BOUTRIS WITTFOGEL - SLOPPY SCIENCE AT THE WATER BOARD

I’m wondering what happened to pride in workmanship in the water world. Why is there so much sloppy work? I understand there are numerous beneficiaries of deficient work, but why are the standards so low amongst the professionals and their managers who produce and review this junk?  Why are the professionals not more demanding of themselves?  Why do we continue to see crap like this? or this? Why is it that any fat document with a pretty cover page and an impressive table of contents passes for excellence?

 

Does the water board really need an 80 page ‘roadmap’ to enforce the law and protect groundwater? Did anyone anywhere ever learn anything from one of those consultant-wallet-stuffing ‘anti-degradation analyses’?? Is anyone taking a critical look at the substance of this stuff? Where are the scientific peer reviews, where is the scientific debate? Where are the professional licensing agencies? When the water board simply ignores the Clean Water Act, state law, its own policy, and the California Constitution (as alleged by some) to make it easier for someone to pollute, are there any repercussions to anyone? Does a staff person get reprimanded, is a manager demoted, does a flock of geologists swoop in and peck the eyes out of an incompetent geologist for shoddy work? 

 

In other trades there would be professional consequences. Bad welds doom the welder; poor timing on setting the corn crop seals the farmer’s fate, screw up as a lawyer and you become a “cheap lawyer,” and well we all know what we get with cheap lawyer. But in the water world appalling deficient work appears to go unchecked, maybe even rewarded. 

 

There are excellent professionals lurking in the water world. We saw that last week with the release of the draft Delta Flow Criteria. Some speculated the report was the product of some sort of political coup, while others seemed to think the report is the result of ghastly naiveté.    Maybe parts of both are true, but what I really think we saw was what it looks like when professionals do their job according to the highest professional standards -- a genuine shock to the water world.