California's man-made water shortage.

• Author: Manning, Alex
• Position: Soundbite - Interview

Joel Kotkin is executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism, which aims to spell out how cities can drive increased opportunity and social mobility for the bulk of their citizens. In May, Reason TV producer Alex Manning sat down with Kotkin, who is also an urban studies specialist at Chapman University in Orange, California, to discuss the structural causes of the state's water crisis.

Q: What is the current state of water in California? A: The water situation in California is pretty bad. You have to understand that we haven't built any new infrastructure for the last 20 years. This, by the way, is not unique to water. It's roads, it's schools, it's an unwillingness to invest in the future because we spend all our money in government paying the pensions of employees.

Q: What's the exact problem right now? A: The problem is that we haven't prepared for what was inevitable, which was a drought. California's had droughts for years and years....It's almost like having a kid and deciding that you're going to stop buying clothes after they turn 8--it's no surprise that nothing fits.

Q: Is the solution dams? Is it aqueducts? A: I agree [that] probably we shouldn't have big lawns. And there's no point in our growing alfalfa and sending it to China. We might as well send all our water to China while we're at it.

Q: Can you describe the motivation behind growing alfalfa? A: The reason that farmers do these things is they get water that's highly subsidized. So they're not really having to pay what would be even close to a market price. Now, I'm not saying the farmers should pay the same as people in cities--farmers play a very important role in this society. But I do think that you have to be able to say, "Look, we cannot subsidize every crop at any cost."

California is a creation of engineering. It's a state with very fertile soil and huge topographical differences...