Against settler sustainability: California’s groundwater as a vertical frontier

Abstract

California has been heralded as a beacon of agricultural production and productivity, yet its groundwater crisis is a warning of its impending collapse. In this paper, we argue that policies like California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act reinscribe the settler state, even as they aim toward environmental sustainability. Drawing from Indigenous feminist scholarship on water and frontier processes, our methodology traces settler colonialism materially and discursively through the movement of water. First, we analyze hydraulic engineering discourses at the turn of the 20th century to illustrate how racial logics were key to producing irrigation—and the broader project of white settlement—as ostensibly benevolent processes of improvement. We then highlight how turn-of-the-century legislation was central to producing agriculture as a site of accumulation by dispossession through the production of settler forms of property and relations with land and water. Finally, we consider groundwater overdraft as a vertical frontier. Thinking with water as an analytic, we study the nexus of relationships that inscribe settler water infrastructures as normative, demonstrating their role as frontier processes within a settler colonial present. Our analysis shows the necessity of dismantling settler modes of sustainability and centering and supporting Indigenous sovereignty.

Thousands of domestic and public supply wells face failure despite groundwater sustainability reform in California’s Central Valley

“…SGMA designated existing public agencies “with water supply, water management, or land use responsibilities within a groundwater basin” 25 —often agricultural and urban surface water districts—as the GSAs, the implementation vehicles for the reform. This design of SGMA empowered local surface water users who have historically controlled water rights and infrastructure, likely resulting in diminished access (and therefore diminished input) for groundwater-dependent users, such as farmers without district affiliations, tribes, and unincorporated disadvantaged communities 39 , 40 .…”

Thousands of domestic and public supply wells face failure despite groundwater sustainability reform in California’s Central Valley

“…In cases where state policy sets polycentric governance in motion, the initial ambiguity of the policy, in this case groundwater sustainability reform, strongly influences its future success and shortcomings. In California, ambiguity within SGMA enabled inconsistent interpretation when it was favorable to local actors or convenient to ignore the sustainability of groundwater resources for Indigenous nations, historically underrepresented groups, and non-agencies 40 .…”

Hydrosocial geographies: Cycles, spaces and spheres of concern

“…Contests over hydrosocial territory extend in numerous directions. In California, Underhill et al (2022) argue groundwater has long been mobilized as a vertical frontier to support agricultural production in colonial settlements that undermine Indigenous sovereignty. Correia's (2022) study in the Chaco identified racial assumptions operating through physical sciences to produce oppressive hydrosocial relations of flood and drought on Indigenous territories.…”