and high-stakes as private defense contracting. A wave of acquisitions in the 1990s and early 2000s means the two industries are increasingly one and the same: three of the top twenty water-engineering concerns in the United States are part of global conglomerates that also make the list of top twenty private defense contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: Parsons Corporation, with $579 million in federal defense contracts; Tetra Tech, with $362 million; and AECOM, with $294 million.22 Water is increasingly attractive to powerhouse contracting firms because it is lucrative not only when times are good but also when they are bad. During the global economic recession that began in 2007, water was one of the few engineering sectors to continue soaking up profits. Engineering firms in general suffered a year of pain in 2009 and one of uncertainty in 2010, according to the industry journal Engineering News-Record. Revenue for the top 500 design firms in the nation fell 11.7 percent to $80.02 billion in 2009, down from $90.85 billion in 2008.23 But the water experts bucked the trenda"particularly, the sector devoted to building new supply projects. An ENR market a.n.a.lysis found that revenue in water-supply design, construction, and management markets rose an astounding 17 percent between 2008 and 2009, amid the worst of the U.S. economic collapse.24 Industry CEOs could thank the water crisis in the western United States and the nationwide drought.25 Through lobbying, involvement on boards and task forces, and campaign contributions, princ.i.p.als work to keep the money flowing to water projects at local, state, and federal levels. Thatas not a bad thing. The problem is that industry economic drivers favor the large, supply-side projects that helped lead to our water stress in the first place.

The American public routinely expresses anger at the influence of self-interested players in the nationas most important affairs: energy and automobile companies on climate policy, insurers on health care reform, defense contractors on military spending. Water engineers, by contrast, come across as brainy hydraulic heroes, in the room to help bring water to people or save them from floods. That is true for many of them as individuals. But engineering firms influence government policy and spending to maximize their profits just like other big business in America.

My writing about water over the years has allowed me to meet many longtime water engineers in the private sector and in government who fall into the hydraulic-hero category. Some of these sources and friends minimize their professionas role in influencing water management, arguing that federal water policy, agricultural irrigation and subsidies, and runaway sprawl led to the overwhelming drain on the countryas water supply. Those points are right, but they are looking to the past. Many books have called out the aLords of Yesterday,a the term coined by author Charles F. Wilkinson, whose highly praised 1997 Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West attacks the five historic alordsa that prevent water sustainability in the West.

