Aquatic Panopticon: Participatory Surveillance and Environmental Enforcement

• In Event: Strategies to Promote Conservation

Abstract

What conditions foster or frustrate participatory surveillance in environmental regulation? California’s recent experience with drought provides an opportunity to examine the institutional, environmental, and social correlates of citizen participation in policing their own communities’ environmental regulations.

Facing unprecedented drought conditions in 2014, the State of California ordered 25% statewide reductions in consumption by its largest local water utilities. Across the state, local governments adopted policies restricting residential irrigation, car washing, and other discretionary uses of water. Along with these restrictions, California local governments established enforcement regimes with warnings, notices, and escalating fines for violations. From June 2015 through May 2016—the drought’s most severe period, when statewide mandatory restrictions were in place—local governments issued more than 293,000 warnings and 97,000 penalties for water violations.

California governments publicized these measures widely, and actively invited citizens to report violations of water use restrictions through online portals and anonymous telephone hotlines. In other words, California local governments invited their citizens to participate in surveillance pursuant to enforcement of environmental rules. The citizenry responded with gusto: Californians reported their neighbors for water violations more than 292,000 times during the height of the drought.

Monthly drought reporting and enforcement data from 400 California water utilities allow analysis of the relationships between citizen surveillance, enforcement actions, and a host of variables: utility ownership, governance institutions, economics, and demographics. We find that citizens report violations more frequently when their water is provided by a municipal utility than when it is provided by a special district, while private utilities generate the fewest citizen reports. Among demographics, only percent Asian population negatively predicts citizen reporting. Turning to enforcement, we find that citizen reporting positively predicts warnings and penalties, which suggests that participatory surveillance drove government enforcement during the California drought. Ownership also correlates with enforcement, again with municipal utilities issuing the most penalties, followed by special districts and private utilities. A community’s racial/ethnic composition also predicts enforcement: frequency of enforcement increases with affluence and declines with minority population.

Finally, we find that citizen reporting and enforcement actions positively predict overall water conservation. These results yield important findings for local environmental governance and the potential for citizens to participate in the implementation of the environmental rules that apply to their communities.

Authors

• Manny P. Teodoro, Texas A&M University

• Youlang Zhang, Texas A&M University