Wilkinsonas top five are the Hardrock Mining Law of 1872, which dedicates more than half of all public lands to mining as the preferred use; public rangeland practices that devastate western ranges and rivers; forest policy that continues to push logging as the dominant use of our national forests; the mega-dams and other water-development practices that destroyed rivers in the name of acheapa hydropower; and finally, the prior-appropriation doctrine, which allows the larger water users who got there first to extract as much water as they want at no charge, so long as it is put to a abeneficiala use, such as farming, mining, or hydropower.26 Those lords have not been toppled. But as population growth exacerbates pressure to move more water to urban areas, it is time to also open our eyes to the entrenched interests standing in the way of water sustainability in metropolitan regions across the nation, from West to East. Last century, federal taxpayers footed the bill for the countryas current hydraulic empire, which, in historian Donald Worsteras words, turned rivers into aabstracted water, rigidly separated from the earth and firmly directed to raise food, fill pipes, and make money.a27 In the twenty-first century, we can avoid that mistake, broadening the very concept of infrastructure to include naturea"ahealthy rivers, small streams, wetlands, and floodplains that are often more reliable and cost effective at providing clean drinking water and natural flood protection,a says Katherine Baer, senior director for the clean-water program at American Rivers.28 That means paying attention to the ecological limits and stability of water in our local communities and states. Traditionally, weave taken notice only during a major drought or the rare boil-water alert. But who takes a few hours off work in the middle of the day to attend water meetings, filled with the mind-numbing business of water contracts, general-obligation bonds, and State Revolving Funds? When citizens do show up, they are not often appreciated. The public-comments portion of water meetings is often scheduled last. The Texas Water Development Board usually has somewhere between twenty-five and fifty agenda items for its monthly meetings. Public comment comes next to last.29 The board of the South Florida Water Management District, based in West Palm Beach, goes to the trouble of taking its meetings on the road, ostensibly to make it easier for the public in far-flung counties to attend. During a rare board meeting at a St. Lucie County library in May 2010, dozens of local citizens arrived in the morning to complain about discharges of polluted freshwater from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie River Estuary. Despite their frustrated pleas, board members made them wait through 6 hours of other business. By the time citizens were allowed to speak at 4 p.m., most of them were gone.30 Global water firms, on the other hand, are heard loud and clear when community, state, and federal water policies get made. They are not only at the decision-making table but setting it, which can create conflicts real and perceived. In Ma.s.sachusetts, private engineering firms are helping state, county, and local officials plan for new wastewater systems to help stop the flow of nitrogen and phosphorus that is fueling algae growth in the freshwater and coastal estuaries of Cape Cod. In 2010, taxpayer-watchdog groups filed a formal complaint with the state Division of Professional Licensure after a professional engineeras report claimed that a more costly central sewage project was far cheaper than a decentralized neighborhood option called cl.u.s.ter systems. Claims of bias for big-pipe projects in the region have led U.S. representative Matthew Patrick of Falmouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, to propose legislation that would prohibit engineering firms that consult on behalf of communities to design and construct the projects they recommended.31 From coast to coast, private engineering firms not only plan, design, and build water projects, they also increasingly run them. Their unique role and reputations would seem professional incentive enough to rise above politics. Instead, they are key players in local, state, and national races. Just like energy companies, agricultural interests, and other water users, global water firms and their employees are major donors at every level; some firms pressure their engineers to donate. Federal elections records show that every one of Americaas top twenty water-engineering firms, through employees or political action committees or both, gave thousands of dollars to congressional candidates in the last federal election cycle. Industry icon Ralph Peterson, the CH2M Hill chairman who built the firm into a $6.5 billion, 25,000-employee industry force, personally gave nearly $100,000 in federal campaign contributions between 1994 and his death in 2009.32 Most of the top twenty firms also had registered PACs to collect money from employees and target donations to key members of Congress and state lawmakers who control infrastructure pocketbooks.33 At the state level, the top water-engineering firms have dropped the largest campaign contributions in recent years on big-infrastructure spender California. Their dollars have helped convince Californians to authorize multibillion-dollar water bonds that fund the projects for which the firms compete. In 2002, for example, Kansas Citya"based Black & Veatch spent $50,000 on the campaign urging voters to support Proposition 50, which authorized $3.44 billion in bonds for various water projects.34 Those projects included funding for the restoration of Californiaas ailing Salton Sea; Black & Veatch has long worked to convince California to adopt its $1 billion solution for restoring the Salton.35 Parsons Corporation spent $25,000 on the same campaign for Proposition 50, which included $10 million for a project it managed on behalf of the All-American Ca.n.a.l.36 CH2M Hillas California PAC gave $342,207 in 2006 alone, including a $50,000 chunk to help pa.s.s that yearas Proposition 84, which authorized $5.4 billion in water bonds.37 CH2M Hill officials worked to make sure Proposition 84 funding would cover the long-term management plan for the Sacramentoa"San Joaquin Delta; later, the company was awarded a $9.5 million contract to develop the plan.38 AECOM, headquartered in Glen Allen, Virginia, also has a keen interest in statewide races on the West Coast. Its PAC contributed $142,925 to California campaigns in 2009. Of that, $5,000 went to three-term Los Angeles city councilwoman Janice Hahn in her bid for lieutenant governor.39 But after San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom made a late entrance into the same race in 2010, AECOM gave the maximum allowable contribution to him: $13,000 total for the primary and general elections; three company executives also contributed to Newsomas successful bid.40 AECOM has numerous financial links to San Francisco: that April, for example, the cityas Public Utilities Commission approved a $26 million water-construction contract with the firm.41 Global engineering firms also make big campaign contributions at the local level, where it can take millions of dollars to win an election. In Houston, then unknown Bill White shattered fund-raising records in 2003, raising $8.6 million to beat out two established opponents for mayor.42 That year, an a.n.a.lysis of Houston campaign contributions found that engineering firms competing for infrastructure contracts were one of the top contributors to city council and mayoral campaigns. Local firms that contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars landed millions of dollars in contracts, which the Houston City Council ahas virtually unlimited discretiona in awarding because professional services arenat subject to compet.i.tive bidding requirements.43 All the political activity has become a point of tension within the profession. The industry finds itself in aa fundamental clash between deeply rooted ethical principles and a profession faced by the pressures of the business environment,a says Professor Jimmy Smith, director of the Murdough Center for Engineering Professionalism at Texas Tech University, in Lubbock. Despite clear guidelines established by the American Society of Civil Engineers, professional engineers often complain that they are apressured into making contributionsa and that aitas a matter of survival.a44 A review of American Society of Civil Engineers professional-conduct cases for 2000 to 2006 found that of all the ethics cases filed in those years, aimproper campaign contributionsa was by far the most common complaint filed.45 The story of illegal campaign contributions at powerhouse firm PBSJ is an extreme example. But the fact that it could happen at an engineering firm that is among the top ranked in the nation reflects how a n.o.ble profession could get sucked into the ign.o.bility of politics.

In 1959, a thirty-five-year-old engineer with the Florida road department, Howard M. aBudda Post, was offered the chance to help create Miami Lakes, the first master-planned community in the Sunshine State. Putting up $500 each, Post and three fellow engineers formed a company that grew as fast as Florida.46 Along with managing the design and construction of Miami Lakes, the young men who made up what became Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan, now PBSJ, engineered the sixty-five-mile Card Sound Bridge, which connected the mainland to the Florida Keys. They designed the first reverse-osmosis water-treatment plant in Florida, Aquarina, and created the Orlando Easterly Wetlands, one of the biggest wetlands for wastewater treatment. The companyas blueprint for success wasa"and isa"government contracting. Local, state, and federal taxpayers proffer more than 90 percent of PBSJas income.47 In the early 1990s, Bill Randolph, then PBSJas chairman, decided it was time to take the company national, and he began to acquire firms from the Gulf Coast to California. By the turn of the century, head doubled PBSJas size and revenues.48 Between 2000 and 2005, two subsequent chairmen, Richard A. Wickett and H. Michael Dye, helped double revenues again, to more than half a billion dollars. As the company burgeoned, so did its political activities. In 1985, PBSJ began making campaign contributions to state and local candidates when it registered a political action committee in Florida. By 2000, PBSJ had established political committees in seven other states.49 The pressure to give must have been extraordinary, because around 1990, PBSJ executives began to step over the line.50 In 2007, U.S. prosecutors charged Wickett and Dye with felony counts related to a along-term scheme to violate campaign-finance laws.a51 Federal elections officials who later investigated found that aPBSJ made direct corporate contributions to federal candidates and engaged in an inst.i.tutionalized, corporate-wide practice of reimbursing employee contributions.a52 A Federal Elections Commission investigation found that, starting in about 1990, Wickett and Dye set up sham bank accounts that diverted PBSJ funds to federal campaigns.53 PBSJ employees also told investigators that their bosses routinely used company funds to reimburse them for campaign contributions; employees filed fake mileage reports to be repaid thousands of dollars. Executives also set up abonusesa for top earners that actually ahad to go to PBSJ political action committees.a54 During the heat of the 2000 elections, Dye arranged a special amidyear bonusa for certain officers and directors, then instructed them to bring checkbooks to PBSJas board meeting so they could use their bonus money to donate to the firmas PACS.55 Federal officials say the scheme was aan important part of PBSJas business strategy,a and the motive was ato increase the likelihood of procuring government contracts for PBSJ.a56 They only uncovered it while investigating a $36 million embezzlement scheme undertaken by PBSJas chief financial officer.

The CFO, William DeLoach, claimed the companyas campaign-contribution scheme helped push him down a slippery slope, giving him the gumption to embezzle from his employer, and from taxpayers in the states where he overbilled on contracts. DeLoach told investigators he figured that if his superiors ever confronted him, he would aremind them of their improper reimburs.e.m.e.nt activity and could say to them, aWhat are you going to d